…the Guardian’s website is thataway. Honestly, they are usually very good at this sort of thing, although even their best writers would struggle to inject much tension into this episode. Before I head up the wooden hill to Bedfordshire, I shall raise a glass to the humbling of the Scottish National Party and to whichever stubborn old reactionary kept British votes retro.
|
|||||
|
We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people. Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house] Authors
Arts, Tech & CultureCivil LibertiesCommentary
EconomicsSamizdatistas |
If you came for constantly updated election coverage through the night…Natalie Solent (Essex) · Political Economy · Privacy & Panopticon · Self defence & Security · UK affairs July 4th, 2024 |
 15 comments to If you came for constantly updated election coverage through the night…Leave a Reply |
Who Are We?The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling. We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe. CategoriesArchivesFeed This PageLink Icons   |
|||
All content on this website (including text, photographs, audio files, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. |
|||||
The Red Terror begins…
Seems to have been a rather lower turnout than I would have expected.
And the Blue Terror is ending.
So if I read that site correctly, the SNP and Conservative parties are the big losers. Reform is getting 4 seats – is that the number of seats that you were hoping for? It seems like a pretty small number given the number of seats available.
EDIT: This part I don’t fully understand.
Reform UK — 4 — 3,391,599
Lib Democrat — 49 — 2,604,918
Gets 25% more votes but gets a tenth of the seats?
That’s what happens in first past the post unfortunately. UKIP used to suffer from the same problem, could get 15% of the vote but zero seats.
The perversity of this is that Reform is representing a very widespread and significant concern over immigration, lack of say from ordinary people, etc but precisely because it is a very common, significant minority it doesn’t stack up in votes in any one particular seat but is instead relatively evenly distributed across the country.
The Greens, for example, are much more concentrated in urban areas like Bristol city centre and Brighton Pavilion but are thin on the ground elsewhere, yet will get seats because of their density in certain areas.
There was a bar graph, which I now can’t find, that had Reform in third place on percentage of votes with the LibDems in fourth.
You can find that on the BBC (like the guardian, their clickable election map is quite good)
Reform 14.3%, almost 4 million votes, limpdumps 12% (labour 34.2% I think).
Pro rata, for 650 in watemonster, I think it would have been something like 222 labour, 153 tories, 93 reform, 78 limp dumps, 45 green (that surprised me!) 16 Scottish nazis.
A labour/limp dump/green/SNP coalition with all the dirty dealing done after the event behind closed doors?
Perfect blameocracy for when it goes wrong!
To be honest I prefer the shitshow we’ve just got!
How long before – protected by the huge majority alas – he’s a dead man walking?
Ferox:
The Reform vote is spread thinly across the country so they come second or third in a lot of seats.
The Liberal Democrats have concentrated support in predominantly rural and suburban areas and so they get more seats.
It’s as if there had been a Congressional redistricting to draw lines around areas where the Liberal Democrats are found.
The best chance in a generation to start the slow process towards meaningful change and a way out of the current shitfest spiral change yet still well over 20% clung to nurse (for fear of something worse, how utterly pathetic) and kept the two-party system in complete control. I don’t blame the bbc, channel 4 or the telegraph. I blame weak people without the balls to even try to make a difference
Jonathan Bowden had it right in 2009:
‘So, there’s a total disconnect now between the ruling group and the masses and the masses have got to show some stomach for once, and they’ve got to be prepared to vote for radical people who will clear out New Labour. Here in the north, in the south, in the east and the west outside England, within Britain and elsewhere. Clear them out! And the Tories will do no good either. You’ve got to clear them out. The Liberals are just a bloc in between the two that give the other two their ideas, all the sort of destructive ideas that Phillips is in favor of and that I talked about earlier. You’ve got to clear them out as well. There needs to be a new start!’
I lacked the stomach previously too. No more.
My lefty SIL is cock-a-hoop. In every case so far socialism has been a disaster but this time will be different you just watch.
Seats are awarded on the basis of the constituency vote. Not on the national vote.
To be fair, the Tories deserved this defeat!
When Claus Schwab said he’d managed to get his placemen into positions of authority, I immediately thought of Trudeau, but you know what? Now, I suspect Cameron, May and probably Johnson too.
Oh yes, the Tories absolutely deserved to lose, I pretty much detest everything that they now stand for, but what was her problem with them since they differ from Labour in nothing but minor details anyway? This was the reason that there was no point in voting Conservative just to keep Labour out.
The pro liberty vote was split between the Conservatives and Reform – this led to a landslide Labour victory.
But the Conservative Party did-this-to-itself by giving in (again and again) to officials and “experts” (on Covid, on government spending and taxation, on so many things) – both government and corporate officials and experts.
A “Central Office” attitude of “well we got far more votes than Reform so we can just carry on as before” will-not-do. The parties of the right must come together – but it must be on the basis of a real rejection of the power of officials, both government and corporate, national and international.
What happened in Alberta Canada should be the guide – the parties of the right came together, but NOT on the basis of the Conservatives just carrying on as before, but (rather) on a new basis, a new foundation.
It may already be too late for the United Kingdom, with the tidal wave of censorship and persecution that is likely (which may well close down blogs such as this samizdata.net – as “racist-sexist-homophobe-transphobe-Islamophobe-climate-deniers”), but we still must try.
Pull the other one Paul.
The Tory party of lock-downs and prosecutions for stepping outside your house, pro liberty? Blasting through the Nuremberg convention, and testing an untried medication on the population at large. Pro liberty ??
Turning us into economic serfs on the teat of the state. Pro liberty???
You must be on something!
Sorry to see Bridgen lose his seat.