UK - Results

Not all seats have fully reported. Kensington in particular is still close, and three seats in Cornwall have yet to release final results; however, here are the results of the election:

You may be wondering why I've included numbers for England, the reason is due to the Grand Committee system that was set up as an answer to the West Lothian Question.

In short, this means that on issues where Scotland has the power to make its own laws, such as education, only members of the proper Grand Committee get to vote; put another way, Scottish MPs don't get a vote on these issues.

The Tories hold a majority on the English, English and Welsh, and English, Welsh, and Northern Irish committees. On the latter, there are 32 seats outside the two main parties; including every NI seat and all Liberal Democrats from the area; 254 Labour seats (for a combined 286) compared with 304 Tories. Things only get better in England and Wales, and even better in just England.

I've also included England outside of London, in the event that such a committee is set up (one does not exist just yet) and the numbers for Wales and Scotland, to help you understand how things played out across the UK.

I've also assumed the Tories will be forming either an outright coalition with the DUP, or, some kind of working arrangement, or a deal or accord to support them in government. Failure to work with the DUP gives the Tories few other options, as the Liberal Democrats oppose brexit, and the only other party that works mathematically, Plaid Cymru, is a progressive party that also opposes brexit.

The working theory is the DUP will demand two key things; first of all free movement between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, and secondly, it seems, they want the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.

This would change the ballgame in Northern Ireland. It would mean "Direct Rule" is "DUP Rule" and would seriously impact negotiations and likely lead to direct rule, after another election or not, and the exclusion of Sinn Fein from power sharing, and could spark off a new round of the troubles.

Interestingly, Nigel Farage may return for a 3rd time due to all of this. Farage became UKIP leader in 2006. He resigned in 2009 but returned a year later. He resigned again in 2016, but returned for a second time to lead the party for a month. Now he's threatening to return for a third time.

With 4 seats yet to declare, the results are as follows.

318 CON 42.4%
261 LAB 40.1%
35 SNP 3.1%
12 L-D 7.3%
10 DUP 0.9%
7 SF 0.7%
4 PC 0.5%
1 GRN 1.6%
0 UKIP 1.9%