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 whembly wrote:
It's simple majority to form a government... right? 326 MP is needed?

Ish. Technically yes, but because Sinn Fein won't take the seats they win, you can actually get a majority with about 323 rather than 326.

 whembly wrote:
It's simple majority to form a government... right? 326 MP is needed?

Yep (although due to some members refusing to sit in parliament the majority is technically 323). The 326 do not need to form a coliatlion though, the conservatives or labour just need to get the support of enough MPs to petition the queen to form the government. They will have to fight to get any legislation through though and would likely have to make some serious concessions.

 Ketara wrote:
Frankly though, all the talk of a hung Parliament is rubbish, I reckon. A quick look at where the leaders were campaigning tells the truth, Corbyn only ever visited two areas outside Labour safe seats, whereas May had it the other way around. Labour played defensively this entire election trying desperately to hold on to what they have whilst the Conservatives have been looking to gain new votes elsewhere.

Corbyn's entire gambit this election has been to try and consolidate himself sufficiently that he can hang around for another five years.

Absolutely, but given the annihilation it looked like Labour might be facing at the start of the campaign, he will certainly claim to have had a good election, and be able to ask the party to actually get behind him.

Thanks for the explanation guys!

 Darkjim wrote:

 Ketara wrote:
Frankly though, all the talk of a hung Parliament is rubbish, I reckon. A quick look at where the leaders were campaigning tells the truth, Corbyn only ever visited two areas outside Labour safe seats, whereas May had it the other way around. Labour played defensively this entire election trying desperately to hold on to what they have whilst the Conservatives have been looking to gain new votes elsewhere.

Corbyn's entire gambit this election has been to try and consolidate himself sufficiently that he can hang around for another five years.

Absolutely, but given the annihilation it looked like Labour might be facing at the start of the campaign, he will certainly claim to have had a good election, and be able to ask the party to actually get behind him.

Why should they? They've been quiescent and more or less dancing to his tune for a good six months now. The knives have been hidden for quite some time. They gave him his chance. The manifesto was written by him, McDonnell, Abbot, Milne & Co, the election strategy was decided by them. The party has been out hitting the streets as hard as they ever did in support of Miliband or Brown.

Corbyn has had as good at this as he could possibly get. He got gifted an opposing leader who talks like a robot and shies away from public confrontations, the mass support of the youth vote, a horrendously unpopular opposition who's been driving through six years of vicious cuts. If he not only can't win now, but actually loses seats, he's utterly bloody useless and they'll be well within their rights to boot his arse to the kerb.

Yeah, I can't blame Corbyn for the way the actual Labour campaign has gone at all.

Well, sorta. I can't forget that pretty much everything before the campaign (EG Corbyn is incompetent/communist etc) and after (Corbyn is the heroic plucky hero destined to win) is all narrative constructed by mass media to sell more papers, get more advertising, get more clicks, get more refreshes...

And that's without getting into the whole Cambridge Analytica allegations for the other side.

So yeah, I've given up on making predictions when it comes to stuff like this now.

Thing is, I'm actually more politically aligned with Corbyn's manifesto then anyone's. But in order to steal my vote, he needed to convince me that him and his frontbench had the skills and experience to pull it off. What he was proposing was the most radical overhauling of the British economy and state since Thatcher. And I know enough to know that if you don't have a top notch team behind something like that, you'll wreck the place.

But it quickly became evident that beyond the broad brush strokes, the policy was shallow and badly thought out, conceived more from ideology than careful thought. Combine it with a frontbench with less managerial and leadership experience than a Customer Services Manager at Tesco, and it was bloody obvious that they'd make a hash of it. And ultimately, I'd rather have the rather crappy mediocre state of things we have now than the utter dog's dinner I expected to result from Corbyn's Labour Government. I suspect I won't have been alone.

And that, he is rather responsible for. I could have indulged inexperience, or forgiven an ideological conviction. I can't ignore sloppy planning though, not with the stakes at risk.

Not sure I'm getting much sleep tonight.

Also, wowzers.. Amber Rudd's seat might need a recount.

 Ketara wrote:

 Darkjim wrote:

 Ketara wrote:
Frankly though, all the talk of a hung Parliament is rubbish, I reckon. A quick look at where the leaders were campaigning tells the truth, Corbyn only ever visited two areas outside Labour safe seats, whereas May had it the other way around. Labour played defensively this entire election trying desperately to hold on to what they have whilst the Conservatives have been looking to gain new votes elsewhere.

Corbyn's entire gambit this election has been to try and consolidate himself sufficiently that he can hang around for another five years.

Absolutely, but given the annihilation it looked like Labour might be facing at the start of the campaign, he will certainly claim to have had a good election, and be able to ask the party to actually get behind him.

Why should they? They've been quiescent and more or less dancing to his tune for a good six months now. The knives have been hidden for quite some time. They gave him his chance. The manifesto was written by him, McDonnell, Abbot, Milne & Co, the election strategy was decided by them. The party has been out hitting the streets as hard as they ever did in support of Miliband or Brown.

Corbyn has had as good at this as he could possibly get. He got gifted an opposing leader who talks like a robot and shies away from public confrontations, the mass support of the youth vote, a horrendously unpopular opposition who's been driving through six years of vicious cuts. If he not only can't win now, but actually loses seats, he's utterly bloody useless and they'll be well within their rights to boot his arse to the kerb.

The polls had them a long, long way behind at the start. They had a chance to actually put some policies forward for a couple of months, rather than just suffer through Corbyn not doing a very good job on the PMQ shouting match each week, and it seems the distance has closed, at least somewhat. I'd say his supporters will claim that as something of a victory.

Just went through the current results. As a rule, the Tories tend to have swallowed about 2/3 of the UKIP votes with Labour taking the remaining third. If May's Brexit rhetoric is working that well up North, I expect it'll to do even better in the Tory heartlands.

Well they said there are 71 labour seats that have majorities smaller than UKIP votes in the last election.


That could swing it a lot.

When all is said and done, the Tories are still likely to be running the show. Probably. To get them out would require an outlandish collation of like half a dozen parties, some of them looking to break up the UK. It wouldn't work. But the Tories have been seriously damaged and now Brexit has been put in danger, for no reason at all. I'm depressed.

Meawhile, the BBC is /shocked that the exit poll might have proven inaccurate now the Tories are doing better than it said.

Ah feth, ITV's got Gina Miller on. They're rubbing salt in the wound.

First blood drawn, the SNP gave up a seat to Labour. Narrow majority of a thousand.

Talk coming from the conservatives is that having seen prelimery results for most of London they have accepted they will not get a majority.

 Future War Cultist wrote:
When all is said and done, the Tories are still likely to be running the show. Probably. To get them out would require an outlandish collation of like half a dozen parties, some of them looking to break up the UK. It wouldn't work. But the Tories have been seriously damaged and now Brexit has been put in danger, for no reason at all. I'm depressed.

Well if you didn't have a reason to drink before.


Bottoms up! Might as well as everything else is going bottoms over boobies.

@ welshhoppo

I wish I had enough booze in the house to get drunk.

There's always the possibility that it could go the other way and they do even worse. Meaning that maybe I'm wrong and Labour will get in. And this country will have to learn that their kind of policies don't work all over again.

 Future War Cultist wrote:
@ welshhoppo

I wish I had enough booze in the house to get drunk.

There's always the possibility that it could go the other way and they do even worse. Meaning that maybe I'm wrong and Labour will get in. And this country will have to learn that their kind of policies don't work all over again.

Well, it would at least show that the public had learned, temporarily, that Tory policies don't work.

Tories just claimed the second SNP scalp, and it was in Northern Scotland, the SNP heartlands, to boot. That was unexpected.

First Trump and now Corbyn. Worlds going nuts for lunatics

I wouldn't really call Corbyn nutty when compared to Trump. Seems pretty sane when compared to our politicians.

But in the meantime.

 Whirlwind wrote:

 welshhoppo wrote:
We haven't got time for May to step down.


We need to crack on with Brexit, we can't afford to be six months behind the EU.

However her position is likely to untenable. Best thing would be to go to the EU and ask for 6 months recess to ensure we can form a government. Doubt Lib Dems will make same mistake again (but will insist on a second referendum with Greens). Big question is whether Sinn Fein will drop not coming into parliament. Given they want open borders might be the first time we see them in parliament.

You think every member of EU is willing to give that to UK? What benefit that gives to them? UK has the 2 year deadline and doubtful they get a day more than that.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
BTW out of curiosity is it normal expected result for single group get majority and anything other than that is abnormal in UK? As in Finland one party getting more than 25% would be huge victory. One party getting absolute majority would be unheard of in here. 2 parties combining for majority is pretty rare I think. Usually it's 3 parties needed to form a goverment strong enough it won't breeze over by one or two members missing critical vote of no-confidence.

tneva82 wrote:
BTW out of curiosity is it normal expected result for single group get majority and anything other than that is abnormal in UK? As in Finland one party getting more than 25% would be huge victory. One party getting absolute majority would be unheard of in here. 2 parties combining for majority is pretty rare I think. Usually it's 3 parties needed to form a goverment strong enough it won't breeze over by one or two members missing critical vote of no-confidence.

For most of the past 40 years, we've had 3 party politics (the rest pretty irrelevant), whereby 1 party rarely gets the majority of votes, but because of First Past the Post, does get the majority of seats and so forms a majority government, UKIP made it four party politics for a while, in terms of vote share at least. In 2010 when no party got an overall majority, we had a coalition of 2 parties to form the majority.

What has changed tonight, is (in England at least) we are back to 2 party politics. The Lib Dems were more or less wiped out 2 years ago and have made very little ground back, and now UKIP have lost virtually all of the 10% or so the vote share they had, so it's now just the Tories and Labour. Those leaving UKIP have split between the Tories and Labour a lot more evenly than was expected (though still in the Tories favour), hence what we currently seem to be heading for, which is a reduced Tory majority / no majority at all. Scotland has saved the Tories, lots of ramifications up there too.

We could be seeing Prime Minister Boris by the weekend. Not saying May will resign, I think under just about any other circumstances she would be forced out for making such a catastrophic mistake, but there is a strong argument which says Brexit talks start in week, probably not the best time for a leadership election.

If he is, the last 2 tory PMs are 2/2 on really, really fething up, can Boris break the pattern?

Well done Tim, just

And regardless of anything else, turnout was up almost everywhere, so yay democracy.

 Darkjim wrote:
Not saying May will resign, I think under just about any other circumstances she would be forced out for making such a catastrophic mistake, but there is a strong argument which says Brexit talks start in week, probably not the best time for a leadership election.

That argument would rely on the Tories putting stability of the country ahead of the party, something which they have already demonstrated an inability to do twice within a year.

This is absolutely ridiculous: http://www.independent.co.uk/News/uk/politics/newcastle-under-lyme-keele-university-election-polls-students-stopped-voting-return-latest-a7780101.html?cmpid=facebook-post

I hope the names of Cameron and May are remembered for a long time for the catastrophic chaos they have inflicted upon the country - and that the country remembers for a long time that Tories will ALWAYS put their party and their donors before the needs of the country. Strong and stable? Dear lord, if the future weren't so worrying this result would be hilarious.

THis election shows that the country is unhappy and divided.

That is the result of lamentable political leadership.

Well, I for one have a massive grin on my face.

I expect we'll see Theresa May either fall on her sword or knifed in the back before the day is out.

Either way, she just blew it, big time. And I for one can't help but feel we've all just dodged a bullet, even if my man didn't win. Perhaps we can now wind up with a Tory leader not pandering to the very worst her party attracts?

Oh wow. I'm tempted to sit and watch the news with a big bag of popcorn. But unfortunately I have to go to work

Just sitting here, hoping the pound drops some more so i can get a Fw discount.