Best Of

Sometimes it takes a post to realise a great truth. Barty is the anti-Doug. Or Doug is the anti-Barty if you prefer. While Barty's libertarianism suggests local govt should be abolished in favour of national, I believe the opposite. If I were arrogant enough to draft a proposal for a well organised society, I'd posit that municipalities should be the primary unit of political organisation, rather than nation-states. I genuinely despise nationalism and would love a political culture rooted in citizenship and civic engagement rather than ethnic or cultural identity. Even so-called "civic nationalists" can't completely escape the taint of at least one of those. Usually both.

I daydream that democracy moves back to the original idea of its classical founders - people would participate directly in face-to-face assemblies at the municipal level to make decisions about local affairs, moving beyond representative democracy toward genuine participatory self-governance. I think representative democracy is cracking up and the only way to save democracy in any meaningful sense is to move back to toward genuine participation. Yeah, theoretically you could do that on a national basis, like a Eurovision vote, endless referenda, but are people really participating, rather than just observing.

Municipalities could form voluntary confederations to coordinate on larger issues while maintaining local autonomy. Economic life would be reorganised around municipal ownership and cooperative enterprises making the local community the fundamental unit of political life while connecting these communities through horizontal networks rather than vertical state structures.

It'll never happen but, hey, it's my ha'penny's worth on how to save the world.

Municipal corporations were a part of the bedrock of Britain's Industrial Revolution.

And in the new millennium, it's notable that outside of the capital (which hoards capital to itself), the strongest growth is in the cities with strongest devolved powers.

Barty's bastardised mashup of centralism and libertarianism has no successful real world analogues.

As a self proclaimed soft Libertarian, although not of the Propertarian bent that Bart seems to espouse I have to say I very much like Doug's idea of bottom up governance. Only those things that cannot be achieved at the lower tier should be elevated to a higher tier.

My only difference is that in this system I still see a place for the Nation State to provide the legal and security framework within which it all happens. That is not something I think can be done effectively or democratically at a Supra national level.

But most decisions being made at a municipal, town or parish level is very much something to be aspired to.

Morning all

This all reminds me of the days of the Alliance and the notion of "realignment". Back then, the SDP members thought the future was the Alliance replacing Labour as the main challenger to the Conservatives and offering a pragmatic, centrist alternative to what was seen as Thatcherite extremism.

The truth was electoral success was coming FROM the Conservatives rather than Labour so others began to wonder if the aim should be to replace the Conservatives as the challengers to Labour's "leftie" extremism.

As we know, internal contradictions, such as on defence, led to the project failing and ending in acrimony and farce.

Reform may desire to end the Conservatives - they many not find it as easy as they believe. The next election is increasingly looking like Reform vs Not Reform (it should be Labour vs Not Labour but that's where high poll numbers gets you) and ironically it might be Nigel Farage who ends up giving Labour a second term. He might actually prefer that if the price is reducing the Conservatives to a meaningless rump.

As I've said before, BOTH the LDs and Conservatives need to think about positioning as the next GE approaches - the LDs cannot afford to be seen to be too close to Labour and, to be fair, Sir Ed is playing that one well while the Conservatives cannot seen to be too close to Reform and, to be fair, Badenoch and Stride are doing their best on that.

The other point to remember is what parties say before an election and what they do after can be and often is very different. You can say you won't do a deal with the LDs two days before an election (as Cameron did) to maximise your vote but you have to game the scenario in which you have to deal with them (the Conservatives did that and did it well, the LDs didn't and paid the price in the negotiations).

Rather curious that at a time like this Zelensky has chosen to visit Ireland.

Where he was welcomed by President Connolly.

Wiki:

"Ideologically left-wing, Connolly describes herself as a socialist and pacifist.[4] A supporter of Irish neutrality, her foreign policy views were described by Politico as "often anti-Western";[5] she is critical of NATO, the European Union's increased military and defence spending and general European militarisation.[6] Connolly has condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine and has also described NATO's attitude toward Russia as "warmongering".

Fat lot of use she is.

You see the Irish have no experience of a neighbour invading and occupying them, if they did they would be more positive to Ukraine.

...

This page of comments is certainly not in line with polling. It goes, to the best of my knowledge: Reform, [Reform? I assume], Tory, Tory, Reform, Tory, [?? I’ve no idea what Sunil votes], Tory, Tory, Reform, Lib Dem, Reform, and now Lib Dem.

Labour, Green, Reform and DNV are probably under-represented on here. Conservative and Lib Dem are over-represented.

I’d guess most here are far less swingy than the average voters.

I would say LDs are over represented on here, Tories and Labour and Green and SNP about average represented based on percentage of posters and their voteshare percentage wise UK wide.

Reform posters though are seriously under represented given Reform now lead the polls

Is any poster on this thread tonight willing to openly say they will vote Reform at the next GE?

I did at the last one. Not sure next time, I quite like Kemi

So with you and LuckyGuy we have potentially half a Reform voter each, so at most rounded up to a single Reform voter the entire thread

Aubrey Allegretti
@breeallegretti


Ed Miliband urges Labour MPs to keep the faith:

“Polls are not a forecast they’re a snapshot. If they were a forecast, I’d be currently celebrating my 10th year as prime minister,” he tells the @NewStatesman Christmas reception.

“I was 15 points ahead of David Cameron… Fatalism and pessimism never lifted a single child out of poverty, created a single job or won a single vote for the Labour Party.”

Miliband quotes a woman he met recently, who said she didn’t like Nigel Farage but still warned him: “If you don’t sort it out you’ll get extremism.”

But Miliband strikes a note of optimism: “Reform are incredibly vulnerable and totally beatable. I am absolutely confident we can beat them.”

https://x.com/breeallegretti/status/1995958479891144782

That woman is absolutely nailed on to vote Reform. That's exactly what you'd say if you were a Reform voter wanting to be polite to David Milliband, but still felt it was important to register some discontentment out of principle. David Milliband the silly man thinks that's a vote in his box.

You've used the American spelling of Ed Miliband.