Neil has hit this story over at RedState already, so let me just embed this…
#ukelection2015 final:
Conservatives 331
Labour 232
SNP 56
LibDem 8
DUP 8
SF 4
UKIP 1
Other 10
— AoSHQ Decision Desk (@AoSHQDD) May 8, 2015
…and note that it came out of nowhere. I was expecting the Tories to lose seats overall, honestly. I certainly wasn’t expecting to see three of the four other major parties (Labour, Liberal Democrats, and UKIP) to be suddenly bereft of leadership. I’d feel bad about getting last night’s results wrong, except that everybody else did, too.
Moe Lane
PS: Mind you, a ‘Conservative’ in the UK is like a Democrat here. Albeit one being hunted out to extinction.
I’m in Europe still, for a couple more days, and I flipped between the two english language news stations I can get, BBC News and the international version of CNN. Remember all the news coverage in 1994 election night? It was like that. You had some seriously morose talking heads on there.
You forget: in 1994 I was an apolitical Democrat. 🙂
So what actually made you change? A vision on the road to Damascus? High school math finally sunk in?
Keeping with the British theme, perhaps it was a truism falsely attributed to Churchill that did the trick:
“If you’re not a liberal when you’re 25, you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative by the time you’re 35, you have no brain.”
Makes no sense that SNP got 1.5 million vote and got all those seat. UKIP got 5 times as many votes and got 1 seat.
Concentrated regional party in 50 districts, versus nationally diffuse across 300. Such are the limitations of geographic districts. Similar reason why there’s no strong third party in the US.
We’ve had “strong” third parties in the U.S. In Wisconsin and Minnesota the Progressive, and Farmer Labor Parties did fairly well in the 30s and 40s, but only in Wisconsin and Minnesota respectively, both were co-opted by Democrats, or run out of office by Republicans.
Who are DUP? Are SF the IRA guys?
SF is Sin Fein, and they won’t be sitting in Westminster, DUP is the largest party in Northern Ireland, meaning Democratic Unionist Party. As I understand it they’re mostly a Centre-Right political party.