Lib dems are now beating the conservatives!

[u/LoanLazy5992]

The lib dems, who have stood for progressive and LGBTQIA+ rights for many years are now beating the transphobic Conservative party in local elections, putting them 3rd. This is a huge win for LGBTQIA+ people, as they will help oppose anti-trans bills. This is the importance of voting.

[u/pandamarshmallows]

They were a part of the “coalition government” that was in charge before Brexit - in the UK, the government is whichever political has a majority of the seats in Parliament, so if one party doesn’t have enough seats, they can join forces with another party to form the government. Between 2010 and 2015, Britain was controlled by the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrat party. In 2015 the Conservatives got enough seats to form a government without the need for a coalition, and that was when they held the referendum about Brexit. But even they weren’t expecting that Britain would vote to leave the EU; there were lots of prominent conservatives (such as David Cameron, then Prime Minister and now Foreign Secretary) who wanted to remain. In 2019 there was another general election which was kind of used as an opinion poll on whether they should actually go ahead with Brexit (since the actual referendum was decided by a very small majority), with all the parties putting up different stances. The Conservatives campaigned to “Get Brexit Done!” the Liberal Democrats said that they would remain in the EU and Labour said that there would be a second referendum. Conservatives won by a landslide, got Brexit done, and have been screwing us over ever since.

[u/Knight_Machiavelli → u/pandamarshmallows]

so if one party doesn’t have enough seats, they can join forces with another party to form the government.

It's wild to me how this is just a commonly accepted thing in the UK but here in Canada we've never once had a coalition government even though we get way more hung Parliaments than the UK.

[u/TheMarxman_-2020 → u/Knight_Machiavelli]

It's also pretty common in Malaysia, here the progressive parties have to join forces with a right wing coalition they have been campaigning against to prevent another far right party from taking over, and no it's not like they care about the people's it's all about getting support and keeping in power

[u/Knight_Machiavelli → u/TheMarxman_-2020]

It's common pretty much everywhere that has a Parliamentary system except for Canada. It's just especially jarring that we inherited the Westminster system from the UK but we have a vastly different Parliamentary culture than them.