A few thoughts on the UK election

So, I’m not an expert on UK politics. But I was looking at the final vote breakdown for the UK election, and I think this story is being highly misunderstood. The Conservatives got around 14 million votes. Adding in Brexit Party and both of UKIPs voters and you’re at about 14.5 million.

Labor got 10.3 million. But if you add in all the regional parties that tend to the left you’re up to 12.7 million.

Which brings us to the Lib Dems. They got 3.7 million votes. And they did it in such a way that they only ended up getting 11 seats. So by my reading this party, who’s primary focus has been preventing Brexit, just ensured that Brexit would go through on the harshest possible terms. They actually found a way to increase their vote share while lowering their number of seats.

That said, adding all the votes together shows a very close result. I’m not sure how much the results would have flipped if you combined it into a two party system.

Canada has a similar problem that gave them the disastrous Harper government. Their left keeps splitting the vote. During Harpers last victory, the Liberals and the NDP combined to get a full 10% more of the vote than the Conservatives.

How does this apply to the US? Simple, it demonstrates just how much third parties suck. Stop splitting the vote. If you don’t like the direction the party is going in, take it over. It’s not going to be easy. But moving the Dems to the left is infinitely easier than building a whole new party that doesn’t just serve to hand things over to the Republicans.

Otherwise we can look forward to President LaPage in a few years.