Britain’s Tories Big Win
Britain’s election results are in, and it is a landslide victory for the conservative Tory party and Brexit, with the Labor Party’s future direction uncertain.
The Tories won 44% of the vote and 365 seats giving them an 80- seat majority in parliament.
Most bet on a conservative win so it should not have come as a surprise nonetheless; the fact that the Tory percentage poll is the highest since 1987 seals the deal.
What can be taken from all this besides the conservatives stunning victory is the party’s major inroads into the predominately working- class regions of Northern England, traditionally the Labor Party’s main support base.
Time will tell whether the working class only ‘lent’ their support for Brexit or if this was a bigger rejection of the leadership of Jeremy Corbin with a hankering for a labor party under the likes of a Tony Blair.
In a doffing of the cap to these untraditional supporters, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has now banned his ministers from attending the elite Davos yearly gathering.
Also important is the support gained by the Scottish Independent Party, incidentally pro-remain, who scored at the expense of both the Tories and Labor.
There may be a strong chance the SNP will hold the balance of power in Westminster in the coming days, in a coalition with Labor and boosting the reach of the Remain bloc in exchange for the demand of a second referendum on Scottish independence.
However, even if a yes vote prevails, whether Scotland can survive for long without London’s financial hub is doubtful as they must be aware.
Protests of ‘not my Prime Minister’ in response to Boris Johnson’s victory have already sprung up, in one video a young woman bemoans Johnson’s success and the working class who ‘voted for this’ blaming them for thwarting her ambitions.
She says all this between the obligatory F-bombs and death wishes.
Funny how people dump on those who disagree with them thinking it
okay to emote without filter when it suits them, but in reverse their opposition must be mindful and just shut the hang up.
Then again, it’s the mind virus of our times and highly contagious unfortunately the Brits caught it from the Americans.
They don’t understand how it all works, or don’t want to
One clued-up Twitter commentator summed up British democracy 101; if you NOT a British citizen then Boris Johnson is NOT your Prime Minister.
If you ARE a British citizen, than irrespective of whether you voted for him or not Boris Johnson IS your Prime Minister.
So yes, it needs emphasizing.
With more protests expected it makes you wonder if these people really want a democracy or even know what it means.
Now, Democracy campaigners in Britain are calling for electoral reform amid a ‘toxic’ general election campaign that has seen ‘lies and misinformation sanctioned from the top’.
Compassion in Politics is one of several groups who are calling to overhaul the UK’s First-Past-the-Post voting system to address a ‘crisis’ in British politics.
Is this just another way of pandering to illegal minorities because a prime motivator seems to be the desire to extend voting from one to a few days with all the potential for fraud this entails?
The First Past the Post voting system works like this; at a local or general election, voters put a cross next to their preferred candidate. The candidate with the most votes in each constituency wins and becomes the MP for that seat, with all other votes disregarded.
FPTP is also efficient and fast where tallying of the votes is concerned with results declared relatively quickly after the polls close.
The thing is this system is the easiest, second most popular voting system in the world, now just because some are unhappy with the election results they calling for well-defined proportional representation.
This ignores the fact most western countries, of which Britain is one, are representative democracies to begin with, yet all of a sudden; the system’s unfair and needs to be overhauled immediately.
It is an attitude that’s becoming more prevalent which can be summed up as; ‘I don’t like the results so change the system’.
In the U.S. there’s a clamor to abolish the electoral college with people not appreciating the country is a representative democracy in the vein of a constitutional Federal Republic and changing it would result in a one man one vote system in complete contravention of the ideal.
That’s because those pushing for it don’t mind winning at the expense of the non-representation of middle America’s some 60 odd million people.
Also, remember politicians elected under this ‘new’ proportional representation system will be delegates not representatives accountable to the electorate.
The current voting system has served the U.K. well says one Britain arguing for retaining the current system:
It’s been in place since elections to the House of Commons began seven centuries ago and it has in modern times delivered Britain from extremist parties of the sort that often used elections to get their foot in the door in Continental Europe before then levering the door off its hinges and setting up their own anti-democratic regimes.
The fact the Communists and fascists achieved no significant electoral momentum at Westminster in the 20th century, unlike in many European countries is down to the voting system’s bias in favor of stability and the political mainstream.
Indeed some would argue that FPTP voting systems encourage broad-church centrist policies and discourage extremist points of view.
We now hearing the system is out of date so it must be changed to suit changing realities, yes, we’ve heard this spiel in relation to something else, two words, Electoral College.
It’s somewhat ironic that the U. K. wants to change the system to favor minorities while the U.S. wants the majority favored at the expense of a lesser majority, in a manner of speaking.
