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Recent political stuff:
- The vote to see if Britain should adopt Alternative Voting has failed.
- Lib Dems lose lots of councils and councillors, whilst Labour make the majority of the gains in England.
- The Scottish National Party do really well in the elections.
A link to the BBC politics page containing relevant information.
Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 3rd 2023 at 11:15:30 AM
Revised summary with all seats declared:
- 27 (+0) SF (N)
- 25 (-3) DUP (U)
- 17 (+9) All (O)
- 09 (-1) UUP (U)
- 08 (-4) SDLP (N)
- 02 (+1) Ind (U)
- 01 (+0) TUV (U)
- 01 (+0) PBP (O)
- 00 (-2) Grenote
That means the overall balance of power is:
- 37 (-3) Unionist
- 35 (-4) Nationalist
- 18 (+7) Other.
Edited by TommyR01D on May 8th 2022 at 2:30:28 AM
Foreign Troper
So, as somebody who isn't into British Politics that much, can somebody summarize what is happening with Ireland right now? Is there a realsitic chance that Ireland and Northern Ireland will reunite currently?
Certified: 48.0% West Asian, 6.5% South Asian, 15.8% North/West European, 15.7% English, 7.4% Balkan, 6.6% Scandinavian
I think not, for a number of reasons:
- The election result isn't really a win for reunification.
- Demographic changes alone do not imply increased support for reunification, because demographies' political affiliations can shift over time.
- The UK government would never agree to it.
- Such a major change in the status of Northern Ireland would probably kick The Troubles off again, which also raises questions about Ireland's willingness to take it back on board.
These are local council results, often used to give the sitting government a telling off. Even if reflective of actual mood it still shows the population are split 50/50.
Its the same in Scotland on a national level, but far more pronounced. From memory the SNP got less than 50% of the votes in 2019, but the most of the seats. This is because of First Past The Post - the unionist vote is split between Labour, Tory and Lib Dem. In 2019 there were approximately 1.25 million SNP votes, and 1.5 million 'Others', but because of FPTP SNP took 48 out of 59 seats.
Nerds nearly need needy nerdy nerds
Part of the Good Friday Agreement stipulates that only if a referendum vote by the people of NI shows there to be a majority desire for reunification would it ever truly be on the cards. A border poll was held in 1973 posing this very question, and, at the time, the overwhelming majority of those who voted was to remain with the UK. Now, it probably wouldn't be quite such a landslide these days, but it would likely still be contested.
Edited by TheHeroHartmut on May 8th 2022 at 2:47:26 PM
Switch FC code: SW-4420-1809-1805
Different Topic - call back to PR, particularly the d'Hondt system.
Found my spreadsheets for 2019 results. 650 seats under d'Hondt. Seat and vote share is as of Ttotal nationwide available.
Nationwide parties
| Con | 324 seats | 49.8% seats | 43.7% vote | |
| Lab | 228 seats | 35.1% seats | 32.1% vote | |
| LD | 42 seats | 6.5% seats | 11.0% vote | |
| Grn | 1 seat | 0.2% seats | 2.7% vote | |
| Brxt | 3 seats | 0.5% seats | 2.0% vote | |
| Nationalist parties - stand home country only | ||||
| SNP | 32 seats | 4.9% seats | 3.9% vote | (note 1) |
| PC | 2 seats | 0.3% seats | 0.5% vote | (note 2) |
Ulster (note 3, note 4)
| DUP | 6 seats | 0.9% seats | 0.8% vote |
| SF | 5 seats | 0.8% seats | 0.6% vote |
| SDLP | 2 seats | 0.3% seats | 0.4% vote |
| UUP | 1 seat | 0.2% seats | 0.3% vote |
| APNI | 4 seats | 0.6% seats | 0.4% vote |
Note 1- SNP only stand in the 59 Scottish seats, and are only pro-independence party.
They won 45.0% of Scottish vote, and 54.2% of seats under this d'Hondt division.
Note 2- Plaid Cymru only stand in Welsh seats, and are pro independence.
Note 3- Main parties do not stand in Northern Ireland.
Note 4- Sinn Fein refuse to take seats in House of Commons. Thus this parliament would have been effectively 645 seats.
Edited by Last_Hussar on May 8th 2022 at 7:22:29 AM
A procrastination in of itself
No, because the republicans haven’t actually made gains.
What’s happened here is that a major unionist party has done badly, but instead of going to another unionist party the voters have gone to the “Let’s stop dividing ourselves into unionist and republican camps” party.
If anything the growth of Alliance reduces the likelihood of Irish unification, because while Alliance can appeal to both unionists (as they’re not going to actively remove NI from the U.K.) and republicans (as they aren’t going to stop NI from exiting the U.K.) their “focus on other things” stance naturally favours the status-quo (NI in the U.K.).
It’s not just the DUP who lost seats, so did the SDLP. If they grow further Alliance could end up consuming both the soft-nationalist SDLP and the soft-unionist wing of the DUP.
I’ve no idea what happens with the NI Assembly if Alliance become one of the two largest parties, but that’d still be a long way off.
"And the Bunny nails it!" ~ Gabrael "If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we." ~ Cyran
I was reading it gets a bit odd at the top table, because the First Minister and deputy have to be from opposite sides - 1 unionist, 1 republican. If Alliance are second it creates a weird situation where they don't get to be deputy.
Yes there is a power-sharing arrangement enforced in the Assembly, which basically means that the largest Unionist party and the largest Nationalist party are in permanent grand coalition.
The offices of First Minister and deputynote First Minister are set up in such a way that neither can exercise any power without the other's permission. If one resigns then the other is effectively suspended from office (which is how the 2017 crisis kicked off).
Sinn Féin have long wanted the positions to be called "Joint First Ministers" or "Co-First Ministers" to emphasise the equality of power, though the DUP rejected this. It will be interesting to see if either party changes its stance now.
A procrastination in of itself
The “basically” is where I’m after clarification, are the rules that the largest Nationalist and the largest Republican parties split the positions, or that the largest parties from the two largest blocks (Republican, Nationalist, Other) split the posts? Because if Other becomes one of the largest blocks do they get frozen out or does one of the other two? It’s not a question for today, but Other lots sits at 20% of the Assembly, so it’s liable to be a question that will need answering at some point.
"And the Bunny nails it!" ~ Gabrael "If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we." ~ Cyran
From the Northern Ireland Act 1998, section 16A:[1]
(4)The nominating officer of the largest political party of the largest political designation shall nominate a member of the Assembly to be the First Minister.
(5)The nominating officer of the largest political party of the second largest political designation shall nominate a member of the Assembly to be the deputy First Minister.
So is "political designation" specifically Unionist/Nationalist or could it be Unionist/Nationalist/Neither?
Edited by annemarisa on May 9th 2022 at 12:09:53 PM
It's "Unionist", "Nationalist" or "Other". A member may choose his or her designation at will, but may not change it more than once during the course of an assembly.
A procrastination in of itself
Keir Starmer has sent an email to Labour members, in it he says that he never broke the rules and that “I don’t believe those accusing me [of breaking the rules] believe it themselves.”
Alongside other stuff he additionally said that “ if the police decide to issue me with a fixed penalty notice,
I would, of course, do the right thing and step down.”
So that’s a pretty clear statement. He didn’t break the rules, the people accusing him are liars and that if the police say he did break the rules he’ll resign.
![[down]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_down.png "[down]"){kind=icon}
Yep, fixed.
Edited by Silasw on May 9th 2022 at 8:35:15 PM
"And the Bunny nails it!" ~ Gabrael "If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we." ~ Cyran
Visiting from the Hoag Galaxy
It helps his case that the photo they like using is obviously a cropped version of one where he was eating with someone who died in 2019.
Not Three Laws compliant.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Do you mean "the police say he did break the rules he’ll resign."?
Twitter is full of the Right accusing Starmer of trying to influence the police.
Disasturbator
When the Right is doing that all themslves,typical projection really
New theme music also a box
So in other words, if the Alliance were to win the most seats, that wouldn't guarantee them either the FM or Deputy FM seat if "other" still came in third? (At least until they picked the party they disliked least and "affiliated" with the other designation.)
I despise hypocrisy, unless of course it is my own.
Do you have a source for that one? If it were true, I would have thought that labour would be pointing that out rather loudly and showing the uncropped picture...
A procrastination in of itself
I think there are technically two accusations. The one involving the picture of him having dinner with someone who died years ago, and the one involving him and other campaigners having dinner during the election campaign. The picture from accusation one gets used for accusation two on occasion.
"And the Bunny nails it!" ~ Gabrael "If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we." ~ Cyran
https://mobile.twitter.com/MrJohnNicolson/status/1521092894987325445
This is the tweet about Nadine "never knowingly in her depth" Dorries.
The other is a shot through the window of the actual meeting. It appears to genuine, but taken by the son of (I think) Delingpole.
The Fail have printed an itinerary showing the curry, without thinking 'its on an itinerary, maybe they thought this through before hand. Said itinerary also shows the 2m distance warning, so they are planning around Covid.
Perhaps he should have taken his wife, then everything would have been OK...
@pi4t: Alliance is unionist in that, because the status quo is the Union, neutrality is a unionist position. They're essentially the NI wing of the Liberal Democrats. (That said, I'm all for seeing the DUPes take a hammerin'.)
I despise hypocrisy, unless of course it is my own.