General British politics discussion thread

O'Neill

Hawkeye9212 wrote: »

Only Tories run in NI and they don't take it seriously. Lib Dems are aligned with Alliance. Labour don't run. A fairer system would see a lot more MPs being elected from the big 3 parties (they aren't English parties).

They do actually but have more reliance on SDLP

breezy1985

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

In normal years 60% of UK MP's have safe seats.

In the remaining 40% of seats any vote not for the the top two is wasted.
If Lib Dems had stepped aside it's likely that IDS would have lost his seat.


“MPs are not chosen by 'the people' - they are chosen by their local constituency parties: thirty-five men in grubby raincoats or thirty-five women in silly hats.”
- Sir Humphrey Appleby, Yes Minister



Two of the four countries in the UK barely even vote for government parties.

When was the last time Northern Ireland elected an MP from the three big English parties ?
And Scotland recently only elected one MP from each party.



Here thanks to multi-seat constituencies you can can vote for the party without having to vote for the person.

Here you don't need to vote for the person most likely to beat the person you don't want to win. You can actually give your first pref to the person you want, and then vote for the one you need.


It's a duopoly, the middle ground is ignored in the pursuit of harder left or harder right. Here at least some parties try to attract the middle ground.

Over and over you hear from people in England and sometimes even the media referring to the Lib Dems as the 3rd biggest party in parliament despite them being 4th and sometimes 5th

ancapailldorcha

breezy1985 wrote: »

Over and over you hear from people in England and sometimes even the media referring to the Lib Dems as the 3rd biggest party in parliament despite them being 4th and sometimes 5th

I think that that's because they're the only other party who campaign across the UK. The SNP and Plaid are limited to Scotland and Wales respectively while NI has its own parties. They were also in government less than a decade ago.

Hawkeye9212

O'Neill wrote: »

They do actually but have more reliance on SDLP

Some NI members run under the Labour name but the national party doesn't stand official candidates.

breezy1985

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

I think that that's because they're the only other party who campaign across the UK. The SNP and Plaid are limited to Scotland and Wales respectively while NI has its own parties. They were also in government less than a decade ago.

Still shows up the complete lack of understanding English people have for what the make up of their country actually is.


Ive straight up asked English people questions like who are the 3rd biggest party or can you name 6 parties in parliament and some are shocked to hear there are more than 4/5 and these are people who are engaged in politics. What is Dup was an inexcusable top search in Google UK after 2017

L1011

O'Neill wrote: »

They do actually but have more reliance on SDLP

They don't - a few pissed off members did in 2016 under a different banner but that's stopped

The "Cross Community Labour" party that was there briefly and actually got a whole one councillors was actually the (Irish) Socialist Party with an alternative name

The Irish Labour party also stood aside for the SDLP; it had had councillors and even occasionally Stormont MPs until the 60s or so.

One third of Tory MPs in ‘blue collar conservatives’ group went to private school
A group of Tory MPs are trying to appeal to the common man by describing themselves as blue collar, despite one third of them having attended private, fee paying schools.
I particularly like the description of Peter Bottomley:

MP Sir Peter Bottomley is described as having come “from a lorry driver to the House of Commons”, but his bio omits to mention that he attended Westminster School and Trinity College Cambridge, and that his father and grandfather were both knights and attended the same Oxbridge college as him.

L1011

I keep forgetting he's still an MP - totally outshadowed by his wife, who's now a Baroness.

Capt'n Midnight

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Here thanks to multi-seat constituencies you can can vote for the party without having to vote for the person.

Explain to me how that works then?

I would rather not have any of the TDs in my constituency but I had to vote for them.

Seth Brundle

Aegir wrote: »

Explain to me how that works then?

I would rather not have any of the TDs in my constituency but I had to vote for them.

I presume that it is referring to the ability to vote for a second candidate for a party without having to vote for the incumbent.

L1011

How Shatter was replace by another FG TD and so on

Sam Russell

Aegir wrote: »

Explain to me how that works then?

I would rather not have any of the TDs in my constituency but I had to vote for them.

If, say, you are in a 3 seater with 10 candidates. Two are from each of the 2 major parties, with3 each from small parties, and 3 independents.

So you vote for preferences, with 1 to 10. If you do not like them, then put them further down the list. So candidates for, say, a major party will be selected by the number of votes they get. Some of those are for the person, some for the party. Parties generally try to vote manage, so party loyalists will be asked to prefer one or other party candidate in order to maximise the party's chances.

Voters choices are what matters, and not 35 party activists in a room, although hey still choose the candidate but with no certainty that either candidate will succeed.

It is the counting that is complicated. The voter simply puts the candidates in preferred order. Simples.

Sam Russell

Sam Russell wrote: »

If, say, you are in a 3 seater with 10 candidates. Two are from each of the 2 major parties, with3 each from small parties, and 3 independents.

So you vote for preferences, with 1 to 10. If you do not like them, then put them further down the list. So candidates for, say, a major party will be selected by the number of votes they get. Some of those are for the person, some for the party. Parties generally try to vote manage, so party loyalists will be asked to prefer one or other party candidate in order to maximise the party's chances.

Voters choices are what matters, and not 35 party activists in a room, although hey still choose the candidate but with no certainty that either candidate will succeed.

It is the counting that is complicated. The voter simply puts the candidates in preferred order. Simples.

So you vote for a candidate, selected by the party.

And the bigger the party, the more candidates they can field and the more chance of gaining power.

So, as I stated originally. All systems favour the bigger parties.

Capt'n Midnight

Aegir wrote: »

Explain to me how that works then?

I would rather not have any of the TDs in my constituency but I had to vote for them.

If you support a party you can give your #1 to Flipper The Dolphin and have your vote go to the party further down.


If you don't support any party you can give the most offensive candidate the highest number first and work back. You don't have to give #1 to the candidate that stands the best chance of beating the one you hate most knowing that any other action is meaningless.


Not finding any candidates appealing is a different problem. Here at least every TD's has an incentive to try. And it's more fun when you realise the easiest path to election is to steal votes from your running mate while not pretending you aren't.

Capt'n Midnight

Aegir wrote: »

And the bigger the party, the more candidates they can field and the more chance of gaining power.

So, as I stated originally. All systems favour the bigger parties.

At the other extreme our system of PR means parish pump politics get too much attention. Giving more power to local government would help there but that's a different topic.

Westminster is rolling back local government powers and budgets whenever it gets a easy chance, they may even kill off the Lib Dems.


In the FPTP system in theory you get strong and stale governments with decent majorities.

In practice you end up with two large parties who promise to undo the changes of the previous one. Real policies are optional.

Before Labour the Liberals were the other part of the duopoly but they only got into power recently because Scotland is no longer part of the traditional system.

Sam Russell

Aegir wrote: »

So you vote for a candidate, selected by the party.

And the bigger the party, the more candidates they can field and the more chance of gaining power.

So, as I stated originally. All systems favour the bigger parties.

Well, that is what political parties are about. Groups form a party of like minded individuals, and seek approval from the voters. That is democracy as we do it. Large parties have more members, and more potential candidates.

In the UK, the FPTP system favours unaccountable cabals in safe constituencies that put forward favoured candidates that will get elected because they carry the party rosette, regardless of any talent. This gives a base number to each of the large parties, and it gives a base for them. The winner takes all is not good for good governance, nor is it good for democracy.

devnull

Being reported in Monday's press that Nigel Farage along with Richard Tice is to relaunch the Brexit Party as an anti-lockdown party called Reform UK.

I presume he will be trying to tempt lockdown skeptics in the Tory party over?

ancapailldorcha

devnull wrote: »

Being reported in Monday's press that Nigel Farage along with Richard Tice is to relaunch the Brexit Party as an anti-lockdown party called Reform UK.

I presume he will be trying to tempt lockdown skeptics in the Tory party over?

They just seem determined to hang in there for some reason using any dodgy pretence. The Reform UK idea has been about for a while. It's not the first bell rung for me anyway.

The next election won't be sooner than 2024. An anti-lockdown party just seems pointless.

breezy1985

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

They just seem determined to hang in there for some reason using any dodgy pretence. The Reform UK idea has been about for a while. It's not the first bell rung for me anyway.

The next election won't be sooner than 2024. An anti-lockdown party just seems pointless.

Just desperate to keep his face in the paper

dinorebel

breezy1985 wrote: »

Just desperate to keep his face in the paper

He loses the Trump connection after Tuesday and is trying to stay relevant.

Roanmore

devnull wrote: »

Being reported in Monday's press that Nigel Farage along with Richard Tice is to relaunch the Brexit Party as an anti-lockdown party called Reform UK.

I presume he will be trying to tempt lockdown skeptics in the Tory party over?

Isn't this going to clash with Laurence Fox's Reclaim Party? They both look to be covering the same demographics.

rock22

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

The next election won't be sooner than 2024. An anti-lockdown party just seems pointless.

I sincerely hope you are right

Peregrinus

Roanmore wrote: »

Isn't this going to clash with Laurence Fox's Reclaim Party? They both look to be covering the same demographics.

Yes but, let's face it, Fox's vehicle was going nowhere. The Old Harrovians whose careers are Not What They Were demographic is too narrow to be a viable base, and a party which claims to oppose "cancel culture" while attempting to organise a boycott of Sainsbury's will lack plausibility even by the fairly low standards of the right.

Fox's best bet is probably to throw his lot in with Farage. Both men are basically trying to attract attention to themselves, but Farage is a past master of the art and Fox would be unwise to compete with him. By joining up with him he might hope to bask in some reflected notice.

VinLieger

Aegir wrote: »

Explain to me how that works then?

I would rather not have any of the TDs in my constituency but I had to vote for them.

No you didn't you could have run yourself as an independent and had a realistic chance of getting elected. Our current dail has 19 independents out of 166 seats, the UK has none out of 650 seats.

If they had the same percentage of independent MPs as we do they would have 71 independent MPs and if the used PR/STV the brexit party would likely have received at least 9 seats instead of the zero they got.

Also if they used PR/STV the Government for the second time in 100 years would have been made up by a group of MPs that were elected by the majority of voters.

Aegir wrote: »

So you vote for a candidate, selected by the party.

And the bigger the party, the more candidates they can field and the more chance of gaining power.

So, as I stated originally. All systems favour the bigger parties.

You are massively oversimplifying the issue just to avoid admitting the literal objective truth that FPTP as a voting system favours far more the larger parties and mathematically inevitably leaves only 2 parties as the choices for voters.

L1011

160 seats, so it's an even higher %

View

Aegir wrote: »

Explain to me how that works then?

I would rather not have any of the TDs in my constituency but I had to vote for them.

As you are no under no obligation to vote, you didn’t have to vote for any candidate. Rather you chose to vote.

Also, it is up to us, the citizens of this country, to nominate the candidates for the ballot paper in our local constituencies. If we aren’t prepared to get off our a£&es and nominate “wonderful” candidates, we have no grounds to complain if the candidates on our ballot papers are “not so wonderful”, since they (the candidates), together with their supporters, were willing to do what we were too lazy to do.

Capt'n Midnight

Remember when JRM (whom the Beano told to 'cease and desist' for impersonating a cartoon character) said the benefits might be felt in 50 years time, ie. long after he is dead ?

Turns out that may not be entirely accurate.


Blitzed cities still deprived 75 years after war because of a Cycle of deprivation

He says it is also a reminder of how "geographically concentrated" the Blitz was and that the damage was not "shared out" across the country, with those in poorer, crowded housing often suffering the most.

The disadvantage in such places now, Prof Todman says is not the legacy of the war, but more a sign that the post-war settlement failed to "bring places up" and those "inequalities continue to exist".

There was a strong sense during the war of wanting to create greater fairness, says Prof Todman, but 75 years later, he says it could be seen as "unfair a society as it was in the 1920s and 1930s".

So yeah, great news for those in the North East who voted for Brexit , prosperity may return. But it will likely be delayed until 2095 , at the earliest.

Oh for fúcks sake!
Politicians have neglected these areas since they ceased to be the powerhouses of the UK economy, to link them to the Blitz is absolute stupidity of the highest order.
Where I lived in the UK the very next street was obliterated one night in 1941, you can still see the join between the Victorian houses and the 1950's replacements today.
There are many industrial towns in the north of England that got away quite lightly and they're still deprived die to lack of post war investment.

breezy1985

A lot of those town and cities were little villages that had population explosions because if certain industries. Now that those industries are gone I don't see how these places are going to go anywhere except backwards as people leave for the new centres of employment.

I'm not in any way excusing Tory neglect of the North but no one can save these places and voting for Brexit or whatever isn't bringing the coal mines back

Joe_ Public

Assuming we don't blow up or drown the planet in the meantime, i firmly believe future generations will look back on this period, past 40 years or so, and wonder why the lives of millions and whole towns and communities were so casually subjugated to the whims of the free market, to then being so easily exploited by right wing populists stoking resentment against immigrants and other minorities. And somehow it was seen as the orthodox position to subscribe to this viewpoint, that the markets would fix everything, while alternatives were portrayed as radical loony leftism. The current predicament, not necessarily caused but most certainly exacerbated by neoliberal policies, offers a chance for a badly needed reset. But i wouldn't be very hopeful of this generation seizing it tbh.