Tag: uk

#rsrh What? The UK thing STILL not resolved?

Seriously?

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.

Labour gets swept away from local governance in UK.

If I understand this correctly, this is kind of a big deal:

Labour left with no county councils in England as Tories seize control of heartlands in local elections

Labour slumped to a record low in yesterday’s local council elections as it was swept from power in its last four counties.

The party faced losing more than 300 seats as its projected share of the vote plummeted to 23 per cent, leaving it trailing in third place in the last big test of public opinion before a General Election.

Gordon Brown admitted the party had suffered a ‘painful defeat’.

As I understand the term, ‘counties’ in the English part of the UK are somewhat more powerful than American counties, but not as powerful as American states: so this is only vaguely like the nearest American equivalent (one party losing control of all fifty state legislatures). Nonetheless, it’s an epic-level shellacking (when your candidates are being beaten by the guy from the Official Monster Raving Loony Party*, you’re in trouble) – and one that suggests that the EU Parliament election results are going to be down right fascinating…

Moe Lane

*Who didn’t win.

Crossposted to RedState.