Friday 2 August 2019

By-election fun

From the BBC:

The Liberal Democrats have won the Brecon and Radnorshire by-election, leaving new PM Boris Johnson with a working majority in Parliament of one...

Now, with the thinnest majority, he will have to rely heavily on the support of his own MPs and his confidence-and-supply partners the DUP to get any legislation passed in key votes.


His majority is thinner than that!

The Parliament.gov.uk website has been updated and shows a majority of precisely zero.

650 MPs. minus Speaker (who doesn't vote) and minus seven Sinn Fein MPs, who refuse to attend = 642, divided by 2 = 321.

There are now 311 Conservative MPs plus 10 DUP MPs, who are in a sort-of-coalition with the Conservatives, total 321.
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UPDATE: Bayard reminds us that there are also two opposition deputy speakers and a Conservative deputy speaker, who don't cast a vote, which would bring the Conservative + DUP majority back up to one.
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Also, apart from the Lib Dems slavish Remainism and Climate Alarmism, I still have a bit of a soft spot for them and would like to say, well done for finally electing a woman as party leader!

Of the main political parties, this leaves only Labour which does not and/or never had a woman as leader. Yup, even UKIP briefly had a woman as leader and Brexit Party is relatively new (and might disappear again soon).


2 comments:

Bayard said...

Apparently, the Speaker has three deputies, which changes the arithmetic back to a majority of one.

Mark Wadsworth said...

B, fair point.