They bring that up regularly, but it’s a false equivalence. At the time of the independence vote it was absolutely true to claim that voting No was true best way to stay in the EU. There was no expectation, none, from anyone that Brexit was on the way. So, at the time, if Europe was the issue then voting to stay in the UK was the logical choice to make.

As for now - well, Swinney (and before him Sturgeon herself) was talking in terms of winning a majority of seats being a mandate for opening independence talks. That’s clearly nonsense, since a majority of seats is possible with a fairly small plurality of votes. And, it’s looking like it’s a moot point anyway, since the SNP seems to have taken a right good kicking this time round.

So Sturgeon is probably not bringing this up tonight because she’d look ridiculous to do so given the (apparent) results in Scotland tonight. If this was a referendum on independence as she and Swinney have suggested, then the result would appear to be a solid No.

I’m watching the ITV feed on YouTube. Dunno what other people actually from the UK would recommend because I don’t really know the British media landscape.

ITV will be just fine. The Beeb’s coverage is usually pretty definitive.

This is clearly a great result, but I think that given the popular vote, that it’s important to accept that this election was anti-tory, not pro-labour.

Labour have five years to make a substantial tangible change in people’s lives or we may very well find ourselves back where we left off or even worse.

Top hat wanker! Truss lost too, this is amazing.

Countdown to Smog reappearing as a Reform candidate?

I believe most of those are mayors in their official garb.

I do like that Farage tries to call himself “centre-right”.

On the other hand, I unironically do like that he calls out how shit FPTP is.

Their last two Labour MPs not only were kicked out in scandal, but also ran in this election splitting the vote. It looks like the Lib Dems also got a significant vote share which has helped the Tories.

They even brought in Rudd for a second go, which didn’t seem to be within the spirit of the game if I’m honest, but that’s Australia for you.

Is a particularly biting bit of satire on the way we usually hear about sports reporting.

Direct proportional representation is easy enough. Just look at the number of votes each party got, and assign that percentage to their overall parliamentary representation. That roughly gives you the answer.

IRV is more interesting, but more complicated. It relies on some assumptions (e.g. Green, SNP, LibDem, Labour all preference each other 100%, Conservatives & Reform preference each other 100%) and takes a lot of effort to do on a seat-by-seat basis. And of course it all assumes ceteris paribus, when in actuality people would vote differently if the voting system were different.

As one example, here’s the seat of Tatton:

Under IRV, with the above assumptions, Labour’s Ryan Jude would have won with 26,005 votes to Conservative Esther McVey’s 25,904. But tweak those assumptions just slightly (give 90% of LibDem votes to Labour, 10% to Conservatives) and it could go the other way (26,365 CON to 25,544 LAB). There are dozens or scores of seats where these sorts of interesting hypotheticals can be asked and analysed. IRV is actually, in my opinion, the next-worst voting system after FPTP (if you exclude weird and rarely-used ones like approval voting, range voting, etc.), but it’s one of the most interesting to do analysis with.

STV is an utterly impossible comparison to make, because it relies on multi-seat electorates, which would probably be done by merging existing electorates into groups of 3–8. STV is a more generalised case of IRV so if you decided on how to do those merges, then you can get even more interesting analysis. As one example, if we imagine a merged electorate involving West Ham, East Ham, Ilford North, Ilford South, Leyton & Wanstead, and Stratford & Bow. Some assumptions are necessary to make this work, my assumption is that anyone whose party name says “workers” or “socialist” preferences Green and then Labour, while those mentioning religion preference Conservative, and if I don’t know, I’m giving them to LibDems then Labour. I’m also assuming all voters for a named party vote as a block, preferencing the same candidate 1st, 2nd, etc., while independents get the votes as they were actually given. This is somewhat realistic because ballot paper design can be set up to encourage this in an STV context (see how Australia does it with “above the line” voting in the Senate, for an example). I’ve merged the minor parties named “workers” or “socialist” into a single party.

This is Labour heartland and in FPTP Labour won all 6 of these seats. My calculation ends up with 3 Labour, 1 LibDem, 1 Conservative, and 1 Green.

MMP ends up with basically the same overall result as direct proportional, but can be interesting in terms of independents & very minor parties and resulting overhang seats.

Given, many systems require more than just marking one box. While, even those that do not, would drastically change how people choose their vote.

I am unsure any such site can give a realistic result from available data?

Edit:

If we just assume proportional based on % of vote yesterday.

Tor 22.9% Lab 35.2% LDe 11.3% Ref 14.5% SNP 2.5% Oth 13.6%

It is bloody hard to see how either party could form a viable 50% Lab LD SNP and a few independents would take it over 50. But honestly, it is hard to imagine that working with the politicians voted yesterday. Tory Ref would need all independents. So less likely to work.

But as I said. Voters would go to the polls with very different ideas about how to vote.

the proper way to watch youtube chat is to click on the x.

Minecraft.

And the chatters are absolutely insane. Not in a good way. There’s no attempt to discuss anything, just people spamming “💙💙 REFORM IS RISING 💙💙”

Reform have an online army that swarms comment threads. Not sure how many of them are based in Russia.

As an Australian, I have to once again apologise on behalf of my nation for the turd in a tuxedo that is Rupert Murdoch.

“The conservatives and lib dems look pretty proportional to me. 10/10 voting system” /s

The British were given the choice and voted against proportional representation. They deserve the duopoly and everything that flows from that e.g. terrible healthcare, the illegal war in Iraq, royals, pointless and expensive aircraft carriers. They chose to leave the only institution that is defending their basic freedoms. These bigoted Dunning Kruger morons cannot be told.

And the depressing thing is that it will never change because the only parties with the power to change it benefit from the current system.

The two largest parties got less than 60% of the national vote but over 80% of seats. FPTP is preventing us from being what we are: a multi party democracy.