Everyone in Britain is a moron
I haven't been to bed yet. I may be cranky. But with over 90% of results in, it's not really possible to draw any conclusions from last night's election other than (a) almost everyone in Britain is a pathetic, brainless cretin, and (b) everything about our "democracy" is a sick black joke at our expense.
Let's take it step by step, shall we?
1. THE WELSH ARE SNIVELLING, FORELOCK-TUGGING WRETCHES
With all results in, the Conservatives have taken a net FIVE seats in Wales, where the idiot population obviously have short memories. Even dear old Lembit Opik, an MP who resembles a human being, got the boot.
2. THE SCOTTISH ARE CRINGING, PITIFUL SCUM
In Glasgow East, just two years after the insufferable, empty-headed screeching harridan Margaret Curran was rejected by the electorate in a huge by-election shock in favour of the SNP, the very same electorate returned a woman who now wasn't even offering them her undivided attention (she's going to carry on as an MSP in the Scottish parliament as well as being a Westminster MP), and with a staggering majority of almost 12,000 to boot.
In Livingston, a marginal Labour seat previously held by Jim Devine (currently facing criminal charges for expenses fraud and billing the taxpayer for legal aid to fight them) and contested by a former councillor closely linked to Devine and facing a corruption investigation of his own, the electorate confounded widespread expectations and voted for the Labour candidate by a majority of almost 11,000.
Overall, not a single one of Scotland's 59 seats changed hands compared to the 2005 result, with both byelections since then (the other being the Lib Dem capture of Dunfermline) reversed with massive swings to Labour. They were practically Labour's only gains in the entire UK.
3. THE ENGLISH ARE WHIMPERING, SPINELESS COWARDS
The Lib Dem opinion poll surge was almost entirely founded on English voters, barely affecting their ratings elsewhere. Yet when it came to the crunch, the courage of the English shrivelled in the face of the dire fearmongering of the right-wing press and reverted to the old two-party fake dichotomy. For all their dramatic gains in the polls – and increased actual votes and share – the Lib Dems are going to end the election with significantly FEWER seats than they started with.
4. THE NORTHERN IRISH ARE POTATO-BRAINED HALFWITS
The Northern Irish don't even join in with the game, voting in MPs who refuse to come to Parliament to represent their constituents at all. It's bad enough being represented by someone you didn't vote for, but voting for someone who tells you in advance that they're not even going to TRY to represent you is just spectacularly retarded.
And what of the mother of democracies itself? How magnificent must our electoral system be that the electorate – handed a gold-plated opportunity on a silver platter atop a velvet cushion – refused to change it? Let's examine this jewel in democracy's crown (figures correct at time of writing):
– Labour and the Lib Dems together garnered almost FIVE MILLION more votes than the Tories, yet secured almost exactly the same number of seats.
– despite this, the entire media (hugely Tory-biased) is treating as a scandalous outrage the idea that a coalition between Labour and the Lib Dems (commanding the support of nearly 60% of the electorate) might be allowed the first attempt at forming a government over a Tory party commanding the support of just 36% of voters.
– within that potential coalition, the Lib Dems got 80% as many votes as Labour, but just 20% as many seats.
– almost every party stood on a platform of "change", and the voters loudly demanded it at every opportunity, and then in the overwhelming mass of cases went out and voted for the incumbent. (Most of the seats that did change hands were ones where the existing MP had retired.) In Scotland, for example, the sitting MP increased their majority in almost every seat.
– the Lib Dems increased their vote share by 1% and LOST six seats. The Conservatives increased their share by 3.9%, and GAINED 90 seats.
– in Scotland, Labour got just over twice as many votes as the SNP, but SEVEN TIMES as many seats. The SNP overtook the Lib Dems to finish second in the popular vote, with significantly more votes than the Lib Dems, but got just over HALF as many MPs as them.
– UKIP got almost six times as many votes as Sinn Fein, but no MPs compared to Sinn Fein's four. (None of whom will turn up to sit in Parliament.)
– in turn, the DUP get almost exactly the same number of votes as Sinn Fein, but twice as many MPs. (In fact, UKIP got slightly more votes than the DUP, Plaid Cymru, Sinn Fein, the SDLP and the Greens put together, yet returned 0 MPs compared to a total of 19 for those parties. We might all find that amusing, but democratic? Hmm.)
– the arithmetic of the result is such that the ultimate balance of power is likely to be held be held by parties (either Ulster Unionists or combined Scottish and Welsh nationalists) which don't field a single candidate between them in England, which comprises over 80% of the population of the UK.
And the outcome of it all? We're almost certainly going to have to do the whole thing all over again inside six months, with no guarantee of it turning out any less of a farce. How in the world has a nation of intelligent people, admired across the globe, managed to contrive such a godawful mess?
The only plausible answer is that we're all complete fucking morons.
So explain to me again how the blue fellas got more votes but can't be the government.
But then you do have UKIP getting 5 times as many votes as the SNP, but the DUP having 8 MPs to UKIPs big fat 0
so every cloud and all that.
(I would put up with a minority of UKIP/BNP people for a more representitive government mind)
Malc
@ Irish Al: They can, but the rules are that if nobody gets a majority, the sitting PM gets first shot at putting a workable arrangement together.
"But then you do have UKIP getting 5 times as many votes as the SNP,"
Actually less than twice as many (863,000 to 483,000), and spread among 10 times as many candidates. Though obviously your basic point still stands.
I'm amazed that there isn't far more outcry from the parties about the people that queued for hours and were turned away at 10pm from various stations. I heard one ran out of ballot papers, which is unbelievable – surely you find the number of eligible voters and order 1.5 times that number of papers.
So Gordon still sits in No.10 This is a man who passed laws allowing a Derby Judge to make it illegal for a lady inWales to buy food even though she's never been charged with an offence http://www.afbio.co.uk I agree with your views we must all be mad.
If the Lib Dems now hold the key to power and they demand electoral reform as part of the deal, how long would such reform take to implement assuming a referendum came out in favour of it?
Hardly any time. It requires no fundamental infrastructure changes, no change in voting procedures, just a different allocation of seats according to votes. On that subject, incidentally, results so far work out like this:
TORIES: 34,828 votes needed to win one seat
LABOUR: 33,177 votes needed to win one seat
SNP: 80,470 votes needed to win one seat
LIB DEMS: 126,014 votes needed to win one seat
I've got no sympathy for the people who started queueing late and then whinged that they couldn't vote.
They were told the polling times weeks earlier. If they thought there was even the slightest chance that they wouldn't be back from work early enough, they had the chance for a postal vote, or a proxy vote.
The BBC kept running footage of Mrs Outraged, who said that she was DISGUSTED; she got in from work at 6, saw a queue, and went home. And repeated it at 7. And then at 8. And finally returned after nine, and as there was still a queue, and the law states you have UNTIL ten and NO LATER, you can't vote. So tough luck.
To be fair, some people queued continuously for 3 hours. And it never takes that long to vote in Britain.
@ Irish AI
I assume you mean, why aren't the blues automatically allowed to govern? Because they have less votes than all the other parties combined. As it stands, more people don't want them in power than do.
I think between Rupert's media blitz and the massive postal vote fraud the results have been massaged. I refuse to believe that the people would be freely so stupid.
Don't forget that we've blown up about 1 million Iraqis so they can have a go at this democracy lark. Not that you'd know it for all the attention it got during the election campaign.
I meant dup (I changed one snp to dup, but not the other).
sorry.
Malc
@throb: "I've got no sympathy for the people who started queueing late and then whinged that they couldn't vote."
Nice. So that fact many polling stations closed at 10, despite the fact they can stay open all night IF the ballots have been handed out is OK? What do you feel about the fact many people queued for HOURS and didn't get to vote?
If this had happened in an African country, the British press would be screaming blue murder about corruption. Here, it's 'unfortunate' rather than absolutely fucking unacceptable.
I must say that I arrived at my polling station at 19:40, so anything more than 2 hours 20 would have seen me scuppered, luckily I was in and out within a minute
(the benefit of living in rural Devon I guess – although it did leave us with a Tory MP with a massively increased majority – although although, the LD person did hold their own)
Malc
Thank you very much for this analysis – I was doing the same thing when I was linked to that. I completely agree – between the two howling lies of "a vote for the Lib Dems is a wasted vote" and "if we get a hung parliament we're all going to die in horrible pain", English voters were scared off voting Lib Dem.
Shame on us all.
(Interesting to note, though that the current vote percentages for Con/Lab/Lib are 36%/29%/23% – not *that* much different from the opinion polls since the third debate.)
Andy
People shouldn't have to ever queue for hours and they should never run out of papers. Shambles.
I was going to blog similar sentiments, but you did it much better. Thanks.
Somewhat pedantically, if you're going to include the potato-brained halfwits, you should be referring to the UK, not Britain (I think, they're all a bunch of c**ts to me).
I mean celts, of course.
I wish I could say I disagree with this blog. But actually, I can't.
Can I just point out that the Conservatives did not get the most votes.
They got around 36%. A Lib-Lab coalition would command about 60% of the votes and would have a majority in seats (although not a clear one) and in vote share.
What would be a travesty is if the Conservatives try to form a minority government with 36% of the vote.
Furthermore, Labour are willing to listen to Lib Dem demands on electoral reform, which would prevent bullshit like this from ever happening again.
I am deeply disappointed in my country this day. We were given a golden opportunity and we fucking bottled it. That and I still have that stupid wretch of an MP in the form of Tessa Jowell.
If we fail to get a representative government out of this mess then the only recourse is for civil uprising. Which admittedly is an interesting thought.
"Can I just point out that the Conservatives did not get the most votes."
No, they got the most votes. they did not get most OF the votes. two different things.
@Craig Grannell
"Nice. So that fact many polling stations closed at 10, despite the fact they can stay open all night IF the ballots have been handed out is OK? "
Yep. Because they have to give out the ballots by ten. And the problem is, people were still queuing to get in at ten.
I entirely expected queues,even though there never have been any before. I got home at eight and then went to the polling station firmly expecting at least a half hour wait, given that many people would have done the same – in from work, something to eat, vote.
In the event, there was no queue at all. I was the only person there. But if there had been, and it had got to ten pm, and I couldn't vote as a result, I would not have been disgusted. I'd chalk it down to experience, and either look to go earlier in the day, or get a postal/proxy vote next time.
In any case, I don't believe that any of the results have been affected by 100 people not being able to vote; in most cases the difference between 1st and 2nd place has been far in excess of 100 votes.
Sadly, we're in a culture of blame these days; everyone is to blame apart from the one person who is at fault; the individual who can affect things.
That's apart from the constituency where there was a tie for first and second place which was resolved by the returning officer allowing them to pick cards.
I wonder if they did Best Of Three.