British general elections

[Phreakmeister]

On May 5th, our British friends will go to the polls. If you had been allowed to vote in those elections, what party would you vote for?

(Edit: I have no idea why I put this in EE instead of in Politics...)

[ZenziC]

Not sure how I would do this but my fiancé intends to vote Tory. His grandfather was a MP under Margaret Thatcher and his father ran for MP in Cardiff, Wales.

I'm kind of iffy on Sinn Fein (the IRA links) but if I were to choose between Gerry Adams and David Trimble, I'd rather Adams (Sinn Fein).

[w1che]

Whatever party Blair belongs to is fine with me. By the way everyone expects him to get reelected..

[Phreakmeister]

True. He has an insanely big lead over the Tories (408 seats for Labour, 160 for the Tories). If the Tories want a parliamentary majority, they need to win an additional 170 seats, which seems close to impossible. However, in the (because of the electoral system irrelevant) nationwide polls, Labour and the Tories are tied, and in some the Tories have taken a lead. According to the Financial Times, the Conservative lead in its poll would still make Labour the biggest party, though with a parliamentary majority slashed to 27.

[ZenziC]

Originally posted by w1che
Whatever party Blair belongs to is fine with me. By the way everyone expects him to get reelected..

Lol...Blair's Labour party is considered liberal. Labour went against Blair when he was for the war.

[RosieWolf]

i'm totally lost about english politics.. please compare the british parties to american.. are tories like democrats, and the others like republicans or ?????....

never understood why u have democratic elections and still have a queen running the country.. doesn't make much sense to me.. but then, is prolly why i don't understand the political system over there.. :)

huggggglez and GBU

[ZenziC]

Originally posted by RosieWolf
i'm totally lost about english politics.. please compare the british parties to american.. are tories like democrats, and the others like republicans or ?????....

never understood why u have democratic elections and still have a queen running the country.. doesn't make much sense to me.. but then, is prolly why i don't understand the political system over there.. :)

huggggglez and GBU

The only people the public elects are the members of parliament, the MPs in turn elect the Prime Minister.

The majority party that wins is the party of the PM. Labour right now has the majority in the election, and thus Blair's the Labour PM. The only way the PM can change is someone from the labour party can challenge the current PM or another party gets the majority.

In Britain the Conservative Party tends to be just that, conservative, but it's very different from the American conservative party. My fiance, a Conservative, calls the GOP the neoconservatives. He tends to agree with me on many issues (death penalty, etc). If I were to compare the Conservative Party to a party in America, they'd be the Democrats, which is what my fiance said.

He snidely said that the Labour was like the Republicans.

Maybe it's just his politics, I dunno.

[Phreakmeister]

Originally posted by RosieWolf
i'm totally lost about english politics.. please compare the british parties to american.. are tories like democrats, and the others like republicans or ?????....

Tories are old-school Republicans (Reagan, Bush sr.). Labour has two wings: Old Labour, which is somewhere between the Democrats and Nader, and New Labour, which is somewhere between the Democrats and the neocons. The Lib Dems are comparable with the Democrats. The Scottish National Party (Scotland) and Plaid Cymru (Wales) are secessionist parties. UUP and DUP (protestant) and Sinn Féin and SDLP (catholic) are from Northern Ireland.