So what does this all mean? Like what do they all stand for and what will change? I really have no idea.

It means the lib dems will get some things they want, voting reform, reformed commons and lords but they will have to vote with con for whatever it is the conservatives want. Basically this happened over one hundred years ago and lead to the downfall of the liberals this time it may very well lead to a three party system. Either way the conservatives will lose seats next election over this, as minority coalition partners always do well at the next election as it seems they have done everything good and not been able to stop anything bad.


tl;dr Lib dems get what they want, will become a bigger part of politics in the long run.

I think the Liberal Democrats get abstentions on a couple of policies that are not agreeable with them, or that they are making arrangements for these should there be any future issue.

good move for the lib dems in the sense they have more input now in politics. Bad move they seem to have sold themselves out - if this makes them a stronger party in the future doubt it will matter as much.

So what specifically will change? I'm thinking like, the cost of bread, and therefore pizza. And the cost of I don't know, like, my ISP. REAL IMPORTANT STUFF.

Food is pretty much stable, that won't change.

Broadband, on the other hand, is a large point of improvement being brought forward.

I just hope we don't get the electoral reform that the Lib Dems want so much. PR would lead to a (nearly) always hung parliament, giving the third part (ie the Lib Dems) far more control than they should have by the number of votes.

where as 1/4 of the votes is worth 57 seats of 650, totally fair

Closer to 1/5th and my point was that with PR they would become the party with the final say in everything, while being the lowest of the major 3.

It's not like they haven't got loads of power from this election anyway, seeing as they have a fair bit of control by being part of this coalition.

Also, I should probably point out that seats are meant to represent the desires of people within an area, and they vote for their representative. Clearly not many areas as a whole wanted the Lib Dems as a representative.

Kinda of a very limited view.

Why are big political parties so important?

At the moment your supposed to vote for the person who will do the best for you in your area, however they all converge into a narrow minded set of party politics, which is supposed to be the way PR works. The current PTP system is working completely in reverse.

A hung parliament forces people to work together, Wales, Scotland, N. Ireland all currently have a hung parliament and they are doing much better in many ways then us (mind they do get all the additional things from us ).

The problem with PR is that it will lead to the 3rd party become the most important party, which is less democratic than the current system.

The other one that is being proposed, the transferable vote thing (a party needs 50% vote to win a constituency and each person ranks the candidates in order of preference, with the lowest vote candidates being removed and their votes moved to the next option until 50% is reached) is probably even worse, as it will more than likely result in a seat/vote disparity for Conservatives much larger than the one the Lib Dems get.

I don't know what's bad in this topic. Maybe something bad will happen in the UK, or maybe I just have no idea what you're all talking about

Why would a reform be bad?

Are the Lib Dem's generally unfavourable?

Also what is the PTP system?

And PR come to think of it.

But most importantly, what exactly will change? If the changes are only proposed, then what are the proposed changes? There must be a list or something. I have absolutely nothing to go on.

The problem here is a lot of those are opinions, but anyway:

FPTP = First Past the Post. It means that in each constituency the person who wins gets the seat and all the other votes are effectively discarded.

PR = Proportional Representation. That is where every vote counts and the seats are split on the number of votes.

The Lib Dems have a lot of support from the student populace and general youth, but a lot of others see their policies as bad ideas or generally unworkable ones.

A few people desire a reform to change us from FPTP to PR. Some people see this as good (yay, every vote counts) and some see it as bad (would lead to very odd governments). Personally, I would like to see the House of Lords reformed. Make that PR with members picked by the parties and have the members have to be people who know more about stuff than politics (scientists, engineers, businessmen, accountants etc) to give some say on what policies are unworkable for other reasons.

Noone really knows what will change atm as the conservatives and the Lib Dems have quite different policies and are working together now (so they have a majority government).

I think they said they are looking into going forwards with reform of the House of Lords with a PR system to elect the members.

Ah, but the difference is I DON'T want a Commons reform, and I want the Lords to actually be useful.