Her Majesties’ subjects have spoken again. It’s just that we don’t know yet what exactly they have said. Well, a majority among them will have probably sighed a little in the booth and then more or less resignedly or enthusiastically ticked off the box next to their local Labour candidate, thus likely ensuring Blairs “historic” second and a half term in office. Earlier, Exit polls predicted a reduced Labour majority of 66 seats.
But because we want to know all this in detail, it is worth mentioning again on top of the page that afoe’s Nick Barlow is blogging the election night over at “What you can get away with” as well as on the 2005 UK General election blog. Here’s why he thinks it’s worth staying up:
“Conservatives take back Putney on a 6.5% swing, Labour hold Newcastle Central but have an 11% swing to the Liberal Democrats. There?s not going to be anything even resembling a uniform national swing tonight, so this could be a long night.”
If that’s still not enough information for the true election junkies among you, then check the list of election bloggers compiled by Chicken Yoghurt. Oh, and before I forget it, the BBC does also offer extensive election coverage including an automatically updating scorecard.
If there is a large swing to Lib Dems – what does that mean for the attitude of the British toward the European Union – the Lib Dems are supposedly very pro-European. Any opionion?
It isn’t that straight forward.
As a generalisation, the Lib Dems have been taking Labour, not Conservative, seats. The Conservatives have been taking both Lib Dem and Labour seats. Europe has hardly featured in the election. The Iraq war and relating questions of trust in Blair have probably been the most prominent set of issues.
Wow, that is a bold prediction. Most polls seem to put Labour at roughly 35-40%. To project them for an outright majority of votes cast is really putting yourself out on a limb.
“Most polls seem to put Labour at roughly 35-40%, To project them for an outright majority….”.
Well that’s what they will have. Vote shares currently show around 36% for Labour, 33% for the Conservatives, and 22% for the Lib Dems.
That this should give 350 odd seats to Labour and 59 to the Lib Dems is one of the vagiaries (and of course injustices) of the British electoral system.
At school in the sixties we were told that the two party system was one of the strong-points of British democracy, since it guaranteed stable government when compared with the ‘instability’ to be found in countries like France and Italy.
Of course thinking on this has changed substantially. The UK has effectively a version of ‘lock-in’.
Since I came to live in Spain my thinking on this has changed accordingly: governments with large absolute majorities may not be particularly desireable. There is much more chance of public opinion getting its voice heard when the government is dependent on a ‘third party’.
Also, despite all the back slapping congratulations, I’m not sure ‘third terms’ are especially desireable. A well-functioning democratic system should be tuned to produce a change after two. The problem in the UK seems not to be the unchalangeable ‘merits’ of the incumbents, but rather the lamentable state of the ‘official’ opposition.
Which brings us back to Melli’s point: what Europe reading can one put on all this? Now Bob is undoubtedly right that Europe seems not to have been an explicit issue. But the vote must offer some guage of ‘anti-EU’ sentiment. Labour these days is hardly an anti EU party, and the poor Conservative showing must tell us something.
Here I think it is absolutely essential to distinguish between the EU and the euro. The euro is – as Bob indicates elsewhere – undoubtedly completely off the UK agenda: and with good reason. But this is *not* the same as being pro- or anti- European.
Now the fact that there has been so much heart-searching about Iraq seems to me, in foreign policy terms, to lead in one direction, and one direction only: towards a greater reconciliation with Europe. This would seem to me to one of the the principal reasons the Conservatives were unable to avail themselves of this sentiment.
I may end up with egg on my face, but I’m getting to be rather more confident that the French will vote ‘yes’, if they do it wouldn’t surprise me to see the Dutch follow suit, and in which case I wouldn’t be totally pessimistic about a UK vote next year, whatever the pols now show.
Of course as Harold Wilson said ‘a week in politics is a long time’, and I could be well wide of the mark.
Maybe even more amazing (than the relatively poor performance of the Tories) is the very poor performance of the UKIP and the other anti-europe party Veritas of some media-character Kilroy-silk (that is not his real name is it?).
Of course the electoral system in the UK is very tough on smaller parties but in this same elections the SNP won a seat from labour (the first time in 30 years) anti-iraq-war group respect won a seat and the green did reasonably well (they did not win one seat however)
Concerning the UK election system:
Apart from the fact that a small _relative_ majority at the polls is generally sufficient to gain a comfortable _absolute_ majority in Parliament there is also the problem of bias:
Because of migration, the average Labour constituency is nowadays much smaller than the average for the Tories, meaning that the Tories need considerably more votes for one seat than Labour does.
For the 2005 election it has been calculated, that approximately 29% of the popular vote would have been sufficient for Labour to secure an absolute majority in Parliament (the Tories would have needed 41% for the same feat)!!
The system is strange indeed and it is rather surprising that the English themselves seem to be rather content with it.
At least, some of the more bizarre aspects of the system have already been abolished, such as the borough of Old Sarum, which for centuries sent 2 represantatives to parliament even though it had no inhabitants whatsoever (in case you don’t believe me, have a look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Sarum)
BTW:
The UK government had the pro and cons of its system analysed in the “Jenkins report” a couple of years ago:
http://www.archive.official-documents.co.uk/document/cm40/4090/contents.htm
(Interesting to read, if you happen to be interested in that sort of thing).