UK Election Summary?

[Pangloss]

I was just wondering if one (or more) of you good folks in the UK could summarize and outline the results of the election for those of us who find British politics just a wee bit confusing.

 

Blair stays on as PM, correct?

[Dak]

okey dokey, basically the country is divided into areas known as constituencies. people can run on behalf of the parties in as many constituencies as they like, with labour, conservative and liberal democrats having representatives running in every constituency, and minority parties such as green piece and the british nationalist party running in some constituencies, and not others (for example, in my constituency, only labour, conservative, lib dem and the uk indipendance party ran).

 

now, whoever gets the most votes in the constituency runs that constituency and becomes a member of parliment, representing the constituency in parliment: for example, in my constituency the person with the most votes was the bloke representing lib dem, so he will go to parliment and represent the views/needs of his constituency, and as he's affilated with lib dem, he will also represent lib dems ideals in parliment.

 

the first thing that the members of parliment will vote on is which party runs the country; broadly speaking, whoever gets the most votes from mps is incharge.(im not sure wether thats actually how it works, but that seems to be whats going on -- if anyone wants to clarify?)

 

there are 646 constituencies in the uk, which means for an overall majority a party needs to be elected into atleast 324 constituencies: if this is the case, then they automatically win the election (ie, if labour wone 324 costituencies, then they would have 324 members of parliment who would all vote for labour to govourn the country -- as thered only be 322 votes left, the vote would go to labour)

 

labouor wone 356, giving them the overall majority they need to rule the country: HOWEVER only 35.2% of the voters actually voted for labour (the closest other party was conservatives, with 197 constituensies and 32.3% of the votes), meaning that labour now hold the record for the lowest share of the votes that ever resulted in an overall majority.

 

full results can be found on this page

 

labour lost alot of constituensies/votes to the conservatives and lib dem.

 

and in short: yes, blair will be serving another term (his last, as hes retireing after this).

 

personal note: i think its appauling that labour got such a majority with only about 3% more votes than conservatives.

[Pangloss]

Interesting, thanks for the feedback.

 

So Labor is more popular in the less populated constituencies, leading to an imbalance in overall popular representation? Sounds similar to some of our problems.

[Dak]

it certainly seems that way; labour won loads of the piddly little constituancies.

 

ive allways been curiouse as to how it works in the us; anyone mind giving me a summary?

 

oh, and what the hell are the local elections (in the uk) for?

[Pangloss]

I guess the key difference would be that we vote for the president separately, because he's not part of the legislature. And our Congress is divided into two sides, but for different reasons than in the UK. We typically vote for one House representative and one of the two Senators (whose terms are offset by two years to avoid having them come up at the same time). The House represents people by number, and the Senate represents people by state, and a law has to be approved by both sides and signed by the President. That way the big states can't run roughshod over the little states, and at the same time the big states get significantly more representation than the little states.

 

In practice, however, we often run into exactly the same sorts of problems, due to the tendency to vote by party or with the state's block.

[Dak]

so is it just the case that whichever presidentual candidate gets the most votes gets in, or is it like the british constituensies but with states instead of constituensies?

 

Blair stays on as PM, correct?

actually, british politics is quite unforgiving on inadequate leaders: the second a leader fails his party, he is out. william hague lost leadership of the conservative party after they failed to win the last election, and blokey McBlokey (cant remember the last conservative leaders name) had to step down after loosing this last one.

 

tony blair has led the labour party into its third consecutive term in office, which is the first time labour have achieved that, although hes also lost a significant number of the labour votes to the lib dems and a number of constituensies to both conservatives and lib dem, so oppinion as to wether hes done a good job and should stay or a terrible job and should step down is mixed within the labour party.

 

for now, his intention seems to be to run for a significant amount of this term, but if he screws up anytime soon he may very well be called to step down, in which case gordon brown will likely replase him as pm.

[Pangloss]

so is it just the case that whichever presidentual candidate gets the most votes gets in, or is it like the british constituensies but with states instead of constituensies?

 

In simplest terms, and most normal circumstances, it's the former. We elect a president and we elect members of the legislature, and the only thing they have in common is that they take place on the same date. The actual mechanics of it are more complex (you might here quibbles about the "electoral college", but it's not a political entity, it's just a mechanism for conveying the popular vote left over from the pre-industrial age), but in general the only time there's any crossover between the three branches of US government (executive, legislative and judicial) is when there is a failure of the normal process in some way (such as when the Supreme Court had to make a ruling about whether the 2000 presidential election results were valid).

 

Put another way, the concept of "forming a government", of having Congress decide who gets to be the president, of having that happen for political rather than electoral reasons -- these things are entirely alien to Americans. It's the kind of thing that sends shivers up our spines and which we might perceive as an enormous, dangerous flaw in your system. We grow up hearing about the importance of checks and balances and separation of powers between the three branches, and hundred-million-dollar Hollywood productions tell us how even a tiny loss of that separation can lead to disaster, so that kind of difference makes us really uncomfortable.

 

In reality, of course, I imagine that the British people enjoy many of not all (or more) of the checks and balances on power that Americans do. At least that's the assumption I start from, since it would be hubris to think otherwise.

 

As a conservative friend of mine often says, in the end it doesn't matter how many checks and balances you have if the people in charge of carrying them out are determined to corrupt and misuse them!

[JohnB]

Pangloss, there is a fundamental difference between a Republic and a Constitutional Monarchy. There is no President.

 

This being the case, the closest American equivalent to "Prime Minister" would be "Leader of the House". The Prime Minister is nothing more than the leader of the party who controls the most seats in the Lower House.

 

While this means that the appointment is political, rather than popular, there is always the caveat that the person chosen to lead the party (either as PM or "Leader of the Opposition" ) will be the one leading the party into the next election. So he'd better be popular.

 

Imagine if the US had gone to the last Congressional election being told; "If the GOP wins then Bush will be POTUS, if the Dems win then Kerry is POTUS." That's roughly how our system works.

 

You are quite right about the checks and balances thing. One major difference between the US and the Westminster system is that there are far more parties in Britain and Oz. This means that it is unusual for one party to control both Houses of Parliment. It only takes one or two Senators from the minor parties to really mess up a government plans.

labouor wone 356, giving them the overall majority they need to rule the country: HOWEVER only 35.2% of the voters actually voted for labour (the closest other party was conservatives, with 197 constituensies and 32.3% of the votes), meaning that labour now hold the record for the lowest share of the votes that ever resulted in an overall majority.

Dak, you use "First past the Post" polling don't you?

[Dak]

hurm, whats 1st past the post mean? (im pretty sure that yes, we do)

[JohnB]

If there are four candidates, then you vote for only one of them. The candidate with the greatest number wins.

 

As opposed to the "Preferential" system.

[darth tater]

For a good explaination of how we elect our president, try this web site.....

http://www.fec.gov/pages/ecworks.htm

[Dak]

then yes, we operate a first past the post system