Subject: OT: Election day in the UK
Author:
Posted on: 2024-07-04 08:04:05 UTC

Last night I looked at the Electoral Calculus website's predicted outcome "if there was an election tomorrow":

Well, tomorrow has become today, and wouldn't you know it, there IS an election! Personally I'm hoping it goes just as badly for the Tories as the polling predicts.

Quick and dirty primer on UK politics: the Conservatives/Tories (blue) are the current government, and the main right-wing party. Labour (red) are the main opposition party, theoretically on the left but in practice pushing at the centre. The Liberal Democrats (orange) are the national third party, ostensibly centrist but currently left of Labour. That's the big three.

Reform are the current incarnation of the far-right racist fascist party, led by the man who caused our national stab-the-economy-in-the-face shambles which is Brexit. The Green party are a left-wing environmentalist party. Then there's the Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru, the local parties for Scotland and Wales; they tend to the left but don't stand for election outside their nations. There are a handful of other minor parties, but those are the big ones.

At this point, Labour will be the next government. The Tories have made a cataclysmic shambles of both the country and the election; you may have noticed they called the election on Independence Day, at a time they were already trailing badly in the polls, which is the biggest own-goal I can imagine handing the opposition. From my side, there's 5 questions I'm excited to see the answer to.

  • How badly will the Tories lose? That Electoral Calculus pic has them losing not only to Labour but to the Lib Dems, which would be amazing. The idea of the Tories no longer even being His Majesty's Loyal Opposition is music to my teeth. I'm hoping for as few Tory MPs as possible, and multiple big names losing their seats.

  • Will the Greens finally pick up another seat? The Green party have had a single seat for what seems like forever. This would be a really nice time for them to finally gain a second: with the Tories in full collapse, people in left-wing seats are more free to vote for who they actually want, rather than needing to be tactical about it.

  • Will the fascists get any seats? Back in 2015, under the name UKIP, the Reform party were polling about as high as they are now and didn't pick up a single seat. I'm hoping that continues. I specifically don't want their leader, Nigel Farage, to win a seat. I also want him to fall into a vat of banana milkshake please.

  • What will happen in Northern Ireland? Northern Ireland has completely different parties to the rest of the UK. Their main issue is whether they should be in the UK or Ireland, so their biggest parties are the DUP (pro-UK) and Sinn Féin (pro-Ireland). Northern Ireland is very angry about Brexit, so a big swing to Sinn Féin could significantly increase the chances of Star Trek being right.

  • Will I still be under a freaking Tory MP? My constituency has been gerrymandered into a safe Tory seat, but nothing is completely safe this time around. I will (have to be) voting tactically to try and boot them out, and I'd really like it if, for once, the person I voted for actually won.

Results will start coming in overnight; given the expected scale of the landslide, we may well know by this time tomorrow who won. But for today, if you're in the UK: whoever you support, please make sure you go out and vote.

Unless it's Nigel.

hS

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