I don’t understand why wanting to keep the past-the-post system makes you an evil politician. Didn’t hear any complaints about it until this election tbh.
Even if deep down he wanted to change it, saying that publicly now is just going to hurt his chances and the credibility of the labour party.
Whether people like it or not, politics is a big game. There are rules you need to adhere to, to play it well. I don’t like it, but I’d sure as hell take advantage of it, if it meant getting ex-Tory voters to vote for me. Without their votes, you’re scuppered.
What we need isn’t a new voting system right now, but stability.
14 years of Tory rule. Enough is enough. Get them out.
Its hard for me to agree. In most major western democracies there’s generally a high level of apathy, disconnect and distrust with the modern political class regardless of voting system.
People get a glimpse of it but the political environment and discourse in say France or Germany is far more toxic and divisive compared to what we see in the UK. If not for the language barrier outsiders would talk of Germany like it was a mirror the United States in terms of political dysfunction.
I never really got the complaints about two party system either. In theory and practice all free democracies the two party system reflects the political spectrum. National political parties, regardless of size either align right or left in term of political ideology, that how blocs are formed.
There really isn’t any post WW2 GE that you can say the intentions of the electorate (whether that intention is good or not is another debate) wasn’t reflected in the result. FPTP is a defining feature of British parliamentary politics, no other modern democracy has the same longevity, adaptability or effectiveness in consistently reflecting the will of the electorate as a legislative body.
This is a good point and I don’t have a good rebuttal to that.
I guess most European countries don’t have e the same kind of partisan attitudes between political parties as there are so many of them and coalitions occur frequently so they have to work together.
Is it? Cameron resigned 1 year after being elected in 2015 over a referendum result, we had a snap election in 2017. That elected prime minister resigned (but she faced vote of no confidence), we had another snap election in 2019 and that prime minister resigned over a scandal. Then the next pick for PM lasted 1 month. That’s without getting into the details of how that all came about with the Tory infighting (Which we all know).
That seems pretty toxic to me? What would you say in France/Germany compares to that? (Well I submit France politics seem more polarised than the usual polarising politics that we see, but even so)
That was essentially your position previously though?
I think you might be overthinking it with the lengthy reply lol. You previously said that because Starmer says he is country first, party second, he might replace FPTP with a new electoral system, necause that is what wluld be best for the country. Which I thought was really funny, because no PM who gets elected with a massive majority is taking apart the system that gave them that result, especially not one like Starmer who by nature seems to be a cautious figure who is averse to radical change. So I tagged you after someone shared a video of Starmer categorically saying he wouldn’t replace FPTP lol
Maybe not in terms of the outright winner who go on to form a government, but outside of that, looking at smaller parties, I think you definitely can.
The intentions of the elctorate who voted for parties outside of the big two weren’t reflected well in 2019.
FPTP is great if you want to vote for one of the two main parties, they end up quite well/accurately represented. Those who vote for smaller parties do not find their intentions well represented in the results.
Edit: actually, your initial assertion isn’t strictly accurate.
In these two post war elections the party with the most votes didn’t win the most seats. In the case of 51, Labour got more votes overall than the Conservatives and the Tories actually won a majority of seats.
It was, so yes you’re right and I would agree that Country first IMO means a change to the electoral system.
Understand why you tagged me and agree it is very unlikely. Personally, if I was in that position, I would think that politicians have a shelf life and actually, it probably serves moderate progressive parties by having a new electoral system so would look at the bigger picture. The big majority will not last forever.
I think Labour are ultimately happy with it being a duopoly and wouldn’t be interested in ever rolling the dice by completely changing our electoral system.
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keeps getting funnier the more you say it.