UK Election Arcana, Explained By Software

An anonymous reader writes "For the first time in 35 years the UK government is looking to be at risk of getting a hung or coalition government. (The most recent previous hung parliaments were in 1974 and 1929.) The voting rules are somewhat arcane and the votes this time are such that there are many strange possible outcomes and a surprisingly large number of permutations of coalitions that could be formed and political strategies that may go into their forming. There are at least 60 permutations, some more politically plausible than others. Adam Back wrote some software to work out the permutations, and lists some of the arcane factors affecting the outcome. If Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown chose to, it would appear even that he could simply refuse to resign, ostensibly trying to form a coalition indefinitely, maybe even forcing the Queen to dismiss the current government, which last happened in 1834 under King William IV."

Comments

Re:Silly Brits

[vadim_t]

No, that's the wrong way to see it.

"Well, at least it's better than in bumfuckistan" is a justification for complacency. Don't wait for it to get worse, do some work and help make it better.

At least you guys -have- minority parties. Good luck finding a single person in the US congress that isn't a republican or democrat (or an 'independent' who votes 99.999% with one of the 2 parties).

So are you trying to do something about it, or just complain about it online?

The grandparent is setting an excellent example here.

Re:Silly Brits

[Don_dumb]

The vast majority of britons looked at what the lib dems offered, said 'he looks nice but no thanks' and actually reduced their vote share - yet they could get cabinet seats.

Wrong. The Lib Dems got 23% of the vote, an INCREASE of 1%. Citation - BBC Full election results.
They had a reduction in the number of seats. - more votes, less power.

It has to be a broken system that gives them less than 10% of the seats for almost a quarter of the vote. Especially when you consider that they increased their vote, yet decreased their number of MPs and that Labour got 29% (only 6 per cent more) of the vote somehow giving them 4 times as many seats. In fact both Labour and the Tories (Conservatives) got over 10% more power (seats) than their share of the vote.