#5585

dont think the left could replicate this tactic either as they are too moral and wouldn’t try to split the vote if there is risk of a tory government

#5586

Far more than they got/didn’t get under FPTP, yeah.

Overall I think there’s far more positives for PR than negatives but no electoral system is perfect.

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#5587
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#5588

I live in an area that had one of the few UKIP councils. They were so useless they got booted out and were replaced with a straight 50-50 labour-tory split with a couple of greens and lib dems forming the balance of power with Labour.

(They tried to get re-elected as independent candidates, but none of them got a second go- I just looked it up and 33 of them lost their seat)

#5589

An another argument for PR is that it shines a spotlight upon the ineptitude of parties like UKIP by giving them the power that is denied to them under FPTP.

I’m quite receptive to the argument that the need for electoral reform had a hand in the Brexit vote as the current process leaves vast swathes of the population disenfranchised with mainstream politics, disempowerment in the whole political process making people feel their voices are going unheard, and the vote on EU membership gave those vast swathes the opportunity to kick up against a political process that they felt powerless in the face of.

When voters feel disempowered they’re ripe for exploitation.

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#5590

A friend of mine had to deal with local councillors as part of her job, and she was so relieved when they left - most of the UKIP bunch were very inexperienced, didn’t want to learn, and some of them were very strange people who struggled with basic social situations/dealing with people in an appropriate and polite way that made “local politician” a very inadvisable career choice.

In fact one of the UKIP women who was the worst now seems to be a full time troll on the local newspaper fb page- like there’ll be a story about “parade of shops gets repainted” or something and she’ll immediately be in there like “it looks horrible, they’re stupid for wasting the money”. “I don’t like the look of those cakes the brownies baked”. That kind of thing.

Same principle I guess as when they were finding the Red Wall Tory candidates- a real dearth of experienced, appropriate candidates to fill the pool, and a lack of interest in proper vetting too.

#5591

There are some good arguments in favour of first past the post, but in 2015 UKIP and the Greens won around 5m votes combined, and ended up with one seat each. I don’t think it’s healthy for people to be disenfranchised like that in a democracy. Besides, the argument that first past the post limits the success of fringe parties and the far right didn’t look so convincing, when, as a result of that election, David Cameron called a referendum on EU membership and a year later we had voted to leave.

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#5592

I find this video far more amusing than I should

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#5593

Given who the Observer’s sources usually are, it sounds like some people are worried about what the Forde inquiry might say about those in Starmer’s camp.

#5594

Very much this. I remember arguing with my father in law about PR before the EU referendum and he said “If you have PR, you get Farage”. And then we basically got him anyway, only with no way of holding him to account.

The sheer amount of what amounts to disenfranchisement you get with FPTP would be nice to get rid of, too

#5595

This doesn’t sound particularly healthy…

#5596

For all the jabs about how the left lives in a bubble, it seems to be administrative libs on either side of the Atlantic who have the unhealthiest obsession about what a few people on Twitter are saying.

Whatever the case, the hyper-sensitive nature of Kieth’s team doesn’t augur well for when the right wing press decide to cut him loose does it.

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#5597

Unity, by stamping out democracy

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#5598

This thread is a catalogue of outright falsehoods, gaslighting and complete delusion

#5599

This might have been a good position for the PLP to arrive at several years ago…

#5600

wtf, this is completely deranged

#5601

i thought Stephen Bush was meant to be one of the more ‘normal’ journos, has he gone a bit weird or has he always been like this?

#5602

He’s completely lost it since about mid-2019.

All the things that made him stand out as an exception to the other political journalists - engaging in good faith, actually reporting on what’s going on - seem to have been junked almost overnight.

#5603

He is of Jewish descent himself (not sure if he identifies as Jewish, I think he might) and he has been consistently scathing of both a) the Labour Party and b) Jeremy Corbyn in their respective handlings of antisemitism for at least the past 4 years. I didn’t watch that but I don’t imagine what he would have said would be wildly different from anything else he has previously said (including writing sympathetically about Margaret Hodge in particular).

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#5604

There’s no way that he would have said this 18 months ago: