| Conservative | 297 | 94 |
| Labour | 252 | -88 |
| Liberal Democrat | 53 | -5 |
| Scottish National Party | 6 | 0 |
| Plaid Cymru | 3 | 1 |
| Others | 18 | -2 |
629 out of 650, and nobody’s seeing a clear path to a majority. Also: apparently it takes the British almost a day to count election returns (maybe they have just one guy who does it, and he has to run from borough to borough). Conclusions:
- This entire situation reminds me why I distrust scenarios where multiple parties have representation in a legislature.
- At the rate things are going, somebody is going to have to ask the Queen what she thinks. That may be interesting.
- I actually retain fond memories of British breakfasts – their bacon is unusual, but good – so watching the BBC broadcasters stumble around at 6 AM local time over this entire thing merely made me oddly hungry.
I’ve never really understood the Parliamentary system of government. I like our system (however if it was up to me, I make a few changes) the best.
I dunno Moe, what you see as bug, I see as a feature. Anything that would make it harder to get things legislated is, in general, a good thing, especially if all laws are required to have sunset provisions.
I think things would be very interesting if, instead of proximity-based seating in the House of Representatives, it was group-based. IE, with 307 million people in the US, if a party can get 700000 members or so, they can send a representative to Congress, that they vote amongst themselves to send. Such a system would certainly be much more representative than the one we have today.
Then folks like the crazy Libertarians could finally have representation. Would it splinter the existing parties? Some. For example I’d probably join a second amendment party. My folks would probably be a member of a social-conservative religious party.
If you kept the senate as it is, the big parties wouldn’t go away, but they’d be more explicit coalitions than they are today.
Moving on from Skip…
If I was David Cameron, I would let Gorden Brown get his job back after this election (but put on a good show of fighting it). Things can only go down-hill from here and if Brown is in charge, he will be blamed. Mr Cameron could then pick up the peices once Gorden Brown’s coalition/public opinion falls apart on him.