Mods, please do delete if you think this is unnecessary.
To avoid derailing other threads I thought I would create a Sunday Politics thread to avoid side tracking other topics with discussions about the voting system, parliamentary politics etc philosophies.
This not however to replicate Twitter or the media circus in politics, just a place where we can talk about the topics as if we were sharing a beer down the pub before Sunday lunch
Mod edit: pEp beat me and moved posts across, so the AUP reminder and additional thread rules are here - Giminion
Here’s my thought - If the Conservatives win another election I will truly lose all faith in the general population.
It seems the Tories could come into your house, kick your dog, excrete on your carpet and resign for not being given a state honour, and people will still vote for them…
‘what did you do in the Tory years daddy, when the most incompetent, dishonest, corrupt, venal government of the post-Victorian age destroyed our economy, politics, civil society, water, health service, media, defence and overseas influence…?’
'oh nothing darling, you see I did some dressing up for a few hours a year, which meant that all my responsibilities to my fellow citizens, to you, and to my parents were wiped out, because it was important that no one who did any dressing up was seen to to have any political opinions,.
I was at school then a student nurse in the NHS, the only place with electricity in the area. Political historians have their own biases built in. Show me where the country is laid waste??
I suggest that having the IMF in 1978 IIRC come to the UK to bailed out is far worse than today, rubbish dumps in the streets, the dead being unburied, rolling black-outs and millions of hours lost through strike action, yes it was far worse, inflation up to 20%. Then there are pockets of madness such as Lambeth under Knight or Liverpool under the militant tendency terrors of Hamilton and Hatton. you had the trade unions running the country not the elected government.
If you want laid waste, look at Scotland under the SNP or wales under Labour and that’s even going near NI and their own special madness.
I think you would be able to find plenty who agree, plenty who disagree & plenty who have a multitude of other opinions. I remember the same being said if Blair at the time. The truth of the matter is that no-one will care if you did anything - look at Scargill still remembered but in general forgotten about by the vast majority.
We’ve got too much squabbling , two many egos & loss of what the positive philosophies should stand for.
The government, international relations they are big people problems which we cannot directly influence. All we go do is do good locally rather than wasting our efforts trying to undermine things.
I think part of the biggest problem is during the Blair years people had convinced themselves that they would never be another party in power so have sought to undermind at every stage when labour lost power rather than help succeed. The pendulum will swing, parties will change & then they will come back.
The issue is that we have a kind of free surface effect in politics pushing each party to further extremes.
The only real way I can see to change things is if parties are no longer listed on the ballot paper.
Bringing back to top, carol vorderman is pushing for tactical voting which I find absolutely abhorrent as it undermines our parliamentary system & moves us away from the point of electing individual to represent us.
Carol can protest but she shouldn’t undermine our political system.
Unable to do anything in the evening, constant power cuts. Strikes left, right and centre; today is nothing, unions rolling over unlike then. Rubbish everywhere.
Tactical voting is the natural result of the current system. What’s the point of throwing your vote away if there’s no chance on earth of the person you vote for being elected?
A better system would be one which took everyone’s votes, and allocated MPs proportionately based on how many people voted for the party. That way everyone’s votes would have an impact.
Just look at what happens with that, I give you Germany, Spain Sweden Belgium (which didn’t have a government for nearly a year), Italy, and Israel. Then there is Scotland which has its own special circle of hell. PR is an even worse system the FPTP.
Now Voders is a whole different question and her revelations of the past.
Completely (but respectfully ) disagree as the principle is that an area votes for a person amongst their numbers who’s judgement & values they trust to represent them in parliament.
I do not nor have I voted based on parties but on the individual. A PR system would just mean our representive would be selected by the party as a sort of feudal parliamentary ninle rather than one we’ve selected. It would be more open to corruption & group think & lead to oligarchy. It is favoured by staunch capitalists who favour a more transactional society so members of a party are like employees rather than shareholders.
My solution would be to have parties no longer listed on the ballot paper (you can still be a member of a party or party representative but officially you are not elected on that basis).
The other candidates are listed in the order that there nomination forms are received by the returning officer.
Whilst it means the electorate have to work harder it emphasises the local person & over party politics & hopefully the people selected are more representative of their constituencies.
It does still allow a bit of tactical voting but it means more voters would need to work harder & base it on person not party.
I disagree - ‘the voter should work harder’ is, in practice, a fundamentally flawed concept for two reasons:
What actually happens is they don’t work harder, they just don’t bothering, and politics loses middle ground and just becomes a battle for hugely engaged nut jobs.
Even if information about particular politicians is available, it only becomes an issue for voters to use at the ballot box of the media picks up on it. We have a dreadful media where two Tory MPs can interview a tory PM, over a Tory policy, and it’s allowed to be called news…
Something I thought was more interesting was that you described FPTP as the principle - your ideas are simply about making the existing system work better - but you never asked yourself whether it should be the principle…
I think keep the constituency link rather than giving the parties more power with PR, but rather than FPTP use Single Transferable Vote. It doesn’t pick the person with the biggest block of support at first instance (unless they actually have an outright majority) but instead picks the person most acceptable to a majority of people.
I’d much rather have a system where proportionally elected representatives have to engage in a process of cooperation and compromise, rather than a system where baked-in advantage favours a particular political party (with a close second) and allows them to run away with a disproportionate amount of power.
Most people vote centre-left, but the right gets the power more often because they’ve broadly consolidated their position.
A 2-party system encourages rift and extreme contrasts, removing all subtlety and political nuance from the voting equation.
They spend more time focussing on what they are not, rather than what they stand for.
Then, they try compromising or misleading about said compromise in order to appeal to floaters and centrists.
The result is that many are disengaged from the process altogether, which is, despite all the other bad stuff, still the worst outcome of all.
Edit: Picking representatives in order of preference also ensures everyone gets to vote for their preferred candidates, knowing they get their second or third pick if their first is t popular enough.
It makes you yearn for the days of the coalition. And shows how successful the Lib Dems actually were at putting the brakes on. Just a shame they were rubbish at campaigning on that point
) disagree as the principle is that an area votes for a person amongst their numbers who’s judgement & values they trust to represent them in parliament.