New Prime Minister

[Triniquint]

The reason why Labour has such a big majority from such a small share of the vote is because most of that vote is concentrated in the most densely packed clusters of seat winning constituencies in the UK, namely Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, Central London and the Home counties.

A similar situation happened in the 1980s with the showdown between Labour and the SDP. They both received high percentages of the vote, but the SDP only received a fraction of the seats that Labour did. This was because the SDP's share of the vote was spread far and wide across the land and only rarely was enough to win a seat here and there.

This is a bug in the system of First Past the Post. However, like I said before, no voting system is entirely fair, only once in this country have we received the government that we had actually voted for and that was Clement Attlee's 1945-1950 Labour government. The fact remains that even under the various different kinds of proportional representation votes, you'll still probably end up with the government that you didn't want, be it a Labour minority government or a hodge podge coalition made up of many small parties, each with conflicting interests, none of which you actually voted for.

I understand the anger and frustration, heck, I'm pretty annoyed at the Islington establishment and the luvvies in power myself, but that is how the system works. I mean, if you really wanted to scare them you could vote BNP but at the end of the day, they've only changed their tune to become the working class champion because they know the most disaffected Labour voter is a white, working or lower middle class male. And when they come into power, half of what they'll want to do will be (thankfully) struck down either by the courts in the UK or by the European Court. It might even put us in a situation of international isolation, perhaps even falling victim to sanctions and economic blockade.

Don't worry though, that will never happen, what would happen however might be a large protest vote, those who don't really like the BNP at all but wanting to vote to scare the moderates into action. A clever strategy although I'll stick to voting Conservative thank you.

[/b]

I understand the reasons, and the first past the post method, and like Ken Livingstone once remarked (in fact he wrote a book with the same ***le), "If Voting Changed Anything, They'd Abolish It". But there comes a point where the pressure applied by the electorate forces change, be it an early election, or a change of government (Regime Change?).

Insofar as voting BNP is concerned, it as far from my approach as voting the Raving Monster Loony Party.

Whether the outcome of a BNP majority would result in the sanction/blockade scenario remains to be seen. However, I must confess to thinking about UKIP these days.



People are getting pretty fed up these days, and I don't especially associate with any particular type of person such as would be expected if I played golf, and frequented the golf club; or played darts and frequented the local Working Men's Club. My friends and acquaintances are from all walks of life, but virtually all of them are saying the same thing - this is the common thread, regardless of one's position.

 

[Prestwick]

One way which could bugger up the BNP's chances is if the "None of the above" option appeared on the ballot paper.