Jump to content

The Labour Party - Part 2

Recommended Posts

On 22/03/2021 at 21:14, Anna B said:

How?

Realistically, a political coalition with other parties is the only way that Labour can hope to return to *shared* power in 2024.

 

Starmer does not strike me as having sufficient vision and political clout to handle that. For all his perceived positives of only a few months ago, going by his latest he’s been consumed by internal politics already and is a write-off. Labour needs a deal maker, unafraid of dumping the dinos and willing to govern by consensus. A tall order.
 

The LibDems enjoy about as much notoriety and political relevance as you can say ‘Nick Clegg, student fees’ all these years later, after disastrous figurehead rebrands. Still, the voting tally is non-trivial, and probably least tribal (relative to Tory/Lab/Greens/SNP), so more ‘transferable’ than others.

 

The Greens are doing a great job of building *and then keeping* their voting tally, but at such a glacial pace that, under the FPTP, they might get into sight of governance next century. Might. They’d likely jump at a power-sharing chance to prove their policy-making and executive mettle.

Edited by L00b

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
8 hours ago, sheffbag said:

now how did i know you would suggest that so...

 

2019 GE result by proportional rep. Based on the 30848002 votes cast for the parties that won seats this equates to 47458 votes per seat

this gives the following results

Conservative - 13,941,086 - 293 seats (364 in GE)

Labour - 10, 292,354 - 216 (203)

Lib Dem - 3,675,342 - 77 (11)

SNP - 1,242,380 - 26 (48)

Green  - 864,743 - 18 (1)

DUP - 244,127 - 5 (8)

SF - 181,853 - 4 (7)

PC - 153,265 - 3 (4)

Alliance - 134,115 - 3 (1)

SDIP - 118,737 - 2 (2)

 

So we get a non majority parliament , even in 1997 when Labour won 418 seats and the Conservatives and Lib dem got 211 between them then PR would have resulted in a hung parliament as Labour only got 43% of the vote . since 1900 there has only been 2 times when there has been a majority vote for any party at any GE. The only times there were was in the 30's  both had majorities for the National party. The only real winners are the Lib Dem but the questions are

 

I vote for my member of parliament, if that person under PR wins the most votes in my area but isn't represented in parliament  (such as any of the 71 seats the conservatives would lose under PR)why should I be represented by a person who doesn't represent the wishes and votes of my constituency.

 

If the PR vote is just a straight vote for the party and then they will pick the MP to represent you then who chooses the MP and which areas do those MPs go to based on splitting the constituencies up. For example, Who gets the seats that the tories lose in order to bring the lib dem count up?

 

If i am in Scotland and voted SNP then 22 MPs to represent me have just been lost and always will be due to the number of votes available in Scotland (and Wales/Ireland) in comparison to england. Who represents the voters for these areas in parliament? 

 

PR essentially dismisses local politics and becomes a national vote with no assurance that the person selected will represent the area you are from correctly (would you put a Labour MP in the middle of the Tory heartland or Scotland?)

 

It dismisses the smaller constituencies in favour of ones with larger voting capability. A potential vote cast in Orkney (electorate 34211) is worth one third of a potential vote cast in the Isle of Wight (electorate 113021). source https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-8749/  Both are islands and at present both woudl have an MP based on the decision of the people who live there and woudl support the people who live there. PR woudl mean that 74442 people who did vote in IOW would have a 75% influence over the 23160 who voted in Orkney. How is that fair to the people of Orkney?

 

So how is this better than voting for a person to represent your area in parliament and then finding out that you get someone else because more people turned out in a different constituency?

PR is a clumsy start but real change requires a different mindset, and a totally different system.

Currently the system is all about opposition rather than cooperation.

I think that needs to change. Surely we can achieve more together than fighting each other all the time. Politicians/ we should have the common good of all in mind. And the turn around every 5 years does nothing for long term planning. I'd like to see a stop (or at least a reduction) of lobbying, and party donations. All sorts of things need to change. Computers and the internet seem to have invaded every domain of life, except politics. They should be harnessed more widely to make decisions based on data.  

 

We are moving into new territory with new parameters that haven't been experienced before. Aaron Bastani calls it the third great upheaval; the first being early man mastering farming rather than the nomadic existence of hunter-gatherers, the second was the move from farming to mass production in the 1800's, and the third is the advent of mass production being superseded by globalisation and Artificial Intelligence, with robotics doing much of the work. That brings its own dilemmas, and that's what we should be working on right now.

 

We still have a governmental system which goes back centuries mired with archaic 'traditions' that make it slow and lumbering, and in a fast moving and changing world, is IMO no longer fit for purpose.

Edited by Anna B

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
16 hours ago, sheffbag said:

with respect , that has nothing to do with the point.  Councillors are not MPs and do not make national decisions. However,  a councillor will be the person that the people in your area voted for in an election and therefore are the chosen representative for the (normally) politcal affiliation of the area. Under PR this may not be the case, that is the point im making

My MP is married to another MP that lives 100+ miles away, either they live apart (they have a young baby) for 5 years, in practice they try to keep where they live quiet.

Even councillors no longer have to put their address on the ballot paper, they might get harrassed, so why should we know where they live.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
On 25/03/2021 at 07:06, El Cid said:

My MP is married to another MP that lives 100+ miles away, either they live apart (they have a young baby) for 5 years, in practice they try to keep where they live quiet.

Even councillors no longer have to put their address on the ballot paper, they might get harrassed, so why should we know where they live.

I think you are missing the point of my post. Its not where the MP lives that is the question.

If PR was used at the previous election then who decides who gets which seat. The party who wins the most votes may not be the representative party for that area due to votes elsewhere. Therefore how do those people fully represent the wishes of the people who didn't elect them?

 

Thats the point im making, its nothing to do with who lives where or who is married to who. Its about the fact that PR would result in parties not representing the areas where they are favoured so my question to Anna was how was that fair and how would it work

On 24/03/2021 at 23:26, Anna B said:

PR is a clumsy start but real change requires a different mindset, and a totally different system.

Currently the system is all about opposition rather than cooperation.

I think that needs to change. Surely we can achieve more together than fighting each other all the time. Politicians/ we should have the common good of all in mind. And the turn around every 5 years does nothing for long term planning. I'd like to see a stop (or at least a reduction) of lobbying, and party donations. All sorts of things need to change. Computers and the internet seem to have invaded every domain of life, except politics. They should be harnessed more widely to make decisions based on data.  

 

We are moving into new territory with new parameters that haven't been experienced before. Aaron Bastani calls it the third great upheaval; the first being early man mastering farming rather than the nomadic existence of hunter-gatherers, the second was the move from farming to mass production in the 1800's, and the third is the advent of mass production being superseded by globalisation and Artificial Intelligence, with robotics doing much of the work. That brings its own dilemmas, and that's what we should be working on right now.

 

We still have a governmental system which goes back centuries mired with archaic 'traditions' that make it slow and lumbering, and in a fast moving and changing world, is IMO no longer fit for purpose.

as usual, didnt answer any of the questions at all. What does any of that have to do with how PR would work in the UK or any of the questions i asked?

Since you said "5 years does nothing for long term planning" how long should a government have in power before the vote goes back to the public in your opinion?

What does AI have to do with an election system?

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I've said it before, but PR sounds great until you realise in past years that parties like the BNP would have got into Parliament.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
8 hours ago, sheffbag said:

I think you are missing the point of my post. Its not where the MP lives that is the question.

If PR was used at the previous election then who decides who gets which seat. The party who wins the most votes may not be the representative party for that area due to votes elsewhere. Therefore how do those people fully represent the wishes of the people who didn't elect them?

 

Thats the point im making, its nothing to do with who lives where or who is married to who. Its about the fact that PR would result in parties not representing the areas where they are favoured so my question to Anna was how was that fair and how would it work

as usual, didnt answer any of the questions at all. What does any of that have to do with how PR would work in the UK or any of the questions i asked?

Since you said "5 years does nothing for long term planning" how long should a government have in power before the vote goes back to the public in your opinion?

What does AI have to do with an election system?

 

My point was that we are going into an unprecedented future which is going to bring new radical changes.

We need a completely new style of government to deal with it, not one that is mired in the past. Each MP should live in the local area and canvas his constituents for their ideas and opinions before votes

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
4 hours ago, the_bloke said:

I've said it before, but PR sounds great until you realise in past years that parties like the BNP would have got into Parliament.

What do you want to do, ban the BNP?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
4 hours ago, El Cid said:

What do you want to do, ban the BNP?

Much as I dislike the BNP and everything it stands for, in a free society everyone should be entitled to a voice. It is then the responsibility of the other voices to counter the arguments, and rigorously defend their own point of view with sensible logic and intelligent reasoning.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
17 hours ago, El Cid said:

What do you want to do, ban the BNP?

No?

 

My point is that if PR lets your unicorn political party of choice in to Parliament, it also lets the dinosaurs in as well.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
On 26/03/2021 at 08:32, sheffbag said:

I think you are missing the point of my post. Its not where the MP lives that is the question.

If PR was used at the previous election then who decides who gets which seat. The party who wins the most votes may not be the representative party for that area due to votes elsewhere. Therefore how do those people fully represent the wishes of the people who didn't elect them?

Perhaps what you need is an additional member system. 

 

You elect the bulk of the MPs by a some sort of first past the post system, and after that add additional MPs, to make the overall proportion of MPs closer to the actual spread of the vote.  The FPTP MPs obviously hold stong local connections, if you assign the additional MPs based on regional votes then you still have a local connection just not as  strong as the  FPTP MPs. 

 

The current system can produce governments with large majorities but I'm not sure they can be considered strong. The larger ones tend to be hard to manage and dissolve into internal bickering. A smaller majority is easier to control and manage.  

 

The current system basically results in several groups of people shouting at each other, a system which produced smaller majorities or coalitions of one form or another would require a more collaborative form of government which would benefit us all.  It might also make it possible to find solutions to the problems which take longer to fix than the election cycle which would definitly be a good thing. 

 

Let's also consider that both the Labour Party and the Conservative Party  are basically conglomerates

of several smaller parties who don't get on with each other very well.  A more propotional system of choosing our governments would allow these smaller parties to gradually separate out which again would benefit everyone. It might also allow ordinary people to get back as MPs not the stream of party clones we tend to get now. 

 

The downside is that it might allow the more extreme edges in but the light of publicity seldom helps these people in the long run and it would hopefully force the centre parties to challenge them head on and to try and find decent solutions to the problems which the extemists feed on.  

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
4 hours ago, the_bloke said:

No?

 

My point is that if PR lets your unicorn political party of choice in to Parliament, it also lets the dinosaurs in as well.

Not having PR allows the Conservatives a advantage and the smaller parties are kept out. I believe this is wrong.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
4 hours ago, the_bloke said:

No?

 

My point is that if PR lets your unicorn political party of choice in to Parliament, it also lets the dinosaurs in as well.

We have an entire chamber full of unelected dinosaurs, god botherers and Ian botham. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.