Yeah, but they're obviously busy and it's important where they're going.
(It's not really just Tories in villages, everyone wants everyone else to drive slower, more quietly, and preferably somewhere else entirely.)
Perpetual UK Politics Thread Part Two
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Yeah, but they're obviously busy and it's important where they're going.
(It's not really just Tories in villages, everyone wants everyone else to drive slower, more quietly, and preferably somewhere else entirely.)
I would expect such a result to draw a Tory cacophony of complaints against FPTP despite their fourteen years with which to Do Something About It.
Absolutely, the hue and cry when Amsterdam instituted 20 mph zones came mainly from people who lived elsewhere
Channel 4 News go canvassing undercover with Reform in Clacton. Laddy bants all round.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmkMpYbOoO0
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmkMpYbOoO0
https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c7227027mdnt?post=asset:e2ca3364-5fb7-4c60-8f0b-924338f71ce6#post
Rishi, I have campaign advice for you: just stop speaking. At all.
Urging voters to think about what Labour could mean for the country, and this isn't a referendum on him and his?
Rishi, I have campaign advice for you: just stop speaking. At all.
It is just like his leadership election (and TBH May's general election). He would do better if he just went away on holiday and didn't do anything for the entire campaign.
Is it just me or is some of that set of predictions absolutely bonkers?
Reform aren't going to get 19 seats. They definitely aren't going to get 99. If they get more than 2 or 3 seats, they will be falling out with one another within days of the election.
I don't see any information on how their model is constructed.
Their prediction here is for all of... one seat going from DUP to UUP.
Their prediction here is for all of... one seat going from DUP to UUP.
I really hope your politicians aren't nearly that stupid. At least rank hypocrisy is easy to just ignore next election results. Deep state election conspiracies don't go away at all even with mountains of groundless cases.
Alright, then let me hope they aren't smart enough to successfully infest the populace.
Shipley Conservative Sir Philip Davies 'bet £8,000 he would lose his seat'
Shipley candidate Sir Philip Davies says it is "nobody's business" whether he placed the bet.
I've lost track. Is this another one?
tone deaf, at the very least.
I hope the laws on such things are clarified once there's a parliament again.
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Personally, I'm of the opinion that the polls have shifted so drastically since the last election that seat projections for anybody other than maybe Labour have huge margins of error. I joked to my friends it looks like the Tories are on track for 75 plus or minus 50, but I'm not convinced that's actually a joke now.
If this was a professional footballer, even in one of the low level leagues, they would be in major trouble for doing any betting at all related to themselves insomuch as it amounts to potential match fixing. MPs should not be held to a lesser standard.Shipley Conservative Sir Philip Davies 'bet £8,000 he would lose his seat'
Shipley candidate Sir Philip Davies says it is "nobody's business" whether he placed the bet.www.bbc.com
I've lost track. Is this another one?
tone deaf, at the very least.
I hope the laws on such things are clarified once there's a parliament again.
Also, Davies is a dreadful person.
And much more.
Philip Davies - Wikipedia
He typifies all that is wrong with parliament IMHO and is part of the group including Peter Bone,, Christopher Chope and Andrew Bridgen that seem to find it amusing to deliberately block things while giving very wishy washy reasons about parliamentary procedure for why they did so.
I know what you mean. Some of the polls feel sort of right, but some are a complete joke. Because Reform are pretty much untested, there is probably not a lot of data to go on as to whether the people who say they will vote for them actually do vote for them or actually turn out to vote.
The polls are giving a good idea of the general direction of things and of the changes from week to week between different parties, but when you drill down to the specifics they seem to be all over the place.
Another thing to bear in mind is that as you drift further and further away from a two party system, FPTP has the potential to throw up increasingly erratic results where people get in on a relatively low overall vote percentage.
This is especially true. The Lib Dems won 8 seats on something like 8% of the vote in 2015and we're now talking about Reform winning maybe 2-3 on maybe more than double that share, possibly with the Lib Dems now getting 50-60 on 10-12% of the vote. I hate Reform UK but that still seems fundamentally unfair to me.
Labour getting somewhere around 75% of the Commons on around 40% vote share is perhaps more unfair,
A least Labour party membership consistently back electoral reform though.
ReFarageKIP should have had a few nutters in Parliament for 20 years, spouting bollocks and ignoring their voters.
A least Labour party membership consistently back electoral reform though.
ReFarageKIP should have had a few nutters in Parliament for 20 years, spouting bollocks and ignoring their voters.
Digging into old GEs reveal a continual stream of "wow, that's unfair". 2015 was particularly weird (Scotland going one-party state, the Lib Dems all but vanishing, UKIP getting an astonishing number of votes), but 2005, 1983, and 1959 were also particularly undemocratic, off the top of my head.
Voting reform would be (well, could be, if done both well and in good faith) lovely, but doing so, even with a giant majority, without a single hint of it in the manifesto would be, well, "very courageous". The Lords would create a huge stink about it (not in the manifesto = they get to play dirty), and the Conservatives would raise the roof with cries of Labour breaking democracy to suit themselves.
Voting reform would be (well, could be, if done both well and in good faith) lovely, but doing so, even with a giant majority, without a single hint of it in the manifesto would be, well, "very courageous". The Lords would create a huge stink about it (not in the manifesto = they get to play dirty), and the Conservatives would raise the roof with cries of Labour breaking democracy to suit themselves.
Labour would have the plausible retort that it's actively hurting Labour and helping everyone else.
Which is why, probably, nothing will change. PMs tend not to want to change the system that gave them unrepresentative power.
Actual, Starmer might do it, changes - it might be time for another voting reform referendum, and let the remaining Conservatives explain why they were wrong with to oppose change last time.
Which is why, probably, nothing will change. PMs tend not to want to change the system that gave them unrepresentative power.
Actual, Starmer might do it, changes - it might be time for another voting reform referendum, and let the remaining Conservatives explain why they were wrong with to oppose change last time.
Surprising nobody, Reform campaign when they think they're not on camera consists of saying just all of the quiet parts out loud:
www.independent.co.uk
(Well, not all, he managed to not fellate Putin like some of them do)
Reform UK activist filmed using racial slur to describe Rishi Sunak
Party activist Andrew Parker was caught using the racial slur while campaigning in Clacton, Essex, last week
(Well, not all, he managed to not fellate Putin like some of them do)
The Greens have long had the worst votes to seats outcome in Westminster. The system kind of works with two parties, but not when there are lots.
In 2017 there was talk that there was a convergence back on two parties because that election seemed to massively reverse the trend in England (I'm excluding the other countries as they have prominent regional parties that don't fit this pattern so much). 2024 looks set to be the opposite of this - with more votes cast for parties other than Lab / Con than has happened since the decline of the Liberal party a century ago as the Labour movement grew.
1951 was the peak period for a two party system in the UK. This graph goes up to 2010, but I suspect that this year will be a new low.
Not only does it mean that the outcomes become more erratic, but it also makes it harder for the party that wins an absolute majority of seats to claim to represent anything remotely resembling a majority of the country. From parties winning a majority with just under 50% of the votes in 1951, we are now at the stage where parties are winning on less than 35%.
The missing data on the end of that graph that I just looked up (in terms of percentage of votes to non Lab/Con: 2015 - 32.8, 2017 - 17.7, 2019 - 24.3. 2010 was 34.9. If I average the last 10 polls, that figure at the moment is around 39%.
What I wonder, is what point the switch to a different voting system becomes an inevitability as this trend continues. FPTP pushes people into a 2 party system, but even with that factor we are still drifting away from it. What percentage of vote share is seen as untenable for a party to win a clear majority of seats on?
Getting co-opted onto committees to review fairly uninteresting (to them) subjects would likely be these guys idea of hell. They would rapidly get found out.
I don't think there is a point where it becomes an inevitability as long as it consistently rewards the same two parties with power.
If this election actually shatters the Tory party and leaves the Liberal Democrats as the opposition, then expect them to insert it more into the national conversation. If that situation remains prolonged for another parliament (instead of the rump Tories and Reform metastasising into a unified far right and Starmer doing nothing with his ming vase making for an even more dissatisfied electorate in five years, which I think is a genuine risk) then there'll be a lot more appeal to it because the alternative will seem to be Labour one party rule for an indefinite future.
1 minute before I read this post this article was in my Google News feed: Jeremy Hunt could be unseated in tactical voting plot - Telegraph. Note that it's not a sensible voting strategy to vote for the candidate most likely to beat Hunt but instead it's a PLOT! to remove him.
Of course. Tactical voting is only good if it's to save the country from a Labour government.
Using it to express dissatisfaction with a Conservative is the sort of opposition to British values the hostile environments were supposed to deter.
Using it to express dissatisfaction with a Conservative is the sort of opposition to British values the hostile environments were supposed to deter.
We never did find out if any deal was done behind the scenes at the last election for the Brexit Party to stand down all their candidates in seats that were a likely Tory win.
If the Tories want reform of the system though, perhaps they need to be reminded of what they got all their cheerleaders to write about it in the past.
Constitutional ‘reform’ would be a sinister plot against British democracy
What could be more liberal and democratic than ensuring permanent centre-left government?
OTOH, the Tories don;t seem to have learned this bit.
I have to say, I never thought of tactical voting or PR as conspiring to deprive voters of a choice - I'm pretty sire that is more like what the current system does, essentially squeezing all other choices out so that only two generally stand much chance of making a difference.
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The Tory-friendly press are strategically ignorant about non-FPTP systems. During the referendum vote on AV under Cameron, the Daily Mail ran with a headline that under preferential voting systems, some people would get more votes than others, and therefore it was undemocratic.
If Reform manage to get the Express and/or Mail on board, and do achieve 15%+ of the vote with 5% or fewer of the seats for a couple of elections in a row, expect those papers to suddenly become much more thoughtful about a change.
If Reform manage to get the Express and/or Mail on board, and do achieve 15%+ of the vote with 5% or fewer of the seats for a couple of elections in a row, expect those papers to suddenly become much more thoughtful about a change.
Yeah, but that's predictable because they're all over 80. I'm pretty sure they put you in prison for drinking sherry before your pension comes in.
Judging by the graphs.... Reform voters? Which would explain quite a lot...