UK election: Conservatives lose majority | Hacker News Reader

UK election: Conservatives lose majority

bbc.com

119 pointskefabean195 comments

To me it demonstrates the mastery of the ruling class at strategy. Just the ticket when you plan to want to rule something as complicated as a country!

Seriously, I'm completely apolitical, but this one is probably one of the worst strategic blunder, ever. Oh, perhaps that and Cameron's brexit gamble.

And it feels exactly like that; they are just gambling with the future of the country, repeatedly, with just petty objectives and personal power in play.

And it's on pretty much every sides of the political landscape, it's feels to me (as an adult) like a watching a gang of 10 years old all trying to pull on a rag, only difference being that we live on the rag :-)

Ok, rambling over. it's friday! :-)

Weekend for me already!

Honestly, I reckon May's decision was understandable. Great polling with a complex negotiation coming up - makes sense to establish a national convention consensus government and press on (regardless of that decision being a bad one or not).

But she completely fluffed the campaign, to a ludicrous extent. She had a weak opposition and popular support, and seemed to make every possible attempt to run as poor as a campaign as possible.

I'm nervous about this being spun as a victory for the left, which I'm already hearing. It's more of a collapse of the Tories.

How is it a collapse for the Tories when they still have 48.5% of the vote? It seems pretty good to me - though I'm not familiar with English politics.

(Serious Q not attacking)

You might have noticed that the last US presidential election was not won by the candidate who had most of the vote. In a similar fashion, the key thing in the UK vote is individual district elections of members of Parliament, not the % of the overall vote.

Well actually I'm fairly sure the parent comment is referring to % of seats - just under half. The tory vote figure I've heard is 43% - so they've outperformed their vote share (which labour and conservatives do consistently under FPTP).

So to the parent: they have less seats - that % was just over 50% before. It's significant because they've been 20%+ ahead in the polls before the election was called - and we've heard predictions of them getting a 50-100 seat majority. They certainly weren't expecting to lose seats.

The latest projections have them at 42.4% of the vote vs Labour's 40.1%. They do have 48.5% of the seats because of an unfair system.

There's always a tension between fairness and stability.

In a perfectly fair system you can end up with dozens of small parties, each having small number of people in parliament, struggling to find majority for a government (see last elections in Netherlands).

That's why some voting systems are designed to give a winning party some premium over their vote percentage.

The supposedly stable system has led to 3 nation elections in 7 years (probably another one this year too) and 2 hung parliaments in the same time. Meanwhile Germany and many other countries have very stable politics with proportional representation.

To add to this, having a system which has to learn to work with other parties, negotiate and compromise is a good thing. MMPs supposed downsides are not necessarily so.

But it does mean that fringe extremist parties can get pet policies passed by holding their partners feet to the fire that the majority of the population wouldn't vote for

Its why NI doesn't have abortion or the same rights for Gay people its down to the Ultras in the DUP as Churchill Said "nothing so loyal as an Ulster "policeman"

> But it does mean that fringe extremist parties can get pet policies passed by holding their partners feet to the fire that the majority of the population wouldn't vote for

Evidence for this: CSU in Germany (the quite-a-bit-more-right-wing sister party of Merkel's CDU).

Evidence of it would be present in just about every MMP government ever formed. Here in New Zealand it's present. Sure, the tail wags the dog a little, but if it happens too much the larger party in government loses votes next election.

Unfortunately with increasingly divergent views we have now ended up with three consecutive elections with no solid majority. We've ended up in the same situation, but with less fair representation.

As strange as it seems we may not have had brexit if UKIP had had representation proportional to their support. The reason we ended up going down that road is a large number of Tory MPs feared UKIP. In a proportional system that may not have mattered so much.

That's actually an advantage of British voting system: it makes issues that are important to a large minority of voters impossible to ignore.

Had UKIP had proportional representation in parliament their demands could be ignored forever. And while in this particular case Britain could be better off that way, it is a wrong thing to do in general.

I'm not sure they would have been ignored, perhaps they may have had enough influence to stop it becoming such a big issue.

I was strongly in favour of remain but I can see some people felt they weren't benefiting from the UK being a member of the EU. If they had been given a bit more attention early on we may not have ended up in this mess.

In pre-election polling they had a comfortable lead of over 20%. That's reduced to 3% - a relative collapse! Polling is of course never entirely accurate, but it was their election to lose.

(They did take a greater share of seats due to FPTP)

A few months ago people were talking about a 100-seat majority for the Tories. Now they have no majority at all: they'll need to get every member of their party plus a few from the DUP to agree to any controversial thing they want to pass (e.g. the Brexit treaty) which might force the government (administration) to make concessions to extreme wings of the party (e.g. a hard-Brexit faction).

actually for some votes that only effect England the DUP cant vote so they cant pass "English" bills without doing a deal with labor / liberals.

When I look at http://www.bbc.com/news/election/2017/results/england (the election results for England specifically), it shows a comfortable majority for the Tories (297 of 533 seats = 55.7%). Am I misunderstanding something?

This isn't quite accurate.

On such bills there is an additional phase in the process where the English MPs can veto the bill, but they must also be voted through the full parliament.

They were running against a candidate who was widely thought to be a joke. They should have had a landslide win. Instead they lost seats, and they lost so many seats they no longer have enough of a majority to win, so we've got a hung parliament.

Labour as an opposition have been abysmal prior to the election campaign. But they ran a really remarkable campaign during the election period. It's all the more impressive when you consider we have the nastiest, most vicious rightwing press in Europe. Here are the national newspaper headlines from Thu 8 Jun: https://imgur.com/a/Gojht

Elections are still won on hope for change it seems. Not that anyone won but certainly more of the same with nothing much positive seems to have not won it for Tories.

It makes sense but it makes way more sense to do that before triggering Article 50, not after and 11 days before negotiations commence. Just reckless and stupid.

Why is Corbyn a weak candidate? I don`t get it why left = communism.

Corbyn is a lot like Sanders he can get the youth to vote for some degrees and has good ideas for the majority of a country.

Austerity is not a good solution for the future within the new dawn of technology around the corner (ML/AI driven software)

Why is Corbyn a weak candidate?

He had consistently poor approval ratings in the run-up to the election, and was hampered by having no support from the parliamentary party. I'd argue that he also had rather muddled and inconsistent policies, but that's open to interpretation.

Austerity is not a good solution for the future

Completely agreed, but I don't think that the correct response is that kind of leftism.

Idealogues on the right don't think there is room for any kind of leftism, which will be their undoing.

That applies to both sides.

Jeremy is well to the left of the majority of labour party members he's a old school socialist not a communist though.

David Miliband (the king over the water) or Ed Miliband running on the same platform would have probably got a LAB majority given the disastrous tory campaign.

Not necessarily, a major component of Labour's pitch to the middle ground was explicitly that a vote for Labour would help keep the Tories in check whilst safe in the knowledge that there was no chance whatsoever it would put labour in government, because of Jeremy Corbyn.

MM that's really cynical could be some richer tory pensioners (wo may have voted UKIP last time) did that because of the steal your children's inheritance, means testing of winter fuel payments and losing the triple lock.

I agree on the campaign, someone decided to have 'strong' and 'national' into the campaign slogan, despite the fact it actually didn't work terribly well for the UKIP last time around (nor this time!), and didn't work for the Front National either a few weeks back.

To me, in both cases, it seems the ruling caste has misread the fact most people want to see some real change with some sort of isolationist/nationalist trend...

Her asking for a mandate was laudable mind you, it was clearly needed. However, it now leaves her with nothing to stand on, and especially no weight whatsoever to negotiate that brexit thing. Unfortunately I don't see who can replace her either...

The thing is, on the other side the labour proposals are in some case quite laughable -- but they seems to have inherited a lot of anti-brexiters who decided that it was the least-worst scenario.

I have to say quite a few people I know where very, very confused about who to vote for, there was none of the 'classical' 'generational voting' which seems to have existed before. Even Lib Dem failed to attract people, and I have to say that surprised me a bit, as the 'center' seems to have worked for Macron in france -- perhaps they lacked a figurehead?

Even Lib Dem failed to attract people, and I have to say that surprised me a bit, as the 'center' seems to have worked for Macron in france -- perhaps they lacked a figurehead?

As a staunch centrist liberal, I'd have to agree I'm surprised :)

The lack of a central figure is definitely part of it. Tim Farron is a nice guy, but not much of a political heavyweight unfortunately. I still think they're suffering from the hangover of the 2010 coalition, and as ever voters are turned off by the feeling that a Lib Dem vote is 'wasted' which—thanks to FPTP—it often is.

I believe that Tim Farron is a great leader and the campaign went well for him, the truth is that his manifesto got lost in the campaign with the Tories and Labour party taking over all media coverage.

That's probably a fairer assessment, yeah. It's a shame, because their manifesto was great.

> I'm nervous about this being spun as a victory for the left, which I'm already hearing. It's more of a collapse of the Tories.

But it is a victory for the left.

Before this election everyone thought Corbyn was a fucking joke - even his own party.

He ran a strong campaign and Labour got 40% of the vote.

I don't think Corbyn ran a strong campaign, that's the point. The Conservatives handed the election to him on a silver platter, and the Labour Party still lost.

> Labour's vote share is 9.6% up on 2015 - the largest increase from one election to another, for any party, since 1935-1945 (9.8%)

That's pretty impressive, especially considering the vigorous campaigns from DM, and the Sun, against Corbyn.

Something like this?

http://static.polityka.pl/_resource/res/path/ce/97/ce973cf4-...

Nice find! Reality doesn't look as graceful tho! Is that May flying off with an article 50 printout? :-)

That's a metaphor for partitions of Poland.

Democracy needs to get a lot less representative, and a lot more accountability and checks need to be put into place.

I'm hoping this puts a dampener or even better kills the May-driven Conservative manifesto pledge to "create a new internet".

Watch out for Angela Rudd. She kept her seat (just) and could be a player.

That's a huge risk though - what would happen if they won an election and their leader lost her seat!

There will be a huge push to remove her if (when) there is another election.

Yes, there were huge rumours she was in big trouble. Many recounts. She is on a knife edge.

Her majority, or lack of, would harm her authority. The Tories are all about performance and she simply hadn't performed.

Amber Rudd, rather than Angela - but I agree she's probably in the running if May resigns today.

Yes, but there's the minor problem she's even more out of her depth than May.

The conservatives have a serious problem right now: pragmatism is seen as being ideologically unsound. Look at the amount of briefing against Philip Hammond there's been. We're talking about a fairly competent, pro-Leave chancellor who has merely argued that potential downsides should be evaluated properly before charging ahead. And he's treated like a Traitor To The Cause.

The problem being that Conservative MPs can be competent, moral and a true believer in Brexit. But it seems to be impossible to be all three.

(The last sounds like a joke, but the exception may prove the rule: Stephen Phillips is definitely a true believer, and demonstrated his integrity by quitting his seat due to his horror at the way Brexit was being handled. Boris Johnson, on the other hand, is none of the above.)

Yes, I fully expect them to revert to their old ways and tear themselves apart over Europe.

I doubt it. May has been on that ticket for years (IIRC 2012?), and the mindset it shared amongst the rest of the party. As someone else has said, Amber Rudd is much the same, in the same way that Michael Gove's replacement in education has been more of the same.

I think it's partly ideological, and partly a total lack of understanding of how technology works that leads to it. I've had discussions with people who say they support such a system, and once you explain the technical reasons why that would be a bad idea and the impact on their ability to actually use anything technological, they often soften considerably, and in some cases chance stance completely.

May will take that ticket to her grave; even as a doddery old peer, she'll be declaring that Something Must Be Done (and then dropping the ball when asked about details).

I think two things could happen. A torry-libdem coalition which would kill these nonsensical surveillance laws (libdem vetoed them in the past), or a new general election soon, then all bets are off.

LibDems ruled out a coalition with anybody last night, they're not willing to step into that fire again - and they fundamentally won't accept either the Tory or Labour policies on Brexit.

Lib Dems were crucified for their vital and successful minority partner in government for 10-15. The UK population wants a dictator, not a grown up concensus.

This will be a Tory government with DUP support on confidence and supply

I don't know DUP. What is there view on surveillance?

There are a fair few tory members (not just backbenchers) who are against May's fetish for ripping up human rights bills and installing a camera in every bathroom.

DUP are fundamentalist christian hard-right tories, but on the other hand they're in Ireland and know a lot about the bad side of state power (despite nominally being on the side of the British government)

More in favor of it that a lot of tories the are to the right of the Conservatives even more so on social issues.

I have a sinking feeling they would love it all along a new border wall with Eire. :/

DUP want an open border between north and south.

Indeed, and this is likely to be a major sticking point with May. You can't really tell any kind of anti-immigrant story with a fully open border, but a fully open border is what peace in Ireland needs, and the DUP fully recognize that.

It's important to understand that support for moderate parties in Northern Ireland has only collapsed because both Sinn Fein and the DUP are seen as being fully committed to the peace.

They are ultra-conservatives. Have a guess.

LibDems have ruled out any coalition with anyone.

> May-driven Conservative manifesto pledge

May-driven in this instance perhaps but Intelligence-agency steered. Next PM will be under the same incessant pressure.

Doesn't really matter which captain is on the bridge, they don't have their hand on the tiller.

That sounds like bullshit. The Parliament is very much on this, you don't need to try to explain it by invoking all-powerful spooks behind the curtains.

Just a reminder, and I think it's getting lost here in the HackerNews demographic narrative.. but:

The Conservatives Won The Election

They will be ruling for 5 years, in a coalition with the even more conservative DUP.

Labour/progressives are out of power for at least another 5 years.

I know it's a bucket of cold water, but I think people aren't facing up to reality after Corbyn did much much better than expected. But he still lost.

This is not going to be a five year parliament given the outcome. It might not be a five month parliament.

I am similarly worried about the idea of spinning this as a left-wing win. Yes, much better than expected, but still a loss.

That said, I don't expect a conservative government to stand at all. I'm putting my money on another general election this year.

Corbyn most definitely lost, no argument there. But so did May. She set out to get a mandate for her vision of the future. She has none.

Personally I think both of them should go. But May will struggle on due to the lack of viable alternatives, and Corbyn will continue to do ...whatever the heck it is that he's doing... because of low expectations.

DUP has a softer stance on Brexit than the tories. Soft Brexit was their condition for forming the coalition.

This election shows once again how terrible the FPTP voting system is. The Tories gained like 41% of the vote, but 48% of the seats. And this is a "better" outcome than it would've been in the U.S., where you also have other high arbitrary thresholds for third-parties, and the media virtually ignores them throughout the year-long election cycles.

If the Tories had 41% of the seats (per the number of votes they received) and Labor 40%, it would've been much easier to form a majority with Labor. Now that seems unlikely, even though all parties should see that the Tories are in rapid decline in the voters' eyes, and they shouldn't attach themselves to the Conservative party in any way.

It's a real shame the Tories killed ranked choice voting (alternative voting) in 2011. I would have still preferred a proportional representation system, but RCV would've been a definite improvement over FPTP, too.

https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/6g6e5d/half_...

It's also an even bigger shame that the Liberals in Canada decided to betray their voters and back-down on moving away from the FPTP voting system, which was one of their biggest campaign promises in the last election. With the risk of getting the Conservatives back in power in Canada, I hope the Canadian voters punish them hard in the next election (by voting NDP or Green), because such betrayal must not be rewarded.

Canada could have finally moved away from the the undemocratic FPTP voting system, but the Liberals decided it may be better to stick to the undemocratic voting system if it means they can just switch places with Conservatives and dominate the government every 1-2 elections, as it happens in the United States with the Democratic and Republican parties.

Political unstability is pretty ugly. Some countries are good at forming coalitions and sticking to them (UK, Germany), some are absolutely terrible at that (France) and you end up with a new government every week. There are some merits to these systems which give a clear majority to the largest party over a fully representative but deadlocked parliament.

As someone who lives in a country with proportional representation as the basis of its electoral system the UK and US first-past-the-post voting system is really weird to observe. It doesn't seem very democratic that a party could get 20% of the popular vote nationally, but win no seats whatsoever.

This is a problem that the upper house in a bicameral system is supposed to solve.

The lower house is assigned to smaller regions, with one representative per region. If every single region has party X at 20% of the vote (and always lower than another candidate), then every region has individually voted for someone else.

The upper house is assigned to larger regions, with multiple representatives per region. You don't have to have to come first to have at least one representative in the upper house. As an example, in my state (victoria, australia) we have 12 senators. They take the total vote count and figure out how many votes you need to get a senator. They take the party with the most votes, give them a senator, and remove X votes. Rinse, repeat. The last senator (or sometimes two) is usually decided by preference flows. At 20% of the vote, you'll be looking at 2/12 senators, and possibly a third depending on preference flow.

The problems in the US and the UK are these: the fewer senators you have per region, the harder it is to be representative, so in the US with only 2 upper house members per region there's not much scope for variation; and in the UK, the upper house isn't elected anyway. Mid-sized minorities just can't get representation (mathematically, at least) in either of those two upper houses.

What does this mean for Brexit? If Theresa May is kicked out, can/will it be declawed? Can it be reversed?

Also, can someone explain to me the steps by which parties in Britain create coalitions (or whatever) and then put a new PM in place? I'm an American, so any reference to American politics is super helpful.

There's only two parties - Lib Dems & Greens - which promised a chance to revert Brexit, so I wouldn't expect it to be reversed. A softer Brexit is certainly on the cards though.

This guide [0] from the BBC might help to understand how coalitions are formed. It's currently looking very tricky as the splits are crazy [1].

[0] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2017-40209087

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/ng-interactive/2017/jun...

I'm not sure, I suspect without a big majority May will find it difficult to keep some of the more rabid brexiters in her party under control.

This election was always about the opposition within the Conservative party rather than Labour.

> A softer Brexit is certainly on the cards though.

The hardness of Brexit does not depend solely on the British government. The EU administration has a huge interest to make Brexit as hard as possible to avoid other member states from feeling the urge to leave.

The UK has a first-past-the-post system designed explicitly to stop coalitions.

For the next few weeks the winning party will negotiate with the other parties and try to create a coalition. If that fails they can either try a minority government or a new election will be called.

This time around a coalition will be hard, the third party (Lib Dems) went into a coalition with the Tories in 2010. It almost destroyed them as a party so they won't do it again.

DUP + Tories could manage a minority government given Sinn Fein's refusal to take up their 7 Westminster seats.

I think the voting reflects the general uncertainty about the Brexit process, plus some of the under 30s actually getting out of bed this time...

http://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2017/06/...

I actually saw queues outside polling stations yesterday.

I'm a bit wary about the idea of a DUP + Tory agreement, because the DUP must know that the Tory position on Brexit is a huge threat to the stability and peace in Northern Ireland, and a hard border with the Irish Republic would be disastrous.

The DUP want a hard border with the Irish Republic. They specifically don't want any special status for Northern Ireland as they're afraid it would bring Ireland and Northern Ireland closer together.

They've said the opposite - do they still behave like they actually do?

Maye the under 30's got out of bed because they saw someone worth voting for (for a change).

I think avoiding coalitions was a side effect rather than a design principle: doesn't FPTP predate political parties in the Commons?

> The UK has a first-past-the-post system designed explicitly to stop coalitions.

That's a terrible reason for FPTP. As soon as you have a third party, you run the risk of coalitions.

What's so bad about coalitions anyway? Germany is run by coalitions and it's a world economic power.

Nothing is wrong with coalitions but they are demonised in the UK as weak and unstable. FPTP is an ancient system from before the time of parties and needs to be reformed.

There can be a sense with coalition government that people are removed from the decisions made behind closed doors - politicians trading off with each other.

I don't accept that myself, but it's ecactly what happens to the Liberal Democrats in 2010 - they entered a coalition, agreed to policies that their voter base didn't accept and paid heavily for the sense of betrayal it fostered.

Unlikely to be reversed but it's a big slowdown and uncertainty for the whole Brexit process which was due to start already next week I believe.

But on the bright side (for us in the rest of EU) it's also more likely to result in a "softer" brexit, if the election result is seen as a vote against May's Conservative plan.

That said, whoever replaces May - once she has been eaten by the Tory backbenchers - is likely to have been an original Brexit backer, which May was not. For example Boris Johnson. So it's all very uncertain at this point.

Edit: Was unsure about the exact date of negotiations - they were set to start on june 19th but it's uncertain if it can now.

Someone actually created a throwaway account to deliver a salty (now removed) comment that I should shut up if I didn't know what I was talking about - referring to "I believe.." in my original comment. Otherwise this would "Turn into reddit".

Someone is having a bad morning.

> For example Boris Johnson

Dear lord that would put a ribbon on everything!

I'd imagine the hardcore Conservatives will see BoJo as the only possible "Stop Corbyn" candidate - Amber Rudd is too high risk and not well known enough, even though she did very well in the campaign.

The problem is that, by all accounts, while BoJo might come across as a nice guy by all accounts he'd likely make an awful PM (e.g. read about the chaos that was his last leadership attempt).

The only 'chaos' I recall was trusting Gove, was there something else?

"All Out War" by Tim Shipman has a lot of the details of the post Brexit manoeuvring for power - Boris appeared to be completely disorganised and with a poorly managed team. One particular event described is where Boris probably lost the PM role because he got mixed up about sending a text to tell his team to tweet that Andrea Leadsom was joining the Boris & Gove team. Leadsom backed out after hearing nothing from Boris and announced that she was running on her own behalf and then Grove did the same.

He would be an absolutely shambolic PM.

"Idiots love Johnson’s contrived, clownish TV persona, and so will vote for him even if his policies mean they’ll be living under a flyover and cooking rats over a brazier." - Daily Mash http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/politics/politics-headlines/br...

Just out: "May has no intentions of resigning" (!)

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jun/09/theresa-may...

Zebra being eaten by lions "had no intentions of being eaten"

The BBC has an interesting article on the subject. http://www.bbc.com/news/live/election-2017-40171454

Parliament has already voted yes on Brexit, and formal communication was already sent to the EU. According to Article 50 of the Lisbon treaty the UK now has less than 2 years to negotiate the terms of its exit.

I don't think the process can be reversed but there is certainly a lot of leeway in how it will happen.

The process could be reversed. All the EU countries would need to agree, but it would be a huge vote of confidence in the EU if Britain changed its mind, so I think that part would be easy.

However, it's unlikely Britain would back out of the decision. I think the best we can hope for is a Norway-like approach (EEA).

I think it can be halted - I've seen a number of high-level EU politicians say that it's possible to stop the process if the UK decides to.

It was this that the Lib Dems were (weakly) campaigning on in the election - to give the people the vote whether to accept the deal or stay in the EU after the negotiations were complete.

It probably can be reversed if the UK wants to. Any amendment needed to make that legally possible would most likely be passed by the EP. Not that it would be easy, mind.

If neither the UK nor the EU desires this break-up, then it won't happen. It all depends on what the UK government does (which realistically speaking probably does not include pulling the emergency brake on the Brexit, unfortunately).

Quite a few prominent EU figures have said they think it can be reversed quite easily. I imagine it gets harder the more negotiation has actually been done though, because especially if Theresa May takes her attitude to them there'll be increasing numbers of burning bridges behind her.

The EU want us to stay though, so at the moment I think a reversal would be quite painless. In a year's time, maybe not.

The terms can be anything the UK and EU (but that's all of the EU) agrees to, including reentry.

So its reversible, and if there was a change of government that wanted to reverse it I suspect the EU would go along. OTOH, it seems near certain that if a coalition is formed, it will be a Tory-DUP coalition, which won't want to reverse it (the DUP seems to want a softer Brexit, but it's not clear that the EU is interested in that.)

If a government can't be formed.(which doesn't seem implausible), then my understanding is that there is another election in fairly short order.

Great question! Brexit negotiations are due to start in 11 days yet we do not have a party with a clear mandate (the purpose of the election in the first place). This is an omnishambles given the Brexit clock is already ticking and the UK's position has weakened significantly. The EU must be quaking in its boots regarding the upcoming negotiations!

The thing about brexit was that the UK was already enjoying a lot of privileges and leeway in regards to their participation in the EU - they didn't participate on the agricultural subsidising fund, they didn't have to covert to Euro, etc, setting them apart and ahead of the other EU countries.

I'm quite positive that the remaining powers of the EU, starting with Germany and France are actually delighted at leveling the playing field and harmonising the EU commitment for the remaining members.

So if the UK wants back in the EU, they will certainly be welcome with the open arms, but without any of the special deals and privileges that UK has enjoyed.

If only for this reason and Brexit was a terrible mistake.

The UK is in the CAP

Maybe the OP was referring to the rebate that the UK had negotiated under Thatcher. This is a special reduction in its contributions to the EU (it was a £4.9 billion reduction in 2015). It was a sweet deal argued principally with regard to the UK receiving less CAP subsidies than France (for example).

The main thing with Brexit is that the British people had a referendum about it which decided the matter. The elected politicans need to follow that direction. So it's unlikely that it can be reverted without damaging the system of UK democracy.

The lib Dems wanted a second referendum about what it would mean, I think, e.g. soft Vs hard.

So it can't really be reversed but the angle can be changed as that has always been unclear.

It can be changed but it would need to be proceeded by a shift in public opinion.

Tusk has said A50 can be cancelled. Irrespective of the correct legal interpretation, I think if the UK government wanted out of Brexit, they'd get it. This is still a pretty unlikely scenario, but not impossible.

I'm putting that qualification in because, frankly, no-one knows the answer since it's never been put to a court. Moreover, I don't think it will matter. What will matter is whether or not the political will exists to make it happen.

Someone closer to the UK than me mind explaining why SNP lost so many seats, including several that seemed pretty safe? I thought that Scottish nationalism was on the rise after Brexit, with many people there wanting to remain within the EU. Why the sudden shift to the Tories there?

Leader of the SNP was pushing for a second referendum. Not a vote winner.

Scottish nationalism is still somewhat popular, but a lot of people voting for the SNP last time weren't actually voting for Scottish nationalism, but for a left party, an area in which Ed Milliband's labour was deemed to be lacking.

The shift to the Tories can explained by: 1. The popularity of Ruth Davies, leader of the scotrish conservatives. 2. The left vote being split between the SNP and Labour, allowing the conservatives to win under FPTP.

Ruth Davies is the only person who had an unabashedly good night.

Well, her and Jean-Claude Juncker, who probably hasn't stopped laughing for the last 12 hours.

Ruth Davidson has got to be the next Conservative leader, she's hardly put a foot wrong.

Bit of a split - what I'm hearing is a bit of ballot fatigue with no appetite for a second referendum, combined with a laser-focused campaign from the Conservatives.

It's worth bearing in mind that the 2015 result was a bit of an anomaly for the SNP to say the least. There was no way to move but down - I didn't expect it quite to this degree, but it does look like both Labour and SNP voters have gone blue.

The last time they went from less than 10 seats to all but 3 seats such a massive swing (35%) was never going to hold.

What an absolute mess. It really just again demonstrates that the country is divided right down the middle - inward vs. outward, young vs. old, nationalist vs. unionist.

Nobody is coming out of this well, and I think it's virtually certain that there will be another general election in short order - but I don't really expect the outcome to be much different.

I guess this is what happens when parties move apart like that. Corbyn's Labour have shifted quite far to the left, while the Conservatives have turned completely inward. There's a huge gap in the middle, and unfortunately our electoral system leaves little hope of filling it.

Didn't the conservatives face an impossible situation anyway? Hence all the resignations after Brexit? Is this, with the missed debates, possibly just an attempt to sit out a tough round of governing?

I'm starting to wonder whether this is a possible ploy by the Tories to sit out of what could be a disastrous spell in politics, given that Corbyn will likely pursue Brexit if he becomes PM.

I like Corbyn, and I think he's done tremendously with a great manifesto, but it still remains to be seen if he can lead a country. He's in his element in an election, as he's been a campaigner and an activist throughout his career. It might make more sense to ignore the DUP, and to allow Labour to try and form a progressive alliance, hoping that the economy will falter under Brexit and a coalition government.

The BBC feed says: "There's still no result in Kensington, west London, after two recounts. The Conservatives say they'll keep calling for recounts until they are denied any more, rather than concede, the BBC understands. As such, there's going to be a third recount, which is either going to take place this afternoon or tomorrow..."

What's that about? On the face of it it seems so childishly spiteful that I feel I must be missing some strategic consideration.

> On the face of it it seems so childishly spiteful that I feel I must be missing some strategic consideration.

Probably hoping one of the recounts comes out in their favor, at which point the other side will ask for a recount. Probably childish and spiteful also.

The record for the number of recounts in a UK general election stands at 7.

Presumably if there is only one vote in it, it's well worth checking carefully, especially if recounts have different counts.

It actually occurred in the 1910s that there was 1 (One!) vote in an area. If its as close as that, there is significant benefit to recounting, as any result that tips the balance could tip the balance of some later votes given the tories lack of a majority

1 vote in Exeter apparently, closer to now there were only 2 votes in east fife last night. Same in Winchester in 1997.

You mean one vote difference? Because I find it hard to believe that voter turnout is that low. :)

I'm curious what the under-30s turnout is. I'm hoping this will inspire younger people & encourage them to engage more in politics.

Hearing figures around 72%.

My 18 year old son was checking results at about 6 this morning - he voted for the first time for Labour and our constituency was a very narrow win for Labour over the SNP (about 250 votes).

Pretty sure his reaction is "Wow this voting thing actually works" :-)

in my constituency in a university city and thus with many under thirties the total turnout was down seven percent. However Labour who the young tend to vote for got more votes.

72% of 18 to 25 year olds, which is much higher than normal.

Man, it's been a bad time for Conservative mandates, hasn't it? Wasn't the Brexit vote set up by a Conservative prime minister to prove that Britain wanted to remain in the EU?

Yes, exactly - two spectacular demonstrations of misjudging the room.

Cameron paid with his job... and with the economy of the UK by the looks of it (yes, I live in the UK) after mis-judging the sentiment in the country (and telling us that he had got a 'new deal' with the EU, which was no such thing). The question is whether May will as well. She's saying 'no' to leaving this morning, but I don't see how her position is tenable, given that her 'strong and stable' concept is looking anything but after last night.

no. michael gove and boris johnson tried to use euroskepticism within the conservative party to strip cameron of the leadership. the referendum was a play by cameron to shut down the euroskeptics and sideline johnson/gove

none of gove, johnson or cameron thought the leave side had any chance of actually winning which is why all three of them bailed in the wake of the vote

Gove and Johnson didn't stand side. They ran for the leadership, were defeated in various ways, then in the case of Gove was not chosen by May to be part of the Cabinet.

I hope the influence of the DUP in Belfast will at least put us on a footing to get immigration and borders sorted more quickly. Those factors will have the greatest effect on tech companies.

Honestly the idea of the DUP having actual power in Westminster scares me. They are even more conservative then the Conservatives, especially about social issues.

Not to mention the effect on the Bi peace process - the government is no longer neutral.

The result is quite ironic. It was supposed to be a 'bloodbath' for the conservatives and the extreme right. It looks like the left/hard left got the young out to vote.

This is largely a vote against austerity and possibly also against globalisation. I would hope that this also translates to a more moderate brexit.

Perhaps if Labour actually won own majority, sounds more like a very poorly run campaign by May. Complete lack of leadership. Just the single fact of shying away from debates.

Great opportunity to put country before party now.

Not a labour supporter myself, but I would saying getting 31 more seats when you were expected to lose 20-100 (according to polls) is a victory. In addition to cons not having a majority, labour can now actually be a proper opposition.

I would really have loved to have been a fly on the wall when this decision was discussed. Maybe someone from the U.K. can explain why, if you have a majority and outright control of Parliament, that you might necessarily need to extend that majority?

> outright control of Parliament

Nobody has this! MPs are always free to vote their conscience, and sometimes they do. The Conservatives are not all of one mind about how to conduct Brexit.

The aim was not simply to increase the Conservative majority, but to try to make sure that the new MPs making up that increased majority were on board with May's hard Brexit, so there wasn't a risk of a backbench revolt scuppering Brexit.

The party used an "emergency procedure" for candidate selection that gave the party leadership more control than previous candidates.

* http://www.conservativehome.com/thetorydiary/2017/05/central...

Well this is technically the case in American politics. Please, why then is it so important to have a greater majority in the U.K.? Why do you need to reach that line?

I am not British nor familiar with British politics. Is there any article that tries to explain the reasons behind what happened? Labours were something like 20% behind when the vote was called, but went close to winning yesterday.

May ran a bad campaign. Corbyn ran a better campaign, apparently.

Anecdote - There wasn't any particular party that I wanted to vote for. My vote was against the Tories in protest of having to give up essential liberties for a bit of temporary safety.

May was never elected and had never really been scrutinised by the public until the election was called.

Not familiar with hung parliaments in the UK - normally there would be new elections if a majority government can't be formed - correct?

So if LibDem/DUP and others refuse to even passively back either Labour or Conservatives then what?

Labour plus the others won't have a majority. And no other party would join with the tories at this point. So we are likely in store for another election, announced in the next couple of weeks.

If you were to guess - what would be the result of that? Hard to say I assume given we don't even know who will lead the Conservatives to that election, but do you think the Labour bounce was a one off thing or a trend that might see them take even more seats ?

I think this election has been a huge boost for Labour - in any election in the short term I think they'd do even better than they've done in this one.

NB I'm not a Labour supporter...

Possibly. But Corbyn certainly benefited a lot from having a weak candidate against him. He could possibly not be so lucky if there is a new election.

Would depend a lot on who the Tories would pick to replace May, although the word this morning is that she has no intention of resigning. Doesn't mean someone isn't going to try and oust her though, there are a lot of Tories who'll be extremely angry with her after last night.

I would be shocked if May survives the day.

May has made u-turns on many of her promises recently.

hard to say. there was a narrative that corbyn was unelectable so a revote might get more buy in from his detractors and a more unified labour front

theresa may also ran an absolutely terrible campaign and is personally unpopular so if the tories replace her they may do better next time around. it's hard to imagine the tories producing a credible leader on short notice though. most of the plausible candidates will want nothing to do with this mess and the second tier was mostly already rejected in favour of may last year

Yes, leader of the Conservatives could be a surprisingly difficult post to fill.

You can form government if you can win a vote of confidence in the house. So some other parties might give them a vote of confidence and they can form government, but any individual piece of legislation the introduce could fail.

Australia has had two minority governments (technically only one) in the last decade and I consider it a good thing, all the stupidest legislation gets defeated.

Last season of House of Cards is dangerously close to reality this time.

In US, Trump might loose his presidency. UK is a mess, based on wrong political decisions.

I still wonder "Who is Frank Underwood and what does he win from all of this".

There is nothing unusual about a political scandal, but this time is obvious that the elite is quite power-driven and the society is nothing more than a voting variable in their equation.

What exactly does a "strong" versus "weak" Brexit imply?

The potential for compromise

Hard versus soft, in other words.

common market access and freedom of movement, mostly. a hard brexit means (potentially) sacrificing the former to reject the latter. a soft brexit means conceding freedom of movement to ensure continuity of economy

"Hard Brexit" = there is no deal and commerce between the UK and the EU revert to WTO rules by default.

The degree of access to the EU market. Which is effectively a tradeoff of access to market for sovereignty. Ie if you implement all EU laws (even though you have no say on them), you are EU compatible and will be given access. That's basically where Norway is. There are legitimate concerns of which is worse between loosing sovereignty over loosing the single market access.

In the extreme:

Weak = become like Norway or Switzerland; technically not in the EU, but bound to many of its treaties. Get you the benefits of, say, open borders, but also means paying for, say, saving the banking system and (almost) accepting whatever new rules the 'real' EU counties come up with (because it got exemptions for lots of EU regulations, Great Britain currently is almost less of a EU member than Switzerland, so it probably wouldn't go that far)

Strong = break all ties with the EU. No open market, border controls everywhere (including the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland) but also no more payments to the EU, and having the freedom to, say, create import tariffs for German cars.

this worryingly shows the huge divide in the nation

edit: I know they're Unionist and eurosceptic, my understanding was that they were also for a single Ireland inside the UK and therefore would want a soft Brexit with an open Irish border. Thanks for correcting me on that however.

----------

There is no possible outcome here for the Tories that works towards a strong Brexit. The most likely coalition partner - the DUP - is all about a unified Ireland. Brexit is driving a major wedge into Ireland's border, so they will undermine that at every turn.

Expect a revote in a couple of weeks. This outcome leaves no one in a position to govern strongly and that directly weakens the UK's position in Brexit talks.

The DUP are the unionist party in the north of Ireland. They are against a united Ireland and were leave campaigners.

The DUP are unionists, they want to maintain the union with Britain, they are diametrically opposed to a united Ireland.

The DUP wants a wall built around northern Ireland, and wants a hard Brexit.

The DUP is a unionist party and is diametrically opposed to a united Ireland.

Hypothetically, Would they accept a united Ireland as part of the UK?

The bigger question there is why would the Irish want to become part of the UK after less than 100 years of independence?

I'm curious has something like that ever happened. A country was conquered, then won independence and then at a later point, decided to "rejoin" them.

Crimea kind of did that. They were conquered by Russia ~200 years ago, won independence with the Ukraine and then wanted to rejoin with Russia.

It happened thanks to massive deportations of Soviet Union which changed whole social structure of Crimea.

People who got conquered and who rejoined have not a single connection.

Well they tried that trick in Ireland too, I'm not sure if the scale was different or if the later wars undid the progress.

This is a slightly one eyed view of what's going on. What would you call the related events in Ukraine? There are plenty of other invasions that have been called reunifications or similar. Attacking a neighbour is quite different to a two state, democratic decision to join.

The bottom line is that most crimeans were in favour of reunification with Russian. The Ukraine government consistently blocked them from voting on the matter.

Putin doesn't do much I'd agree with, but I think he was the good guy here.

That's incorrect. The election on the issue made them part of Ukraine (90's) rather than Russia and polling since has been consistently similar. The more recent faux referendum is universally condemned as a sham.

For dubious values of "wanted". Russian troops literally seized the Crimean parliament building and forced MPs to vote to hold a referendum on it at gunpoint, and the referendum itself was questionable due to being held under Russian military occuption (not to mention illegal).

Why on earth would they want that - I don't think I've heard anyone even mentioning that idea.

It's about as likely as the US deciding it wants to be a UK colony again.

Exactly. What a ridiculous suggestion.

We will get our island back and it's in sight now

Never! We are Irish. We do not and will not ever accept a king, queen or monarch ruling over us. We are a Republic and would be willing to die for it, and this time go the whole way

Are you a DUP member? I think you're in the wrong party if so

Northern Ireland person here, I'm afraid you have it backwards. The DUP is strongly opposed to a united Ireland, and (until very recently) have supported a border of some description with Ireland.

Sinn Fein are for a united Ireland, but do not take up their seats in Westminster.

The DUP have obtained 10 seats in this election (Sinn Fein have 7), and a coalition between the Conservatives and the DUP looks likely. The DUP has been bigger supporters of the Conservatives, and of Brexit.

Thanks mate, I had a blend of the two as my understanding per my edit. I thought both wanted a united Ireland, but one from the Union and one from the Republic. I had that understanding as I thought that was largely what kept the issues within Ireland minimised.

No probs, what's been keeping the issues under control here is the Belfast (Good Friday) agreement [0], which (among lots of other things):

- grants dual nationality (British and Irish) to all the people born in Northern Ireland (simplified, there's a bit of complexity in there)

- allows for the Northern Ireland to become part of a United Ireland if the majority of people in Ireland wish it

IMO there's been a voice of reason coming from the middle ground, but this election has seen the province move more towards tribalism and the middle ground parties loosing their seats.

[0] - https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-belfast-agree...

(edited for formatting of the bullet points)

What is it with the Brits and an inability to do elections right these days. First they screw up the proportional representation referendum. Then the Scots mistakenly choose Remain (which wasn't an error at the time, but became one with Brexit). Then they Brexited, ironically because they want more control and accountability but rejected prop rep. And now this shemozzle.

The rest of the world should take away the UK's voting rights until they promise to behave!

As a Brit I have observed a large section of the population seem to suffer from an acute and decades-long case of Stockholm Syndrome.

Much of the populace would prefer to suffer the indignities and gradual erosion of prosperity and civil liberties inflicted on them by their ruling classes than to risk an uncertain future on a potential change.

They are comfortable in their mistreatment.

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