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ASS-P
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05 Jun 2015, 1:22 pm

In the wake of the (still relatively recent) British PM elections I'm going to ask some things I've always wanted to ask regarding how some things in the U.K. are set up/work out .
In a way , some of these may seem a bit " naive "/kid-like ~ Let's say I'm a 15-yr old doing a report for school :) .
Okay , here goeth:
So (1) , the recent PM election resulted in the Tories gaining enough seats in the House Of Commons to be fully the ruling party and end the coalition with the Liberal Democrats ? How did the general Commons party line-up change ?
(2) I had heard that , during the previous government , there was only one district in Scotland (I'll use the I-guess-American phrase " district " here if you don't mind :) .) that was Tory ?
Is that st7ill the case ?
I'll have lots more to add to this , and not all as factually dry-based as this one , either , later .
Obviously , any knowledgeable UK-ites (or , indeed , non-Brits who know , as well...) , please answer...Maybe I could pay you back by trying to explain the Electoral College !... :D ...........



Marky9
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05 Jun 2015, 1:41 pm

I recall there are now only 3 non-SNP MP's from Scotland. I'm not sure how they breakdown into voting districts though. Maybe it can be gleaned from this article:

Link to Article About Scottish MP's

Cheers.



Magneto
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05 Jun 2015, 3:47 pm

The SNP took 56 out of the 59 constituents in Scotlands. Each constituency votes for their MP using first past the posts, where the candidate with the single biggest share of the vote wins the seat. This, of course, leads to a situation where one party can take 56 out of 59 seats in an area, despite only recieving 50% of the vote share.



Hyperborean
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05 Jun 2015, 4:07 pm

To answer your two questions:

1. The party line-up changed considerably and against all predictions. The Conservatives increased their (small) majority very slightly, the first time a sitting Tory government has done this for a long time. The Labour party lost even more seats than in the previous election, while the Liberal Democrats (who had been in coalition with the Tories), lost 48 of their 56 seats, almost wiping them out. The SNP won 56 of the 59 seats in Scotland, now making them a force to be reckoned with. UKIP and the Greens retained one seat each, but their vote share increased dramatically. Although there is a majority Tory government, the UK now has an increasingly multi-party system.

2. Yes, there was only one Tory-held constituency (i.e.: district) in Scotland during the previous parliament, and that hasn't changed. Of the 59 Scottish constituencies, the SNP hold 56, and the Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrats one each.

Much opinion now feels that we should change our first-past-the-post (FPTP) system of voting to proportional representation, which favours smaller parties and generally produces coalitions, and is widely used in the rest of Europe. To give an idea of the inequalities of FPTP, 24% of the electorate voted for the Conservatives, yet they form a majority government. So the remaining 76% are not happy ...



Magneto
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06 Jun 2015, 7:05 am

Well, you can't really say that, given that a large fraction of the electorate didn't actually vote.



ASS-P
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08 Jun 2015, 3:25 pm

...The US uses much the same " f-p-t-p " system , of course , for both the - sides ? - of Congress , the House and Senate .
Years ago , my late father said that the correct phrase for a Commons " district " was " posting " . He was Anglophiliac to have subscribed to the Manchester Guardian's " international weekly " edition in the post-WWI years living in the San Antonio , TX , area so ! !! !! !! !! !!
Are the Commons districts' borders ever redrawn . US House districts are up for redrawing every 10 years , with the latest Census ~ The rampant gerrymandering when that happens aside ! !! !! !! !! :wink:



Magneto
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09 Jun 2015, 4:56 am

I think they've got a redrawing coming up soon. Or maybe not, there was a fuss when they proposed to do it, perhaps because they wanted to reduce the number of MPs from 650 to 600.



ASS-P
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12 Jul 2016, 7:59 pm

...In my 06/09/15 post (My ! !! !! !! !! More than a year ago ! !! !! !! !!) I meant that my father had been Anglophiliac ENOUGH to have , in the post-WWII years , subscribed to the (then-) Manchester Guardian's " international weekly " subsidiary edition .
Ooooh :oops: :x , I wrote " World War ONE " the first time around ~ Hey , I'm not THAT old :P ! !! !! !! !! !! :mrgreen: :twisted: :) :wink:


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13 Jul 2016, 1:46 am

This might possibly interest you, but I can't say from experience, because I haven't taken the course myself.
8)
Free online course from the University of London via Coursera: begins 1 August


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ASS-P
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04 Aug 2016, 6:55 pm

...I'll start factual questioning (re-start ???) with thiis fairly easy one .
When Cameron resigned recently and his successor as Tory head ~ and thus , in this case , PM ~ was chosen , I read that when it got down to two contenders , Tory party members received a written ballot via mail to vote for one of the two (Am I remembering rightly ?) . I guess it's that's way when it's just a prty leader being chosen and not , as t was here , a PM ?
And would Labour choose a new leader , in the last round , in the same fashion ?
Just fairly recently , when Blair quit and Cameron ended up succeeding him at 10 Downing , was that how Cameron was named Labour head (and thus PM , since they were in at the time) (though I know that Blair and Cameron had already long agreed that Cameron would follow him ~ I mean officially) ? And , again , would/do Labour select a new top person that way when it's just bing party head , not a becoming PM situation ?
As far as the American Big Two parties' system for nominating candidates , the Democrats' and Republicans' method of declaring the winner of the primaries differ a bit (Or they did in 2008 , when both the Dems and Reps were not offering incumbents for President) .


_________________
Renal kidney failure, congestive heart failure, COPD. Can't really get up from a floor position unhelped anymore:-(.
One of the walking wounded ~ SMASHED DOWN by life and age, now prevented from even expressing myself! SOB.
" Oh, no! First you have to PROVE you deserve to go away to college! " ~ My mother, 1978 (the heyday of Andy Gibb and Player). I would still like to go.:-(
My life destroyed by Thorazine and Mellaril - and rape - and the Psychiatric/Industrial Complex. SOB:-(! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !!