Why today's election results cheer me up
While I am largely opposed to the UKIP platform*, I am terribly amused by the results of the local elections, with them achieving 23% of the vote.
This leaves the Conservatives in an awful position - if they move rightwards then they risk losing the people in the center, if they stay where they are then they risk losing the people that left for the UKIP. This is particularly funny because if they hadn't come out against AV they would be a second vote for quite a lot of those UKIP voters. As it is the vote split will do terribly unpleasant things for them.
Additionally, a fourth uk-wide party with popular support makes FPTP look even sillier, which has to be a good thing in the long run.
(You can remind me of this post when the first UKIP Prime Minister is elected.)
Edit: Nice summary from the BBC of what this means for the different parties.
*From memory. Their website seems to have gone down under load, so I can't check the details.
Original post on Dreamwidth - there are
comments there.
This leaves the Conservatives in an awful position - if they move rightwards then they risk losing the people in the center, if they stay where they are then they risk losing the people that left for the UKIP. This is particularly funny because if they hadn't come out against AV they would be a second vote for quite a lot of those UKIP voters. As it is the vote split will do terribly unpleasant things for them.
Additionally, a fourth uk-wide party with popular support makes FPTP look even sillier, which has to be a good thing in the long run.
(You can remind me of this post when the first UKIP Prime Minister is elected.)
Edit: Nice summary from the BBC of what this means for the different parties.
*From memory. Their website seems to have gone down under load, so I can't check the details.
Original post on Dreamwidth - there are
comments there.