(The lower table is the Northern Ireland results, which don't really link into the rest of the country.)

Once again, it turns out numbers are the best system for determining which of two things is larger. The Electoral Calculus predictions gave the correct broad overview, and the exit poll last night (a poll carried out on people as they left the polling stations, and posted as soon as the polls closed) was mostly spot-on. There are two seats still to declare (I've marked the most likely results on the right), but the new UK government will be an enormous Labour majority.

What's interesting is that the percentage of the vote doesn't have to shift much for this to happen. Labour are only 0.7% up, but have more than doubled their seats! The Lib Dems have done even better on even less. That's an artefact of the electoral system: it doesn't matter if you have a lot of votes across the country, but if you concentrate them. Labour in 2019 had a big general movement, but no concentration to get first-place finishes.

• How badly did the Tories lose? Crushingly but not cataclysmically. I would have loved them to drop to third party status, but it was never likely. They will remain the Opposition, and probably recover - if they don't tear themselves apart. What's fun is that Tory party rules require a leadership election if 15% of their MPs submit letters demanding one. That means it only takes 19 disgruntled MPs to force the current leader to step down - and there are a lot of disgruntled Tories. I don't think we'll see stability there for some time.

• Did the Greens pick up another seat? They got three! They always had Brighton Pavilion; they've added Bristol Central, North Herefordshire, and Waveney Valley. I hope they get to keep them.

• Did the fascists get any seats? Yes, but far fewer than the polls predicted. Unfortunately Nigel will be squatting in Parliament unless the milkshakes get him. (To be honest this shows how badly broken the voting system is - 14% of the national vote should not give only four seats - but I'm happy with it in this specific case.)

• What happened in Northern Ireland? Sinn Fein didn't pick anything up, but the Unionist vote has splintered, with three other parties taking one vote each from the DUP. Not sure how that will play out.

• Am I still under a freaking Tory? Yes. :( They beat the Lib Dems by about 2000 votes, which is fewer than were thrown away voting for Labour, but also fewer than were leeched from the Tories by the fascists, so it's a bit of a wash. Well, we can't have everything. :-/

Now we just need Kier Starmer to fix the state the Tories left the country in, and prove himself better on some issues (trans rights, as Lily says) than he has signalled. (He is already better than the Tories on that specific point, but that's a really low bar and not good enough.)

hS

I'm mostly worried about a certain TERF-who-shall-not-be-named getting her fingers into Labour's policies and the flip-flopping Keir Starmer's been doing as a result. Hopefully they won't actually listen to her but I'm not gonna hold my breath. I'm sure there's plenty of other things Labour will do better on... though coming off the absolute nightmare that the Tories have been, the bar is really on the ground there!

Frankly, the UK booting its conservatives out of major power would be a better Independence Day treat than anything planned on this side of the pond. It's a glimmer of hope that all is not completely lost in the world.

~Neshomeh thinks fireworks are fine in their place, which is not any of the days surrounding the actual holiday.