Morning music
Tweets seen
By my use of Electoral Calculus, that might translate to Lab 476 Commons seats (overall majority 302), Con 68 (official Opposition), LibDems 62, SNP 13, Reform UK 4, Plaid Cymru 4, Greens 2 (Northern Ireland 18, Others 3).
What kind of “democracy” is it, though, when a party (Labour) might get 39% of the popular vote, yet get about 72% of the seats in the House of Commons (476 seats)? A strict 39% of seats would be 253 seats.
Another party (Conservatives) might get 19% of the popular vote, meaning, on strict mathematical equivalence, about 124 seats, not the mere 68 conferred by FPTP voting.
As for Reform UK, its present or forecast 17% should confer (under proportional voting) about 111 seats. The forecast under FPTP voting— a mere 4.
There again, the LibDems, with only 10% of the popular vote, are forecast to have 62 seats, almost the same as under a strict proportional allocation (65).
Can such an electoral system even be called “democratic”? Open question.
More music— “Ostalgie”
The DDR was a strange little country, in which I spent a couple of days in 1988; actually, not quite as small a country as commonly imagined: about 42,000 sq. miles, as against England’s 51,000, but with an overall density of population about a third of England’s (the UK as a whole has about 94,000 sq. miles).
More tweets seen
Interesting both in itself and re. the tactical voting point.
Incidentally, my 2019 (but several-times updated) piece about Therese Coffey (from my Deadhead MPs series) has proven popular; thousands of hits to date. https://ianrobertmillard.org/2019/09/16/deadhead-mps-an-occasional-series-the-therese-coffey-story/.
Britain 2024
“Two men have been jailed for a total of 67 years for shooting and stabbing to death an 18-year-old in east London.
Awadh Saleh and Rio Burton-Devine, both aged 25 from east London, were found guilty of the murder of Abubakar ‘Junior’ Jah, 18, at the Old Bailey today.
Judge Mark Dennis KC sentenced the pair to 36 years and 31 years respectively for the ‘brutal and cowardly’ attack in 2021.”
What will London be like in 2034 or 2044?
The System parties have no real answers.
Late tweets
By my use of Electoral Calculus [https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/userpoll.html], that actually puts the Cons in a marginally better position than other recent polls, by reason of the slip in Labour’s position, but it still means Lab 466 (overall majority 282), Con 70, LibDem 70, Reform UK 4, Greens 2.
Were Labour to recover to 40%, the number of Con MPs would reduce to 51; were Labour to rise to 41%, the number of Con MPs would be a mere 42.
Penny Mordaunt is campaigning not so much for the Conservative Party as for her own political career (in fact, her career full stop, for she has no other). It seems 50-50, at best, that she will be re-elected anyway.
Labour is as dull as ditchwater, as witness its pathetic Manifesto for the General Election, but I do not think that it much matters now. The main aim of 80%+, maybe even 90%, of the electorate is to get rid of the Conservative Party not just for the next 5 years but permanently. Starmer and fake Labour will only fail to sweep all before them —by default— if something so devastating happens to their campaign that it is hard to imagine what.
Late music
Ian Robert Millard 