It’s intriguing to arrive in a foreign land on the eve of their General Election.
Just why the United Kingdom votes on a Thursday has always been a bit of a mystery but it certainly adds to the low key nature of the day.
We’re staying in East London, home to the long serving Diane Abbot’s Labour-dominated constituency of Hackney and Stoke Newington.
My daughter and son-in-law enthusiastically voted for her to ensure a huge majority yet again for Britain’s first black woman MP. She’s held the seat since 1987and this time scored a whopping 59.5 percent of the votes cast in her ethnically diverse seat.
(Dad’s opinion didn’t matter in the slightest. The family were horrified to hear that if I was eligible I’d consider voting for Nigel Farage’s Reform!)
But as my wife and I walked around our neighbourhood and then into Central London on Election Day itself, the sense of this being just another ordinary working day was hard to miss.
Unlike in New Zealand where polling booths seem ubiquitous, and the orange signs are hard to miss, the signage here is black and white, not as prominent, and the frequency of booths seems lower than at home.
While we saw some polling stations out in the residential areas, they were invisible in the middle of town. On Thursday we did the tourist/shopping thing and spent a few hours on Regent and Oxford Streets and along Piccadilly. Didn’t see a polling booth.
The process, according to my family, is simple. There is just one vote to make – that for the local constituency MP in Britain’s first past the post (FPP) electoral system.
You can vote outside your local constituency but there’s no enrolling on the day. The UK Electoral Commission stopped enrollments on June 17. If you weren’t on the roll by then, you couldn’t vote.
What a good, clean and simplified system. We should learn from it.
On the day itself, it seems that any mention of the election in a public place or in the media is taboo.
The Election Day tradition in New Zealand is for the 6pm news to lead with a story about how the population has gone to the polls, booths close in an hour, there’s invariably a few comments from returning officers about turnout, and then of course coverage of the party leaders casting their vote and commenting on their way out of the booth.
The BBC Six O’Clock News headlines showed how the rules are different here. I watched the start of the bulletin before going out the back for the family barbecue. The teasers at the top of the show were about an attempted murder of a celebrity and what had happened at Wimbledon that day.
Then there’s the extraordinarily late closing of the polling booths. Even though the country is in one time zone, the reality of weekday business allows for voters to cast their ballot right up till 10pm.
Apart from the FPP system, the other huge difference on Election Day here is the Exit Poll.
While my son-in-law told me there are signs up around the polling booth emphasizing how your vote is your business, and how you should not tell nobody else how you voted, around 20,000 electors across the country took part in an exit poll. That was reported enthusiastically by the BBC just after their Election Night coverage began at 9.55pm.
Even though the opinion polls had been predicting a huge Labour win for months, the Exit Poll – which is actually more realistic for a Proportional Representation (PR) system – merely confirmed what would unfold over the next few hours.
But Labour’s utter domination of the result, winning 411 out of 650 seats in the House of Commons, belies the reality that Britain is a politically divided nation.
Despite winning 63 percent of the seats, Labour did it with just 34 percent of the popular vote. Remember also that turnout was a measly 60 percent, the third worst in UK electoral history. So here is a party with a rampant majority to pass whatever legislation they want, taking power after barely 20 percent of the eligible electorate supported them.
As Nigel Farage’s party chairman Richard Tice has pointed out, Labour received roughly two and half times as many votes as Reform but have 50 times the number of MPs. The Tories’ numbers were 50 percent more votes but 10 times the MPs, and the Liberal Democrats 30 percent FEWER votes across the country than Reform but have six times the number of MPs.
What is patently obvious is that the FPP system will now come under more scrutiny here than ever before. Whether or not the long standing two or three party domination of the Commons can ever bring itself to devolve to some sort of PR such as our MMP is highly problematic.
The old saying about turkeys and Christmas comes to mind. FPP has been part of British parliamentary politics since 1707. Change has been resisted for three centuries but a result such as this, plus the political genius of Nigel Farage, may finally bring some change. It won’t happen quickly though.
For the next five years Labour can do what it wants. There will be significant tax increases. But my family sample say that’s for the better.
They’re about to send their oldest to a fee paying private school. The new Prime Minister has promised to slap VAT, the equivalent of GST, on private school fees. Apparently it’s for the good of the country.
I’m a guest here. It’s better to keep my mouth shut.
Peter Williams was a writer and broadcaster for half a century. Now watching from the sidelines. Peter blogs regularly on Peter’s Substack - where this article was sourced.
(Dad’s opinion didn’t matter in the slightest. The family were horrified to hear that if I was eligible I’d consider voting for Nigel Farage’s Reform!)
But as my wife and I walked around our neighbourhood and then into Central London on Election Day itself, the sense of this being just another ordinary working day was hard to miss.
Unlike in New Zealand where polling booths seem ubiquitous, and the orange signs are hard to miss, the signage here is black and white, not as prominent, and the frequency of booths seems lower than at home.
While we saw some polling stations out in the residential areas, they were invisible in the middle of town. On Thursday we did the tourist/shopping thing and spent a few hours on Regent and Oxford Streets and along Piccadilly. Didn’t see a polling booth.
The process, according to my family, is simple. There is just one vote to make – that for the local constituency MP in Britain’s first past the post (FPP) electoral system.
You can vote outside your local constituency but there’s no enrolling on the day. The UK Electoral Commission stopped enrollments on June 17. If you weren’t on the roll by then, you couldn’t vote.
What a good, clean and simplified system. We should learn from it.
On the day itself, it seems that any mention of the election in a public place or in the media is taboo.
The Election Day tradition in New Zealand is for the 6pm news to lead with a story about how the population has gone to the polls, booths close in an hour, there’s invariably a few comments from returning officers about turnout, and then of course coverage of the party leaders casting their vote and commenting on their way out of the booth.
The BBC Six O’Clock News headlines showed how the rules are different here. I watched the start of the bulletin before going out the back for the family barbecue. The teasers at the top of the show were about an attempted murder of a celebrity and what had happened at Wimbledon that day.
Then there’s the extraordinarily late closing of the polling booths. Even though the country is in one time zone, the reality of weekday business allows for voters to cast their ballot right up till 10pm.
Apart from the FPP system, the other huge difference on Election Day here is the Exit Poll.
While my son-in-law told me there are signs up around the polling booth emphasizing how your vote is your business, and how you should not tell nobody else how you voted, around 20,000 electors across the country took part in an exit poll. That was reported enthusiastically by the BBC just after their Election Night coverage began at 9.55pm.
Even though the opinion polls had been predicting a huge Labour win for months, the Exit Poll – which is actually more realistic for a Proportional Representation (PR) system – merely confirmed what would unfold over the next few hours.
But Labour’s utter domination of the result, winning 411 out of 650 seats in the House of Commons, belies the reality that Britain is a politically divided nation.
Despite winning 63 percent of the seats, Labour did it with just 34 percent of the popular vote. Remember also that turnout was a measly 60 percent, the third worst in UK electoral history. So here is a party with a rampant majority to pass whatever legislation they want, taking power after barely 20 percent of the eligible electorate supported them.
As Nigel Farage’s party chairman Richard Tice has pointed out, Labour received roughly two and half times as many votes as Reform but have 50 times the number of MPs. The Tories’ numbers were 50 percent more votes but 10 times the MPs, and the Liberal Democrats 30 percent FEWER votes across the country than Reform but have six times the number of MPs.
What is patently obvious is that the FPP system will now come under more scrutiny here than ever before. Whether or not the long standing two or three party domination of the Commons can ever bring itself to devolve to some sort of PR such as our MMP is highly problematic.
The old saying about turkeys and Christmas comes to mind. FPP has been part of British parliamentary politics since 1707. Change has been resisted for three centuries but a result such as this, plus the political genius of Nigel Farage, may finally bring some change. It won’t happen quickly though.
For the next five years Labour can do what it wants. There will be significant tax increases. But my family sample say that’s for the better.
They’re about to send their oldest to a fee paying private school. The new Prime Minister has promised to slap VAT, the equivalent of GST, on private school fees. Apparently it’s for the good of the country.
I’m a guest here. It’s better to keep my mouth shut.
Peter Williams was a writer and broadcaster for half a century. Now watching from the sidelines. Peter blogs regularly on Peter’s Substack - where this article was sourced.
5 comments:
Very wise. Your daughter and son-in-law are the the most odious type of lefties. No offense.
Our electoral system sure as hell ain't perfect, but when compared to FPP and the shocking assignment of seats in the UK election, it at least reflects the will of the voting public as a whole.
To end up with more of the popular vote but 6 times less seats is a travesty. As is the landslide Labour victory with only 34% support from those that voted.
What a shocker!!
Populations across the West need to start moving in big numbers away from the traditional two main parties, which these days are both woke and further to the Left that ever before, if they want to see real change.
That’s interesting Peter. I too am a Nigel Farage fan who will be a lone but courageous voice in parliament because of the FPP rules. Over the years I’ve noticed that the liberals have spent more energy making it easier for their simpleton followers to vote under the guise of being kind. We used to demand a voter registration cut off date. Miss that, tough. One day to vote, if you can’t get out of bed to vote, tough. Just look how far the American liberals have jacked up the voting process to retain power. “Mail in ballots with no ID required?” Very novel. But let’s not overlook the latest Democrat scam. Open the Souther border to 10 million illegal emigrants, stick them up in hotels and allow them to vote will certainly bolster the Democrat numbers that they were woefully short of during the 2020 election.
It appears that people voted on the economy (which has been weak).
People vote their pocketbooks.
The UK is the only major rich economy that remains smaller - poorer - than prior to the pandemic and Brexit may be a factor.
Statistics show that UK has contracted .4% since 2019, while other countries (US, Canada, Italy, France, Japan) have experienced positive economic growth during that time.
Overall, the government's independent watchdog, the Office for Budget Responsibility, thinks the UK will ultimately be 4% worse off, than it would have been if UK had voted no to Brexit - although for many voters, Brexit was more about sovereignty than the economy.
(BBC analysis)
The Unite Kingdom recent General Elections.
1. - there is NO WAY, that either Labour and/or The Conservative Parties would agree to an electoral system [a] - the same as and/or [b] similar to what NZ currently has; it would undermine their "collective" ability to gain Power.
2. Diane Abbot - Peter ask your Son-in-Law & Daughter "what has Diane done, in a constructive, meaningful way that created an unbelievable result for either Her Constituents and or the Country, since she has been an MP for the past 37 years, other than being a 'lover (whilst married)' to Jeremy Corban.
Oh, yes whilst on the Opposition Benches, she was a "Shadow Minister", whilst Jeremy Corban was Party Leader, but in name only.
3.- The Tories "relish power" have done so for the past 14 years, the most prominent "Twat" of recent times was Boris Johnson (BJ), and it is from his tenure, that has caused The People to "walk away from the Tories", other than the most diehard, ardent, people - who you may find believe they "are
the entitled ones" - BJ had the opportunity to stop the 'invasion from France' of people, not wanted in the UK, paid Money to Macron (President France) to assist, which Macron "did nothing". This has been proven.
4. - The Reform Party - fighting an uphill battle against more prominent minor Parties - Lib Dems (gains 71 seats this time) - if you do not have the numbers (i.e. MP's) contesting Constituencies, then you will lose the battle - the fact Reform gained 5 is impressive, the question is "will they be there for the next election cycle - no - unless they build that MP base.
And Peter, if you did your "usual, I have my media eye on high alert", then you will have seen how the British tabloids (including the TV Channel 4) went about "attempting to destroy Nigel Farage".
5. - what the UK 'must watch' is the rise of the Party led by Jeremy Corban, again re-elected to Parliament but bring with him MEN of the Muslim Faith - with that growing population in the UK, "they will become the fastest growing minor party". They already have their People on local Councils across the UK.
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