A note on the UK elections

I am badly out of touch with UK politics. However, I have been watching the last stages of the campaign with a degree of interest. The latest rolling poll results have Labour on 32%, the Conservatives on 31%, UKIP on 17%, the Liberal Democrats on 8%, the Greens and Other each on 6%. Presumably other includes the Scottish National Party as well as the smaller Welsh Plaid Cymru.

I knew that UKIP was polling well, but hadn't realised that their vote was as high as that. The UK optional first past the post system makes results very hard to call unless you know the seats. For example, in Scotland the SNP is threatening remaining Labour seats, while the high UKIP vote need not translate into seats. It depends where that vote is concentrated.

This is the current party position in the House of Commons.

Party	Seats
Conservative	302
Labour	256
Liberal Democrat	56
Democratic Unionist	8
Scottish National	6
Independent	5
Sinn Fein	5
Plaid Cymru	3
Social Democratic & Labour Party	3
UK Independence Party	2
Alliance	1
Green	1
Respect	1
Speaker	1
Total number of seats	650

This is quite an important election, for the UK is dealing with a very mixed bag of political trends: pro and anti-European sentiment, distrust of the major parties and the rise of conflicting nationalisms. It will be interesting to watch the results.