The British General election is more or less done and dusted. Tony Blair's Labour Party will form the next government. This was quite an interesting result after what was a fairly boring campaign.

Good Points For Blair:

The first ever Labour PM to win three elections in a row.

An overall majority of 65-70 (not all results in yet) which should enable him to govern comfortably for the next five years.

Not quite the "bloody nose" some were predicting.

Bad Points For Blair:

Labour's overall vote down 5%-6%

Lowest ever share of the vote for a winning party (around 36.5%)

Majority down from 161 to 65-70.

Lost seats to all other parties

If not a "bloody nose" maybe a bit of a "black eye"??

Overall this is not a bad result for Blair but it's probably worse than he was predicting. It is an anomaly of the British electoral system that Labour got about 4% more of the popular vote than the Conservatives but this is good enough for them to win about 120 more seats than them. Labour gets 36.5% of the popular vote and wins 55% of the seats whereas the Liberal Democrats get 23% of the popular vote and win less than 10% of the seats. Oh well...that's democracy.

I knew they would win.No other party come near them

That'll do for me It's the lesser of the evils and I'm glad he's still in number 10

He is in but I think his days are numbered. BTW he looks like he has put on some serious weight. Is his health ok?

How many terms is the Prime Minister allowed to run for?

Well i did what i said i was going to do and voted liberal democrat, didn't win but they have won a fair few seats in parliament

and Labour is alot better than conservatives, let's thanks the lord they didn't get in.

When I was in England back in '00, the newspapers were blasting Blair for sweating profusely. Does he still do that?

He blinks alot and moves his head about now, he always seems to have a glossy layer of sweat on his big forehead aswell, very attractive

Now is this the first time a PM has won 3 terms?

I actually don't mind Blair from what I know of him, but really don't know any of the other candidates at all.


TIS

One of our British mates can correct me if I'm wrong here, but I nelieve that they vote for the party, not the man. Then, whichever party controls Parliament proposes someone for PM, who must be rubber-stamped by the King or Queen.

The party with majority doesn't propose someone. Whoever is the head of that party becomes the PM. Blair said he is going to stay with Labour one more term if I remember correctly, so the head of Labour party might change for the next election.

Anyhow, the Labour lost around 100 seats. That's a little more than I expected.

Isn't that more or less the same thing?

If the party doesn't want Blair as the head anymore (or as PM), don't they just pick someone else?

Well, that's the point. Most members of Labour party were against some of Blair's policies and criticized him in the House of Commons, yet he announced that he'd stay as the head of the Labour for another term. I'm not sure how the head of a party is being elected. I heard that Mike Howard resigned yesterday. I wonder why?!

This is for Conservative Party:
And this, is for Labour Party:
I assume, selecting a new party leader can happen if either the present leader dies or resigns.

This is about the system of GB parties:
Source

To my knowledge Mignon he runs for as long as he's leader and not voted out by the party for whatever reason.

One of our British mates can correct me if I'm wrong here, but I nelieve that they vote for the party, not the man. Then, whichever party controls Parliament proposes someone for PM, who must be rubber-stamped by the King or Queen. [/b][/quote]Yeah, we have 'constituencies' local areas, each with a parliamentary representative of each party lib dem, conservative, labour, this time in our area we had lots of BNP's hoping to grab the odd seat in the house too although their not one of the 'main runners' if you like. For each one voted in they get a 'seat' in the house of commons and the overall party with the most seats has the majority hand IE: ruling party. Thats why blair hasnt had such a good win this time, he lost lots of 'seats' which were labour held previously.

Hope this helps and isnt too confusing

FH

A few questions for our UK friends;

Was this election as "hot" a topic for you, as the last U.S. election was for us? You know, with emotions running high. Do those running have televised debates? Is there an inaugaration type ceremony like in the U.S.?


TIS

Hiya TIS

nah, here we dont bother really. They have programmes on TV as it gets closer and an audience can question politicians and suchlike. We dont have any of those big rallys or suchlike all flag waving and cheering, unfortunately,might add a bit of excitement to boring brit politics. Theres no big ceremonies either...infact the calls have already started to get Tony Blair OUT as leader and Gordon Brown (another member of the labour party) IN. So it's as well we dont! Tony could be out before a ceremony took place

There is a ceremony TIS but it is for the official opening of a new Parliament rather than for the new PM.

This is the first time a LABOUR PM has won three CONSECUTIVE elections. Harold Wilson, a Labour PM in the 60's and 70's, actually won four elections but he also lost one in the middle of his five...if you see what I mean, his record was WWLWW.

There is no limit on the number of times someone can be PM.