UK General Election 101Follow

We have 3 major parties; Conservative ('Tory'), Labour and Liberal Democrat. The Lib Dems haven't been in power since before WWII.

There are a number of other parties that may win a seat here and there - UK Independence Party (right wing, want to leave the Europe Union), The British National Party (anti-immigration *****) and the Green Party (irrelevant fUcking Hippies).

In addition, there are silly ones: The Monster Raving Loony Party (founded by 60's rock musician Screaming Lord Sutch). We even have a Zombie Party (Policies include a Cemetary Improvement Fund to improve the comfort of the undead, and legalising living/undead marriage).


Anywho:

LaboUr: Led by Gordon (no charisma, Mr Angry) Brown. Been in power since '97 and facing flack for the economic downturn and general Ennui of the electorate. Complacent, and still facing flack over the Iraq war.

Conservatives: Led by David (ultra-posh over-privileged toff) Cameron. Most of their policies are re-branded Labour policies, and the rest are mostly aspirational without detail of how they will achieve their aims.

Liberal Democrats: Led by Nick (bland and as posh as Cameron) Clegg. A nobody until the recent Leadership Debates, when, untarnished by any coherent policies, was able to make Brown and Cameron look like squabbling kids.

Under our system, we have 650 Members of Parliament (MPs). Any party that has 326 or more MPs is the new Government and takes over the day after the election.

All the predictions are that no party will get 326 seats, forcing 2 parties to form a coalition (known as a 'hung parliament').

My prediction:

No overall majority - gains for Tories and Lib Dems; heavy losses for Labour.

Tories and Lib Dems will form a coalition, very few decisions will be made, those decisions that are made will be so unpopular, we will have another election in the Autumn, or early next year.

If they have fewer than 326 seats, they can only form a Gubb'mint if the other parties agree.

Historically, in the UK, coalitions have caused planning blight. Without a large majority, acts of parliament get diluted to the point of being meaningless, and the wheels grind mighty slow.

As Stephen Fry once witticised: "Compromise - stalling between two fools"

I'm memorising the national anthem so I can sing it ironically every time the conservatives do something stupid.

I'm also purchasing a bulk supply of throat sweets.

No

You can have elections at irregular intervals? Who decides it?

Er. Just winging it here cause I don't feel like looking up the specifics in the UK, but the normal method for that type of system is that the MPs elect a prime minister who assumes the head executive role for the government. That requires a majority vote. Obviously, if one party has a majority of seats, they simply elect their guy as PM and are done. If no party does, you have to form a coalition and agree on who's guy will be the PM.

Depending on the country there are different rules for how coalitions are formed, how they can be broken, and whatnot. The whole "vote of no confidence" stems from those rules. In a coalition, if a party in the coalition decides they don't like the job being done, they can bow out, effectively removing the majority needed to hold the Prime Minister position and forcing some elections to come up with a new one.

Regardless of the specifics in any given country, a coalition government is always going to be weaker than a single party government. It's often going to get mired down in intra-party issues and have to constantly work to avoid tipping over the apple cart while trying to still get stuff done. I was going to comment on how an electoral college system would fix that right up, but then again, having a government that doesn't get anything done might be the most brilliant innovation ever!

@Gbaji I live in Canada. I was just trying to figure out the differences between the two systems seeing as they're both Westminster, and which ones were custom and which ones were actual rules.

Edited, May 6th 2010 8:01am by Xsarus

I *think* gbaji is substantially correct. If it's like in Australia, going into any election, the Head of any party will automatically become Prime Minister (Head of the Executive) if that party wins. So the Prime Minister has to win his/her seat in parliament in order to get into the Executive. The same for all the Executive Ministers of the Cabinet. They each have a parliamentary seat that they represent the voters of, as well as their executive job. Ministers of the Cabinet correspond to US Secretaries, I think.

Opposition parties that aren't in power all have "Shadow Ministers". That is, they have a member of parliament whose job it is is to scrutinise and criticise the job of one of the Ministers. For example, if the Liberals are in power, and have a Minister of Education, then one of the Labour Members of Parliament will be the "Shadow Minister of Education", and s/he will question and criticise the Minister of Education's policies in Parliament, and make public alternative Education policies, that will allow the public to decide if they prefer Labour policy on Education during the next election.

In Australia Lower House hung parliaments that result in coalition governments are usually quite functional in the Lower house. Stalling, immobility, and watering down usually happens from the Upper House shredding bills that the Lower House sends to be passed by the Upper.

We do have a mechanism to circumvent that. If the Upper House won't pass Supply legislation, then the government, via the technicality of the Governor-General, can dissolve the government and call an early "Double Dissolution" election when ALL Lower and Upper House seats are contested. (Usually only half the senate seats are put to the vote during each normal general election.) In practice, for whatever reason, Double Dissolution elections are rarely called, even when the Upper House has given the government a legal reason to trigger one.

Well, strictly speaking in the UK the PM doesn't have to be an MP, so long as whoever is the PM can command a majority in the Commons it doesn't matter who he is. In practice though you're right the head of the largest (and hopefully majority) party is automatically the person who commands that majority so he becomes the PM as it would be virtually impossible for a party/group of parties to agree upon someone else, neither would the country at large accept such a decision I'd expect.

As for the cabinet there's no absolute need for a minister to hold a parliamentary seat, though I believe there are rules on the number of non-MP's a cabinet can have.



We don't have an elected upper house so tomorrow's election is not going to change the balance of power there - at least not immediately, however the lower house in the UK has the power to [eventually] overrule the upper house if the bill etc has passed a vote in the Commons using the Parliament Act. Of course a theoretical minority government couldn't do this as they'd not get the vote passed without members of other parties voting in favour in the first place but it will be interesting to see how the Lords vote with a coalition government in the Commons.

Are you asking two questions or one? You said if no coalition was possible then asked if Labour and Lib Dem could form a government. So instead I'll answer the question I think you're asking: There's no reason the largest party has to be involved in the coalition so yes Labour and Lib Dem could form a coalition using your example. In fact under the rules - well what rules there are - the current party of government will have the first chance, as it were, to form a coalition. However if you were the Lib Dem leader then you might feel morally obliged to ignore the chance of a coalition with the Labour party if the Conservative were a bigger party.

As a coalition they'd then hold a majority even if neither party was the biggest party by seats won. Also, probably worth noting is that although the Lib Dems won't hold many seats (though considerably more than you're using for your example) the coalition of say Labour and Lib Dem would hold a significant share of the popular vote, potentially 60%.

We shall see I guess.

Edited, May 6th 2010 5:25pm by Xeddox

I can't decide whether I want to administer from the shadows, or minister to them.

Could do both, I suppose.

This. It looks great on a resume too.

If they issued ballot papers after 10pm they broke the law, that much is simple, whether you were stood in the queue or not. The issue will be fun to watch though if only because any legal issues raised will also have to take into account those who allowed people to vote late. The question is will a court force an election in a constituency where the rules for that election were followed?

There has to be a consistent time for the polling stations to close, even if that's made later for future elections, no one should be allowed to vote once any ballot box has been opened, so while I feel sorry for these people, especially as looking at some of the stories they arrived in plenty of time (an hour in some cases) before polling closed, allowing some polling stations to take votes beyond 10pm when others have already closed isn't a fair system.

I can see some reform of the system, but I'm not seeing a huge amount of by-elections as some of the papers are already predicting this morning, simply because the rules were followed. Maybe if the MP feels the need to resign in protest to force a rerun but otherwise no, at least not on a wholesale basis, maybe if a court feels the result would have been significantly altered then perhaps but that's hard to measure. I suspect the people who know the answer are the candidates who lose in those areas affected. I'll watch with interest.

Although for once I agree with Mandelson:





Edited, May 6th 2010 8:15pm by Xeddox