For Things that Haven’t Come Yet – Nana grizol
I won’t even pretend to have a grasp on the intricacies of the British electoral system. I get the broad contours of it but when people start talking about how to wrangle a ‘Queen’s speech through parliament’ I tend to get a little lost. None of which prevents me from being fascinated watching the results come in today.
As far as I can tell, the only real question left is how much the Conservatives win by. There’s a small chance they’ll get sufficient seats to simply form a government on their own. But the likelier result is that they come up 10-20 seats short and then the real fireworks begin as Labour scrambles to try to build a coalition of sufficient size to get themselves a working government. It seems unlikely, though. Even if the votes might theoretically be there I have a feeling it’s going to be hard to actually hold them together in the face of what (let’s face it) is a pretty catastrophic loss.
In many ways, it’s similar to what’s likely to happen in November on this side of the ocean – where it’s virtually certain that Democrats will suffer a major loss of seats in Congress, but are at least somewhat likely to hold on to both houses. And the question then will be how they actually govern (or if they CAN govern at all).
I’ve been mostly following things on the Guardian’s election blog. Anyone have advice for a better place to go?