Is the UK screwed? The Vote Is Coming In

Now there's an oxymoron: Scottish Conservatives. In the land that makes the  best adult beverages, we have conservatives that would be to the left of Obama.

David Cameron and his conservatives are leading the charge with 305 seats versus 255 for Labour and 61 for Liberal Democrats. 326 is needed for a clear majority and 29 seats fell to other parties.  So much for Gary's preaching of multiple parties. They will now have a hung government.

Likely, the Liberals with forma a coalition with Labour. Some of the minor parties could align with the conservatives, but even so, there is no 326 seat majority.

The god news is that the conservatives have made some serious gains. Still, the Brits do not have anything considerable in the way of classical liberals, libertarians or a "Tea Party". The conservatives in the UK may be pro-business and pro-lwer taxes, but it's relative, and they also support many big government programs that are anathema to liberty. Think of RINOs as a large group. We certainly wouldn't welcome them here, but in the context of british politics, it's going in the right direction so to speak.

With the results in the UK, and the ascendancy of the likes of Geert Wilders, it doesn't take one to realize that even in small or relative ways, Europe is getting pangs of moving right, as being hard left for decades is starting bring home consequences in immigration, taxation, and national debt. Even the Farm Animals® there are starting to get restless.

Normally, America sneezes and the world (Europe) catches a cold. Could the reverse be happening? Or is it sychronicity? Inevitability? Certainly not chance.

What I see is a good start, but I would like to see classical liberal elements make progress in Europe. Until then, they will be Farm Animals®.

Thank you for reading this blog.

So Much For Gary's Insistence On A Parliamentary-Like System

H/T John R. Lott

From the WSJ:

A ComRes telephone poll of 1,003 adults for ITV and the Independent newspaper, released late Monday, showed the Conservatives with 32%, the Liberal Democrats with 31% and Labour with 28%.

Labour's potential advantage—despite its flagging status in opinion polls—are prompting rivals to jockey for position. Mr. Clegg, for example, has complained of the prospect of unpopular Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown "squatting" in No. 10 without a voter mandate. In such a scenario, anger could spread from Labour's political rivals to the public, where steam is building to demand serious reforms to one of the world's oldest parliamentary democracies.

Labour owes its ability to hang on despite the weak economy to several advantages. Since Tony Blair's landslide victory in 1997, Labour has an advantage in the number of seats it holds in Parliament that is out of proportion to its share of the popular vote. In the last election in 2005, Labour won 36.2% of the votes but 56.5% of the seats in Parliament. The Conservatives won 33.2% of the votes but only 31.5% of the seats. The Liberal Democrats won almost one in four votes but fewer than one in 10 of the seats.

The result: Labour won three percentage points more of the vote than the Conservatives, but dominated Parliament with 355 seats to the Tories' 197. To overcome that advantage, political analysts estimate that the Conservatives will need to win around six percentage points more of the vote, just to overcome the disparity.

The chief reason for this is that Labour wins seats in Parliament with fewer votes. Labour-heavy Scotland and Wales have more seats compared with their population than Tory-leaning England. Even in England, Conservative constituencies are larger. The average Tory seat held 72,950 voters, and the average Labour seat 66,802 . . .

Gary, who posts at Libertarian Republican is always preaching how we need to emulate the English System of representative government. I'd like to link to one of his rantings, but Wes or Eric, in their haste in redoing Libertarian Republican, deleted all user comments. So much for the upgrade. May it's a feature and not a bug.

Anyway, as we can see, the english system has some serious flaws.

Thank you for reading this blog.