Further, a big factor that neither Callaghan nor Kinnock had to contend with, but Corbyn did, was the SNP
Except they weren't so much contending as colluding. That's partly what makes it doubly funny. You can add up all the seats gained by ALL the horrid little plebian parties combined and it's still not enough for a parliamentary majority.
Quite a victory you've got there ^_^
Oh but if the progressive response to the 2016 US election shows anything, it's that the realities of representative democracy mean nothing and we should just have a simple popular vote to decide such things (but conveniently only when our side loses, lol). Well Jeremy Stalyn's party lost the popular vote here too. So, unless you've all changed your tune to a hilariously hypocritical extent, he should wind his neck in and fuck off back to wherever the fuck he came from.
Or, he could just wander round posh areas of London threatening to expropriate private property again, that was pretty amusing. Sordid little prole.
1. I think a good argument can be made that Trump's presidency is illegitimate because he lost the popular vote. That said, I think the rules being known well in advance is more than adequate justification for him being our president. It's really not that different from
the position I took in the democratic primary (the rules being known in advance more than justifies the results, but winning the popular vote is a powerful argument).
2. The fact that the other parties did not get a majority (when combined) only serves to obfuscate the issue. The Conservative party started with 330 (a majority). May declared a snap election when her party was up 17 percentage points in the polls. She didn't do this because she wanted a majority (though, she did), she declared the election hoping to
increase the number of Conservatives in parliament so that she could work out a Brexit plan that she favored. Her gambit failed, she lost 13 seats (which she could have kept by
not declaring a snap election), and Labour
gained 33 seats. You can spin it any way you want, but fact is she wanted more seats, and she wound up with less.
3. The result in the UK election should not be seen as an isolated event. Trump is
making Europe liberal again. It's almost as if (a) seeing that right-wing populists can win scares people into voting against them and (b) Trump being a contemptuous wanker dissuades people from right-wing populism.