The British are as stupid as we are

[Emrys]

15. That's a leap.

To win a seat, first past the post requires a concentration of votes in a particular constituency, full stop.

Under that system, you get nothing, except maybe some heartache and a whole bunch of fruitless bellyaching, for a mass of votes in a region if you don't have that, and Reform's regional placings in this latest election do nothing to illuminate how that might pan out. Otherwise, how come Reform didn't win any directly elected seats?

Pundits have gone mad trying to map PR results onto FPTP makeups. If that wasn't the case, successive elections in Scotland would have turned out very differently, and more folks would have gotten rich on the betting markets.

The dynamic also changes when you come to constituency voting, when there's more focus on individual candidates and campaigns. In Scotland, at least, Reform fell into the trap of campaigning on issues that are reserved to Westminster. It may have fooled some, but it's plain dumb (which hasn't stopped Labour and the Tories, not to mention the Lib Dems, trying to pull the same trick, in this election and previous ones).