Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Election UK:Denial at the Ballot Box

For those reading from elsewhere in the world; here in the UK we've just had an election. The economy was (not surprisingly) the main issue - but also there was global warming. Now it's impossible to unpick that issue from all the other issues, but it is notable that there are 2 political parties that have strong global warming denial positions - UKIP (with Monkton as the science advisor) and the fascist BNP. Both have not done well. While both have slightly increased their votes, I think issues like immigration and dissatisfaction with the mainstream parties had a greater role to play in that. However there was a large turn-out of people who didn't vote for them, which drowned out any gain they might have hoped to make. Plus our first-past the post voting system does not favour small parties. As a result they lost 29 local councillors between them.

In the election the party with the most representatives was the Conservatives - but not enough to take power alone. I know that there are prominent Conservatives (and the supporting press) who are into global warming denial too, however the fact that they don't have the majority means that wing of the party will be held in check by the alliances they will have to make with parties who reject global warming denial totally.

Put simply in the UK denial of global warming has not been shown to be a vote winner.

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