Comments | ontd_political: Boris is re-elected and other electoral matters

x_butterfly19_x in ontd_political

Boris is re-elected and other electoral matters

May 05, 2012 11:30

Boris Johnson has won a second term as London mayor, beating Labour rival Ken Livingstone by 3%, after a far closer contest than expected.

Mr Johnson won on second preference votes after failing to gain more than 50% in the first round.

He bucked the national trend after heavy Tory losses elsewhere.

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liberal democrats, uk: conservative / tories, uk: labour party, elections, boris johnson

Comments 27

(The comment has been removed)

ragnor144 May 5 2012, 14:46:57 UTC

dark_puck May 5 2012, 13:21:54 UTC

Is it me, or is the formatting on this really fucked up?

On my Flist I just get a HUGE blank space until the end of my tag list, when suddenly it appears; one the page itself there seems to be some really fucked up unordered list tags going on.

x_butterfly19_x May 5 2012, 13:42:34 UTC

It's not quite that bad for me but it looks a bit dodgy. Will adjust.

/adjusted, hope that is a bit better

(The comment has been removed)

x_butterfly19_x May 5 2012, 13:41:51 UTC

They were getting all carried away because evidence seems to show that Boris is more electable as a personality than the entire rest of the Tory party as a concept.

the_gabih May 5 2012, 14:08:57 UTC

The thing with Boris is that it's not about him being a Conservative, it's about nobody giving a flying fuck about Ken. God knows why Labour and co put him forward, but they don't seem to understand that they lost not because of policy, or entirely because of media bias, but because everyone's just bloody sick of their candidate.

sparkindarkness May 5 2012, 14:26:14 UTC

This. There's a huge vote against Ken - why why why did Labour choose this man of all people to run?

ceilidh_ann May 6 2012, 01:01:25 UTC

The vote to pick a candidate was bang in the middle of the leadership race so I think it got side-lined. I wasn't a fan of the choice either but I struggle to think of a candidate who could have done it, and he did a lot better than anticipated.

myste_uk May 5 2012, 14:55:11 UTC

This. My first pref vote was Siobhan Benita, and second pref Boris, simply because I'd rather him than Ken, and it was obviously a 2 person race. Sucks.

Also a bit irritated at the way both BBC and Sky cut off the speeches following the declaration as soon as Siobhan Benita started speaking... she had almost as many votes as 3rd and 4th placed candidates, but we got to hear their speeches and not hers? Fucked up if you ask me.

Glad she's planning to stand next time round.. really hope we hear more from/of her over the next few years.

agentsculder May 5 2012, 15:09:10 UTC

As someone who doesn't know a lot about the UK electoral system (I'm from the US), do these results create any pressure for parliamentary elections? I know the UK doesn't have those on a set schedule like we do here, but I would think given the fact the Tories and the Lib Dems got their collective butts kicked, it would signal there can't much confidence in the current government.

If anyone would care to enlighten me, I would be much appreciative.

myste_uk May 5 2012, 15:36:34 UTC

It does indeed indicate that there's a lot of discontent with the current government, but no it won't mean any change to when we next have a parliamentary election - the coalition is in power for a fixed 5 year term (next general election is 7th May 2015). The only way we would have one sooner is in circumstances that won't happen eg if 2/3rds majority of MPs vote for an early election - this is part of why the coalition was important to the conservative government.. they and the lib dems form over 2/3rds of parliament, wheras on their own they didn't reach that size majority so the opposition would be able to club together to vote for a new election ( ... )