Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

Fred, sometimes you really can't see the wood for the trees. Perhaps a picture would help?

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Election/HowManyMPs

Kayak very pretty.

Check the percentage of the total electorate who voted for the tories.

That is the percentage that you can realistically say they represent.

If you had 10 contesting parties and at an election with nine parties and each had 9% of the votes and seats leaving to the remaining party having 19%, would you consider that the one party is likely to be representative of the electorate than combinations of more than any other two or three.

To get a democratic majority it would need at least five or more parties joining together to be representative.

I can see the advantage of your argument for the tory party, but either coalition would be representative of the electorate, when you consider the votes cast.

We will see.

... but when you consider the practicality of getting five or more parties to agree on a common agenda when only two seem to be having trouble doing so? And stay agreed for any length of time? Bearing in mind that the one-man parties would hold the casting vote and so a disproportionate amount of power, which would not go down well with the others? And when the arithmetic depends on Sinn Fein not taking up their seats in parliament? etc. etc.

The last thing we need is PR. These coalition talks have been a small example of what would happen after every election. In fact we would probably have to wait for the Liberals to decide each time who we could have as a government, irrespective of how the votes went. The other problem is that it would be the Liberals and another party deciding on a joint manifesto each time. The electorate would never get what they voted for.

The current election has been recalculated based on AV and the figures are approx Conservatives 286, Labour 265 and Liberals 87. That is a recipe for permanent coalitions.

Fred,

Still think you are arguing against the facts. Fact, more people voted for the Conservatives than Labour. Fact, the Conservatives finished with more seats than Labour. Fact, the electorate voted for a party that had a leader called Cameron and against a party that had a leader called Brown.
Morally I still can not see how the party that won the most votes, can be demoted to runner-up by the party that came third.
I can not see your argument, so yet again we will have to agree to disagree.

Conservatives 286, Labour 265 and Liberals 87.

where would that put SNP etc ?

In the bin hopefully.

The Guardian has the totals slightly different

What I don't understand is that the AV system works with voters ranking the candidates in order of preference rather than just marking one candidate with an X.

How, therefore, can the Electoral Reform Society (or whatever they're called) categorically say what would have happened in this election given that they don't know how the electorate would have ranked the other candidates?

Is that a Quango Moment?

Look at the table at the bottom of the page

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/may/10/proportional-representation-general-election-2010

SNP get 6, 5, 9, or 13 depending on the system. AV gives them 5.

Interestingly Conservatives would have got the most under all systems.

Haystack,

The notes to the figures in the Grauniad link confirm exactly the point that I was trying to make.

UPDATE: As several posters have noted below, this is hardly an exact science. If it helps, here's the methodology from the ERS summarised:

Our simulations should be regarded as illustrative the picture they give is necessarily a rough one.

The ERS figures are pretty much plucked out of thin air, in the absence of knowing exactly how the electorate would have placed their 2nd and 3rd choice votes.

Well, it seems that the Libs/dems have done a deal with the cons. More than a little surprised and think many members of the L/Ds many of the public will feel betrayed by people by Clegg's decision.


I feel sorry for the rank and file of the of the L/D party and think there will be a exodus from the party, unless they have PR or equivalent before the dissolution of parliament.

Also, without PR at the next election I can see the L/D being decimated and a backlash against the tories.

Interesting, to see how the coalition pans out, but I would be surprised, if the proposed coalition, will last longer than 18months.

I would think the Labours will be happy to lose the responsibility and consequences of this government and will benefit from reorganisation.

Hopefully, they might learned the consequences of fragmentation.

I wonder what the SNP and Scottish Labour party will do.

The Scots are complaining that the new government has no manfate to govern in Scotland. They would have said that anyway if the Conservatives had a majority. As my constituency voted overwhelmingly Labour, I could claim that the new government has no mandate to govern me. The Scotland is just northern England. I used to be married to a girl from Elgin and I used to write to him at Elgin, Morayshire, Northern England.

The liberals will go along with almost anything the Conservatives want to do as they cannot afford another election. Labour are broke as well. Hopefully, cameron will do a few popuklar things and then call an election before a year is out. The Liberals could take some credit if things go well and hopefully reduce the Labour share of the vote. We we really need is Labour to crumble with the Liberals taking over the roll of opposition.

From what many Labour and Conservative MPs have bee saying, PR is almost impossible to get passed into law. Lots of Labour MPs only got in because of first past the post.

He's gone ,thank god !!! just watching his resignation live ..Thank the lord and i'm not even religious.

not only the end of Brown but also the end of Mandelson

and I suspect Gordon will be glad to see the back of him as well

Mr and Mrs Brown leaving the palace now

off to the Holiday Inn perhaps

not for boom and bust but bed and breakfast

and like the rest of us, he is now stuck in the traffic

welcome to the real world

I am confused by :

"The Scotland is just northern England. I used to be married to a girl from Elgin and I used to write to him at Elgin, Morayshire, Northern England."

As you used the past tense, I can understand why she may feel happy to escape any obligation she may have felt to you.

But your statement does confuse me.

I would expect a job for G Brown in the EU, or even the UN.