Update, for those interested. Disclaimer first off, I backed Labour in this election.
The Conservatives formed a "working relationship" with the DUP of N. Ireland to get to a very slim majority of 7. They've stressed it's not a coalition. Theresa May is still PM, although from her failed gamble, who knows how long she'll stay PM. She's said there is no way she'll resign, but the also said there's no way she'll call an election. Some bookies have odds of 2:1 for Boris Johnson to replace her as PM in the next fortnight. It's all possible she could have a vote of no confidence, especially with her gamble being so bad for the conservatives.
Labour on the other hand, did great. They got a large boost in seats compared to 2 years ago, thanks to the increase in young voters. Their overall number of votes were within 1 million of the conservatives, but they lived in the wrong places to have such an effect. FPTP showing its wonder once again. Corbyn, who was almost replaced by his own party, will no doubt remain the Labour leader, and will do for many years to come. I can see them doing well in the 2022 elections. To answer Ako's question, he's not completely socialist, but he's more socialist than other Labour leaders have been recently.
You can see where his party, and the others, fall on the political spectrum here.There's talk of some sort of "Progressive Alliance" led by the Labour Party, with some other smaller parties, and them forming a Government. How feasible this is, I don't know, but it would be interesting to look out for. Just to throw another spanner in the works.
In terms of the country, I'm not sure how this will change things in the long run. Brexit talks will almost certainly become harder, so we might not get as good of a deal with that as we could. May has repeatedly said that a "bad deal" is better than "no deal", which is rubbish. This Government seems to be under the impression they can get all the things they want, without any negative effects. If they don't get that, they feel they can walk away from the EU with no deal, which they seem to believe would hurt the EU, but we'd be some sort of undamaged island that won't be affected in any way. The conservatives have also been hesitant to ensure the rights of EU nationals in the UK are kept, something which a number of the other parties said they'd make a top priority. It's estimated the funding for the NHS will be cut more, which will make the current crisis worse. Education funding is going down per student, with many schools needing to ask parents for donations to run. I know for a fact that my old school is loosing £3m over the next 3 years. The police force is also facing cuts.
To add to that, May seems to be against cryptography, and thinks if we ban it she'll be able to catch all the terrorists. There was talk of banning it completely, and banning anything in the UK from running any kind of secure software, that would allow communications that the police couldn't see. From my point of view, as someone who cares about privacy and stuff quite a lot, this won't catch anyone, but would leave ordinary people in the UK worse off, with an increased likelihood of being attacked or hacked. It's clear the high ups in the conservative cabinet don't really know what cryptography is.
There's an article on BoingBoing explaining why this is a terrible idea. Oh, and she wants to get rid of the Human Rights act to help her with her fight against terrorism.
Oh, and another point, one point in Theresa May's manifesto was to require ID to vote. The only ID you can get in the UK is a driver's license, or a passport. They've said before, and they've said again, they're not going to introduce an ID card like the rest of Europe, probably because that's too convenient for them. This ID requirement would be bad for voters who are young, old or poor, as they're the groups of people who don't have a driver's license or a passport, and would no longer be allowed to vote. I haven't seen anyone talk about this during the election, and I feel like it's a much bigger issue that needs to be looked at more. It's estimated about 3.5 million people, roughly 7.2% of the electorate, would be unable to vote under this new rule. It also seems unnecessary, when in 51.4 million votes they've only had 26 allegations of fraud that could have been stopped by ID.
Something I feel that really played a part in this election was the media portrayal of the two main parties. The Labour party had very negative media. On election day,
two major (biased) newspapers had their front covers undeniably telling you to vote one way. One of them even had an article
telling you how to prevent your kids from voting, to try and lower the labour vote. The media here has been very, very biased. It was the same in the Brexit vote. People here don't really ever do their own research, so if a few biased newspapers take a break from talking about the royal family to tell you someone is awful, millions of people believe them. In my opinion, something seriously needs to be done about this. The advertising and media around elections and votes needs to be looked at more, because people aren't making up their own minds. Newspapers apparently can, and sometimes do, print complete lies about things, and people vote based on that. This country seems to lack hard, unbiased facts when it comes to votes recently. It's a problem. I'm not a sore loser, I just feel like the overall election, and the referendum last year, wasn't very "fair", for lack of a better word. I did my own research, I can see some points why people would vote conservative, but they weren't really the points people were making. I had multiple friends who were voting conservative, and only one or two of them I agree with their reasoning. I like to think I look at things from all sides before making up my mind, and I feel like that wasn't really available these past few weeks.
I don't see the UK looking to rosy over the next 5 years. I personally see no chance that the government will be able to survive 5 years, and when people see how Brexit and their party is making their country worse, they'll become unhappy with things. If you were thinking of moving here for whatever reason, I'd personally advise against it for a few years...
I also wouldn't rule out a November election, if it turns out it's too difficult to do much in this Government. That'll be even worse I imagine, but who knows. Maybe the public will realise something's up, and make their own minds up about what they want.
