DUP = Democratic Unionist Party - hardline ultra-conservative Northern Irish unionist party,
SF = Sinn Fein - Irish republican party, doesn’t take their seats in parliament as it would require them giving an oath of allegiance to the queen.
PC = Plaid Cymru - Welsh nationalist party.
The only one of these that you need to worry about are the DUP, the conservatives can form a majority coalition government with them, they will not want to do this though (and everyone else aside from the DUP won’t want them to either), and can probably form a minority government without them.
Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and Sinn Féin (SF) are Northern Irish parties… the former is conservative, favouring Northern Ireland remaining in the UK. The latter isn’t, to put it mildly. I believe PC is a Welsh party (Plaid Cymru or something like that?)… they’re like the Welsh version of the SNP.
They don’t actually need 326 to form a government, they just need to have enough votes to prevent the opposition voting the government out. It looks like they’ll have 319 seats, the 10 DUP won’t vote against them, the 7 Sinn Fein won’t vote against them because they don’t take their seats, so that only leaves LAB+SNP+LD+PC+Green for a total of 314.
What about this thing I’m reading about the Queen’s speech? It’s attached to a program of laws proposed by the incoming government, right? What happens if it doesn’t pass?
Yeah, the queen’s speech is a list of proposed laws, it’s not a binding list or anything, and there is a ceremonial vote at the end of it, but the same number of votes would apply as I mentioned before so it’s no different in that regard.
Let’s just say it would be very difficult to find someone to lead the negotiations with the EU within the next week in her place.
This is going to be very… interesting.
Oh baise-ça, if you pardon my French: this is a huge mess since Cameron won, and it’s getting worse by the minute. There is no way this GE is not going to affect the negotiations, and the result virtually guarantees that the polarisation within society in the UK is not going away any time soon.
Any bill just requires a simple majority, MPs can abstain or just not bother showing up. I called the queen’s speech a ceremonial vote because they’d never get to that point without having the votes to begin with, they’re not going to be debating the nuts and bolts of things, proposing amendments etc. The debate is basically just a forum for the government and the opposition to lay their stalls out for the coming parliament.
Ah, I think I get it now. As long as May can get the DUP to commit to vote with her on the queen’s speech, then she’ll be allowed to form a minority government. A formal coalition is not required. Does that about sum it up?
Labour have now said they’re not going to do any deals with anyone, so if the conservatives can’t get a government together that means we’re heading for another election.
Watching May’s speech after her meeting with the queen, acting like she didn’t just get a resounding slap in the face. Hmm, it wil be interesting to see how long the DUP alliance lasts, they were leavers but can’t possibly support a hard Brexit.
It seems that Sinn Fein’s misgivings are serious. (The brits are required to maintain neutrality, and if the DUP were junior members of a coalition, that neutrality would be in doubt)
I’m constantly amazed and disturbed at how quickly the tories and their wealthy benefactors turn on each other when things go wrong. Look what happened to gove when he tried to run for pm, now that corpse has been resurrected. Osborne calling may a ‘dead woman walking’. Murdoch so pissed off he’s got his tabloid minions gunning for her. What a bunch of thin-skinned, power hungry vultures. They are the lannisters, aren’t they? At least the lannisters managed to defeat labour house stark.
