News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on The Queen has more power over British law than we thought. Parent comment

Re:The Queen has more power over British law than we thought by oblio on Wednesday February 10, 2021 @02:30AM (#26086490)
> So if after an election there are two different coalitions who both claim to be the best chance at a stable government, who makes the choice to go with one of them, or to call fresh elections?

We, here in the rest of the world, use a magic number to determine that. 51% (or 50% + 1).

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The Queen has more power over British law than we thought by jonp888 on Wednesday February 10, 2021 @02:44AM (#26086555)
Sure, that works fine when one party has 50%. But what happens when no-one does?
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The Queen has more power over British law than we thought by CobrastanJorji on Wednesday February 10, 2021 @03:00AM (#26086633)
That was the case in the UK from 2010-2015. It's called a minority government.

Various factions horse trade until some coalition of parties has a majority, and then they rule as coalition. Members of both the Conservatives and Liberal-Democrats had cabinet seats.

The main downside to this sort of process is that sometimes negotiations take a long time. Belgium spent nearly two years bickering over forming their coalition in 2010.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The Queen has more power over British law than we thought by dragonwriter on Wednesday February 10, 2021 @05:35PM (#26095751)
> Sure, that works fine when one party has 50%. But what happens when no-one does?

Form a coalition that does or have new elections. You can even set a timeline after an election for a coalition to be in place or new elections are mandated by law.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The Queen has more power over British law than we thought by oblio on Wednesday February 10, 2021 @05:46AM (#26087619)
That comment was literally about coalitions ...
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The Queen has more power over British law than we thought by kenneth on Wednesday February 10, 2021 @03:22AM (#26086731)
Belgium does a great job of proving that that doesn't quite always work.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The Queen has more power over British law than we thought by phaemon on Wednesday February 10, 2021 @04:39AM (#26087209)
Belgium was the country that recovered fastest from the 2008 financial crash...
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The Queen has more power over British law than we thought by andruby on Wednesday February 10, 2021 @03:47PM (#26094548)
Yet we still pay a "crisisbijdrage" :P It's an additional tax on top of regular corporation tax.

EDIT: which seems to have been introduced in 1993 and never removed :-/

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The Queen has more power over British law than we thought by oblio on Wednesday February 10, 2021 @06:25AM (#26087875)
There are a ton of counterexamples and things in real life are measured by ratios of good to bad, not by proving that one case is false, like in math.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The Queen has more power over British law than we thought by tremon on Wednesday February 10, 2021 @06:20AM (#26087839)
It's a great example of why cancel culture shouldn't be used to run a country.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The Queen has more power over British law than we thought by dragonwriter on Wednesday February 10, 2021 @05:34PM (#26095739)
> 51% (or 50% + 1).

Usually “smallest integer greater than 50%”, of which the other two are imperfect approximations.

[ Parent | on HN ]