Merged topic into relevant thread.
Blocking refugees is the fuel for the fire, not accepting them. By blocking them we play into the Islam vs The West narrative that so-called Islamic State are using to get people on their side. We need to accept them with open arms and show that Muslims are welcome in our country, and we are not their enemy.
Why can’t the EU just dissolve already. Such a relic
[size=14pt]TL;DR: Theresa May called an election she didn’t have to call, thinking she’d win amazingly. She failed epicly. She’s now going to use a very unpopular far-right party to get the majority she needs.
So yesterday there was an election in the UK. All of the results are now in, and it’s a kind of complicated situation.
Firstly, this is not a normal election. This election was called by Prime Minister Theresa May because she wanted a bigger mandate for the Brexit negotiations.
[size=14pt]2015 Election Results:
In the UK Parliament, there are 650 available seats
Conservative - 330 seats (50.8%)
Labour - 232 seats (35.7%)
Scottish National Party - 56 Seats (8.6%)
Liberal Democrats - 8 seats (1.2%)
Democratic Unionist Party - 8 seats (1.2%)
Sinn Féin - 4 seats (0.6%)
Plaid Cymru - 3 seats (0.5%)
Social Democratic & Labour Party - 3 seats (0.5%)
Ulster Unionist Party - 2 seats (0.3%)
UK Independence Party - 1 seat (0.2%)
Green Party - 1 seat (0.2%)
The Speaker of the House - 1 seat (0.2%) (not a party, an elected official)
Independent Candidates- 1 seat (0.2%)
Theresa May only had a slight majority, holding just over half of the seats. She also was not elected to her position. Prime Ministers are not directly elected, but are the leader of the party with the most seats. When David Cameron resigned in 2016, all other leadership candidates quit before the final vote so not even Theresa May’s party voted for her.
The opposition (Labour) were not doing too well, with the party’s MP’s unhappy with leader Jeremy Corbyn, but the general members of the party confident in him. Theresa May called an election because she believed that she would win by a landslide. Initially, the polls were highly in her favour and it was likely that she would win by a huge margin. This did not happen.
[size=14pt]2017 Election Results
Conservative Party - 318 seats -13 - 48.8%
Labour - 262 seats +30 - 40.3%
Scottish National Party - 35 seats -21 - 5.4%
Liberal Democrats - 12 seats +4 - 1.8%
Democratic Unionist Party - 10 seats +2 - 1.5%
Sinn Féin - 7 seats +3 - 1.1%
Plaid Cymru - 4 seats +1 - 0.6%
Green Party - 1 seat No change - 0.2%
The Speaker of the House - 1 seat (0.2%) (not a party, an elected official)
Independent Candidates- 1 seat (0.2%)
UK Independence Party - 0 seats -1
Social Democratic and Labour Party - 0 seats -3
Ulster Unionist Party - 0 seats -2
All in all, Theresa May went from having a 50.8% majority to a 48.8% minority. Her opposition grew more unified with Labour gaining 30 seats.
[size=18pt]What happens now?
No party has over half the seats, so no party can form a government entirely on their own. However, a government only needs the approval of over half the seats. If another party were to help Theresa May get over the 50% line, then she would be able to form a government.
On the 13th of June, Theresa May will take her proposal to form a government to Parliament. The Conservative’s 318 MPs are 99.999% certain to agree with it. It appears that Theresa May will use the Democratic Unionist Party’s 10 seats to help her get over the majority.
This will be a very unpopular decision. The DUP are a (at least in UK terms) fairly far-right Christian party, with strong links to Irish Paramillitary groups. They are against (amongst other things), abortion and gay marriage. They also believe that the Earth is 10,000 years old and that christian school education should be mandatory.
If Theresa May does form this government, it won’t go down well. The last minority government in the UK lasted for less than a year.
[hr]
THE END OF THE FACTS. THE COMMENCEMENT OF OPINIONS.
Theresa May performed laugably. She saw an opportunity to get a majority government and make our country “Strong and Stable”. She’s left us with a minority government that will have to be propped up by a very unpopular, Northern Ireland only party. She’s shot herself in the foot again by allying with the DUP who literally nobody else likes. This will push more moderate Conservatives to Labour. IMO, she should resign.
The UK Independence Party has lost all of their seats, which is deeply amusing. Even the leader of the party didn’t get re-elected and has now resigned.
The Labour party did suprisingly well. The Labour party started off as a left-wing pro-workers party, but in recent years it’s shifted to being a centrist or even slightly right-wing party. Jeremy Corbyn however is an old-style left-wing Labour candidate, and that new style seems to have worked. Many people believe that he offers a different choice to the other parties.
But then it won’t be a minority government, as she will have 328 seats if she sides with DUP.
Hung parliament is something common in other European countries. In the last elections in my country, the same happened, but the situation was reversed: the conservatives won by a pretty large margin, but without a majority, so the leader of the socialist party (which ended in second) formed a coalition with far-left Marxist-Leninist parties which would form a majority, and he was appointed prime minister by our president without winning elections. I was thinking the labour party could do the same, but looking at the results you’ve posted, it seems highly unlikely, as they would need an additional 63 seats. On the other hand, it would be extremely difficult for Theresa’s party to govern without a majority, so it’s perfectly understandable why she decided to get those extra 10 seats.
She isn’t siding with the DUP exactly, she’s simply requesting that they vote to allow her government to form. They’re not under any obligation to actually do it, and if they do vote to allow it then they’ll be under no obligation to help her any further. It’s not like a coalition where both parties come into power. The previous minority government in 1974 came to power in a similar way, but it lasted for 9 months.
disapointing. 
I am not a global political.
I am ashamed to say I don’t know much about global politics but I have been making some attempts to learn through the majestic Google and Youtube.
I also just wanted to use this post to say I’m not dead.
Hello.
It was a incredibly interesting result … looks like the DUP and the Conservatives are going to form a coalition which has outraged many tory MPs and the left too. Time will only tell how long this will last. many speculate that there might even be another election in December.
At the moment there’s no indication that a coalition will be formed, it just looks like the DUP’s MPs will vote in favour of May’s minority government to get it in.
As you said there is significant opposition to this. The leader of the Scottish Conservatives, who made significant gains in this election, is gay and so of course is not a fan of the DUP. She actually controls more MPs than the DUP have, so in theory she could get her MPs to vote against this government, which would cancel out the extra support from the DUP. Whether that will happen or not is unclear.
The DUP is deeply unpopular pretty much everywhere outside of the places where it gets voted in. There’s a post in the /r/unitedkingdom subreddit about their beliefs, which are incredibly recessive by UK standards.
Hahahahaha, welcome to Australia - 2010 election. Good luck with the minority government LMFAO
yayyyyyyyyy
Merged topics. Also, a reminder that:
The DUP has just confirmed they have agreed a ‘confidence and supply’ deal with Theresa May. This means they will approve her government but won’t be forming a coalition or anything like that.
This is also fairly bad news for Ireland in general as it could be seen as a violation of the Good Friday peace agreement, which requires the British government to be neutral in the conflict between unionists and republicans. Some have argued that the government being propped up by unionists is a violation of this.
Man I hope it all falls apart - I am so disgraced that May would form a coalition with the DUP.
That would suggest that although not an official coalition, the DUP will not block supply meaning that they will vote with the conservatives, essentially in coalition. Let’s see how it all unfolds.