[Flipside]

That's a situation the Lib-Dems have been complaining about for years, but they chickened out and put forward a half-assed system at the Referendum about it.

[The E]

[rance]

The NHS will soon be impaled on those spikes in the background.

[headdie]

Well Mr Skinner MP Bolsover didnt take long to start bashing UKIP - https://www.facebook.com/bbcdailyandsundaypolitics/videos/1013474218669436/

[Phantom Hoover]

5-seat majority for the Tories.

They had 4 times that much in Major's government and they'd lost it within 5 years. Karajorma has the right idea.

[headdie]

5-seat majority for the Tories.

They had 4 times that much in Major's government and they'd lost it within 5 years. Karajorma has the right idea.

the thing about a slim majority like this is that 5 seats is nothing, 5 back benchers decide they dont like the party line and rebel then the government has to go begging to the other parties to ensure success, but unlike with coalition all the power is then in the hands of the other MPs so it is much harder to bully or coerce support

[Flipside]

It will be interesting to watch Cameron get support together for the European Referendum with such a small majority, so little UKIP presence and the rest of the house pretty much pro-Europe. He may find trouble in the ranks with MP's who have enough business know-how to see where the wind would blow if that were to happen.

[Mongoose]

Parliamentary systems make my head hurt.

[karajorma]

the thing about a slim majority like this is that 5 seats is nothing, 5 back benchers decide they dont like the party line and rebel then the government has to go begging to the other parties to ensure success, but unlike with coalition all the power is then in the hands of the other MPs so it is much harder to bully or coerce support

Unlike the earlier coalition there isn't a them vs us dynamic to it now. Cameron can't bully his party with the threat of staying strong against their partners.

What this Election shows me is that First Past the Post is a really broken system. Not that I wanted Ukip in power but they had 3 million votes and 1 seat, SNP had 1.5 million and 56 seats.

I'm still not completely convinced about that though. UKIP had 3 million votes but with a ballot paper that only said "UKIP" and "Anyone but UKIP" wouldn't you see a large majority of people who didn't want them? PR sounds like a fairer method but it often allows extremists power that they would never get otherwise. Do you really want to live in a country with BNP MPs in it? They got ****ed over in this election but in previous ones they might not have done too badly.

This was quite interesting, especially

It costs £500 to run for parliament, a deposit that is only returned if the candidate receives at least 5% of the vote.

In 2010, the Lib Dems didn't lose a single deposit. By the end of Friday morning, they had lost £169,000 in deposits for 2015, meaning that they failed to get 5% of the vote in at least 338 constituencies.

Remember that when people start complaining about them only having 8 seats with 2.4 million votes. If they can't get even 5% of the vote in more than half of the constituencies, do they really deserve more seats?

[666maslo666]

PR sounds like a fairer method but it often allows extremists power that they would never get otherwise. Do you really want to live in a country with BNP MPs in it? They got ****ed over in this election but in previous ones they might not have done too badly.

You could have proportional representation but with a cutoff point of lets say, 5%. Parties below this threshold would not get into parliament. Such system exists here in Slovakia and I like it a lot, it successfully keeps communists and fascists out of parliament while allowing for an entire spectrum of parties that are pretty representative of peoples opinions.

[rance]

PR sounds like a fairer method but it often allows extremists power that they would never get otherwise. Do you really want to live in a country with BNP MPs in it? They got ****ed over in this election but in previous ones they might not have done too badly.

You could have proportional representation but with a cutoff point of lets say, 5%. Parties below this threshold would not get into parliament. Such system exists here in Slovakia and I like it a lot, it successfully keeps communists and fascists out of parliament while allowing for an entire spectrum of parties that are pretty representative of peoples opinions.

Do you cap parties representation as well? For example one party cant't have more than 50% to stop them from being in complete control?

[Phantom Hoover]

Um... why would you do that? If a majority of people vote for a party that party should have a majority in the government.

This is especially true in more moderate systems than full PR (which puts a lot of power in the hands of party leaders and gives the people very little say in the actual individual people who end up in government), because they normally split the country into smaller districts which each proportionately elect a handful of candidates, and it's quite likely that one party would dominate the vote in some regions.

[rance]

Well if one party had say 70% representation then they would have little to no opposition meaning they could get away with anything, a caped representation with Single transferable vote would insure people elect who they want, but those elected stay in check in case they go against the public interest

[Phantom Hoover]

There's already a system of checks in most democracies against a dominant party going out of control, in the form of judicial review. Denying a democratic mandate to a huge majority of the people is a fundamentally unacceptable way of accomplishing the same thing.

[Gee1337]

If I'm honest, the election result is one of the better possibilities (imho)... obviously will we have to agree to disagree with this!

I've already said that I voted UKIP and I will probably continue to do so, even with Farage gone as there is a lot of sense in what they say. There has been a lot of false stigma and unfairness towards UKIP. They have been a victim of their own rapid growth. I firmly believe that they are more "centre" than people care to admit or believe, when it is considered that they have attracted voters from both sides of the political spectrum. What they have done this election is to mould themselves into a respectable party and they have weeded out people who have brought them into dis-repute with a variety of unpopular remarks, which the mainstream media have jumped on at every opportunity, especially the BBC! I am very disappointed that Farage didn't get elected as I think that parliament needs a colourful character like him in there to shake things up, however the tories did throw vast resources against him in the Thanet South campaign. I think that Farage will return as UKIP leader and he will stand somewhere in 2020, and by this time I believe that UKIP will be a much more respectable party and a lot of the problems they have succumbed too at this election will not repeat themselves at the next election. This is the first time that UKIP as stood in pretty much every seat going and they got second place in 118 of them, which to me speaks volumes. If they do not make major in-roads at the next GE, then yes it will most likely be the end of them.

One thing that does get me about the election is the representation of the country. There are several points which highlight this problem such as 37% to 30% of the electorate for Tory Vs Labour, but that 7% meant almost 100 more seats for Tory because of the marginals. Also, there is the issue of 8% meant 8 seats for the Lib Dems, yet 12.6% only meant 1 seat for UKIP. I believe that the way round this is to merge a lot of the constituencies and base them on population, meaning that a constituency size should be based on how many voters there are, but there should also be less seats.

The biggest thing that gripes me about the electorate in this country, is the constant want for change but yet they still end up voting ConLabLib (obviously less Lib), and the real truth here is that there is not much difference between the mainstream parties anyway. Even though Mr Cameron says he will deliver a EU referendum, I believe this to be a bit of a Trojan Horse as he will either fold on this promise, or he will throw vast resources at a campaign to stay in, because the reality is that all these parties want to stay as part of the EU anyway. If Cameron doesn't deliver what he has put forward in this GE's manifesto, then it will be the end of the Tories as they can no longer blame a coalition partner. Labour have taken a massive hit this time round and I believe that the Labour party are currently in decline (which in my opinion is a good thing).

I think the electorate's expectation of change happening this time round was too high, and I am guilty of thinking this as well, but change is happening. I think we all need to wake up and realise that it will take a little bit longer than anticipated.

As a final note regarding UKIP... people have branded them and will continue to brand them as racist, and this branding is done by progressive socialists and it is completely false. However, if it were true, I think I'd rather vote for a racist than a paedo (which both Labour and Conservatives of guilty of having), although ultimately I'd rather vote for neither!

[Phantom Hoover]

I mean the fact that UKIP were expelling candidates from the party every other day for saying horrendously racist **** wasn't helping their image

[Gee1337]

A slight exaggeration "every other day" ... and I don't think that all the comments were "horrendously" racist.

However, the principle in what you are putting across there, I actually agree with you... it did not help their image! But I have never been a person suade by image, I go by substance and it was their manifesto and common sense ideology which won me over.

Expelling those people from the party for said comments can actually be positively spun to say that UKIP do not tolerate it. I seriously believe they will come back stronger in 2020.

Until then though... the next big topic for me is the EU referendum (if it actually happens).

[karajorma]

UKIP got effectively shut out of parliment and that is almost certainly a good thing. Under a PR system they might have ended up with 30 to 60 MPs.

[Phantom Hoover]

Expelling those people from the party for said comments can actually be positively spun to say that UKIP do not tolerate it.

It'd be nice if they backed that up by trying to filter out the racists before having them run for parliament.

[Gee1337]

I disagree karajorma. As a result of this election, we are in for more of the same bunch of scandalous and corrupt pillocks that we have had for decades. Atleast there is some form of honesty with UKIP, whether people disagree with it or not and they have raised a lot of important issues that would have otherwise been glossed over.

In an ideal world Phantom, yes I agree... it would have been nice. Unfortunately though, there are those that will always slip through the net. UKIP are not exclusive to having questionable candidates, as Labour and Conservative have had the same problem over the years. The difference is that the media haven't jumped on it the same way, because they main parties are considered as the "norm". However, I think UKIP did back it up, as they expelled or suspended those from the party pending investigations... hence they do not tolerate it.

An example of an exaggerated smear was David Colbourn's comment calling Hamza Yousif (think that was the name of the SNP candidate), "Abu Hamza" and accusing Mr Colbourn of comparing Mr Yousif to a terrorist. I don't think this was an accurate reflection of the scenario, but rather a misguided play on the name "Hamza", such as "Beckingham Palace" or someone being called Bruce Willis then nicknaming them John McClane.