My Thoughts on the Recent Election

If you don't already know, the UK held a General Election on Thursday. The results surprised a lot of people, including myself. To start off if you aren't that aware of British politics, here's a rundown:
- Conservative Party, led by Theresa May. Before the election was the ruling party and has been for a while (therefore May was the Prime Minister) and is roughly equivalent to the right-wing US Republican Party.
- Labour Party, led by Jeremy Corbyn. Roughly equivalent to the left-wing US Democratic Party.
- Liberal Democrats, led by Tim Farron. Supposedly neither left nor right-wing.
- Green Party, led by Caroline Lucas and Jonathan Bartley. Mainly focussed on improving the environment. Always win in Brighton and nowhere else.
- UK Independence Party (UKIP), led by Paul Nuttall. Very right-wing, and often called racist/islamophobic.
- Scottish National Party (SNP), led by Nicola Sturgeon. Campaign for Scottish independence (even though they already had a referendum in which the public voted to stay in Britain) and generally only win seats in Scotland.
- Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), led by Arlene Foster. I'd never heard of them until recently, but apparently they're from Northern Ireland and their right-wing policies seem to be only focussed on NI.
- Sinn Féin, led by Gerry Adams. An 'Irish republican' political party, whatever that means. Main policy is to have a united independent Ireland (mainland + Northern Ireland) and never take their seats in Westminster as they don't acknowledge it. (Thank you Jemima for your Sinn Féin expertise!)
- There are other small parties but these are the main few, and the ones I'll be discussing in this post.
The UK governmental system is, in a nutshell: a party must win at least 326 seats (Members of Parliament [MPs]) in an election to get a majority, and then they govern the country. Their leader becomes Prime Minister (PM) and they can make the laws and essentially do whatever they want. If, however, no party gets the majority (which is called a Hung Parliament), then they can choose to form a coalition, where there is dual authority in Parliament. For example, in 2010 the Conservatives had 306 seats, not enough for a majority. The Liberal Democrats had 57 seats, so when the two parties combined, they had 363 seats overall, more than the 326 majority. Therefore, the leaders (David Cameron and Nick Clegg, respectively) became PM and Deputy PM.


I align myself most closely with the Labour Party, so I'll tell you now this is probably a biased account of this year's election, but it is my opinion after all. Actually, I align most with the Green Party, but as they're so tiny they'll never win, so Labour is my closest large party. This election was a huge surprise, and here's why:

1. The turnout for young people was off the charts. Having previously been criticised for being 'lazy', 'apathetic', and not caring about their futures, young people really stepped up their game this year, which will hopefully spark changes/additions in the manifestos of many parties to appeal more to the younger generation too. 
2. The Labour Party gained masses of votes. Corbyn had been campaigning like mad and targeting young people, which probably explains the huge increase in young voters. In the 2010 election, they had 29% of the votes, in the 2015 election 30%, and in the most recent election a whopping 40%. That is a likely unseen increase, which is a huge deal for every single party, as well as the country.
3. We don't really know what's going to happen next. The Conservatives 'won' the election (meaning they have the most MPs) with 318 seats, but that isn't enough for a majority. Therefore, we currently have a Hung Parliament (like I explained earlier). 
4. The Conservatives seem to be buddying up with the DUP, which is angering a lot of people. The DUP has some not PC views and had been called far-right, extremist, and populist. They are very anti-abortion, oppose gay marriage, and campaigned publicly against the legalisation of 'homosexual acts' in Northern Ireland in 1977 (for context, 'homosexual acts' were legalised in Britain in 1969).
5. Theresa May has been lying a lot recently. She firstly said that there was no way she would call a snap election, and what did she do? Well, there wouldn't be this post if she hadn't called that snap election. More recently, she said that should her Conservative Party lose 6 seats in this election, she would step down as leader. They have in fact lost 12 seats, and has she stepped down? No way. Also just to dig the knife in deeper, her main campaign against Jeremy Corbyn (and by extension the entire Labour Party) was calling him a 'terrorist sympathiser'. Is her getting all close with the DUP not terrorist sympathising? The British public seem to be at their wits' end with Theresa May, and I'm exactly the same.
6. On a lighter note, this is the most diverse Parliament in British history. !!!!! We now have 45 LGBT MPs (19 of which are Conservative, which surprised me), 52 ethnic minority MPs (who are still staggeringly under-represented, with 598 MPs being white), 208 female MPs (which is so cool when you think about how just over 100 years ago Emily Davison died for women to have the vote, let alone to be in Parliament), and the most disabled representation ever. No matter what it looks like from afar, I promise Parliament is progressing. I hope.