The Absolute State Of It - It's The UK Politics Thread!

[Wrathbone]

Found a lively one in Sherwood.

https://whocanivotefor.co.uk/person/255 ... -paul-spry

Some highlights include:

- He wants every constituency to have a male MP and a female MP, so double the current number of MPs. I note he doesn't have a female counterpart running.

- Clearly this would cause problems with space in the Commons, so he wants to build a new Houses of Parliament.

- All military actions and laws must be approved via a national referendum. A Brexit every week!

- The concept of separate countries for England, Scotland, Wales and NI should be abolished in favour of a single nation (presumably he just means abandon devolution), because "this is the Space Age".

- He is concerned that the country will be under "Marshall" law in the next five years.

[Sly Boots]

[Raid]

My favourite image of the election. The Leader of His Majesty's government, the Prime Minister of Great Britain, the Rt Hon Rishi Sunak, getting second billing to Britain's most tattooed mum.

[Raid]

[Sly Boots]

NYT has Reform winning 13 seats, which is a bit of a dampener on things...

[eny]

I voted Labour purely to get rid of that snidey Baker, good riddance if it goes the way it seems. Harrogate is now Lib Dem. Good to see the back of this lot, but whoever gets in won't have it easy, what a damn mess.

[eny]

30p Lee kept his seat....for Reform. Jesus.

[eny]

Galloway trumped, ha haa haa!

[eny]

Grant Shapps out on his arse.

[eny]

Corbin and Facage both win their seats...

[Wrathbone]

Managed to stay awake until 4am to see the results come in, and I've never seen anything quite like it. Yes, Labour won a landslide but first-past-the-post saved them. So many of the results (at least going by the early ones) had Reform in a disturbingly high second place, and the turnout was 50-60% in most places. Starmer will shout about what a huge mandate he has, yet I think (from memory) Corbyn got a higher percentage popular vote in the last election.

[Raid]

It's easy to see the headline of a Labour landslide and think all's good, but that vote share is pretty scary. Reform received over four million votes, only two million fewer than the Tories. A candidate that Reform disowned a week ago because of vile racist comments almost won their seat. While I can only hope that more of these votes were cast over a general fear of excessive immigration, it's difficult not to think that a substantial portion of our population harbour some pretty horrible viewpoints.

So yay, the Tories are out, and we've elected some people that probably aren't worse, but the way this was campaigned for doesn't exactly fill me with hope that this country's problems are over. The amount of airtime anti-trans viewpoints received honestly scares me because it feels like the country believes denying a small number of people basic human dignity and allowing them to live with an identity they're comfortable with (with no impact to anyone else) is more important than fixing our actual problems.

[Sly Boots]

I'm glad that Reform won less than a third of the seats the exit poll had suggested, hopefully the number of votes they did get is less an endorsement of their views and pro-Farage than it is a protest against the Tories by traditional Tory voters, who nonetheless couldn't bring themselves to vote Labour (my dad gave this as his reason for doing so).

That probably accounts for the Lib Dems doing so well as well, as someone who used to vote for them before they evaporated as a party it's nice to see a decent third party emerge again.

I voted Labour here though, and they won for the first-time ever in my area, which was nice, pretty big share of the vote to (21k vs 14k for Tories, for whom this has traditionally been a safe seat).

[eny]

We booted the priggy fart-man of Brexit! Finally! I don't pretend the alternative isn't going to be up against it though, tough times ahead for anyone who isn't a parasite...our real issue as a society isn't immigrants....it's the people who create them that are the problem.

[Raid]

I've had the coverage on in the background while working this morning, and listened to both Sunak and Starmer's speeches. It's funny that the tone for Sunak's was one of apology, I wish he'd shown that level of humility prior to leaving Number 10 to go and collect his P45. Sunak and Starmer both thanked their opponents, a brief and rare show of cross-party solidarity, and listening to Starmer I did allow myself a brief moment of hope that maybe we may get back to the point where I can start watching the news again without constantly feeling like the country is disappearing down the toilet and into a local waterway. I have my criticisms of the Starmer, but he can come across as calm and respectable, which is something his four immediate predecessors lacked.