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Because bullet points are easier than essays

Chart stolen from this guy.

I promised you a post on the British elections and didn’t deliver. Fridaypost’s as good a time as any.

A Conservative win wasn’t the worst possible outcome — obviously — but it wasn’t the one I was hoping for. I was hoping for a divided, unstable government with a small Conservative majority that would force Cameron to jig right. Here’s some bullet points in no particular order:

■ The Liberal Democrats went from part of a ruling coalition to near annihilation. Seriously, they may be done. Forever.

■ None of the pollsters came close to predicting the outcome, which sadly won’t be the end of pollsters.

■ Labour lost big.

■ The SNP won big (at the expense of Labour).

■ UKIP took a healthy chunk of the vote, but only one seat.

■ They lost Nigel Farage’s seat.

■ Cameron is bound to see a big Conservative win as a big Cameron win.

Here’s a simplistic weasel-eye-view of why this happened, also in fun, easy-to-digest bullet points:

■ It was inevitable that the LibDems would collapse at their next election test. They were a far left party that had entered into a coalition government with the main right party.

■ It became clear early on that the Scottish National Party was going to murder the Labour vote in Scotland. Stirred up nationalism and leftover bad feeling from the failed Scottish split-off (Labour had encouraged them to stay in the union).

■ Sawed off SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon began to strut and crow that if Labour got in, she’d call the shots.

■ Brits got in the voting booth and panicked at the thought of gormless weirdo Ed Miliband running the country under the thumb of the Scots. (Which may or may not have depressed the UKIP vote, although the UKIP vote wasn’t bad — they came in third in the popular vote).

Early appearances are that the election will pull Cameron to the right, not least because he can’t blame the LibDems for his leftist inclinations. In conclusion, here’s the 2006 audio snippet of Cameron calling UKIP “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists.”

Comments


Comment from Uncle Badger
Time: May 29, 2015, 10:32 pm

Yet, predictably, Cameron has already reneged on a promise to scrap the European Convention on ‘human rights’ (for any bastard who isn’t actually British and wants to be left in peace to plot and plan our utter destruction).


Comment from Deborah HH
Time: May 30, 2015, 12:21 am

Gormless. Such a useful word. 😉


Comment from Uncle Al
Time: May 30, 2015, 2:07 am

What’s really interesting is that the OED says, first, this:

gorm, n.
a. An undiscerning person, a fool.

And then, second, this:

gormless, a.
Wanting sense, or discernment.

So: a gorm is a person who is gormless.

Isn’t English wonderful?


Comment from Stark Dickflüßiᵹ
Time: May 30, 2015, 3:44 am

Big takeaway for me?

S~ talks drugs & conspiracies? 24 comments.
S~ talks silly vidja games? 4 comments, two of which are racist (& my fault, to be honest).

So. Hows about them Cniᵹts Templar?


Comment from JuliaM
Time: May 30, 2015, 6:40 am

The UKIP vote actually pushed the usual second placers to third place in a couple of my local election areas…


Comment from Nina
Time: May 31, 2015, 3:02 am

It’ll be interesting for this Yank to see how things shake down in the next year or so.


Comment from Some Vegetable
Time: May 31, 2015, 5:52 pm

I am interested that first Australia, and now the UK have shifted rightward. I (believe that I) understand though, that the UK election result stems from the crazy Scots acting like teenagers who want Daddy to keep the bills while insisting that they really are independent, and have a wild party (yeah, it’s a bad pun, but it’ll do) to prove it. When the thrill of having an SNP wears off in an election cycle or two, they will scurry back to the hand that promises to feed them -Labour.

Thus, as a Yank, I want to hope that the shift towards conservatism by our cousins means something for the U.S. but I can’t bring myself to believe it. I am resigned to a Clinton win. I had never heard of this guy Mallory who Drudge keeps mentioning recently. He is purely an ABC candidate (Anybody But Clinton) and I don’t think he can beat the machine. My Dem friends who are all professor types still blindly support her and aren’t even aware of the Financial Foundation Scandal. Benghazi is merely a Republican political attack, not a terrorist one. To them, who she is is more important than what she might or might not do. Still, I thought I might have a glimmer of hope last evening when, over drinks, one of them proposed to tell a Hillary joke:

“Hillary says she won’t get gray hair in the White House because she’s already been dyeing her hair for years.”

We are so doomed.


Comment from mojo
Time: June 1, 2015, 6:21 am

I think UKIP is going places, at the expense of Tories. Especially if Cameron keeps up his usuals.


Comment from MikeW
Time: June 1, 2015, 7:00 pm

Oh… Oh… Oh-h-h, Sweet Mystery of Life, at last I’ve foun-n-nd you-u-u!

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