Famous Belgians and the Welsh general election
Should you find yourself in a pub quiz racking your brains for famous Belgians, you may want to add Victor d'Hondt to Eddy Merckx and Plastic Bertrand.
Victor, a mathematician by calling, gave him name to the electoral system used to elect regional list members of the Welsh assembly.
That system, which compensates parties which fail to win first-past-the-post seats, is responsible for the Welsh Tory leader's failure to win a seat in the assembly despite leading his party to its most successful electoral performance.
Monsieur d'Hondt's system allowed the Conservatives to rebuild themselves after they were wiped off the political map during the 1997 UK general election. Nick Bourne's failure is the price they pay for their success.
It was grim night for Plaid Cymru, who lost a deputy leader, Helen Mary Jones, and a rising star, Nerys Evans.
Imagine yourself a fan of a relegated football team whose season is condensed into eight hours and you get a sense of the sort of evening experienced by Plaid's director of elections, Ian Titherington, their representative on the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio Wales election results programme.
He blamed Plaid Cymru's defeat on the way Labour had turned the election into a referendum on the UK government and taken ownership of the assembly powers referendum in March.
You can see his point, although Plaid Cymru have themselves used UK issues ("Blair lied, vote Plaid") in a Welsh context. Mr Titherington was gracious enough to stay until the end of the show, when others would have taken the opportunity to beat the traffic.
Liberal Democrats Jenny Willott and Roger Williams also took the flak for their party without complaint.
Another programme guest, retiring Labour Minister Jane Davidson was magnanimous in her party's victory, praising Helen Mary Jones's contribution to Welsh politics.
Even before the polls closed, the spin doctors moved to lower expectations. Labour stressed how difficult it would be to get a majority, the Lib Dems reminded us it would always going to be a difficult election for them, and Plaid Cymru confided that they didn't expect to make any gains.
As I write, there are 13 (out of 60) results still to come, along with a Tory leadership election and a Plaid Cymru inquest, quite possibly followed by another leadership election.
Monsieur d'Hondt has long gone to that polling station in the sky, but his place in the list of notable Belgians appears secure.
Hello. I'm David Cornock and I'm parliamentary correspondent for ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Wales. This is the blog for the latest news and gossip from the Westminster village - with a Welsh accent.
Comment number 1.
At 6th May 2011, RW49 wrote:Pretty much as expected really. All Labour had to do was sit there looking quietly confident while the others had anxiety attacks. Plaid only have themselves to blame, looking desperate and negative by turn. Beating up on a government of which you are part is never going to work. The 'our portfolios produced better results than yours' argument always seemed thin to me. A Labour majority reliant on the Aberconwy result? Ouch!
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Comment number 2.
At 6th May 2011, Bill wrote:Dear David Cornock,
Your post is too intellectual and obtuse for me to appreciate. Communication is the basic premise of a journalist's purpose - especially a ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Parliamentary correspondent?
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Comment number 3.
At 7th May 2011, dispozest wrote:The d'Hondt calculation sadly gave the Lib-Dems 4 Regional List seats this time with just 8% of the vote, despite their obvious unpopularity - in North Wales they triumphed(?) with just 5.9% of the vote.
What I still don't understand is why the minor parties didn't live up to their YouGov poll predictions on the Lists, where voting intentions of 6-8% were flagged up, which would normally have seen 1 Green Party and 1-4 UKIP List AMs elected under d'Hondt? On the face of it the Welsh electorate played safe, bottled it, or couldn't be bothered to try and over-turn the cosy relationship the main parties displayed during the GoWA referendum...
Both the political talking heads and the electorate looked and sounded fatigued after the referendum. But it looks as if the divide between the political class and the proles just got bigger!
If the minor parties want to take up the slack they need to work harder and smarter next time around. They might do better if they started to build a political movement from the ground up instead of just putting in an appearance every few years and expecting that to be enough to earn people's vote.
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Comment number 4.
At 7th May 2011, caradog_minchin wrote:#2: take no notice of that one David. Some of us look at these pages in search of something to stir what is left of our grey matter! More power to your elbow...
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Comment number 5.
At 8th May 2011, tredwyn wrote:#3 8 per cent of the vote and there are 60 seats. So how many seats should they get? Well 8/100 x 60 = 4.8. How many seats did they get? 5. It's called proportional representation and we are not used to it in the UK but Mr d'Hondt knew what he was doing.
Incidentally famous Belgians include Simenon, Herge in literature and Cesar Franck and Django Reinhardt in music. Before Belgium existed as a state famous Flemings include Van Dyck, Van Eyck, Rubens and a fair number of the other great European painters. The parade of English insularity ceases to be amusing on the n'th repetition.
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Comment number 6.
At 9th May 2011, Bill wrote:Response to post 04 @ 13:16pm on 07 May - 'caradog_minchin'. You totally miss the point of my post ... Mr Cornock has no vested interest, only a cheque from the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ for his blog - whatever it contains, within reason?
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Comment number 7.
At 10th May 2011, caradog_minchin wrote:Post 6 - you are correct "Read Animal Farm", I regret that I have not followed your thinking in this case. But no matter as I generally do follow your posts. Best wishes.
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Comment number 8.
At 10th May 2011, Bill wrote:Response to post 07 @ 13:18pm on 10 May 2011 - 'caradog_minchin'. Appreciate your kind response very much indeed. Best wishes from 'Read Animal Farm'.
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