The New Dark Age

7 May, 2010: 15:19

This seems to be the result with nearly all the results in, although I reckon there are going to be some challenges given the chaos at some of the polling stations.

It is now impossible for the Tories to form a majority government, so they’ll have to a deal with one of the other parties. Lots of cries about ‘the national interest.’

Tories: 304 seats 36% of the vote
Labour: 257 seats 29% of the vote
Lib-Dems: 57 seats 23% of the vote
Other: 28 seats 12% of the vote

The results show just how rigged the electoral system is with Labour getting five times as many seats as the Lib-Dems but only 6% more of the votes.

As they say, a ‘hung Parliament’, and apparently some polling stations ran out of ballot papers or closed before people had voted! Watch for fireworks, challenges to results etc.

Some polling stations had outdated election lists so people couldn’t vote! In Sheffield voters staged a sit-in.

Talk is now on ‘reforming’ the electoral system although the Conservatives have rejected the idea. For an in-depth analysis see

Proportional representation and Brown’s opportunist ploy By Moshe Machover

The most consistent PR procedure is the party-list system used in many countries for parliamentary elections and in most EU countries for elections to the Euro parliament. The country is divided into a small number of large constituencies. (In some small countries, such as the Netherlands and Israel, the whole country is a single constituency.) In each constituency a party can present a list of candidates, and a voter casts a vote for one of these lists. The assembly seats are allocated to each party in proportion to the number of votes cast for it.[11] In the ‘closed list’ variant of the list system, the seats are allocated to a party’s candidates in the order in which they appear on its list. In the ‘open list’ variant, voters may indicate preference for a particular candidate in the list of their choice, and seats are allocated accordingly.