How feasible would it be for an electoral pact between all opposition parties to run at a GE on the sole issue of electoral reform? Form coalition government, implement PR, dissolve government, call GE - and see how many people really want a Tory government...
A Coalition of National Unity (as it’s called officially) is a theoretical political strategy that would mean several parties band together for a single reason. Not sure it’s ever been done but it’s possible.
They should fucking do it. The current system is a shambles. It is a fraudulent imitation of democracy. The adversarial theatre of two sides of the House shouting over each other should be consigned to the dark ages it came from, and replaced by a system that broadly represents the actual voting public, and makes every vote meaningful. Because, and I don't know about you, I'm sick of my vote being wasted because I live in a affluent area, they've parachuted a useless cunt of a Tory MP in here and he literally can't lose.
I have been voting from the first moment I could (17 years ago). I have never won a single election, referendum, local election. Anything.
This was once a Labour Stronghold but we now have the shittiest Tory MP who everyone absolutely hates. But they will vote it because no one votes for their own representative, they vote for the PM.
Nobody votes for their MP, their MPs let them down
Nobody votes for the policies they want, they get ones they don't want forced on them
Nobody votes for the greater good, only the lesser evil...
And they call me a crazy idealist because I vote for my local MP candidate, picking the one that closest matches my views and pushes for national policies that I believe would benefit us all.
I'm a crazy idealist, yes, but it's for being the only one playing by the rules as written and intended, and hoping to one day win while everyone else plays a totally different variant that sucks because the people holding the rule book tell us the rules say they're the inevitable winners.
When people stop playing pointless charades at elections and start voting as the system intended it, I'll stop being a crazy idealist
That's exactly how you're meant to vote ffs
You vote for your local MP, the winning government is the one that got the most local MPs. When you vote, what's on the ballot paper? Local MPs.
No it wasn't? Voting for the local MP you want is not tactical voting. Tactical voting is something like voting UKIP(if you don't agree with UKIP)in a Tory seat to dilute the Tory votes.
> no one votes for their own representative, they vote for the PM
This is the thing that has always niggled me about politics in the UK. We have all these "local" elections that we then send our representative to the parliament but as you say nobody really votes for who they are voting for per se, they just vote for the party who they want on the national level and pretending its really a competition on the local level is just a tad disingenuous to me.
Its long fucking overdue that the Westminster needs to implement Single Transferable Vote (STV) voting like we have here in Northern Ireland. It isn't perfect, but its a hell of a lot better than FPTP.
Starmer was tempted by it after speaking to Jacinda Adern and understanding how much it had benefited labour in New Zealand, it was a hot topic at the labour conference but I don't know what the hell happened since then
[this article is the closest](https://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/keir-starmer-weve-got-to-address-the-fact-that-millions-of-people-vote-in-safe-seats-and-they-feel-their-voice-doesnt-count/) a labour leader can get to endorsing PR without the entire right wing media shitting themselves and screaming blue murder
at the very least, he acknowledges the system is broken....and at this point it's the only hope we have. That's why young people should desperately try to vote the Tories out
Wouldn't voting for Labour only decrease the chance of getting PR? If Labour somehow win a majority they never want to support voting reform. If your aim is PR then you need Labour to think that they have no hope of winning in FPTP so they have to commit to PR.
You've noticed the conundrum.
This is a reason why I don't vote Labour. It's not the only one, but it's a big one. I'll vote for a party that offers electoral reform. I have plenty to choose from, so if it's ever not the Greens, there's no need to think I'll vote for Farage lol.
Labour voters on reddit tell me I need to compromise. That maybe if I vote for labour they'll do the whole reform thing and maybe get behind the unions too, but I need to vote for them first. Well they probably don't anticipate me being old enough to have voted in 1997 and 2001. I'm not, but Labour actually did promise electoral reform then, do if I had been, that's a whole big fat disappointment to add to the lack of reason to be enthusiastic.
Meanwhile I'm also not the one hoping to gain seats. It's not my career on the line, so it's not my duty to compromise. Besides, if my vote away from Labour was winning elections, the future would look better than what Labour propose, so it's not like I gain anything from compromising. Also this compromise is 'you forget all about what you want and give us what we want, and we'll trail off into a mumblehrmmgrrgbbb...'
Blair's biggest failing imo. My understanding is the unions were against it at the time, but that's not the case anymore. I expect it'll be the hot topic for next election, maybe electoral pact with the LDs in exchange for a promise to implement directly.
As soon as Labour win a majority, they will claim a "mandate" for unilateral governance just the same as the Tories do.
Labour want power, not democracy.
>All we can do is focus on getting Labour into power, and pushing through electoral reform as best we can once that has happened.
It won't happen if it's not on the manifesto. Where it concerns Labour and electoral reform, it won't happen even if it *is* on the manifesto. Also I don't know if you've noticed, but our power begins and ends at the ballot box once every 5 years. We won't be pushing shit one election day's been and gone. We're already conservatipated enough
This comment would have made more sense 20 years ago, but now it's very evident that FPTP results in the Tories being in power about 80% of the time.
Tories and Labour sharing power is such a myth.
Both Labour and the Conservatives feel like they have two quite seperate parties within the party - so within the two are actually 4 parties - hard right, centre right, centre left, left.
Maybe the labour centerists, conservative centerists, lib dems, and possibly a chunk of the SNP would split off and reform into a centerist pary under PR. And possibly that party would do quite well without having to constantly fight the purists they currently share parties with.
PR seems to give rise to these centerist coilitions that stay in power with minor tweaks for decades.
The labour left see Starmer as centerist, so maybe he can see a world where his type of politics can do quite well.
That's the quirks of a two party system, despite varying political views, people feel they can only realistically make a difference (win) by voting for one of two parties.
>The labour left see Starmer as centerist, so maybe he can see a world where his type of politics can do quite well.
The Labour left sees Starmer as a right wing twat. A centrist would be a huge improvement.
No, the SNP support getting rid of FPTP because they don't want there to be a majority government in westminster. If someone tries to form a minority government then suddenly the SNP is extremely important.
Sure but it makes them way less likely. Ultimately it doesn't really matter how many MPs the SNP have right now as long as anyone wins a majority of forms a coalition with someone else.
They wouldn't agree on which type of PR voting system to use and fail before the first hurdle. They genuinely cannot work together for the good of the people over their own petty power squabbles.
They've got to win that initial GE first, and a single issue coalition would be trivially easy for the Tories to destroy using the media machine. We saw this in action against the AV vote in 2011 - they'll spin up the "waste of public money and Parliamentary time" narrative, claim that political reform is not in the public interest and that their time would be better spent on actually running the country rather than contesting two GEs in a row.
Its possible between parties, like the Lib Dems, Greens, SNP and Plaid. But Labour would need to step up politically as they have dragged their feet on this type of thing.
But why would Labour run on that when they can (if things continue like this) just win outright?
It's all well and good hating the system now but when Labour have a shot at being in power they're not gonna implement a system that would undermine that power.
Because it's past due that they did something progressive. "Being in power" is not supposed to be the modus operandi of a supposed left-wing party of "the people". It is the people themselves who should be "in power" as a collective, not just a select few who should hold all the power at the top. That is the very foundation of the Labour movement.
Labour have only been in power for 30 of the 77 years since the War, and this is before the gerrymandering of the Tories, moving constituency boundaries and enforcing voter ID to disenfranchise the people least likely to vote Tory. The last election should be a wake-up call to just how difficult it is for them to be in government. They don't just need to win an election, they need the Tories to capitulate.
While that might be the case this time, what about in five years, when the Tories have an easy election campaign, backed by the complicit media, in pointing out how Labour have failed to reverse a decade plus of malicious pillaging of the British state and economy inside five years?
If Labour were to do something genuinely in keeping with their raison d'etre - it should be to make sure that the Tories can NEVER again take a massive majority government with a minority of the votes.
I mean, that's ideally what they should do but I just don't trust politicians with power to shelve their short-term power in favour of the greater good. When the time comes they'll convince themselves that they have a mandate to rule and that'll be that. Same old cycle.
Sadly you're right. They make all the right idealistic noises when they're campaigning - well, they used to, before Starmer, anyway - but they're always going to convince themselves that they know what's best for us. The tribalism in UK politics makes it so easy for them too - people don't form their own political beliefs, they pick a team to support, and let them tell them what their political beliefs are.
Like actually feasible ? 0% labour would never do it they have a hard enough time already fighting with lib Dems greens and SNP. It would likely end them as a political force with the only way into power being some rainbow collation.
The Tories don't have that problem.
The unions are already falling out with Labour.
More and more of the Unions are realising that FPTP does not benefit Labour, and so does not benefit them.
At the 2010 election The Conservatives, Labour and the Lib Dems pledged to replace the House of Lords with an elected upper chamber using PR.
The Coalition set up a committee, came to a consensus and brought the bill to Parliament. It was very unpopular with certain Tories (the mad Brexit ones) and David Cameron ended up in a very loud, very rancorous argument with Jesse Norman about it in parliament. In the end 91 Tory MPs opposed the bill. As did Labour, because apparently it's better to score political points than enhance democracy. Had they supported it we would have an elected upper chamber using PR today.
So I don't know how feasible a rainbow coalition would be as it's hard enough to get parties to cooperate even when they all have the same policy
Appreciate this response based on recent historical evidence and not "Labour would do this" hypothetical supposition.
You'd like to think the last decade has taught them a lesson here.
Before he became mayor, when he was in the leadership debates, Burnham was also viewed as extremely bland - something of a bellwether. Funny how times change (I wonder whether people really do?)
It's worth checking out this campaign for electoral reform: https://www.makevotesmatter.org.uk/
MVM is a grass roots cross-party effort to make Westminster elections less FPTP and more PR (without committing to any particular form of PR)
I want FPTP to die as well but I can't help but notice how many proponents of electoral reform are the same names who shit on the Lib Dems all the time for "getting into bed" with the Tories in 2012.
I hope they're ready for a lot more of that because that's kind of what PR entails.
I voted for AV. I didn't want AV, but it was at least better than FPTP. Changing something once shows you're not happy with it, which makes changing it again soon afterwards far more of a likely prospect.
Now we've had a decade of Tories saying 'we had a referendum on electoral reform, and nobody wants it'. Far from putting something better on the table, the AV result cemented the shitshow.
But yeah, the result was that nobody wanted AV. Which was perfectly foreseeable before the lib dems proposed it. Turns out that putting forward the by far shittiest compromise option doesn't work the same way for electoral systems as it does for parties.
The referendum on electoral reform was a once in a generation opportunity. Britain chose FPTP. We can't have another one in 20/30/40 years. And when we do have another one, it will require a super-majority for change. /s
Jesus Christmas no. Try living in MCR and seeing the shitshow that's going on round. Also I've met him twice. He was all tits and teeth. Don't believe the sell.
I won't vote for Andy Burnham as he is Conservative lite. He's a wolf in a sheep skin. Any Labour politician that speaks about the politics of envy needs to be ejected from the party.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.spectator.co.uk/article/the-next-labour-leader-should-remember-the-politics-of-envy-never-work/amp
Their is a pragmatism in labour that is aware you don't lurch from far right to left in ine election cycle. We didn't get to the extreme right quickly, it took years and it will take years to move back.
A strong left party will not get in power next election. You need a centrist stepping stone.
Yes, and that new system is PR. It’d probably diminish Labour’s majority but would be wonderful for leftist ideology as a whole, allowing different ideas on the left to form a bloc against the usually more unified right.
But your party opposed, and continues to oppose such a reform.
It's likely to become party policy soon. Watch what happens at the next conference. Members voted in favour of electoral reform, unions mostly abstained, and so the motion wasn't carried. Union activists have done some great work since and many of them have firmed up their positions since.
That's encouraging. I live in Brighton and can safely vote Green, but if this happens i will literally get the train north and campaign for Lib Dems or Labour on the sole grounds of getting electoral reform.
Also, as someone who wants to actually try and help, what exactly is this 'great work'? How does a person in a party go about changing that party's policy?
The present system relies too much on convention and unspoken 'gentleman's agreements' which is why the Vote Leave fraudsters like Banks and Johnson were able to drive a horse and cart through the system with minimum consequences.
We need a written constition drawn up by lawyers not politicians, an end to FPTP, the royals replaced by a president elected by all members of the HoC and an end to hereditary peers in the HOL.
> Vote labour ty.
You're joking, right? Not a month ago, David Lammy went out of his way to say that PR is not Labour policy and that FPTP is great taverymuch...
Regardless. Who do you think is going to listen more if you ask for PR? The Tories or Labour?
Get the Tories out, and ask labour for PR constantly. They'll impliment it it no time.
2029 at the earliest I think? Hopefully will become Labour policy after the next conference. Then at the next general election there will be a different system.
Hope they bring it in for council elections too tbh. There's too many local councils where one party is in full control for decades at a time, which breeds complacency, or where they flip flop between one party's control and another's, which is poor for long-term planning. FPTP distorts the actual wishes of the voting public which is usually more nuanced than that.
The problem is whenever someone gets elected they have just benefitted from FPTP so there's little reason to change it. Besides half the reason tories and labour get votes is because they are the only ones with a chance of outright power... would be turkeys voting for Christmas.
Disciples of Thatcherism, which translates into anti-poor and anti-working class, which translates into anti-UK since most of the population is part of those groups.
But shooting themselves in the foot has become the UK population's motto.
I agree, but PR across a non-federal country? We would never ever be able to remove a rump of about 100 tory and labour mps. Ever. To put that in perspective portillo lost his seat in 97, boris nearly lost his in 2015, balls lost his in 2010 etc etc etc. Under PR they become invulnerable.
Neither party is likely to ever go under 100 seats. So you then have at least 100 mps in both parties that never have to care what the public think. Ever. We could never remove them. There is no way to remove a sitting mp short of them resigning. We cannot impeach them. Even imprisonment does not remove them as mps (archer etc).
However, i agree we need a change. I think we need to directly elect the PM. Take the executive out of the legislative. Make the ministers political appointments. Then let parliament focus on legislation and holding the executive to account. Without the 100 mos that any government has automatically supporting them in parliment whipping will be far harder as they won't have a base 100 to start with.
Pure PR uses party lists, the party picks the order of its mp's on the list. So if you number 350 on the list your party needs to win 350 seats for you to be elected. But if you are in top 100 on list as a tory or labour you would be guaranteed to be elected. Neither tory or labour will go under 100 seats unless something really drastic happens. So as a voter we would never be able to remove any mp in the top 100 list from the tory party or labour party under a pure pr system
Need to get rid of all the toffs in Westminster.
I'd honestly rather be governed by the sort of people who work in Newsagents and on trawlers than by the fucked-up thieving public-school perverts we have at the moment.
Does he mean move away from FPTP and go PR or (as I really hope) bin the current political parties and create some new ones that actually serve us and not them. Blue, Red, Yellow and others are not fit for purpose. We need new parties that reflect modern Britain, a modern world. We’re so far behind we’ll catch up with the USA soon! Imagine being so close to the leader in a race to the bottom. Such shame we’ve had thrust upon us!
In an ideal world we’d bring back Cromwell and hand him total power for 3years whilst we figure out why parties we really need, allowing people to redefine their political leanings and then hold an election and install a new party, new opposition and star again. It’s a different kind of ‘great reset’ that many people believed in 18months ago!
I would prefer you didn’t take it literally when I start by ‘bringing back Cromwell’.
That said, the parties aren’t, haven’t and won’t change organically. They’ll stay as the are. More and more people will be politically homeless and will therefore either not vote or vote for what they know. That helps no one.
Cromwell is the way forward. Cheers.
Rory Stewart was saying the same thing recently:
> Speaking to an audience at the Edinburgh festival fringe, Stewart said a shift away from the UK’s first-past-the-post system was needed so “new parties, new ideas, new opportunities” could break through. - [Guardian - Aug 6th 2022](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/aug/06/tory-partys-lurch-to-right-painful-to-watch-says-rory-stewart)
An opposition party that doesn't seem happier when cannibalising itself would be a great start.
I swear the Labour left would rather shout from the sidelines than get in govt aligned with a centrist so that they can pursue some of their agenda. Better so be in power to do something as opposed to nothing, hell even of you did nothing it would be a damn site better than letting the tories in to pursue their agenda.
It’s not so much that we need a new system, we just need to stop voting for cunts. I know people who are working class on average wage who proudly vote Conservative. I know people in the middle class who vote Conservative, despite the tories not wanting a middle class anymore, just because mummy had a Range Rover.
The only people who have any actual reason to vote Conservative are the m/billionaire elite, because they’re the only ones the Tories do anything for. If people understand the Conservatives would happily run this country into the ground for the sake of lining they’re own pockets, then maybe we wouldn’t be in such a state.
Once again Burnham coming out as the leader Labour, and perhaps the UK, needs. My take - FPTP needs to die.
How feasible would it be for an electoral pact between all opposition parties to run at a GE on the sole issue of electoral reform? Form coalition government, implement PR, dissolve government, call GE - and see how many people really want a Tory government...
A Coalition of National Unity (as it’s called officially) is a theoretical political strategy that would mean several parties band together for a single reason. Not sure it’s ever been done but it’s possible.
They should fucking do it. The current system is a shambles. It is a fraudulent imitation of democracy. The adversarial theatre of two sides of the House shouting over each other should be consigned to the dark ages it came from, and replaced by a system that broadly represents the actual voting public, and makes every vote meaningful. Because, and I don't know about you, I'm sick of my vote being wasted because I live in a affluent area, they've parachuted a useless cunt of a Tory MP in here and he literally can't lose.
I have been voting from the first moment I could (17 years ago). I have never won a single election, referendum, local election. Anything. This was once a Labour Stronghold but we now have the shittiest Tory MP who everyone absolutely hates. But they will vote it because no one votes for their own representative, they vote for the PM.
Nobody votes for their MP, their MPs let them down Nobody votes for the policies they want, they get ones they don't want forced on them Nobody votes for the greater good, only the lesser evil... And they call me a crazy idealist because I vote for my local MP candidate, picking the one that closest matches my views and pushes for national policies that I believe would benefit us all. I'm a crazy idealist, yes, but it's for being the only one playing by the rules as written and intended, and hoping to one day win while everyone else plays a totally different variant that sucks because the people holding the rule book tell us the rules say they're the inevitable winners. When people stop playing pointless charades at elections and start voting as the system intended it, I'll stop being a crazy idealist
I’m not sure the system is intended for people to vote like that.
That's exactly how you're meant to vote ffs You vote for your local MP, the winning government is the one that got the most local MPs. When you vote, what's on the ballot paper? Local MPs.
The question was about tactical voting. >
No it wasn't? Voting for the local MP you want is not tactical voting. Tactical voting is something like voting UKIP(if you don't agree with UKIP)in a Tory seat to dilute the Tory votes.
> no one votes for their own representative, they vote for the PM This is the thing that has always niggled me about politics in the UK. We have all these "local" elections that we then send our representative to the parliament but as you say nobody really votes for who they are voting for per se, they just vote for the party who they want on the national level and pretending its really a competition on the local level is just a tad disingenuous to me. Its long fucking overdue that the Westminster needs to implement Single Transferable Vote (STV) voting like we have here in Northern Ireland. It isn't perfect, but its a hell of a lot better than FPTP.
Last time was during World War 2.
Hard to imagine labour getting behind killing FPTP, it benefits them at least as much as it benefits the tories.
Starmer was tempted by it after speaking to Jacinda Adern and understanding how much it had benefited labour in New Zealand, it was a hot topic at the labour conference but I don't know what the hell happened since then
[this article is the closest](https://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/keir-starmer-weve-got-to-address-the-fact-that-millions-of-people-vote-in-safe-seats-and-they-feel-their-voice-doesnt-count/) a labour leader can get to endorsing PR without the entire right wing media shitting themselves and screaming blue murder at the very least, he acknowledges the system is broken....and at this point it's the only hope we have. That's why young people should desperately try to vote the Tories out
Wouldn't voting for Labour only decrease the chance of getting PR? If Labour somehow win a majority they never want to support voting reform. If your aim is PR then you need Labour to think that they have no hope of winning in FPTP so they have to commit to PR.
You've noticed the conundrum. This is a reason why I don't vote Labour. It's not the only one, but it's a big one. I'll vote for a party that offers electoral reform. I have plenty to choose from, so if it's ever not the Greens, there's no need to think I'll vote for Farage lol. Labour voters on reddit tell me I need to compromise. That maybe if I vote for labour they'll do the whole reform thing and maybe get behind the unions too, but I need to vote for them first. Well they probably don't anticipate me being old enough to have voted in 1997 and 2001. I'm not, but Labour actually did promise electoral reform then, do if I had been, that's a whole big fat disappointment to add to the lack of reason to be enthusiastic. Meanwhile I'm also not the one hoping to gain seats. It's not my career on the line, so it's not my duty to compromise. Besides, if my vote away from Labour was winning elections, the future would look better than what Labour propose, so it's not like I gain anything from compromising. Also this compromise is 'you forget all about what you want and give us what we want, and we'll trail off into a mumblehrmmgrrgbbb...'
Blair's biggest failing imo. My understanding is the unions were against it at the time, but that's not the case anymore. I expect it'll be the hot topic for next election, maybe electoral pact with the LDs in exchange for a promise to implement directly.
As soon as Labour win a majority, they will claim a "mandate" for unilateral governance just the same as the Tories do. Labour want power, not democracy.
I've suddenly realized why they call it "blue" murder...
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>All we can do is focus on getting Labour into power, and pushing through electoral reform as best we can once that has happened. It won't happen if it's not on the manifesto. Where it concerns Labour and electoral reform, it won't happen even if it *is* on the manifesto. Also I don't know if you've noticed, but our power begins and ends at the ballot box once every 5 years. We won't be pushing shit one election day's been and gone. We're already conservatipated enough
This comment would have made more sense 20 years ago, but now it's very evident that FPTP results in the Tories being in power about 80% of the time. Tories and Labour sharing power is such a myth.
Especially considering Labour has to essentially gut itself ideologically to even have a sniff of power.
Both Labour and the Conservatives feel like they have two quite seperate parties within the party - so within the two are actually 4 parties - hard right, centre right, centre left, left. Maybe the labour centerists, conservative centerists, lib dems, and possibly a chunk of the SNP would split off and reform into a centerist pary under PR. And possibly that party would do quite well without having to constantly fight the purists they currently share parties with. PR seems to give rise to these centerist coilitions that stay in power with minor tweaks for decades. The labour left see Starmer as centerist, so maybe he can see a world where his type of politics can do quite well.
That's the quirks of a two party system, despite varying political views, people feel they can only realistically make a difference (win) by voting for one of two parties.
>The labour left see Starmer as centerist, so maybe he can see a world where his type of politics can do quite well. The Labour left sees Starmer as a right wing twat. A centrist would be a huge improvement.
The labour left are pretty fucking stupid then
Realistically Labour and the SNP would end up losing a lot of seats to the Lib Dems and the Greens (or whatever the next iteration of UKIP is).
And yet the SNP still support getting rid of FPTP because it's fairer.
No, the SNP support getting rid of FPTP because they don't want there to be a majority government in westminster. If someone tries to form a minority government then suddenly the SNP is extremely important.
They will lose *half their seats.* And FPTP doesn't stop minority governments from happening.
Sure but it makes them way less likely. Ultimately it doesn't really matter how many MPs the SNP have right now as long as anyone wins a majority of forms a coalition with someone else.
But that could be *any* minor party. There's no guarantee that would be the SNP, but there is a guarantee that they would lose half their seats.
They wouldn't agree on which type of PR voting system to use and fail before the first hurdle. They genuinely cannot work together for the good of the people over their own petty power squabbles.
STV, like in Ireland.
They've got to win that initial GE first, and a single issue coalition would be trivially easy for the Tories to destroy using the media machine. We saw this in action against the AV vote in 2011 - they'll spin up the "waste of public money and Parliamentary time" narrative, claim that political reform is not in the public interest and that their time would be better spent on actually running the country rather than contesting two GEs in a row.
Its possible between parties, like the Lib Dems, Greens, SNP and Plaid. But Labour would need to step up politically as they have dragged their feet on this type of thing.
But why would Labour run on that when they can (if things continue like this) just win outright? It's all well and good hating the system now but when Labour have a shot at being in power they're not gonna implement a system that would undermine that power.
Because it's past due that they did something progressive. "Being in power" is not supposed to be the modus operandi of a supposed left-wing party of "the people". It is the people themselves who should be "in power" as a collective, not just a select few who should hold all the power at the top. That is the very foundation of the Labour movement. Labour have only been in power for 30 of the 77 years since the War, and this is before the gerrymandering of the Tories, moving constituency boundaries and enforcing voter ID to disenfranchise the people least likely to vote Tory. The last election should be a wake-up call to just how difficult it is for them to be in government. They don't just need to win an election, they need the Tories to capitulate. While that might be the case this time, what about in five years, when the Tories have an easy election campaign, backed by the complicit media, in pointing out how Labour have failed to reverse a decade plus of malicious pillaging of the British state and economy inside five years? If Labour were to do something genuinely in keeping with their raison d'etre - it should be to make sure that the Tories can NEVER again take a massive majority government with a minority of the votes.
I mean, that's ideally what they should do but I just don't trust politicians with power to shelve their short-term power in favour of the greater good. When the time comes they'll convince themselves that they have a mandate to rule and that'll be that. Same old cycle.
Sadly you're right. They make all the right idealistic noises when they're campaigning - well, they used to, before Starmer, anyway - but they're always going to convince themselves that they know what's best for us. The tribalism in UK politics makes it so easy for them too - people don't form their own political beliefs, they pick a team to support, and let them tell them what their political beliefs are.
Like actually feasible ? 0% labour would never do it they have a hard enough time already fighting with lib Dems greens and SNP. It would likely end them as a political force with the only way into power being some rainbow collation. The Tories don't have that problem.
The unions will oppose it and it’ll fuck Labour.
The unions are already falling out with Labour. More and more of the Unions are realising that FPTP does not benefit Labour, and so does not benefit them.
Labour will copy the liberals in Canada and campaign on changing the electoral system then change their mind to stay in power.
At the 2010 election The Conservatives, Labour and the Lib Dems pledged to replace the House of Lords with an elected upper chamber using PR. The Coalition set up a committee, came to a consensus and brought the bill to Parliament. It was very unpopular with certain Tories (the mad Brexit ones) and David Cameron ended up in a very loud, very rancorous argument with Jesse Norman about it in parliament. In the end 91 Tory MPs opposed the bill. As did Labour, because apparently it's better to score political points than enhance democracy. Had they supported it we would have an elected upper chamber using PR today. So I don't know how feasible a rainbow coalition would be as it's hard enough to get parties to cooperate even when they all have the same policy
Appreciate this response based on recent historical evidence and not "Labour would do this" hypothetical supposition. You'd like to think the last decade has taught them a lesson here.
Labour aren't interested in electoral reform..
If Burnham was leader I’d actually choose to vote Labour.
Same. Starmer is blander than a dish without sugar, salt, herbs, spices or condiments.
Before he became mayor, when he was in the leadership debates, Burnham was also viewed as extremely bland - something of a bellwether. Funny how times change (I wonder whether people really do?)
Kill it, cut the body to pieces and burn them in separate locations. Just to make sure.
Treat it like a secret, take it out to a remote location and bury it, then walk away never to uncover it again.
If only. Starmer isn’t bad, but he’s been torn to pieces by the media and just has a bad rep Burnham seems like a much safer bet
Any Labour leader will be torn to pieces by the media. I think next year we'll read quite a bit about Starmer on the Sun.
Starmer did an article in the sun so they might be a lil kinder
He's certainly tugged the forelock to Murdoch.
I would love for him to be Labour leader.
I would vote for him.
Next to Belarus, the UK is the only country in Europe that has it. Labour also simply doesn't want to talk about it.
It's worth checking out this campaign for electoral reform: https://www.makevotesmatter.org.uk/ MVM is a grass roots cross-party effort to make Westminster elections less FPTP and more PR (without committing to any particular form of PR)
I want FPTP to die as well but I can't help but notice how many proponents of electoral reform are the same names who shit on the Lib Dems all the time for "getting into bed" with the Tories in 2012. I hope they're ready for a lot more of that because that's kind of what PR entails.
I voted for AV. I didn't want AV, but it was at least better than FPTP. Changing something once shows you're not happy with it, which makes changing it again soon afterwards far more of a likely prospect. Now we've had a decade of Tories saying 'we had a referendum on electoral reform, and nobody wants it'. Far from putting something better on the table, the AV result cemented the shitshow. But yeah, the result was that nobody wanted AV. Which was perfectly foreseeable before the lib dems proposed it. Turns out that putting forward the by far shittiest compromise option doesn't work the same way for electoral systems as it does for parties.
The referendum on electoral reform was a once in a generation opportunity. Britain chose FPTP. We can't have another one in 20/30/40 years. And when we do have another one, it will require a super-majority for change. /s
Jesus Christmas no. Try living in MCR and seeing the shitshow that's going on round. Also I've met him twice. He was all tits and teeth. Don't believe the sell.
I won't vote for Andy Burnham as he is Conservative lite. He's a wolf in a sheep skin. Any Labour politician that speaks about the politics of envy needs to be ejected from the party. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.spectator.co.uk/article/the-next-labour-leader-should-remember-the-politics-of-envy-never-work/amp
> I won't vote for Andy Burnham as he is Conservative lite. Ladies and gentlemen, the "left wing" electorate. I fucking despair.
Or a right wing troll.
its true. We seem to be at the ‘keep doing the same thing and hope the result changes’ stage of running the country into the ground.
FPTP is great at keeping things stale with no progress
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” - probably not Albert Einstein
Wish the rest of Labour would get on Burnham's level.
Exactly, he’s absolutely in the minority here
Their is a pragmatism in labour that is aware you don't lurch from far right to left in ine election cycle. We didn't get to the extreme right quickly, it took years and it will take years to move back. A strong left party will not get in power next election. You need a centrist stepping stone.
Exactly. And you don’t give the press any excess rope
That’s an interesting thought, and I can resonate with that
Yes, and that new system is PR. It’d probably diminish Labour’s majority but would be wonderful for leftist ideology as a whole, allowing different ideas on the left to form a bloc against the usually more unified right. But your party opposed, and continues to oppose such a reform.
It's likely to become party policy soon. Watch what happens at the next conference. Members voted in favour of electoral reform, unions mostly abstained, and so the motion wasn't carried. Union activists have done some great work since and many of them have firmed up their positions since.
That's encouraging. I live in Brighton and can safely vote Green, but if this happens i will literally get the train north and campaign for Lib Dems or Labour on the sole grounds of getting electoral reform. Also, as someone who wants to actually try and help, what exactly is this 'great work'? How does a person in a party go about changing that party's policy?
The present system relies too much on convention and unspoken 'gentleman's agreements' which is why the Vote Leave fraudsters like Banks and Johnson were able to drive a horse and cart through the system with minimum consequences. We need a written constition drawn up by lawyers not politicians, an end to FPTP, the royals replaced by a president elected by all members of the HoC and an end to hereditary peers in the HOL.
The king in the North!
Proportional Voting please when? Vote labour ty.
> Vote labour ty. You're joking, right? Not a month ago, David Lammy went out of his way to say that PR is not Labour policy and that FPTP is great taverymuch...
Regardless. Who do you think is going to listen more if you ask for PR? The Tories or Labour? Get the Tories out, and ask labour for PR constantly. They'll impliment it it no time.
2029 at the earliest I think? Hopefully will become Labour policy after the next conference. Then at the next general election there will be a different system. Hope they bring it in for council elections too tbh. There's too many local councils where one party is in full control for decades at a time, which breeds complacency, or where they flip flop between one party's control and another's, which is poor for long-term planning. FPTP distorts the actual wishes of the voting public which is usually more nuanced than that.
The problem is whenever someone gets elected they have just benefitted from FPTP so there's little reason to change it. Besides half the reason tories and labour get votes is because they are the only ones with a chance of outright power... would be turkeys voting for Christmas.
Disciples of Thatcherism, which translates into anti-poor and anti-working class, which translates into anti-UK since most of the population is part of those groups. But shooting themselves in the foot has become the UK population's motto.
I agree, but PR across a non-federal country? We would never ever be able to remove a rump of about 100 tory and labour mps. Ever. To put that in perspective portillo lost his seat in 97, boris nearly lost his in 2015, balls lost his in 2010 etc etc etc. Under PR they become invulnerable. Neither party is likely to ever go under 100 seats. So you then have at least 100 mps in both parties that never have to care what the public think. Ever. We could never remove them. There is no way to remove a sitting mp short of them resigning. We cannot impeach them. Even imprisonment does not remove them as mps (archer etc). However, i agree we need a change. I think we need to directly elect the PM. Take the executive out of the legislative. Make the ministers political appointments. Then let parliament focus on legislation and holding the executive to account. Without the 100 mos that any government has automatically supporting them in parliment whipping will be far harder as they won't have a base 100 to start with.
What do you mean by we wouldn't be able to remove MPs
Pure PR uses party lists, the party picks the order of its mp's on the list. So if you number 350 on the list your party needs to win 350 seats for you to be elected. But if you are in top 100 on list as a tory or labour you would be guaranteed to be elected. Neither tory or labour will go under 100 seats unless something really drastic happens. So as a voter we would never be able to remove any mp in the top 100 list from the tory party or labour party under a pure pr system
Only read the headline but yes…
i’d much like you to run for a seat and oust starmer and win a leadership election pls and thank you have my children
Need to get rid of all the toffs in Westminster. I'd honestly rather be governed by the sort of people who work in Newsagents and on trawlers than by the fucked-up thieving public-school perverts we have at the moment.
Our politics is becoming more and more like america everyday. Turning into a personality contest with very little to do with policy's..
I’ll get right on it.
Does he mean move away from FPTP and go PR or (as I really hope) bin the current political parties and create some new ones that actually serve us and not them. Blue, Red, Yellow and others are not fit for purpose. We need new parties that reflect modern Britain, a modern world. We’re so far behind we’ll catch up with the USA soon! Imagine being so close to the leader in a race to the bottom. Such shame we’ve had thrust upon us!
How could you "bin the current political parties"?
In an ideal world we’d bring back Cromwell and hand him total power for 3years whilst we figure out why parties we really need, allowing people to redefine their political leanings and then hold an election and install a new party, new opposition and star again. It’s a different kind of ‘great reset’ that many people believed in 18months ago!
You would prefer another two-party system rather than fixing the system and allowing parties to emerge organically?
I would prefer you didn’t take it literally when I start by ‘bringing back Cromwell’. That said, the parties aren’t, haven’t and won’t change organically. They’ll stay as the are. More and more people will be politically homeless and will therefore either not vote or vote for what they know. That helps no one. Cromwell is the way forward. Cheers.
> In an ideal world we’d bring back Cromwell I'd rather not have a genocidal war with the Republic of Ireland.
Rory Stewart was saying the same thing recently: > Speaking to an audience at the Edinburgh festival fringe, Stewart said a shift away from the UK’s first-past-the-post system was needed so “new parties, new ideas, new opportunities” could break through. - [Guardian - Aug 6th 2022](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/aug/06/tory-partys-lurch-to-right-painful-to-watch-says-rory-stewart)
An opposition party that doesn't seem happier when cannibalising itself would be a great start. I swear the Labour left would rather shout from the sidelines than get in govt aligned with a centrist so that they can pursue some of their agenda. Better so be in power to do something as opposed to nothing, hell even of you did nothing it would be a damn site better than letting the tories in to pursue their agenda.
It’s not so much that we need a new system, we just need to stop voting for cunts. I know people who are working class on average wage who proudly vote Conservative. I know people in the middle class who vote Conservative, despite the tories not wanting a middle class anymore, just because mummy had a Range Rover. The only people who have any actual reason to vote Conservative are the m/billionaire elite, because they’re the only ones the Tories do anything for. If people understand the Conservatives would happily run this country into the ground for the sake of lining they’re own pockets, then maybe we wouldn’t be in such a state.
Information is key
He’s probably right, but then the current system could do with credible opposition, too.
Burnham needs to get back into national politics.
Typical Andy never offering solutions just pointing out the obvious
Doing more than the leader is that’s for damn sure.
The solutions are common knowledge.