Thursday, July 04, 2024

UK General Election (seeing red)

There is an old saying in politics, that each election is different. Some years you are the windshield, and in others you're the bug. (Unless you're Donald Trump, in which case you never lose.)

Early reports from the UK where the polls have now closed, suggest that Labour is on track for a record majority while the Conservatives appear to have suffered their worst defeat in modern political history. Labour's massive win and the corresponding collapse of the Tories, appears to be at least in part due to the infighting on the right. Specifically, the rise of the new Reform Party and its rightwing populist leader Nigel Farage. Exit polls suggest that Reform, on track to win perhaps 13 seats, actually got a larger share of the popular vote than the Liberal Democrats, on track to win around 60 seats. That means that they are almost certainly responsible for a very large number of normally safe Conservative seats swinging to Labour. 

The other news, some might call it a silver lining in a very dark cloud, is that it looks like the SNP, Scotland's leftwing secessionist party, has been absolutely pasted.  The numbers are not firm as of this post, but exit polling suggests they are on track to lose around 80% of their seats in Westminster. In all cases the beneficiary being Labour. It should be noted that Scotland has a devolved parliament, and the SNP still controls the government there with the next Scottish election not scheduled for another two years. 

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