Proxy Vote

The country next door, still masquerading, in medieval cos play, as An Kingdom just had a general election. I was born there, grew up there, and left there more or less as soon as I was old enough to vote. After college in Dublin, and Grad School in Boston, I returned there at the age of 29, for the first of all the short term contracts along which my "career" has teetered. We lived in Geordieland for the next 7 years and I must have voted in the General Election of 1987 but I have no memory of doing so. With no help at all from me, or any of our friends-and-relations, Margaret Thatcher and the Conservative Party won a third term at the helm of government.

By the time the next election came round, we'd moved back to Ireland, and were a-voting in a pluralist democracy and a republic. But I've paid attention to UK elections partly because I have family [ancestral, collateral and descendant] over there; and partly because economic and political decisions over there do have impact over here - Brexit for starters. At the moment I have voting-age family in four, maybe five, different English constituencies. I sent them an exhortation early on Thursday morning to "Vote Early and Vote Often" and suggested [quip clipped from Metafilter] an appropriate beverage after polling might be a bottle of Sangre de Tory. I think "we" have helped to see off the Conservatives. It's hard to take the thing seriously when the results are announced [here knocking the stuffing out of Tory Leader hopeful Penny Mordaunt] by a chap in a great frilly bib like it was all a Restoration comedy ca. 1670.

At least in Stroud and Didcot, Conservatives have also lost their seats. Thanks Fam!

• STROUD: 2024 LAB 46% CON 26% - 2019 CON 48% LAB 42%
• DIDCOT: 2024 LIB 40% CON 28% - 2019 CON 51% LIB 32%
• BATH: 2024 LIB 41% LAB 18% - 2019 LIB 55% CON 31%
• HACKNEY 2024 LAB 60% GRN 23% - 2019 LAB 70% CON 12%

If you care, there is plenty of data to crunch and opinion to ignore out there. Starting with Wikipedia, whence I have culled the numbers in the list above. Here in Ireland we elect our pluralist democracy using STV proportional representation, it is not without its problems - not least round after round of counting. In the UK, they blast through, starting immediately after polling stations close at 22:00hrs, pulling an all-nighter and getting a very good idea of who has won before breakfast and everything ironed out by lunchtime. Counting efficiency aside, I'll just draw your attention to the egregious disenfranchising consequences of continuing to operate on a Winner Take All protocol in single seat constituencies. 

There is a clear trend in the data here: more votes == more seats in parliament but in the detail it is crazy unfair. Democracy requires that if more people vote for such-an-outcome, even if that outcome is contrary to my druthers, then the majority gets the win. Even if that outcome is sexist, racist, ageist, fascist or murderist. In the Election on 4th July 2024, the inequity and iniquity of the British electoral system is high-lighted by the bum's-rush meted out on the (dreadful populist racist) Reform UK bund of Nigel Farage. They secured 14% of the countrywide votes and only got 4 MPs elected . . . the same as the Greens with less than half their tally of votes. Contrariwise, the Liberal Democrats, with many fewer [85% of] votes than Reform, nevertheless got 71 seats (18x more than Reform). And the Conservatives have seen the biggest loss of seats since records began despite getting 2/3 as many votes as Labour. [note added in press, Reform secured a 5th seat late in the day; but my analysis of unfairness stands]

British rellies: you do you, of course; but surely it's time to move along from a) a Monarchy b) a manifestly undemocratic democracy c) frilly bibs and tricorn hats except in costume dramas.