Brecon and Radnorshire by-election: Lib Dems beat Conservatives

Boris sees his majority in the house of commons cut to ONE

In a by-election the Tory (conservative) candidate has lost his seat and was replaced by the candidate of the LibDems, the pro-Europe party so to speak. Even with the support of the DUP the majority of his government was cut to one seat. So any 2 dissidents in his own party can sink his government.

The by-election was necessary because of a petition of voters to unseat him after a conviction for a false expenses claim. But the Tory's ran the same candidate because last time he had a majority of 8,038 voters but in this election there was a swing of almost 9,500 votes. From an 8 thousand plus majority his opponent, LibDem candidate Jane Dodds now has a majority of 1,425 votes.

So the situation of Boris's his government is precarious. In fact his government only has a majority because the Sinn Fein members of parliament never show up in parliament and do never vote. If they showed up and participated in the house of commons the government would fall because with those 7 seats filled he would not have a majority. But as the Sinn Fein MP's are abolitionists and want to make Northern Ireland part of a united Ireland, they never come to Westminster.

Peter King said:

Boris sees his majority in the house of commons cut to ONE

In a by-election the Tory (conservative) candidate has lost his seat and was replaced by the candidate of the LibDems, the pro-Europe party so to speak. Even with the support of the DUP the majority of his government was cut to one seat. So any 2 dissidents in his own party can sink his government.

The by-election was necessary because of a petition of voters to unseat him after a conviction for a false expenses claim. But the Tory's ran the same candidate because last time he had a majority of 8,038 voters but in this election there was a swing of almost 9,500 votes. From an 8 thousand plus majority his opponent, LibDem candidate Jane Dodds now has a majority of 1,425 votes.

So the situation of Boris's his government is precarious. In fact his government only has a majority because the Sinn Fein members of parliament never show up in parliament and do never vote. If they showed up and participated in the house of commons the government would fall because with those 7 seats filled he would not have a majority. But as the Sinn Fein MP's are abolitionists and want to make Northern Ireland part of a united Ireland, they never come to Westminster.

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Thank you. We Americans miss much happening in Europe.

Fledermaus said:

Thank you. We Americans miss much happening in Europe.

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Well it mean that Trump's mini me has just one more defector to go until he no longer has a majority and if he tries to force through Brexit with no deal I am pretty sure some in his party will jump ship to the LibDems or go rogue and go on as independents.

And to understand what happens on both sides of the Atlantic you need to be a political junkie, like me. I cannot wait until the presidential election really gets going. It is going to be a few years before I get to vote here in the Netherlands so a nice exciting US election will really tide me over until we get going here.

PS. Our election compared to the US one is boring, 6 weeks of campaigning. No masses of campaign ads, no bombardment with phone calls and as a whole most of our politicians act like decent human beings during the electoral process.

Out of those who actually showed up (the vote was down from the General Election) the total Brexit (if you count the Conservatives as a monolithic pro-Brexit bloc) vote was higher than the obvious pro Remain vote so that needs to be factored in.
This rural area voted leave in the referendum and that desire shows little sign of diminishing.

Boris Johnson's premiership is hanging by a thread

Infinite Chaos said:

Out of those who actually showed up (the vote was down from the General Election) the total Brexit (if you count the Conservatives as a monolithic pro-Brexit bloc) vote was higher than the obvious pro Remain vote so that needs to be factored in.
This rural area voted leave in the referendum and that desire shows little sign of diminishing.

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It was the highest by-election turnout for over 20 years though. From the perspective of a neighbouring constituency I'd guess the Conservative bloc was more pro local boyo than anything else. One farm I drive past there has had a series of Remain etc posters by the main road since the referendum.

Peter King said:

Boris sees his majority in the house of commons cut to ONE

In a by-election the Tory (conservative) candidate has lost his seat and was replaced by the candidate of the LibDems, the pro-Europe party so to speak. Even with the support of the DUP the majority of his government was cut to one seat. So any 2 dissidents in his own party can sink his government.

The by-election was necessary because of a petition of voters to unseat him after a conviction for a false expenses claim. But the Tory's ran the same candidate because last time he had a majority of 8,038 voters but in this election there was a swing of almost 9,500 votes. From an 8 thousand plus majority his opponent, LibDem candidate Jane Dodds now has a majority of 1,425 votes.

So the situation of Boris's his government is precarious. In fact his government only has a majority because the Sinn Fein members of parliament never show up in parliament and do never vote. If they showed up and participated in the house of commons the government would fall because with those 7 seats filled he would not have a majority. But as the Sinn Fein MP's are abolitionists and want to make Northern Ireland part of a united Ireland, they never come to Westminster.

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My second favorite thing about this election is that UKIP were beaten by the Monster Raving Looney Party. Reason has indeed prevailed.

the rat faced liar Swinson will lose her seat ... she only got in due to Tory/Labour voting tactically .... all that's gone due to bad blood between the 3 unionist parties in Scotland

Bringing down Johnson would not guarantee that the conservatives would not just put up another prime minister. Worst case scenario would be the Queen order a minority government formed so not likely to favor the left much anyway until the next election.

Drawdown said:

Bringing down Johnson would not guarantee that the conservatives would not just put up another prime minister. .

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But anyone they came up with would need to win a vote of confidence, and with more than one Concervative MP talking about defecting that would be difficult for them to do without working with other parties.

Peter King said:

Well it mean that Trump's mini me has just one more defector to go until he no longer has a majority and if he tries to force through Brexit with no deal I am pretty sure some in his party will jump ship to the LibDems or go rogue and go on as independents.

And to understand what happens on both sides of the Atlantic you need to be a political junkie, like me. I cannot wait until the presidential election really gets going. It is going to be a few years before I get to vote here in the Netherlands so a nice exciting US election will really tide me over until we get going here.

PS. Our election compared to the US one is boring, 6 weeks of campaigning. No masses of campaign ads, no bombardment with phone calls and as a whole most of our politicians act like decent human beings during the electoral process.

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I wish we had your election system over our current one.

Unitedwestand13 said:

I wish we had your election system over our current one.

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Dutch people are cheapskates when it comes to elections, all that money for nothing is also a reason why we do what we do. Also, if elections take much longer people would get bored with it and you want people's attention with the election.

The election date is set, the campaign lists are set, the election campaign starts, there are a few televised campaign debates and a few radio debates. Political parties will sent (as a rule) one campaign leaflet per house and that is about it.

Ooh, and all the political parties get the chance to make a 3 minute political video which is transmitted at 5 minutes before 6pm every evening and every party gets to make such a video and the transmission schedule is done by putting all the names in a computer program and every party gets their date of transmission by chance. Oh, and it is only on TV during the week, not in the weekend. And most people never watch it.

Peter King said:

Dutch people are cheapskates when it comes to elections, all that money for nothing is also a reason why we do what we do. Also, if elections take much longer people would get bored with it and you want people's attention with the election.

The election date is set, the campaign lists are set, the election campaign starts, there are a few televised campaign debates and a few radio debates. Political parties will sent (as a rule) one campaign leaflet per house and that is about it.

Ooh, and all the political parties get the chance to make a 3 minute political video which is transmitted at 5 minutes before 6pm every evening and every party gets to make such a video and the transmission schedule is done by putting all the names in a computer program and every party gets their date of transmission by chance. Oh, and it is only on TV during the week, not in the weekend. And most people never watch it.

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I'm jealous. Americans get bombarded with election propaganda every day and all through the day for weeks on end.

Rogue Valley said:

I'm jealous. Americans get bombarded with election propaganda every day and all through the day for weeks on end.

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The big difference is also that candidates do not run per region or city and do not have to do campaign rallies and donor things to get the ungodly amounts of money they burn through during the campaign.

Political parties make up lists with good candidates (according to them), then the voters either vote for the first person on the list or if they want to vote for someone down the list that is also possible.

The total number of votes on one party are tallied together, the total number of votes are divided by 150 to get the number of votes that will give you one seat. Say you need 100 thousand votes for one seat in parliament and your party gets 600,000 votes than your party gets 6 seats. Simple math so to speak. There is also a lower number for preferential votes. Say you need 25,000 preferential votes for a seat and your party has 600,000 votes, normally the first 6 names on the voters list will get in parliament. However if say the number 10 on the list has got a lot of preferential votes, than he will get the seat instead of the number 6 on the list. So the first 5 will get a seat plus the person with a sufficiently high number of preferential votes (as set by the voting commission).

There is also something like combined lists. Because there will always be votes above the number you need to get a seat. Say 100,000 seats gets you a seat and 2 parties have a combined list, which is totally possible, it means they get to combine the number of voters left.

As said 100,000 voters gives you one seat. Say party A has 675,000 and party B (with whom they have a combined list) has 345,000 voters. Normally party A would get 6 seats and party B has 3 seats, but because of their combined list they have 75,000 and 45,000 "over votes", if you are on a combined list you get to combine the 2 numbers and get one more seat. So in this case party A gets 7 seats and party B keeps 3. Now if the party A had 645,000 votes and party B had 375,000 votes the remaining seat would go to party B.

This stops the loss of votes between two parties who have a lot of ideological similar positions. This makes sure people really can count on their votes being counted and that their votes matter.

Now after the election 2,3 or 4 parties make a coalition government and usually elected members get positions in the government. And at that moment the people who were on the election list and were not elected, still have a chance to get into parliament.

For example, the VVD has 27 seats, so the 27 people who are first on the election list (in case that there are no preferential votes for that party) will become parliamentarians. Now the VVD becomes a coalition party and 8 parliamentarians get a seat in the government. That means that the people who were 28 to 35 now take over their seats in parliament.

Peter King said:

Well it mean that Trump's mini me has just one more defector to go until he no longer has a majority and if he tries to force through Brexit with no deal I am pretty sure some in his party will jump ship to the LibDems or go rogue and go on as independents.

And to understand what happens on both sides of the Atlantic you need to be a political junkie, like me. I cannot wait until the presidential election really gets going. It is going to be a few years before I get to vote here in the Netherlands so a nice exciting US election will really tide me over until we get going here.

PS. Our election compared to the US one is boring, 6 weeks of campaigning. No masses of campaign ads, no bombardment with phone calls and as a whole most of our politicians act like decent human beings during the electoral process.

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Peter King:

PM Johnson could prorogue Parliament and just wait out the Oct. 31, 2019 deadline. A parliament which cannot meet is a parliament which cannot vote a motion of non-confidence. So I would not be so sure that the Hard Brexit horse can be hobbled with a man like Boris at the helm. If he does hedgehog by proroguing Parliament, we may see a very British Coup or worse a Very British Civil War in the wake of such tactics.

Cheers?
Evilroddy.