Yes the economy is key and getting the deficit and inflation down but that doesn't mean you can ignore the culture wars the woke left are raging, which the right needs to fight back on. As Meloni proved last year and Trump proved in 2016 fighting the culture wars on a conservative platform can even lead to victory
Had to laugh at: "...the culture wars the woke left are raging..."
You won't hear anyone on the left talking about the 'culture war'; it is entirely an invention and preoccupation of the right.
I am fairly young. Genuinely these culture issues just do not occur in the real world, we talk about football, cricket and how the Tube is broken again.
We talk about these things too. But it is being waged across campuses the length and breadth of the country.
I do think we will probably get PR under Labour but not because Labour particularly wants it.
We wont get pr under labour for the simple reason is they will have to put it to a referendum and the result of it will be fuck no we dont want that
Nah, no referendum. Just do it.
Voting for our government is our choice not theirs, it is their job interview.....they dont get to tell us how to do the interview. Any party that tries to change the system without a referendum is going to land itself in the shit with voters.
The voting belongs to us not fuckwit politicians
If the Lib Dems demand PR and Labour agree, they should implement it. They'll have a mandate and it will be better for us all.
Then they wont mind if we just implement lamppost protocol
Do you honestly think PR is bad? Really?
PR is different. Under FPTP parties are coalitions. Generally in the U.K. we have majority governments which represent the coalition of the ruling party, and broadly implements manifestos. Under PM parties tend to splinter, and government relies on horse trading after the election. At which point manifestos get ripped up, Pace tuition fees and the Lib Dems. I don’t know which is best. For minor parties FPTP is unfair. UKIP representaed a lot of people but struggled to gain representation in parliament, as does the greens etc. But many would not like the act of a coalition formation either.
For all its faults, FPTP post has tended to deliver stable government in the U.K., which is probably why it’s lasted so long.
Most of the rest of the developed world seems to manage pretty well on PR.
And I am sure we would too, but it would be a fundamental change and one that ought to have majority support. If labour put it in the manifesto and win fine, but they won’t.
And I am sure we would too, but it would be a fundamental change and one that ought to have majority support. If labour put it in the manifesto and win fine, but they won’t.
Quite evidently FPTP isn't working. And so if the public keep voting against it politicians should do what they are elected to which is be intelligent and change it.
We don't need a referendum on it, referendums are a disaster. Just do it.
I do think we will probably get PR under Labour but not because Labour particularly wants it.
We wont get pr under labour for the simple reason is they will have to put it to a referendum and the result of it will be fuck no we dont want that
Nah, no referendum. Just do it.
Voting for our government is our choice not theirs, it is their job interview.....they dont get to tell us how to do the interview. Any party that tries to change the system without a referendum is going to land itself in the shit with voters.
The voting belongs to us not fuckwit politicians
If the Lib Dems demand PR and Labour agree, they should implement it. They'll have a mandate and it will be better for us all.
Then they wont mind if we just implement lamppost protocol
Do you honestly think PR is bad? Really?
PR is different. Under FPTP parties are coalitions. Generally in the U.K. we have majority governments which represent the coalition of the ruling party, and broadly implements manifestos. Under PM parties tend to splinter, and government relies on horse trading after the election. At which point manifestos get ripped up, Pace tuition fees and the Lib Dems. I don’t know which is best. For minor parties FPTP is unfair. UKIP representaed a lot of people but struggled to gain representation in parliament, as does the greens etc. But many would not like the act of a coalition formation either.
For all its faults, FPTP post has tended to deliver stable government in the U.K., which is probably why it’s lasted so long.
Where have you been?
Which bit are you saying is wrong?
FPTP has largely produced poor governments. It persists not because it is good, it persists because it is in the vested interest of the two biggest parties.
I do think we will probably get PR under Labour but not because Labour particularly wants it.
We wont get pr under labour for the simple reason is they will have to put it to a referendum and the result of it will be fuck no we dont want that
Nah, no referendum. Just do it.
Voting for our government is our choice not theirs, it is their job interview.....they dont get to tell us how to do the interview. Any party that tries to change the system without a referendum is going to land itself in the shit with voters.
The voting belongs to us not fuckwit politicians
If the Lib Dems demand PR and Labour agree, they should implement it. They'll have a mandate and it will be better for us all.
No it will be better for the parties and far worse for democracy. We should be reducing the influence and power of the parties not increasing it.
Really? Parties are a social technology through which people come together on complex topics and agree on enough to propose a definite course of action. If they are to weaken we will need to replace them. What might that be?
That is a naive and outdated view of parties. They are a machine for gaining power and forcing MPs to do their bidding through a combination of threats and bribery. There is nothing of value they bring to the democratic process and we should be doing all we can to weaken them, reduce their control over individually elected MPs and make our MPs work for the good of their constituents and the country rather than for the good of their party.
Be careful what you wish for. The Parliament which contained the most MPs who thought that they knew better was the Parliament of 2015-19 which came seriously close to bringing our democracy into disrepute. Most of those paid with their seats in 2019 and deservedly so but effective government needs party discipline and party control. We certainly need a better quality of leadership and to make politics more attractive to people of ability across the spectrum but a Parliament full of egoists is not one that appeals to me.
Brexit will never be able to be resolved in an intelligent way if every time somebody points out something they're called a Rejoiner.
Let's be honest, Brexit isn't working. We could do a lot to resolve it short of rejoining but since the Tories are incapable of doing that despite starting the whole thing, Labour will have to. They must ignore the people calling them rejoiners at all costs, these are the same people that crashed the car in the first place.
The problem you have is that, whilst I agree with a lot of what you say, to many of those advocating changes to 'resolve' Brexit are the same who tried so hard to stop it in the first place before it had even happened. They shoed themselves to be untrsutworthy and dishonest and are now asking to be trusted again.
There ar many ways that the current sitiation could be improved if people had the will to do so. But there are very few politicians out there honest and trustworthy enough to be entrusted with that task.
Yes the economy is key and getting the deficit and inflation down but that doesn't mean you can ignore the culture wars the woke left are raging, which the right needs to fight back on. As Meloni proved last year and Trump proved in 2016 fighting the culture wars on a conservative platform can even lead to victory
Had to laugh at: "...the culture wars the woke left are raging..."
You won't hear anyone on the left talking about the 'culture war'; it is entirely an invention and preoccupation of the right.
Only if you think trashing our heritage, trans in womens bathrooms', restricting conservative speakers etc is a non issue which those on the right don't
I would say many on the left not only think all you mention above are not only non-issues but also entirely acceptable, and indeed welcome, positions to hold. There are many on the left who would quite happily ban parties on the right for being "unacceptable" in a way that none (except on the neo-Nazi fringes) of the right would even dream of doing.
Yes the economy is key and getting the deficit and inflation down but that doesn't mean you can ignore the culture wars the woke left are raging, which the right needs to fight back on. As Meloni proved last year and Trump proved in 2016 fighting the culture wars on a conservative platform can even lead to victory
Had to laugh at: "...the culture wars the woke left are raging..."
You won't hear anyone on the left talking about the 'culture war'; it is entirely an invention and preoccupation of the right.
They don’t talk about, they are just on the ground fighting it. Come to uni and see it in action. Bath isn’t a particularly radical place yet it’s infested with lots of well meaning lefties who agonise about the right way to address someone who is non binary, or trans etc. We’ve recently all been invited to online training ‘how to support trans students’. It’s not bad in itself, just it’s far removed from most peoples lives.
I suspect the left would not consider any of that to be fighting culture wars; conversely they would probably consider the most salient 'culture war' actions to be those the right are doing and starting...
Yes the economy is key and getting the deficit and inflation down but that doesn't mean you can ignore the culture wars the woke left are raging, which the right needs to fight back on. As Meloni proved last year and Trump proved in 2016 fighting the culture wars on a conservative platform can even lead to victory
Had to laugh at: "...the culture wars the woke left are raging..."
You won't hear anyone on the left talking about the 'culture war'; it is entirely an invention and preoccupation of the right.
Only if you think trashing our heritage, trans in womens bathrooms', restricting conservative speakers etc is a non issue which those on the right don't
You prove my point. The right are raging what they refer to as a 'war', no one on the left talks about culture wars.
You are being left behind by the sweep of social progress and you don't like it. 15 years ago you would have been arguing against gay marriage. But society has moved on.
To reiterate, 'the woke left' are not fighting a so-called 'culture war', you are. (And you're losing btw.)
Yes the economy is key and getting the deficit and inflation down but that doesn't mean you can ignore the culture wars the woke left are raging, which the right needs to fight back on. As Meloni proved last year and Trump proved in 2016 fighting the culture wars on a conservative platform can even lead to victory
Had to laugh at: "...the culture wars the woke left are raging..."
You won't hear anyone on the left talking about the 'culture war'; it is entirely an invention and preoccupation of the right.
I am fairly young. Genuinely these culture issues just do not occur in the real world, we talk about football, cricket and how the Tube is broken again.
We talk about these things too. But it is being waged across campuses the length and breadth of the country.
Not by any of my uni friends.
I work at a Uni and I’ve seem things you people could never imagine…
Brexit will never be able to be resolved in an intelligent way if every time somebody points out something they're called a Rejoiner.
Let's be honest, Brexit isn't working. We could do a lot to resolve it short of rejoining but since the Tories are incapable of doing that despite starting the whole thing, Labour will have to. They must ignore the people calling them rejoiners at all costs, these are the same people that crashed the car in the first place.
The problem you have is that, whilst I agree with a lot of what you say, to many of those advocating changes to 'resolve' Brexit are the same who tried so hard to stop it in the first place before it had even happened. They shoed themselves to be untrsutworthy and dishonest and are now asking to be trusted again.
There ar many ways that the current sitiation could be improved if people had the will to do so. But there are very few politicians out there honest and trustworthy enough to be entrusted with that task.
But Richard I disagree.
Starmer is trying to resolve Brexit without rejoining yet whenever he speaks people say he is secretly trying to take us back in. So if that's what he is dealing with, how can you expect anything to change?
Yes the economy is key and getting the deficit and inflation down but that doesn't mean you can ignore the culture wars the woke left are raging, which the right needs to fight back on. As Meloni proved last year and Trump proved in 2016 fighting the culture wars on a conservative platform can even lead to victory
Had to laugh at: "...the culture wars the woke left are raging..."
You won't hear anyone on the left talking about the 'culture war'; it is entirely an invention and preoccupation of the right.
I am fairly young. Genuinely these culture issues just do not occur in the real world, we talk about football, cricket and how the Tube is broken again.
We talk about these things too. But it is being waged across campuses the length and breadth of the country.
Not by any of my uni friends.
I work at a Uni and I’ve seem things you people could never imagine…
And I'm sure I could say the same about here. The point is that these are not issues on the whole to most people in society.
And I am sure we would too, but it would be a fundamental change and one that ought to have majority support. If labour put it in the manifesto and win fine, but they won’t.
Quite evidently FPTP isn't working. And so if the public keep voting against it politicians should do what they are elected to which is be intelligent and change it.
We don't need a referendum on it, referendums are a disaster. Just do it.
Isn’t working in what way? It work for Thatcher, Blair and Cameron.
I do think we will probably get PR under Labour but not because Labour particularly wants it.
We wont get pr under labour for the simple reason is they will have to put it to a referendum and the result of it will be fuck no we dont want that
Nah, no referendum. Just do it.
Voting for our government is our choice not theirs, it is their job interview.....they dont get to tell us how to do the interview. Any party that tries to change the system without a referendum is going to land itself in the shit with voters.
The voting belongs to us not fuckwit politicians
If the Lib Dems demand PR and Labour agree, they should implement it. They'll have a mandate and it will be better for us all.
No it will be better for the parties and far worse for democracy. We should be reducing the influence and power of the parties not increasing it.
Really? Parties are a social technology through which people come together on complex topics and agree on enough to propose a definite course of action. If they are to weaken we will need to replace them. What might that be?
That is a naive and outdated view of parties. They are a machine for gaining power and forcing MPs to do their bidding through a combination of threats and bribery. There is nothing of value they bring to the democratic process and we should be doing all we can to weaken them, reduce their control over individually elected MPs and make our MPs work for the good of their constituents and the country rather than for the good of their party.
Be careful what you wish for. The Parliament which contained the most MPs who thought that they knew better was the Parliament of 2015-19 which came seriously close to bringing our democracy into disrepute. Most of those paid with their seats in 2019 and deservedly so but effective government needs party discipline and party control. We certainly need a better quality of leadership and to make politics more attractive to people of ability across the spectrum but a Parliament full of egoists is not one that appeals to me.
They paid with their seats because the current system does not allow for truely independent MPs. As soon as they were outside the party system they were doomed. That is one of the things that has to change.
Also worth noting that one of the reasons so many of those MPs were held in contempt by their electorate was because they broke their promises. Sarah Wollaston and Anna Soubry are classic examples of that. Lying to get yourself re-elected is not a good look.
I do think we will probably get PR under Labour but not because Labour particularly wants it.
We wont get pr under labour for the simple reason is they will have to put it to a referendum and the result of it will be fuck no we dont want that
Nah, no referendum. Just do it.
Voting for our government is our choice not theirs, it is their job interview.....they dont get to tell us how to do the interview. Any party that tries to change the system without a referendum is going to land itself in the shit with voters.
The voting belongs to us not fuckwit politicians
If the Lib Dems demand PR and Labour agree, they should implement it. They'll have a mandate and it will be better for us all.
Then they wont mind if we just implement lamppost protocol
Do you honestly think PR is bad? Really?
PR is different. Under FPTP parties are coalitions. Generally in the U.K. we have majority governments which represent the coalition of the ruling party, and broadly implements manifestos. Under PM parties tend to splinter, and government relies on horse trading after the election. At which point manifestos get ripped up, Pace tuition fees and the Lib Dems. I don’t know which is best. For minor parties FPTP is unfair. UKIP representaed a lot of people but struggled to gain representation in parliament, as does the greens etc. But many would not like the act of a coalition formation either.
For all its faults, FPTP post has tended to deliver stable government in the U.K., which is probably why it’s lasted so long.
Where have you been?
Which bit are you saying is wrong?
FPTP has largely produced poor governments. It persists not because it is good, it persists because it is in the vested interest of the two biggest parties.
It produces stable governments, not necessarily good ones. It allows parties time to try to change the country. It’s not necessarily to best form of government. I’m not sure PR is either.
And I am sure we would too, but it would be a fundamental change and one that ought to have majority support. If labour put it in the manifesto and win fine, but they won’t.
Quite evidently FPTP isn't working. And so if the public keep voting against it politicians should do what they are elected to which is be intelligent and change it.
We don't need a referendum on it, referendums are a disaster. Just do it.
Ah right if the people disagree do it anyway because politicians know better....you know its politicians that got us in the shit we are in? You know what you want politicians to do shit that people wont vote for thats called a dictatorship
It produces stable governments, not necessarily good ones. It allows parties time to try to change the country. It’s not necessarily to best form of government. I’m not sure PR is either.
ROFL, we've had literally no stability at all since 2015.
And I am sure we would too, but it would be a fundamental change and one that ought to have majority support. If labour put it in the manifesto and win fine, but they won’t.
Quite evidently FPTP isn't working. And so if the public keep voting against it politicians should do what they are elected to which is be intelligent and change it.
We don't need a referendum on it, referendums are a disaster. Just do it.
Ah right if the people disagree do it anyway because politicians know better....you know its politicians that got us in the shit we are in? You know what you want politicians to do shit that people wont vote for thats called a dictatorship
The people voted for Brexit. I think that was moronic myself but we are where we are now.
No that doesn't mean rejoining before you accuse me of that too.
Brexit will never be able to be resolved in an intelligent way if every time somebody points out something they're called a Rejoiner.
Let's be honest, Brexit isn't working. We could do a lot to resolve it short of rejoining but since the Tories are incapable of doing that despite starting the whole thing, Labour will have to. They must ignore the people calling them rejoiners at all costs, these are the same people that crashed the car in the first place.
The problem you have is that, whilst I agree with a lot of what you say, to many of those advocating changes to 'resolve' Brexit are the same who tried so hard to stop it in the first place before it had even happened. They shoed themselves to be untrsutworthy and dishonest and are now asking to be trusted again.
There ar many ways that the current sitiation could be improved if people had the will to do so. But there are very few politicians out there honest and trustworthy enough to be entrusted with that task.
But Richard I disagree.
Starmer is trying to resolve Brexit without rejoining yet whenever he speaks people say he is secretly trying to take us back in. So if that's what he is dealing with, how can you expect anything to change?
I reserve judgement on Starmer. Bear in mind I view ALL politicians ans being fundementally dishonest inthe cause of getting elected so wouldbe very pleasantly surprised if Starer proved to be a rare exception.
I do think we will probably get PR under Labour but not because Labour particularly wants it.
We wont get pr under labour for the simple reason is they will have to put it to a referendum and the result of it will be fuck no we dont want that
Nah, no referendum. Just do it.
Voting for our government is our choice not theirs, it is their job interview.....they dont get to tell us how to do the interview. Any party that tries to change the system without a referendum is going to land itself in the shit with voters.
The voting belongs to us not fuckwit politicians
If the Lib Dems demand PR and Labour agree, they should implement it. They'll have a mandate and it will be better for us all.
Then they wont mind if we just implement lamppost protocol
Do you honestly think PR is bad? Really?
PR is different. Under FPTP parties are coalitions. Generally in the U.K. we have majority governments which represent the coalition of the ruling party, and broadly implements manifestos. Under PM parties tend to splinter, and government relies on horse trading after the election. At which point manifestos get ripped up, Pace tuition fees and the Lib Dems. I don’t know which is best. For minor parties FPTP is unfair. UKIP representaed a lot of people but struggled to gain representation in parliament, as does the greens etc. But many would not like the act of a coalition formation either.
For all its faults, FPTP post has tended to deliver stable government in the U.K., which is probably why it’s lasted so long.
Where have you been?
Which bit are you saying is wrong?
FPTP has largely produced poor governments. It persists not because it is good, it persists because it is in the vested interest of the two biggest parties.
PR of course produced a government led by one Adolf Hitler in 1930s Germany. Not sure we have ever had as dangerous a government as that!
Yes the economy is key and getting the deficit and inflation down but that doesn't mean you can ignore the culture wars the woke left are raging, which the right needs to fight back on. As Meloni proved last year and Trump proved in 2016 fighting the culture wars on a conservative platform can even lead to victory
Had to laugh at: "...the culture wars the woke left are raging..."
You won't hear anyone on the left talking about the 'culture war'; it is entirely an invention and preoccupation of the right.
If anyone talks about a "war" on something it means they have lost before.they have even started. See also "war on drugs".
So there's a whole bunch of things that a reactionary segment of society can't cope with, but are somewhat mainstream, like net zero, gender neutral toilets, including slavery in historical reviews and bundle them up into a culture war.
The other interesting stat I heard is that in the 90s, British equities were 85% in British ownership.
That’s now just a third.
Britain is becoming a branch economy, just as British regions are themselves feeble economic puppets of London.
That's just one more baleful consequence of the rotten property market. Piles of bricks are an almost guaranteed safe investment, offering stratospheric growth - thus, people are disincentivised from investing in anything else. This, in turn, makes homes to live in so stupidly expensive that younger generations have no choice but to bet the farm on property - if they can afford it - because the alternative is to be an impoverished rent serf for a succession of rapacious landlords until you die.
If you're a mortgage-free homeowner in this country you have reached the Promised Land.
Strange as it may seem, the rate of growth in house prices has significantly moderated since 2007. The government has effectively killed off the buy to let market, which contributed to that.
I can't help thinking that interest rates ought to have been raised from near zero a long time ago.
That observation about price growth trends is not entirely without merit, albeit that wages have performed so badly since the GFC that average prices as a multiple of average earnings have continued to accelerate into the stratosphere. @Kinabalu predicts that this trend will go into reverse, but I can't see how given that the cumulative effects of mass migration, renewed wage suppression as inflationary pressures ease, and lack of new building seem liable only to shore up prices.
@Ally_B1 has been woefully unfortunate in seeing the price of their residential property actually decline since 2007, and they're by no means alone: think of all the owners of flats who've been put through the wringer by the cladding disaster. Nonetheless, this won't be the case for the large majority of owner-occupiers, especially those in freehold houses. That's of absolutely no comfort to them, but most homeowners who've been in situ for any length of time are both sat on paper profits far in excess of anything they would've earned putting money in, say, a stock and share ISA invested in a FTSE100 tracker fund, and they're either at or working towards the point where their housing costs collapse to nothing, save for the price of repairs/service charges and insurance. In an economy that's so dominated by property investment and ownership, that's a very advantageous position in which to find oneself.
Going forward, there's no reason to suppose that property won't continue to be the best investment that anyone, save perhaps for the very rich, can possibly make in Britain. If a future Government is going to attempt to reduce the reliance of the economy on piles of bricks and free up more capital for productive investment, it's going to take a long time and require a lot of determined pushing back against powerful vested interests.
My mother (and her generation) bought houses on the basis of
- no accommodation costs when you retire - paying your own mortgage has to be better than paying someone else's. - When you sold, if you were lucky and timed it right, you would get your money back.
The one-way-bet thing is still strange to me - my first flat had the same price in 1997 (when I bought) that it had 10 years earlier. No, not inflation adjusted. Same number of pounds.
Re the 1997 vs 1987 comparison, 1987 was pretty much the peak of the 80s housing boom and then we had the collapse in prices as interest rates skyrocketed.
If you'd like a later example, I bought a flat in Reading in 2001, and sold it for a slight loss in 2013. (OTOH I see the person who bought it from me then sold it on again in 2015 for a 58% profit...)
I reserve judgement on Starmer. Bear in mind I view ALL politicians ans being fundementally dishonest inthe cause of getting elected so wouldbe very pleasantly surprised if Starer proved to be a rare exception.
That's fine. I think most people do too.
But people who cannot accept he has so far done a good job will be defeated by him.
Brexit will never be able to be resolved in an intelligent way if every time somebody points out something they're called a Rejoiner.
Let's be honest, Brexit isn't working. We could do a lot to resolve it short of rejoining but since the Tories are incapable of doing that despite starting the whole thing, Labour will have to. They must ignore the people calling them rejoiners at all costs, these are the same people that crashed the car in the first place.
The problem you have is that, whilst I agree with a lot of what you say, to many of those advocating changes to 'resolve' Brexit are the same who tried so hard to stop it in the first place before it had even happened. They shoed themselves to be untrsutworthy and dishonest and are now asking to be trusted again.
There ar many ways that the current sitiation could be improved if people had the will to do so. But there are very few politicians out there honest and trustworthy enough to be entrusted with that task.
But Richard I disagree.
Starmer is trying to resolve Brexit without rejoining yet whenever he speaks people say he is secretly trying to take us back in. So if that's what he is dealing with, how can you expect anything to change?
An issue with Starmer is that he has lied used tactics to change the Labour Party. So people see his actions over trying to overturn Brexit before 2020 and think he’s lying using tactics now.
Brexit will never be able to be resolved in an intelligent way if every time somebody points out something they're called a Rejoiner.
Let's be honest, Brexit isn't working. We could do a lot to resolve it short of rejoining but since the Tories are incapable of doing that despite starting the whole thing, Labour will have to. They must ignore the people calling them rejoiners at all costs, these are the same people that crashed the car in the first place.
The problem you have is that, whilst I agree with a lot of what you say, to many of those advocating changes to 'resolve' Brexit are the same who tried so hard to stop it in the first place before it had even happened. They shoed themselves to be untrsutworthy and dishonest and are now asking to be trusted again.
There ar many ways that the current sitiation could be improved if people had the will to do so. But there are very few politicians out there honest and trustworthy enough to be entrusted with that task.
But Richard I disagree.
Starmer is trying to resolve Brexit without rejoining yet whenever he speaks people say he is secretly trying to take us back in. So if that's what he is dealing with, how can you expect anything to change?
I reserve judgement on Starmer. Bear in mind I view ALL politicians ans being fundementally dishonest inthe cause of getting elected so wouldbe very pleasantly surprised if Starer proved to be a rare exception.
Yes the economy is key and getting the deficit and inflation down but that doesn't mean you can ignore the culture wars the woke left are raging, which the right needs to fight back on. As Meloni proved last year and Trump proved in 2016 fighting the culture wars on a conservative platform can even lead to victory
Had to laugh at: "...the culture wars the woke left are raging..."
You won't hear anyone on the left talking about the 'culture war'; it is entirely an invention and preoccupation of the right.
Only if you think trashing our heritage, trans in womens bathrooms', restricting conservative speakers etc is a non issue which those on the right don't
You prove my point. The right are raging what they refer to as a 'war', no one on the left talks about culture wars.
You are being left behind by the sweep of social progress and you don't like it. 15 years ago you would have been arguing against gay marriage. But society has moved on.
To reiterate, 'the woke left' are not fighting a so-called 'culture war', you are. (And you're losing btw.)
What you call 'social progress' is what those on the right call the undermining of our culture and nation and its heritage and the traditional family or indeed now notions of traditional gender. Hence we now have a birthrate well below replacement level and are reliant on ever increasing levels of immigration.
Now I have nothing against homosexual marriage in civil law or immigration where it brings needed skills but the balance has gone too far for many. Sometimes power for its own sake is worthless and it is better to be in opposition where you are at least true to your principles and values
It produces stable governments, not necessarily good ones. It allows parties time to try to change the country. It’s not necessarily to best form of government. I’m not sure PR is either.
ROFL, we've had literally no stability at all since 2015.
But what of 1979 to 1997. And 1997 to 2010? And in fact the governments haven’t fallen between 2015 and now 2017 and 2019 were elections by choice.
I think going through the Independents and Others counting genuine nationalists and unionists would be a Labour of love - but you can certainly add the sliver of Aontu votss to the nationalist vote share and maybe try and dig out any PUP types. And PbPs nationalism is somewhat moot.
And I am sure we would too, but it would be a fundamental change and one that ought to have majority support. If labour put it in the manifesto and win fine, but they won’t.
Quite evidently FPTP isn't working. And so if the public keep voting against it politicians should do what they are elected to which is be intelligent and change it.
We don't need a referendum on it, referendums are a disaster. Just do it.
Ah right if the people disagree do it anyway because politicians know better....you know its politicians that got us in the shit we are in? You know what you want politicians to do shit that people wont vote for thats called a dictatorship
The people voted for Brexit. I think that was moronic myself but we are where we are now.
No that doesn't mean rejoining before you accuse me of that too.
I didnt accuse you of wanting to rejoin without people agreeing to it and never have
but imposing pr on people without their say so is also egregious. If the electorate dont want pr that should be their choice same as if they want pr.
Politicians should not get to choose how they are elected they are meant to represent us....changing how we choose them should be our choice not theirs
Yes the economy is key and getting the deficit and inflation down but that doesn't mean you can ignore the culture wars the woke left are raging, which the right needs to fight back on. As Meloni proved last year and Trump proved in 2016 fighting the culture wars on a conservative platform can even lead to victory
Had to laugh at: "...the culture wars the woke left are raging..."
You won't hear anyone on the left talking about the 'culture war'; it is entirely an invention and preoccupation of the right.
I am fairly young. Genuinely these culture issues just do not occur in the real world, we talk about football, cricket and how the Tube is broken again.
We talk about these things too. But it is being waged across campuses the length and breadth of the country.
'Culture wars' have been raging on university campuses for as long as I can remember, albeit under different guises. Here, in the USA, and in much of Western Europe, universities were hotbeds of political activism and vitriolic disagreements back in the 1960s and 1970s - including over feminism, black rights, gay rights and various other themes. It's nothing new.
In fact, I'm pretty confident that the proportion of students actively involved in such 'wars' is much lower now than it was 50 years ago. Now, most students are passive observers, preferring a life of consumption rather than activism.
I do think we will probably get PR under Labour but not because Labour particularly wants it.
We wont get pr under labour for the simple reason is they will have to put it to a referendum and the result of it will be fuck no we dont want that
Nah, no referendum. Just do it.
Voting for our government is our choice not theirs, it is their job interview.....they dont get to tell us how to do the interview. Any party that tries to change the system without a referendum is going to land itself in the shit with voters.
The voting belongs to us not fuckwit politicians
If the Lib Dems demand PR and Labour agree, they should implement it. They'll have a mandate and it will be better for us all.
No it will be better for the parties and far worse for democracy. We should be reducing the influence and power of the parties not increasing it.
Really? Parties are a social technology through which people come together on complex topics and agree on enough to propose a definite course of action. If they are to weaken we will need to replace them. What might that be?
That is a naive and outdated view of parties. They are a machine for gaining power and forcing MPs to do their bidding through a combination of threats and bribery. There is nothing of value they bring to the democratic process and we should be doing all we can to weaken them, reduce their control over individually elected MPs and make our MPs work for the good of their constituents and the country rather than for the good of their party.
Reading in between the lines, I’m getting that you’re not a fan of parties. I guess you prefer personality politics. Would Macron be an example of what good looks like?
Not at all. You are right that I hate parties but am no fan of what you term personality politics either. My long held and long advocated view is that parties can exist but should be detoothed. Make all votes in Parliament free votes. Make whipping, as we understand it, illegal - certainly 2 and 3 line whips. Make it a crime for a party to either bribe or threaten an MP just as it is for anyone outside Parliament to do so. All votes should be won on force of argument not by whipping.
Yes the economy is key and getting the deficit and inflation down but that doesn't mean you can ignore the culture wars the woke left are raging, which the right needs to fight back on. As Meloni proved last year and Trump proved in 2016 fighting the culture wars on a conservative platform can even lead to victory
Had to laugh at: "...the culture wars the woke left are raging..."
You won't hear anyone on the left talking about the 'culture war'; it is entirely an invention and preoccupation of the right.
If anyone talks about a "war" on something it means they have lost before.they have even started. See also "war on drugs".
So there's a whole bunch of things that a reactionary segment of society can't cope with, but are somewhat mainstream, like net zero, gender neutral toilets, including slavery in historical reviews and bundle them up into a culture war.
...and then claim the 'woke left' is raging that war 🤣
And I am sure we would too, but it would be a fundamental change and one that ought to have majority support. If labour put it in the manifesto and win fine, but they won’t.
Quite evidently FPTP isn't working. And so if the public keep voting against it politicians should do what they are elected to which is be intelligent and change it.
We don't need a referendum on it, referendums are a disaster. Just do it.
Ah right if the people disagree do it anyway because politicians know better....you know its politicians that got us in the shit we are in? You know what you want politicians to do shit that people wont vote for thats called a dictatorship
The people voted for Brexit. I think that was moronic myself but we are where we are now.
No that doesn't mean rejoining before you accuse me of that too.
I didnt accuse you of wanting to rejoin without people agreeing to it and never have
but imposing pr on people without their say so is also egregious. If the electorate dont want pr that should be their choice same as if they want pr.
Politicians should not get to choose how they are elected they are meant to represent us....changing how we choose them should be our choice not theirs
Brexit will never be able to be resolved in an intelligent way if every time somebody points out something they're called a Rejoiner.
Let's be honest, Brexit isn't working. We could do a lot to resolve it short of rejoining but since the Tories are incapable of doing that despite starting the whole thing, Labour will have to. They must ignore the people calling them rejoiners at all costs, these are the same people that crashed the car in the first place.
The problem you have is that, whilst I agree with a lot of what you say, to many of those advocating changes to 'resolve' Brexit are the same who tried so hard to stop it in the first place before it had even happened. They shoed themselves to be untrsutworthy and dishonest and are now asking to be trusted again.
There ar many ways that the current sitiation could be improved if people had the will to do so. But there are very few politicians out there honest and trustworthy enough to be entrusted with that task.
£397bn of service exports in 2022, an increase of 20% compared to 2021, and up 23% on exports in 2018. These comparators are obviously flattered by Covid but even so. The forecasts that the UK was going to be the bottom performer of the G7 are wrong. Our growth this year, whilst far from exciting, is going to be ahead of the Eurozone.
The relentless negativity of those who want to refight the battles of some years ago now are distorting where we are and where we are going. The west as a whole are suffering from an energy shock on the back of Ukraine and we are very far from immune from that but we need as a country to focus on what we need to do now to grow quickly, improve our tax base, improve our balance of payments from the disastrous years in the SM (our own fault, not the SM's) and give better chances to our children.
I do think we will probably get PR under Labour but not because Labour particularly wants it.
We wont get pr under labour for the simple reason is they will have to put it to a referendum and the result of it will be fuck no we dont want that
Nah, no referendum. Just do it.
Voting for our government is our choice not theirs, it is their job interview.....they dont get to tell us how to do the interview. Any party that tries to change the system without a referendum is going to land itself in the shit with voters.
The voting belongs to us not fuckwit politicians
If the Lib Dems demand PR and Labour agree, they should implement it. They'll have a mandate and it will be better for us all.
No it will be better for the parties and far worse for democracy. We should be reducing the influence and power of the parties not increasing it.
Really? Parties are a social technology through which people come together on complex topics and agree on enough to propose a definite course of action. If they are to weaken we will need to replace them. What might that be?
That is a naive and outdated view of parties. They are a machine for gaining power and forcing MPs to do their bidding through a combination of threats and bribery. There is nothing of value they bring to the democratic process and we should be doing all we can to weaken them, reduce their control over individually elected MPs and make our MPs work for the good of their constituents and the country rather than for the good of their party.
Reading in between the lines, I’m getting that you’re not a fan of parties. I guess you prefer personality politics. Would Macron be an example of what good looks like?
Not at all. You are right that I hate parties but am no fan of what you term personality politics either. My long held and long advocated view is that parteis can exist but should be detoothed. Make all votes in Parliament free votes. Make whipping, as we understand it, illegal - certainly 2 and 3 line whips. Make it a crime for a party to either bribe or threaten an MP just as it is for anyone outside Parliament to do so. All votes should be won on force of argument not by whipping.
I would suspect you agreed with my proposal of an elected executive and a sortioned commons for those reasons
I do think we will probably get PR under Labour but not because Labour particularly wants it.
We wont get pr under labour for the simple reason is they will have to put it to a referendum and the result of it will be fuck no we dont want that
Nah, no referendum. Just do it.
Voting for our government is our choice not theirs, it is their job interview.....they dont get to tell us how to do the interview. Any party that tries to change the system without a referendum is going to land itself in the shit with voters.
The voting belongs to us not fuckwit politicians
If the Lib Dems demand PR and Labour agree, they should implement it. They'll have a mandate and it will be better for us all.
No it will be better for the parties and far worse for democracy. We should be reducing the influence and power of the parties not increasing it.
Really? Parties are a social technology through which people come together on complex topics and agree on enough to propose a definite course of action. If they are to weaken we will need to replace them. What might that be?
That is a naive and outdated view of parties. They are a machine for gaining power and forcing MPs to do their bidding through a combination of threats and bribery. There is nothing of value they bring to the democratic process and we should be doing all we can to weaken them, reduce their control over individually elected MPs and make our MPs work for the good of their constituents and the country rather than for the good of their party.
Reading in between the lines, I’m getting that you’re not a fan of parties. I guess you prefer personality politics. Would Macron be an example of what good looks like?
Not at all. You are right that I hate parties but am no fan of what you term personality politics either. My long held and long advocated view is that parteis can exist but should be detoothed. Make all votes in Parliament free votes. Make whipping, as we understand it, illegal - certainly 2 and 3 line whips. Make it a crime for a party to either bribe or threaten an MP just as it is for anyone outside Parliament to do so. All votes should be won on force of argument not by whipping.
Quite right. Liz Truss wouldn't have got as far as she did without whipping.
I do think we will probably get PR under Labour but not because Labour particularly wants it.
We wont get pr under labour for the simple reason is they will have to put it to a referendum and the result of it will be fuck no we dont want that
Nah, no referendum. Just do it.
Voting for our government is our choice not theirs, it is their job interview.....they dont get to tell us how to do the interview. Any party that tries to change the system without a referendum is going to land itself in the shit with voters.
The voting belongs to us not fuckwit politicians
If the Lib Dems demand PR and Labour agree, they should implement it. They'll have a mandate and it will be better for us all.
Then they wont mind if we just implement lamppost protocol
Do you honestly think PR is bad? Really?
PR is different. Under FPTP parties are coalitions. Generally in the U.K. we have majority governments which represent the coalition of the ruling party, and broadly implements manifestos. Under PM parties tend to splinter, and government relies on horse trading after the election. At which point manifestos get ripped up, Pace tuition fees and the Lib Dems. I don’t know which is best. For minor parties FPTP is unfair. UKIP representaed a lot of people but struggled to gain representation in parliament, as does the greens etc. But many would not like the act of a coalition formation either.
For all its faults, FPTP post has tended to deliver stable government in the U.K., which is probably why it’s lasted so long.
Where have you been?
Which bit are you saying is wrong?
FPTP has largely produced poor governments. It persists not because it is good, it persists because it is in the vested interest of the two biggest parties.
It produces stable governments, not necessarily good ones. It allows parties time to try to change the country. It’s not necessarily to best form of government. I’m not sure PR is either.
You’re wrong. In the 100 years it produced stable government in the 40s, 50s, 80s and 2000s. The rest was not hugely stable. The last 13 years have been dismal from that point of view. You might also question the quality of the so called stable governments.
I do think we will probably get PR under Labour but not because Labour particularly wants it.
We wont get pr under labour for the simple reason is they will have to put it to a referendum and the result of it will be fuck no we dont want that
Nah, no referendum. Just do it.
Voting for our government is our choice not theirs, it is their job interview.....they dont get to tell us how to do the interview. Any party that tries to change the system without a referendum is going to land itself in the shit with voters.
The voting belongs to us not fuckwit politicians
If the Lib Dems demand PR and Labour agree, they should implement it. They'll have a mandate and it will be better for us all.
No it will be better for the parties and far worse for democracy. We should be reducing the influence and power of the parties not increasing it.
Really? Parties are a social technology through which people come together on complex topics and agree on enough to propose a definite course of action. If they are to weaken we will need to replace them. What might that be?
That is a naive and outdated view of parties. They are a machine for gaining power and forcing MPs to do their bidding through a combination of threats and bribery. There is nothing of value they bring to the democratic process and we should be doing all we can to weaken them, reduce their control over individually elected MPs and make our MPs work for the good of their constituents and the country rather than for the good of their party.
Reading in between the lines, I’m getting that you’re not a fan of parties. I guess you prefer personality politics. Would Macron be an example of what good looks like?
Not at all. You are right that I hate parties but am no fan of what you term personality politics either. My long held and long advocated view is that parteis can exist but should be detoothed. Make all votes in Parliament free votes. Make whipping, as we understand it, illegal - certainly 2 and 3 line whips. Make it a crime for a party to either bribe or threaten an MP just as it is for anyone outside Parliament to do so. All votes should be won on force of argument not by whipping.
Quite right. Liz Truss wouldn't have got as far as she did without whipping.
Yes the economy is key and getting the deficit and inflation down but that doesn't mean you can ignore the culture wars the woke left are raging, which the right needs to fight back on. As Meloni proved last year and Trump proved in 2016 fighting the culture wars on a conservative platform can even lead to victory
Had to laugh at: "...the culture wars the woke left are raging..."
You won't hear anyone on the left talking about the 'culture war'; it is entirely an invention and preoccupation of the right.
Only if you think trashing our heritage, trans in womens bathrooms', restricting conservative speakers etc is a non issue which those on the right don't
You prove my point. The right are raging what they refer to as a 'war', no one on the left talks about culture wars.
You are being left behind by the sweep of social progress and you don't like it. 15 years ago you would have been arguing against gay marriage. But society has moved on.
To reiterate, 'the woke left' are not fighting a so-called 'culture war', you are. (And you're losing btw.)
Depends on what you mean by "woke left". Here in Scotland we have the SNP and Greens who are certainly proactively woke, are not averse to waging a culture war as Joanne Cherry and JK Rowling have discovered, and that is most definitely having a political impact. I suspect it won't end well.
And I am sure we would too, but it would be a fundamental change and one that ought to have majority support. If labour put it in the manifesto and win fine, but they won’t.
Quite evidently FPTP isn't working. And so if the public keep voting against it politicians should do what they are elected to which is be intelligent and change it.
We don't need a referendum on it, referendums are a disaster. Just do it.
Ah right if the people disagree do it anyway because politicians know better....you know its politicians that got us in the shit we are in? You know what you want politicians to do shit that people wont vote for thats called a dictatorship
The people voted for Brexit. I think that was moronic myself but we are where we are now.
No that doesn't mean rejoining before you accuse me of that too.
I didnt accuse you of wanting to rejoin without people agreeing to it and never have
but imposing pr on people without their say so is also egregious. If the electorate dont want pr that should be their choice same as if they want pr.
Politicians should not get to choose how they are elected they are meant to represent us....changing how we choose them should be our choice not theirs
How do you think FPTP came about? A referendum?
Not claiming that at all, it came about in an era long gone. But it is what we have currently. I just don't now agree that we should change the system without the agreement of the electorate.
Personally I want to rip up our democracy and implement a completely different system but again while I think it better I would not claim we should implement it without consent of the electorate
Brexit will never be able to be resolved in an intelligent way if every time somebody points out something they're called a Rejoiner.
Let's be honest, Brexit isn't working. We could do a lot to resolve it short of rejoining but since the Tories are incapable of doing that despite starting the whole thing, Labour will have to. They must ignore the people calling them rejoiners at all costs, these are the same people that crashed the car in the first place.
The problem you have is that, whilst I agree with a lot of what you say, to many of those advocating changes to 'resolve' Brexit are the same who tried so hard to stop it in the first place before it had even happened. They shoed themselves to be untrsutworthy and dishonest and are now asking to be trusted again.
There ar many ways that the current sitiation could be improved if people had the will to do so. But there are very few politicians out there honest and trustworthy enough to be entrusted with that task.
£397bn of service exports in 2022, an increase of 20% compared to 2021, and up 23% on exports in 2018. These comparators are obviously flattered by Covid but even so. The forecasts that the UK was going to be the bottom performer of the G7 are wrong. Our growth this year, whilst far from exciting, is going to be ahead of the Eurozone.
The relentless negativity of those who want to refight the battles of some years ago now are distorting where we are and where we are going. The west as a whole are suffering from an energy shock on the back of Ukraine and we are very far from immune from that but we need as a country to focus on what we need to do now to grow quickly, improve our tax base, improve our balance of payments from the disastrous years in the SM (our own fault, not the SM's) and give better chances to our children.
So I guess you're in 9% of the population that thinks Brexit has been a success?
A third thing I learned on Twitter this morning (via Nick Timothy) is that 22% of study visas went to dependants, compared to 6% in 2019.
You can see what the government is *trying* to do about economic growth.
I cannot fathom it. I suspect it's to get more medical staff into the NHS quick-ish but it's one hell of a brave way to do it.
44% of the dependent visas are going to Indian nationals and 30% to Nigerian nationals. And it's expected to have gone from c.16k to 150k in the last year. That's on top of Indians being the biggest in boat crossings last month.
It's clear to me that student visas, as well as boat crossings, are simply a way to circumvent work permits to economically migrate - and the combined population of India and Nigeria is nearly 1.7 billion, so there will be no end to it.
To me, this is a greater “loss of control” than even the volumes we saw under FOM (against which, successive governments made no effective mitigation).
I can't think of a better way to kill off Brexit than pursuing this policy.
I think this country’s centre right politicians are the most useless set of centre-right politicians anywhere in the democratic world. They are incapable of achieving anything they claim to want.
Like @Richard Tyndall, I sometimes wish the Conservative Party would just disappear. But, I doubt if a replacement would be any better.
It's astonishing how our Conservative Party seems to lack any confidence and conviction and, yet, the Republican Party, for all their faults, possess neither of these problems.
I am sure if Kemi, Suella or Jacob win the next Conservative leadership election after a Rishi and Jeremy H general election loss, the Conservatives will swiftly find their rightwing mojo again and be ready to fight the culture war as hard as Trump and DeSantis' GOP now are
God help us all. The best we can hope for is that, as a far more secular society than the United States, we prove more immune to the slide into Christian Fascism.
Not if Jacob wins, he is an even more reactionary socially conservative Christian than Trump and even more strict Roman Catholic than DeSantis
But fortunately there are far fewer religious loons about to flock to such a banner, so it should make it that much harder for such an individual to get their hands on real power.
JRM is not the man, he’s such a twit.
But, a more plausible figure, say a Conservative version of Kate F
Brexit will never be able to be resolved in an intelligent way if every time somebody points out something they're called a Rejoiner.
Let's be honest, Brexit isn't working. We could do a lot to resolve it short of rejoining but since the Tories are incapable of doing that despite starting the whole thing, Labour will have to. They must ignore the people calling them rejoiners at all costs, these are the same people that crashed the car in the first place.
The problem you have is that, whilst I agree with a lot of what you say, to many of those advocating changes to 'resolve' Brexit are the same who tried so hard to stop it in the first place before it had even happened. They shoed themselves to be untrsutworthy and dishonest and are now asking to be trusted again.
There ar many ways that the current sitiation could be improved if people had the will to do so. But there are very few politicians out there honest and trustworthy enough to be entrusted with that task.
£397bn of service exports in 2022, an increase of 20% compared to 2021, and up 23% on exports in 2018. These comparators are obviously flattered by Covid but even so. The forecasts that the UK was going to be the bottom performer of the G7 are wrong. Our growth this year, whilst far from exciting, is going to be ahead of the Eurozone.
The relentless negativity of those who want to refight the battles of some years ago now are distorting where we are and where we are going. The west as a whole are suffering from an energy shock on the back of Ukraine and we are very far from immune from that but we need as a country to focus on what we need to do now to grow quickly, improve our tax base, improve our balance of payments from the disastrous years in the SM (our own fault, not the SM's) and give better chances to our children.
The ONS has found Investment since 2020 to be much stronger than originally estimated.
I would give Biden a pass on this. Strictly speaking the Quad was set up under Trump but it didn't do anything much. Biden has energised it, holding summit meetings, agreeing substantive policies and so on, largely driven by him
Braverman must have something on Sunak given she seems to think she’s unsackable.
I’m surprised though that she hasn’t done the martyr routine and resigned in protest at the cabinets stance on immigration .
That way she can position herself as the darling of the right and hope to become leader when Sunak loses the GE.
I think you are absolutely right. Actually going to the back benches won’t harm Bravermans leadership bid at all, she will be distanced from Sunak’s government, with some of her rivals in it, going down, everyone in it earning the ire of party members as it does so, she will have plenty of time to cultivate her position and her base from outside government, and of course the most powerful electoral slogan there can be “I told you so”.
As I understand it, Truss sacking her was a hour shouting match between the two ladies. She’s unlikely to go quietly.
I do think we will probably get PR under Labour but not because Labour particularly wants it.
We wont get pr under labour for the simple reason is they will have to put it to a referendum and the result of it will be fuck no we dont want that
Nah, no referendum. Just do it.
Voting for our government is our choice not theirs, it is their job interview.....they dont get to tell us how to do the interview. Any party that tries to change the system without a referendum is going to land itself in the shit with voters.
The voting belongs to us not fuckwit politicians
If the Lib Dems demand PR and Labour agree, they should implement it. They'll have a mandate and it will be better for us all.
Then they wont mind if we just implement lamppost protocol
Do you honestly think PR is bad? Really?
PR is different. Under FPTP parties are coalitions. Generally in the U.K. we have majority governments which represent the coalition of the ruling party, and broadly implements manifestos. Under PM parties tend to splinter, and government relies on horse trading after the election. At which point manifestos get ripped up, Pace tuition fees and the Lib Dems. I don’t know which is best. For minor parties FPTP is unfair. UKIP representaed a lot of people but struggled to gain representation in parliament, as does the greens etc. But many would not like the act of a coalition formation either.
For all its faults, FPTP post has tended to deliver stable government in the U.K., which is probably why it’s lasted so long.
Where have you been?
Which bit are you saying is wrong?
FPTP has largely produced poor governments. It persists not because it is good, it persists because it is in the vested interest of the two biggest parties.
It produces stable governments, not necessarily good ones. It allows parties time to try to change the country. It’s not necessarily to best form of government. I’m not sure PR is either.
You’re wrong. In the 100 years it produced stable government in the 40s, 50s, 80s and 2000s. The rest was not hugely stable. The last 13 years have been dismal from that point of view. You might also question the quality of the so called stable governments.
Time to give something else a go.
That is simply not true. I am not sure what on earth you are calling stability but with the exception of the two years following the 1964 election and the less than 1 year following the 1974 election FPTP produced extremely stable Government in both the 60s and 70s.
Brexit will never be able to be resolved in an intelligent way if every time somebody points out something they're called a Rejoiner.
Let's be honest, Brexit isn't working. We could do a lot to resolve it short of rejoining but since the Tories are incapable of doing that despite starting the whole thing, Labour will have to. They must ignore the people calling them rejoiners at all costs, these are the same people that crashed the car in the first place.
The problem you have is that, whilst I agree with a lot of what you say, to many of those advocating changes to 'resolve' Brexit are the same who tried so hard to stop it in the first place before it had even happened. They shoed themselves to be untrsutworthy and dishonest and are now asking to be trusted again.
There ar many ways that the current sitiation could be improved if people had the will to do so. But there are very few politicians out there honest and trustworthy enough to be entrusted with that task.
£397bn of service exports in 2022, an increase of 20% compared to 2021, and up 23% on exports in 2018. These comparators are obviously flattered by Covid but even so. The forecasts that the UK was going to be the bottom performer of the G7 are wrong. Our growth this year, whilst far from exciting, is going to be ahead of the Eurozone.
The relentless negativity of those who want to refight the battles of some years ago now are distorting where we are and where we are going. The west as a whole are suffering from an energy shock on the back of Ukraine and we are very far from immune from that but we need as a country to focus on what we need to do now to grow quickly, improve our tax base, improve our balance of payments from the disastrous years in the SM (our own fault, not the SM's) and give better chances to our children.
So I guess you're in 9% of the population that thinks Brexit has been a success?
I don't think that we have made full use of it yet.
Our current immigration policy should be a marked improvement on freedom of movement but it requires both better controls from the likes of Border Force and more active management by the government in terms of targets.
Our existing arrangements with the EU are capable of being improved and I very much hope that the Windsor agreement will be the start of that.
Our civil service seem very reluctant to implement changes that might cause divergence from the EU. Some of this, such as manufacturing standards, is understandable, some less so.
But I think, on balance, we are doing ok. Economic policy is much more important than Brexit and is the job of the government. I wanted more incentives to invest and train in the budget. I want to see our education system more integrated with the industries and skills of the future. The cost of gas following on the cost of Covid has made this very difficult but I would barely give the government a pass mark to date. Again, we should be doing better but it is not Brexit that is holding us back.
Yes the economy is key and getting the deficit and inflation down but that doesn't mean you can ignore the culture wars the woke left are raging, which the right needs to fight back on. As Meloni proved last year and Trump proved in 2016 fighting the culture wars on a conservative platform can even lead to victory
Had to laugh at: "...the culture wars the woke left are raging..."
You won't hear anyone on the left talking about the 'culture war'; it is entirely an invention and preoccupation of the right.
I am fairly young. Genuinely these culture issues just do not occur in the real world, we talk about football, cricket and how the Tube is broken again.
We talk about these things too. But it is being waged across campuses the length and breadth of the country.
Not by any of my uni friends.
I work at a Uni and I’ve seem things you people could never imagine…
I do think we will probably get PR under Labour but not because Labour particularly wants it.
We wont get pr under labour for the simple reason is they will have to put it to a referendum and the result of it will be fuck no we dont want that
Nah, no referendum. Just do it.
Voting for our government is our choice not theirs, it is their job interview.....they dont get to tell us how to do the interview. Any party that tries to change the system without a referendum is going to land itself in the shit with voters.
The voting belongs to us not fuckwit politicians
If the Lib Dems demand PR and Labour agree, they should implement it. They'll have a mandate and it will be better for us all.
Then they wont mind if we just implement lamppost protocol
Do you honestly think PR is bad? Really?
PR is different. Under FPTP parties are coalitions. Generally in the U.K. we have majority governments which represent the coalition of the ruling party, and broadly implements manifestos. Under PM parties tend to splinter, and government relies on horse trading after the election. At which point manifestos get ripped up, Pace tuition fees and the Lib Dems. I don’t know which is best. For minor parties FPTP is unfair. UKIP representaed a lot of people but struggled to gain representation in parliament, as does the greens etc. But many would not like the act of a coalition formation either.
For all its faults, FPTP post has tended to deliver stable government in the U.K., which is probably why it’s lasted so long.
Where have you been?
Which bit are you saying is wrong?
FPTP has largely produced poor governments. It persists not because it is good, it persists because it is in the vested interest of the two biggest parties.
It produces stable governments, not necessarily good ones. It allows parties time to try to change the country. It’s not necessarily to best form of government. I’m not sure PR is either.
You’re wrong. In the 100 years it produced stable government in the 40s, 50s, 80s and 2000s. The rest was not hugely stable. The last 13 years have been dismal from that point of view. You might also question the quality of the so called stable governments.
Time to give something else a go.
That is simply not true. I am not sure what on earth you are calling stability but with the exception of the two years following the 1964 election and the less than 1 year following the 1974 election FPTP produced extremely stable Government in both the 60s and 70s.
I’ve never heard anyone describe the governments of the 1970s as extremely stable.
I do think we will probably get PR under Labour but not because Labour particularly wants it.
We wont get pr under labour for the simple reason is they will have to put it to a referendum and the result of it will be fuck no we dont want that
Nah, no referendum. Just do it.
Voting for our government is our choice not theirs, it is their job interview.....they dont get to tell us how to do the interview. Any party that tries to change the system without a referendum is going to land itself in the shit with voters.
The voting belongs to us not fuckwit politicians
If the Lib Dems demand PR and Labour agree, they should implement it. They'll have a mandate and it will be better for us all.
No it will be better for the parties and far worse for democracy. We should be reducing the influence and power of the parties not increasing it.
Really? Parties are a social technology through which people come together on complex topics and agree on enough to propose a definite course of action. If they are to weaken we will need to replace them. What might that be?
That is a naive and outdated view of parties. They are a machine for gaining power and forcing MPs to do their bidding through a combination of threats and bribery. There is nothing of value they bring to the democratic process and we should be doing all we can to weaken them, reduce their control over individually elected MPs and make our MPs work for the good of their constituents and the country rather than for the good of their party.
Reading in between the lines, I’m getting that you’re not a fan of parties. I guess you prefer personality politics. Would Macron be an example of what good looks like?
Not at all. You are right that I hate parties but am no fan of what you term personality politics either. My long held and long advocated view is that parties can exist but should be detoothed. Make all votes in Parliament free votes. Make whipping, as we understand it, illegal - certainly 2 and 3 line whips. Make it a crime for a party to either bribe or threaten an MP just as it is for anyone outside Parliament to do so. All votes should be won on force of argument not by whipping.
Isn’t the “you want a career and to get on, but we can see how you are voting” the strongest implement in the whips armoury, and that exists even without whips?
Yes the economy is key and getting the deficit and inflation down but that doesn't mean you can ignore the culture wars the woke left are raging, which the right needs to fight back on. As Meloni proved last year and Trump proved in 2016 fighting the culture wars on a conservative platform can even lead to victory
Had to laugh at: "...the culture wars the woke left are raging..."
You won't hear anyone on the left talking about the 'culture war'; it is entirely an invention and preoccupation of the right.
Only if you think trashing our heritage, trans in womens bathrooms', restricting conservative speakers etc is a non issue which those on the right don't
You prove my point. The right are raging what they refer to as a 'war', no one on the left talks about culture wars.
You are being left behind by the sweep of social progress and you don't like it. 15 years ago you would have been arguing against gay marriage. But society has moved on.
To reiterate, 'the woke left' are not fighting a so-called 'culture war', you are. (And you're losing btw.)
What you call 'social progress' is what those on the right call the undermining of our culture and nation and its heritage and the traditional family or indeed now notions of traditional gender. Hence we now have a birthrate well below replacement level and are reliant on ever increasing levels of immigration.
Now I have nothing against homosexual marriage in civil law or immigration where it brings needed skills but the balance has gone too far for many. Sometimes power for its own sake is worthless and it is better to be in opposition where you are at least true to your principles and values
We may not always like it but social change is going to happen. 100 or even 50 years ago people were bemoaning the breakdown of the traditional family caused by women working but none of that moaning made one iota of difference.
I do think we will probably get PR under Labour but not because Labour particularly wants it.
We wont get pr under labour for the simple reason is they will have to put it to a referendum and the result of it will be fuck no we dont want that
Nah, no referendum. Just do it.
Voting for our government is our choice not theirs, it is their job interview.....they dont get to tell us how to do the interview. Any party that tries to change the system without a referendum is going to land itself in the shit with voters.
The voting belongs to us not fuckwit politicians
If the Lib Dems demand PR and Labour agree, they should implement it. They'll have a mandate and it will be better for us all.
No it will be better for the parties and far worse for democracy. We should be reducing the influence and power of the parties not increasing it.
Really? Parties are a social technology through which people come together on complex topics and agree on enough to propose a definite course of action. If they are to weaken we will need to replace them. What might that be?
That is a naive and outdated view of parties. They are a machine for gaining power and forcing MPs to do their bidding through a combination of threats and bribery. There is nothing of value they bring to the democratic process and we should be doing all we can to weaken them, reduce their control over individually elected MPs and make our MPs work for the good of their constituents and the country rather than for the good of their party.
FPTP cements in place the two major parties, and concentrates power in precisely the manner you deprecate.
I do think we will probably get PR under Labour but not because Labour particularly wants it.
We wont get pr under labour for the simple reason is they will have to put it to a referendum and the result of it will be fuck no we dont want that
Nah, no referendum. Just do it.
Voting for our government is our choice not theirs, it is their job interview.....they dont get to tell us how to do the interview. Any party that tries to change the system without a referendum is going to land itself in the shit with voters.
The voting belongs to us not fuckwit politicians
If the Lib Dems demand PR and Labour agree, they should implement it. They'll have a mandate and it will be better for us all.
No it will be better for the parties and far worse for democracy. We should be reducing the influence and power of the parties not increasing it.
Really? Parties are a social technology through which people come together on complex topics and agree on enough to propose a definite course of action. If they are to weaken we will need to replace them. What might that be?
That is a naive and outdated view of parties. They are a machine for gaining power and forcing MPs to do their bidding through a combination of threats and bribery. There is nothing of value they bring to the democratic process and we should be doing all we can to weaken them, reduce their control over individually elected MPs and make our MPs work for the good of their constituents and the country rather than for the good of their party.
FPTP cements in place the two major parties, and concentrates power in precisely the manner you deprecate.
FPTP with whipping does that. Which is why I want to remove the power of the whips.
PR with whipping in place will make no improvements to this but will give the parties the justification to claim that votes were for them rather than for the indiviual MPs. This will make the situation even worse rather than better.
The problem with FPTP is that it entrenches the political system too much into just two main parties.
Starmer is likely going to win the next GE not because he has the best policies or vision for the country, but because in a two-horse race one of the horses is lame and needs to be shot.
At least with PR there is a proper path to smaller parties gaining ground, establishing image and influence, and eventually becoming larger parties/parties of government.
Brexit will never be able to be resolved in an intelligent way if every time somebody points out something they're called a Rejoiner.
Let's be honest, Brexit isn't working. We could do a lot to resolve it short of rejoining but since the Tories are incapable of doing that despite starting the whole thing, Labour will have to. They must ignore the people calling them rejoiners at all costs, these are the same people that crashed the car in the first place.
The problem you have is that, whilst I agree with a lot of what you say, to many of those advocating changes to 'resolve' Brexit are the same who tried so hard to stop it in the first place before it had even happened. They shoed themselves to be untrsutworthy and dishonest and are now asking to be trusted again.
There ar many ways that the current sitiation could be improved if people had the will to do so. But there are very few politicians out there honest and trustworthy enough to be entrusted with that task.
£397bn of service exports in 2022, an increase of 20% compared to 2021, and up 23% on exports in 2018. These comparators are obviously flattered by Covid but even so. The forecasts that the UK was going to be the bottom performer of the G7 are wrong. Our growth this year, whilst far from exciting, is going to be ahead of the Eurozone.
The relentless negativity of those who want to refight the battles of some years ago now are distorting where we are and where we are going. The west as a whole are suffering from an energy shock on the back of Ukraine and we are very far from immune from that but we need as a country to focus on what we need to do now to grow quickly, improve our tax base, improve our balance of payments from the disastrous years in the SM (our own fault, not the SM's) and give better chances to our children.
The ONS has found Investment since 2020 to be much stronger than originally estimated.
Indeed, and that will result in GDP being upgraded in due course. But we need to do a lot more. Our economy is heavily overbalanced towards consumption. We do not invest enough , we do not save enough and our government has excessive borrowing. We had these problems in the EU and they have not magically disappeared. They were never going to. Its up to us.
I do think we will probably get PR under Labour but not because Labour particularly wants it.
We wont get pr under labour for the simple reason is they will have to put it to a referendum and the result of it will be fuck no we dont want that
Nah, no referendum. Just do it.
Voting for our government is our choice not theirs, it is their job interview.....they dont get to tell us how to do the interview. Any party that tries to change the system without a referendum is going to land itself in the shit with voters.
The voting belongs to us not fuckwit politicians
If the Lib Dems demand PR and Labour agree, they should implement it. They'll have a mandate and it will be better for us all.
No it will be better for the parties and far worse for democracy. We should be reducing the influence and power of the parties not increasing it.
Really? Parties are a social technology through which people come together on complex topics and agree on enough to propose a definite course of action. If they are to weaken we will need to replace them. What might that be?
That is a naive and outdated view of parties. They are a machine for gaining power and forcing MPs to do their bidding through a combination of threats and bribery. There is nothing of value they bring to the democratic process and we should be doing all we can to weaken them, reduce their control over individually elected MPs and make our MPs work for the good of their constituents and the country rather than for the good of their party.
Reading in between the lines, I’m getting that you’re not a fan of parties. I guess you prefer personality politics. Would Macron be an example of what good looks like?
Not at all. You are right that I hate parties but am no fan of what you term personality politics either. My long held and long advocated view is that parties can exist but should be detoothed. Make all votes in Parliament free votes. Make whipping, as we understand it, illegal - certainly 2 and 3 line whips. Make it a crime for a party to either bribe or threaten an MP just as it is for anyone outside Parliament to do so. All votes should be won on force of argument not by whipping.
Isn’t the “you want a career and to get on, but we can see how you are voting” the strongest implement in the whips armoury, and that exists even without whips?
And to be fair, if a party is going to use its money and shoe leather to get someone elected, shouldn't they take an interest in how they vote in Parliament? Similarly, a lot of voters won't get much further than the colour of rosette when deciding who to vote for.
None of which is to say that powerful political parties are an adornment to politics. But like branded groceries, they're probably necessary to make things work on a mass market basis.
Brexit will never be able to be resolved in an intelligent way if every time somebody points out something they're called a Rejoiner.
Let's be honest, Brexit isn't working. We could do a lot to resolve it short of rejoining but since the Tories are incapable of doing that despite starting the whole thing, Labour will have to. They must ignore the people calling them rejoiners at all costs, these are the same people that crashed the car in the first place.
The problem you have is that, whilst I agree with a lot of what you say, to many of those advocating changes to 'resolve' Brexit are the same who tried so hard to stop it in the first place before it had even happened. They shoed themselves to be untrsutworthy and dishonest and are now asking to be trusted again.
There ar many ways that the current sitiation could be improved if people had the will to do so. But there are very few politicians out there honest and trustworthy enough to be entrusted with that task.
£397bn of service exports in 2022, an increase of 20% compared to 2021, and up 23% on exports in 2018. These comparators are obviously flattered by Covid but even so. The forecasts that the UK was going to be the bottom performer of the G7 are wrong. Our growth this year, whilst far from exciting, is going to be ahead of the Eurozone.
The relentless negativity of those who want to refight the battles of some years ago now are distorting where we are and where we are going. The west as a whole are suffering from an energy shock on the back of Ukraine and we are very far from immune from that but we need as a country to focus on what we need to do now to grow quickly, improve our tax base, improve our balance of payments from the disastrous years in the SM (our own fault, not the SM's) and give better chances to our children.
So I guess you're in 9% of the population that thinks Brexit has been a success?
I don't think that we have made full use of it yet.
Our current immigration policy should be a marked improvement on freedom of movement but it requires both better controls from the likes of Border Force and more active management by the government in terms of targets.
Our existing arrangements with the EU are capable of being improved and I very much hope that the Windsor agreement will be the start of that.
Our civil service seem very reluctant to implement changes that might cause divergence from the EU. Some of this, such as manufacturing standards, is understandable, some less so.
But I think, on balance, we are doing ok. Economic policy is much more important than Brexit and is the job of the government. I wanted more incentives to invest and train in the budget. I want to see our education system more integrated with the industries and skills of the future. The cost of gas following on the cost of Covid has made this very difficult but I would barely give the government a pass mark to date. Again, we should be doing better but it is not Brexit that is holding us back.
It's good to have different views.
Picking up on a couple of your points. GDP it depends how you slice it. 2022 was a good growth year for the UK, but it has definitely done the worst of the G7 since Covid, which happens to coincide with Brexit. We only managed to not to be the last in the G7 in Q1 2023 because Germany did marginally worse.
Our exports are also underperforming our peers with growth less than them in a booming market. Not surprising given the increase in trade barriers because of Brexit of course.
Personally I don't think there's a lot of point in dwelling on what went wrong. We are where are. But I do think it's important to acknowledge the damage caused because only then can we start to limit it.
I do think we will probably get PR under Labour but not because Labour particularly wants it.
We wont get pr under labour for the simple reason is they will have to put it to a referendum and the result of it will be fuck no we dont want that
Nah, no referendum. Just do it.
Voting for our government is our choice not theirs, it is their job interview.....they dont get to tell us how to do the interview. Any party that tries to change the system without a referendum is going to land itself in the shit with voters.
The voting belongs to us not fuckwit politicians
If the Lib Dems demand PR and Labour agree, they should implement it. They'll have a mandate and it will be better for us all.
Then they wont mind if we just implement lamppost protocol
Do you honestly think PR is bad? Really?
PR is different. Under FPTP parties are coalitions. Generally in the U.K. we have majority governments which represent the coalition of the ruling party, and broadly implements manifestos. Under PM parties tend to splinter, and government relies on horse trading after the election. At which point manifestos get ripped up, Pace tuition fees and the Lib Dems. I don’t know which is best. For minor parties FPTP is unfair. UKIP representaed a lot of people but struggled to gain representation in parliament, as does the greens etc. But many would not like the act of a coalition formation either.
For all its faults, FPTP post has tended to deliver stable government in the U.K., which is probably why it’s lasted so long.
Where have you been?
Which bit are you saying is wrong?
FPTP has largely produced poor governments. It persists not because it is good, it persists because it is in the vested interest of the two biggest parties.
It produces stable governments, not necessarily good ones. It allows parties time to try to change the country. It’s not necessarily to best form of government. I’m not sure PR is either.
You’re wrong. In the 100 years it produced stable government in the 40s, 50s, 80s and 2000s. The rest was not hugely stable. The last 13 years have been dismal from that point of view. You might also question the quality of the so called stable governments.
Time to give something else a go.
How was the nineties not stable? And which governments collapsed since 2010? Stable means unable to govern and thus a new election is needed.
Yes the economy is key and getting the deficit and inflation down but that doesn't mean you can ignore the culture wars the woke left are raging, which the right needs to fight back on. As Meloni proved last year and Trump proved in 2016 fighting the culture wars on a conservative platform can even lead to victory
Had to laugh at: "...the culture wars the woke left are raging..."
You won't hear anyone on the left talking about the 'culture war'; it is entirely an invention and preoccupation of the right.
Only if you think trashing our heritage, trans in womens bathrooms', restricting conservative speakers etc is a non issue which those on the right don't
You prove my point. The right are raging what they refer to as a 'war', no one on the left talks about culture wars.
You are being left behind by the sweep of social progress and you don't like it. 15 years ago you would have been arguing against gay marriage. But society has moved on.
To reiterate, 'the woke left' are not fighting a so-called 'culture war', you are. (And you're losing btw.)
What you call 'social progress' is what those on the right call the undermining of our culture and nation and its heritage and the traditional family or indeed now notions of traditional gender. Hence we now have a birthrate well below replacement level and are reliant on ever increasing levels of immigration.
Now I have nothing against homosexual marriage in civil law or immigration where it brings needed skills but the balance has gone too far for many. Sometimes power for its own sake is worthless and it is better to be in opposition where you are at least true to your principles and values
We may not always like it but social change is going to happen. 100 or even 50 years ago people were bemoaning the breakdown of the traditional family caused by women working but none of that moaning made one iota of difference.
Not always in a socially liberal direction, the Victorian era for example was more socially conservative than the Restoration or even the Georgian eras.
If conservatives are prepared to fight for it social liberals won't always get their own way
I would give Biden a pass on this. Strictly speaking the Quad was set up under Trump but it didn't do anything much. Biden has energised it, holding summit meetings, agreeing substantive policies and so on, largely driven by him
I’d give him more than a pass. The improvement in relations between S Korea and Japan, and new commitment to cooperation has been nothing short of dramatic.
If the talent of the Tories next is seriously Kemi, then Labour are going to be in power a long time.
I get where you are coming from, but to be honest Labour isn’t exactly brimming with talent. One of their best isn’t even an MP (Burnham). None have been in power and will find it a different challenge to opposing an unpopular government (easy in the current climate). Personally I think Starmer is ok, but does not inspire. I quite like streeting. I have time for Jonathon Ashworth. Beyond that? Rayner is a cartoon figure of class war, the Punchy John of our times. I’m sure some will emerge with greater exposure, but it would be wrong to expect many labour ministers not to flounder every bit as badly as the current government of none of the talents.
Burnham is crap. He is the Kemi of Labour.
I disagree. I think he connects with people, but each to their own.
He's a bullshitter. A self-publicist. The Manc. version of Boris Johnson.
I do think we will probably get PR under Labour but not because Labour particularly wants it.
We wont get pr under labour for the simple reason is they will have to put it to a referendum and the result of it will be fuck no we dont want that
Nah, no referendum. Just do it.
Voting for our government is our choice not theirs, it is their job interview.....they dont get to tell us how to do the interview. Any party that tries to change the system without a referendum is going to land itself in the shit with voters.
The voting belongs to us not fuckwit politicians
If you’re insistent on sticking with FPTP, then stop complaining about being stuck with the choices we have, We’ll never get a change to the duopoly with FPTP. It’s the main reason the Big Two are so resolved to maintain it - the system that cements them as the only two choices.
You want FPTP? Then you want only the revolving door of Tory PM and Labour PM, for now and always.
I do think we will probably get PR under Labour but not because Labour particularly wants it.
We wont get pr under labour for the simple reason is they will have to put it to a referendum and the result of it will be fuck no we dont want that
Nah, no referendum. Just do it.
Voting for our government is our choice not theirs, it is their job interview.....they dont get to tell us how to do the interview. Any party that tries to change the system without a referendum is going to land itself in the shit with voters.
The voting belongs to us not fuckwit politicians
If the Lib Dems demand PR and Labour agree, they should implement it. They'll have a mandate and it will be better for us all.
No it will be better for the parties and far worse for democracy. We should be reducing the influence and power of the parties not increasing it.
Really? Parties are a social technology through which people come together on complex topics and agree on enough to propose a definite course of action. If they are to weaken we will need to replace them. What might that be?
That is a naive and outdated view of parties. They are a machine for gaining power and forcing MPs to do their bidding through a combination of threats and bribery. There is nothing of value they bring to the democratic process and we should be doing all we can to weaken them, reduce their control over individually elected MPs and make our MPs work for the good of their constituents and the country rather than for the good of their party.
Reading in between the lines, I’m getting that you’re not a fan of parties. I guess you prefer personality politics. Would Macron be an example of what good looks like?
Not at all. You are right that I hate parties but am no fan of what you term personality politics either. My long held and long advocated view is that parties can exist but should be detoothed. Make all votes in Parliament free votes. Make whipping, as we understand it, illegal - certainly 2 and 3 line whips. Make it a crime for a party to either bribe or threaten an MP just as it is for anyone outside Parliament to do so. All votes should be won on force of argument not by whipping.
Isn’t the “you want a career and to get on, but we can see how you are voting” the strongest implement in the whips armoury, and that exists even without whips?
The implement is the ability to say that we will punish you for voting the wrong way. Remove that ability and the whips are neutered.
Remove the power of the parties to suspend MPs for having voted the 'wrong' way and at the same time remove the power of the parties to impose candidates on constituencies. Make that entirely the remit of the constituency organisations. The parties will hate it but they will have to live with it.
Brexit will never be able to be resolved in an intelligent way if every time somebody points out something they're called a Rejoiner.
Let's be honest, Brexit isn't working. We could do a lot to resolve it short of rejoining but since the Tories are incapable of doing that despite starting the whole thing, Labour will have to. They must ignore the people calling them rejoiners at all costs, these are the same people that crashed the car in the first place.
The problem you have is that, whilst I agree with a lot of what you say, to many of those advocating changes to 'resolve' Brexit are the same who tried so hard to stop it in the first place before it had even happened. They shoed themselves to be untrsutworthy and dishonest and are now asking to be trusted again.
There ar many ways that the current sitiation could be improved if people had the will to do so. But there are very few politicians out there honest and trustworthy enough to be entrusted with that task.
£397bn of service exports in 2022, an increase of 20% compared to 2021, and up 23% on exports in 2018. These comparators are obviously flattered by Covid but even so. The forecasts that the UK was going to be the bottom performer of the G7 are wrong. Our growth this year, whilst far from exciting, is going to be ahead of the Eurozone.
The relentless negativity of those who want to refight the battles of some years ago now are distorting where we are and where we are going. The west as a whole are suffering from an energy shock on the back of Ukraine and we are very far from immune from that but we need as a country to focus on what we need to do now to grow quickly, improve our tax base, improve our balance of payments from the disastrous years in the SM (our own fault, not the SM's) and give better chances to our children.
So I guess you're in 9% of the population that thinks Brexit has been a success?
I don't think that we have made full use of it yet.
Our current immigration policy should be a marked improvement on freedom of movement but it requires both better controls from the likes of Border Force and more active management by the government in terms of targets.
Our existing arrangements with the EU are capable of being improved and I very much hope that the Windsor agreement will be the start of that.
Our civil service seem very reluctant to implement changes that might cause divergence from the EU. Some of this, such as manufacturing standards, is understandable, some less so.
But I think, on balance, we are doing ok. Economic policy is much more important than Brexit and is the job of the government. I wanted more incentives to invest and train in the budget. I want to see our education system more integrated with the industries and skills of the future. The cost of gas following on the cost of Covid has made this very difficult but I would barely give the government a pass mark to date. Again, we should be doing better but it is not Brexit that is holding us back.
It's good to have different views.
Picking up on a couple of your points. GDP it depends how you slice it. 2022 was a good growth year for the UK, but it has definitely done the worst of the G7 since Covid, which happens to coincide with Brexit. We only managed to not to be the last in the G7 in Q1 2023 because Germany did marginally worse.
Our exports are also underperforming our peers with growth less than them in a booming market. Not surprising given the increase in trade barriers because of Brexit of course.
Personally I don't think there's a lot of point in dwelling on what went wrong. We are where are. But I do think it's important to acknowledge the damage caused because only then can we start to limit it.
We have had a major balance of payments problem since North Sea oil started to decline in the early 1990s. Nearly 30 consecutive years of trade deficits culminating in a significant quantity of our productive assets in foreign ownership and a rent paying economy.
This happened in the SM and the EU. It wasn't the fault of either but the economic incompetence of our own governments. Trying to pretend the same problems now are caused by Brexit is not, in my view, acknowledging the damage, it is recognising that our path has been unsustainable for a long time and it has caught up with us. We need to change and the excuse of the EU not letting us (which was never more than marginally true, at best) is no longer available.
I would be highly surprised if this isn't a storm in a teacup. She shouldn't have done what she did, and in an earlier time should have been sacked. After Johnson's behaviour, why should she go?
If Sunak wants to get rid of her, fair enough, but this is a pretty weak excuse
I would be highly surprised if this isn't a storm in a teacup. She shouldn't have done what she did, and in an earlier time should have been sacked. After Johnson's behaviour, why should she go?
Did I miss something? Is Johnson still prime minister?
I do think we will probably get PR under Labour but not because Labour particularly wants it.
We wont get pr under labour for the simple reason is they will have to put it to a referendum and the result of it will be fuck no we dont want that
Nah, no referendum. Just do it.
Voting for our government is our choice not theirs, it is their job interview.....they dont get to tell us how to do the interview. Any party that tries to change the system without a referendum is going to land itself in the shit with voters.
The voting belongs to us not fuckwit politicians
If the Lib Dems demand PR and Labour agree, they should implement it. They'll have a mandate and it will be better for us all.
Then they wont mind if we just implement lamppost protocol
Do you honestly think PR is bad? Really?
PR is different. Under FPTP parties are coalitions. Generally in the U.K. we have majority governments which represent the coalition of the ruling party, and broadly implements manifestos. Under PM parties tend to splinter, and government relies on horse trading after the election. At which point manifestos get ripped up, Pace tuition fees and the Lib Dems. I don’t know which is best. For minor parties FPTP is unfair. UKIP representaed a lot of people but struggled to gain representation in parliament, as does the greens etc. But many would not like the act of a coalition formation either.
For all its faults, FPTP post has tended to deliver stable government in the U.K., which is probably why it’s lasted so long.
Where have you been?
Which bit are you saying is wrong?
FPTP has largely produced poor governments. It persists not because it is good, it persists because it is in the vested interest of the two biggest parties.
It produces stable governments, not necessarily good ones. It allows parties time to try to change the country. It’s not necessarily to best form of government. I’m not sure PR is either.
You’re wrong. In the 100 years it produced stable government in the 40s, 50s, 80s and 2000s. The rest was not hugely stable. The last 13 years have been dismal from that point of view. You might also question the quality of the so called stable governments.
Time to give something else a go.
How was the nineties not stable? And which governments collapsed since 2010? Stable means unable to govern and thus a new election is needed.
You’re confusing stability for ‘has a majority’. They are not the same thing, as the last few years demonstrate. Boris won a majority, but no one thinks this government is remotely stable.
From the poll tax riots the two Tory leadership election, black Wednesday and the Maarstricht rebellions , the 1990s weren’t very stable.
I do think we will probably get PR under Labour but not because Labour particularly wants it.
We wont get pr under labour for the simple reason is they will have to put it to a referendum and the result of it will be fuck no we dont want that
Nah, no referendum. Just do it.
Voting for our government is our choice not theirs, it is their job interview.....they dont get to tell us how to do the interview. Any party that tries to change the system without a referendum is going to land itself in the shit with voters.
The voting belongs to us not fuckwit politicians
If the Lib Dems demand PR and Labour agree, they should implement it. They'll have a mandate and it will be better for us all.
Then they wont mind if we just implement lamppost protocol
Do you honestly think PR is bad? Really?
PR is different. Under FPTP parties are coalitions. Generally in the U.K. we have majority governments which represent the coalition of the ruling party, and broadly implements manifestos. Under PM parties tend to splinter, and government relies on horse trading after the election. At which point manifestos get ripped up, Pace tuition fees and the Lib Dems. I don’t know which is best. For minor parties FPTP is unfair. UKIP representaed a lot of people but struggled to gain representation in parliament, as does the greens etc. But many would not like the act of a coalition formation either.
For all its faults, FPTP post has tended to deliver stable government in the U.K., which is probably why it’s lasted so long.
Where have you been?
Which bit are you saying is wrong?
FPTP has largely produced poor governments. It persists not because it is good, it persists because it is in the vested interest of the two biggest parties.
It produces stable governments, not necessarily good ones. It allows parties time to try to change the country. It’s not necessarily to best form of government. I’m not sure PR is either.
You’re wrong. In the 100 years it produced stable government in the 40s, 50s, 80s and 2000s. The rest was not hugely stable. The last 13 years have been dismal from that point of view. You might also question the quality of the so called stable governments.
Time to give something else a go.
How was the nineties not stable? And which governments collapsed since 2010? Stable means unable to govern and thus a new election is needed.
You’re confusing stability for ‘has a majority’. They are not the same thing, as the last few years demonstrate. Boris won a majority, but no one thinks this government is remotely stable.
From the poll tax riots the two Tory leadership election, black Wednesday and the Maarstricht rebellions , the 1990s weren’t very stable.
I think we have a different definition of stability then. The ability to pass legislation, to win a vote of no confidence equals stable for me, but clearly not for you.
Isn’t the “you want a career and to get on, but we can see how you are voting” the strongest implement in the whips armoury, and that exists even without whips?
The implement is the ability to say that we will punish you for voting the wrong way. Remove that ability and the whips are neutered.
Remove the power of the parties to suspend MPs for having voted the 'wrong' way and at the same time remove the power of the parties to impose candidates on constituencies. Make that entirely the remit of the constituency organisations. The parties will hate it but they will have to live with it.
How are you proposing to structure the government to avoid "you won't be on the shortlist for that junior minister post" being a threat the whips can hold over MPs?
FPTP is so broken that the only reason the Government didn't collapse in 2019 was because we'd put in a stupid law to maintain FPTP in the event of a minority government, which was something FPTP was supposed to prevent.
I do think we will probably get PR under Labour but not because Labour particularly wants it.
We wont get pr under labour for the simple reason is they will have to put it to a referendum and the result of it will be fuck no we dont want that
Nah, no referendum. Just do it.
Voting for our government is our choice not theirs, it is their job interview.....they dont get to tell us how to do the interview. Any party that tries to change the system without a referendum is going to land itself in the shit with voters.
The voting belongs to us not fuckwit politicians
If the Lib Dems demand PR and Labour agree, they should implement it. They'll have a mandate and it will be better for us all.
Then they wont mind if we just implement lamppost protocol
Do you honestly think PR is bad? Really?
PR is different. Under FPTP parties are coalitions. Generally in the U.K. we have majority governments which represent the coalition of the ruling party, and broadly implements manifestos. Under PM parties tend to splinter, and government relies on horse trading after the election. At which point manifestos get ripped up, Pace tuition fees and the Lib Dems. I don’t know which is best. For minor parties FPTP is unfair. UKIP representaed a lot of people but struggled to gain representation in parliament, as does the greens etc. But many would not like the act of a coalition formation either.
For all its faults, FPTP post has tended to deliver stable government in the U.K., which is probably why it’s lasted so long.
Where have you been?
Which bit are you saying is wrong?
FPTP has largely produced poor governments. It persists not because it is good, it persists because it is in the vested interest of the two biggest parties.
It produces stable governments, not necessarily good ones. It allows parties time to try to change the country. It’s not necessarily to best form of government. I’m not sure PR is either.
You’re wrong. In the 100 years it produced stable government in the 40s, 50s, 80s and 2000s. The rest was not hugely stable. The last 13 years have been dismal from that point of view. You might also question the quality of the so called stable governments.
Time to give something else a go.
How was the nineties not stable? And which governments collapsed since 2010? Stable means unable to govern and thus a new election is needed.
You’re confusing stability for ‘has a majority’. They are not the same thing, as the last few years demonstrate. Boris won a majority, but no one thinks this government is remotely stable.
From the poll tax riots the two Tory leadership election, black Wednesday and the Maarstricht rebellions , the 1990s weren’t very stable.
I think we have a different definition of stability then. The ability to pass legislation, to win a vote of no confidence equals stable for me, but clearly not for you.
Brexit will never be able to be resolved in an intelligent way if every time somebody points out something they're called a Rejoiner.
Let's be honest, Brexit isn't working. We could do a lot to resolve it short of rejoining but since the Tories are incapable of doing that despite starting the whole thing, Labour will have to. They must ignore the people calling them rejoiners at all costs, these are the same people that crashed the car in the first place.
The problem you have is that, whilst I agree with a lot of what you say, to many of those advocating changes to 'resolve' Brexit are the same who tried so hard to stop it in the first place before it had even happened. They shoed themselves to be untrsutworthy and dishonest and are now asking to be trusted again.
There ar many ways that the current sitiation could be improved if people had the will to do so. But there are very few politicians out there honest and trustworthy enough to be entrusted with that task.
£397bn of service exports in 2022, an increase of 20% compared to 2021, and up 23% on exports in 2018. These comparators are obviously flattered by Covid but even so. The forecasts that the UK was going to be the bottom performer of the G7 are wrong. Our growth this year, whilst far from exciting, is going to be ahead of the Eurozone.
The relentless negativity of those who want to refight the battles of some years ago now are distorting where we are and where we are going. The west as a whole are suffering from an energy shock on the back of Ukraine and we are very far from immune from that but we need as a country to focus on what we need to do now to grow quickly, improve our tax base, improve our balance of payments from the disastrous years in the SM (our own fault, not the SM's) and give better chances to our children.
So I guess you're in 9% of the population that thinks Brexit has been a success?
I don't think that we have made full use of it yet.
Our current immigration policy should be a marked improvement on freedom of movement but it requires both better controls from the likes of Border Force and more active management by the government in terms of targets.
Our existing arrangements with the EU are capable of being improved and I very much hope that the Windsor agreement will be the start of that.
Our civil service seem very reluctant to implement changes that might cause divergence from the EU. Some of this, such as manufacturing standards, is understandable, some less so.
But I think, on balance, we are doing ok. Economic policy is much more important than Brexit and is the job of the government. I wanted more incentives to invest and train in the budget. I want to see our education system more integrated with the industries and skills of the future. The cost of gas following on the cost of Covid has made this very difficult but I would barely give the government a pass mark to date. Again, we should be doing better but it is not Brexit that is holding us back.
It's good to have different views.
Picking up on a couple of your points. GDP it depends how you slice it. 2022 was a good growth year for the UK, but it has definitely done the worst of the G7 since Covid, which happens to coincide with Brexit. We only managed to not to be the last in the G7 in Q1 2023 because Germany did marginally worse.
Our exports are also underperforming our peers with growth less than them in a booming market. Not surprising given the increase in trade barriers because of Brexit of course.
Personally I don't think there's a lot of point in dwelling on what went wrong. We are where are. But I do think it's important to acknowledge the damage caused because only then can we start to limit it.
We have had a major balance of payments problem since North Sea oil started to decline in the early 1990s. Nearly 30 consecutive years of trade deficits culminating in a significant quantity of our productive assets in foreign ownership and a rent paying economy.
This happened in the SM and the EU. It wasn't the fault of either but the economic incompetence of our own governments. Trying to pretend the same problems now are caused by Brexit is not, in my view, acknowledging the damage, it is recognising that our path has been unsustainable for a long time and it has caught up with us. We need to change and the excuse of the EU not letting us (which was never more than marginally true, at best) is no longer available.
Some problems are directly caused by Brexit; others were already present but made worse by Brexit; a third group of problems aren't related to Brexit, but Brexit is a distraction from solving them. Finally there are problems that have nothing to do with Brexit. No problems seem to be solved by Brexit.
Current account deficits look to be in the second category. Already present but made worse by Brexit.
I do think we will probably get PR under Labour but not because Labour particularly wants it.
We wont get pr under labour for the simple reason is they will have to put it to a referendum and the result of it will be fuck no we dont want that
Nah, no referendum. Just do it.
Voting for our government is our choice not theirs, it is their job interview.....they dont get to tell us how to do the interview. Any party that tries to change the system without a referendum is going to land itself in the shit with voters.
The voting belongs to us not fuckwit politicians
If the Lib Dems demand PR and Labour agree, they should implement it. They'll have a mandate and it will be better for us all.
Then they wont mind if we just implement lamppost protocol
Do you honestly think PR is bad? Really?
PR is different. Under FPTP parties are coalitions. Generally in the U.K. we have majority governments which represent the coalition of the ruling party, and broadly implements manifestos. Under PM parties tend to splinter, and government relies on horse trading after the election. At which point manifestos get ripped up, Pace tuition fees and the Lib Dems. I don’t know which is best. For minor parties FPTP is unfair. UKIP representaed a lot of people but struggled to gain representation in parliament, as does the greens etc. But many would not like the act of a coalition formation either.
For all its faults, FPTP post has tended to deliver stable government in the U.K., which is probably why it’s lasted so long.
FPT has delivered voting minority government for the most part, post war.
A majority on the whole don't get a government comprising of a party or parties they voted for. Government for the 40%.
I do think we will probably get PR under Labour but not because Labour particularly wants it.
We wont get pr under labour for the simple reason is they will have to put it to a referendum and the result of it will be fuck no we dont want that
Nah, no referendum. Just do it.
Voting for our government is our choice not theirs, it is their job interview.....they dont get to tell us how to do the interview. Any party that tries to change the system without a referendum is going to land itself in the shit with voters.
The voting belongs to us not fuckwit politicians
If the Lib Dems demand PR and Labour agree, they should implement it. They'll have a mandate and it will be better for us all.
Then they wont mind if we just implement lamppost protocol
Do you honestly think PR is bad? Really?
PR is different. Under FPTP parties are coalitions. Generally in the U.K. we have majority governments which represent the coalition of the ruling party, and broadly implements manifestos. Under PM parties tend to splinter, and government relies on horse trading after the election. At which point manifestos get ripped up, Pace tuition fees and the Lib Dems. I don’t know which is best. For minor parties FPTP is unfair. UKIP representaed a lot of people but struggled to gain representation in parliament, as does the greens etc. But many would not like the act of a coalition formation either.
For all its faults, FPTP post has tended to deliver stable government in the U.K., which is probably why it’s lasted so long.
Where have you been?
Which bit are you saying is wrong?
FPTP has largely produced poor governments. It persists not because it is good, it persists because it is in the vested interest of the two biggest parties.
It produces stable governments, not necessarily good ones. It allows parties time to try to change the country. It’s not necessarily to best form of government. I’m not sure PR is either.
You’re wrong. In the 100 years it produced stable government in the 40s, 50s, 80s and 2000s. The rest was not hugely stable. The last 13 years have been dismal from that point of view. You might also question the quality of the so called stable governments.
Time to give something else a go.
How was the nineties not stable? And which governments collapsed since 2010? Stable means unable to govern and thus a new election is needed.
You’re confusing stability for ‘has a majority’. They are not the same thing, as the last few years demonstrate. Boris won a majority, but no one thinks this government is remotely stable.
From the poll tax riots the two Tory leadership election, black Wednesday and the Maarstricht rebellions , the 1990s weren’t very stable.
I think we have a different definition of stability then. The ability to pass legislation, to win a vote of no confidence equals stable for me, but clearly not for you.
Is the Tory administration 2019-2023 stable?
Yes. See all the rather pathetic ‘general election now’ posters. The Tories remain in power, can pass legislation and can call the next election when they choose, up to Jan 2025. So yes. Unstable governments cannot pass laws, lose votes of no confidence and require fresh elections to try to achieve stability.
I do think we will probably get PR under Labour but not because Labour particularly wants it.
We wont get pr under labour for the simple reason is they will have to put it to a referendum and the result of it will be fuck no we dont want that
Nah, no referendum. Just do it.
Voting for our government is our choice not theirs, it is their job interview.....they dont get to tell us how to do the interview. Any party that tries to change the system without a referendum is going to land itself in the shit with voters.
The voting belongs to us not fuckwit politicians
If the Lib Dems demand PR and Labour agree, they should implement it. They'll have a mandate and it will be better for us all.
Then they wont mind if we just implement lamppost protocol
Do you honestly think PR is bad? Really?
PR is different. Under FPTP parties are coalitions. Generally in the U.K. we have majority governments which represent the coalition of the ruling party, and broadly implements manifestos. Under PM parties tend to splinter, and government relies on horse trading after the election. At which point manifestos get ripped up, Pace tuition fees and the Lib Dems. I don’t know which is best. For minor parties FPTP is unfair. UKIP representaed a lot of people but struggled to gain representation in parliament, as does the greens etc. But many would not like the act of a coalition formation either.
For all its faults, FPTP post has tended to deliver stable government in the U.K., which is probably why it’s lasted so long.
Where have you been?
Which bit are you saying is wrong?
FPTP has largely produced poor governments. It persists not because it is good, it persists because it is in the vested interest of the two biggest parties.
It produces stable governments, not necessarily good ones. It allows parties time to try to change the country. It’s not necessarily to best form of government. I’m not sure PR is either.
You’re wrong. In the 100 years it produced stable government in the 40s, 50s, 80s and 2000s. The rest was not hugely stable. The last 13 years have been dismal from that point of view. You might also question the quality of the so called stable governments.
Time to give something else a go.
How was the nineties not stable? And which governments collapsed since 2010? Stable means unable to govern and thus a new election is needed.
You’re confusing stability for ‘has a majority’. They are not the same thing, as the last few years demonstrate. Boris won a majority, but no one thinks this government is remotely stable.
From the poll tax riots the two Tory leadership election, black Wednesday and the Maarstricht rebellions , the 1990s weren’t very stable.
I think we have a different definition of stability then. The ability to pass legislation, to win a vote of no confidence equals stable for me, but clearly not for you.
Is the Tory administration 2019-2023 stable?
Yes. See all the rather pathetic ‘general election now’ posters. The Tories remain in power, can pass legislation and can call the next election when they choose, up to Jan 2025. So yes. Unstable governments cannot pass laws, lose votes of no confidence and require fresh elections to try to achieve stability.
If you can’t get your economic policy accepted by the market, or you change your leader twice in 50days, I suggest your government is not stable. There is more to stability than HoC arithmetic.
I do think we will probably get PR under Labour but not because Labour particularly wants it.
We wont get pr under labour for the simple reason is they will have to put it to a referendum and the result of it will be fuck no we dont want that
Nah, no referendum. Just do it.
Voting for our government is our choice not theirs, it is their job interview.....they dont get to tell us how to do the interview. Any party that tries to change the system without a referendum is going to land itself in the shit with voters.
The voting belongs to us not fuckwit politicians
If the Lib Dems demand PR and Labour agree, they should implement it. They'll have a mandate and it will be better for us all.
Then they wont mind if we just implement lamppost protocol
Do you honestly think PR is bad? Really?
PR is different. Under FPTP parties are coalitions. Generally in the U.K. we have majority governments which represent the coalition of the ruling party, and broadly implements manifestos. Under PM parties tend to splinter, and government relies on horse trading after the election. At which point manifestos get ripped up, Pace tuition fees and the Lib Dems. I don’t know which is best. For minor parties FPTP is unfair. UKIP representaed a lot of people but struggled to gain representation in parliament, as does the greens etc. But many would not like the act of a coalition formation either.
For all its faults, FPTP post has tended to deliver stable government in the U.K., which is probably why it’s lasted so long.
Where have you been?
Which bit are you saying is wrong?
FPTP has largely produced poor governments. It persists not because it is good, it persists because it is in the vested interest of the two biggest parties.
It produces stable governments, not necessarily good ones. It allows parties time to try to change the country. It’s not necessarily to best form of government. I’m not sure PR is either.
You’re wrong. In the 100 years it produced stable government in the 40s, 50s, 80s and 2000s. The rest was not hugely stable. The last 13 years have been dismal from that point of view. You might also question the quality of the so called stable governments.
Time to give something else a go.
How was the nineties not stable? And which governments collapsed since 2010? Stable means unable to govern and thus a new election is needed.
You’re confusing stability for ‘has a majority’. They are not the same thing, as the last few years demonstrate. Boris won a majority, but no one thinks this government is remotely stable.
From the poll tax riots the two Tory leadership election, black Wednesday and the Maarstricht rebellions , the 1990s weren’t very stable.
I think we have a different definition of stability then. The ability to pass legislation, to win a vote of no confidence equals stable for me, but clearly not for you.
Is the Tory administration 2019-2023 stable?
Yes. See all the rather pathetic ‘general election now’ posters. The Tories remain in power, can pass legislation and can call the next election when they choose, up to Jan 2025. So yes. Unstable governments cannot pass laws, lose votes of no confidence and require fresh elections to try to achieve stability.
If you can’t get your economic policy accepted by the market, or you change your leader twice in 50days, I suggest your government is not stable. There is more to stability than HoC arithmetic.
A brief interruption that was resolved in record time. How long did Labour hang on to their Truss (Corbyn)?
Yes the economy is key and getting the deficit and inflation down but that doesn't mean you can ignore the culture wars the woke left are raging, which the right needs to fight back on. As Meloni proved last year and Trump proved in 2016 fighting the culture wars on a conservative platform can even lead to victory
Had to laugh at: "...the culture wars the woke left are raging..."
You won't hear anyone on the left talking about the 'culture war'; it is entirely an invention and preoccupation of the right.
Only if you think trashing our heritage, trans in womens bathrooms', restricting conservative speakers etc is a non issue which those on the right don't
You prove my point. The right are raging what they refer to as a 'war', no one on the left talks about culture wars.
You are being left behind by the sweep of social progress and you don't like it. 15 years ago you would have been arguing against gay marriage. But society has moved on.
To reiterate, 'the woke left' are not fighting a so-called 'culture war', you are. (And you're losing btw.)
What you call 'social progress' is what those on the right call the undermining of our culture and nation and its heritage and the traditional family or indeed now notions of traditional gender. Hence we now have a birthrate well below replacement level and are reliant on ever increasing levels of immigration.
Now I have nothing against homosexual marriage in civil law or immigration where it brings needed skills but the balance has gone too far for many. Sometimes power for its own sake is worthless and it is better to be in opposition where you are at least true to your principles and values
We may not always like it but social change is going to happen. 100 or even 50 years ago people were bemoaning the breakdown of the traditional family caused by women working but none of that moaning made one iota of difference.
Not always in a socially liberal direction, the Victorian era for example was more socially conservative than the Restoration or even the Georgian eras.
If conservatives are prepared to fight for it social liberals won't always get their own way
That's not a position most historians would support. It was a period of huge social change, emancipation, and liberalisation.
On the other hand it was quite politically conservative (as the obverse of the conservative/revolutionary coin.)
I do think we will probably get PR under Labour but not because Labour particularly wants it.
We wont get pr under labour for the simple reason is they will have to put it to a referendum and the result of it will be fuck no we dont want that
Nah, no referendum. Just do it.
Voting for our government is our choice not theirs, it is their job interview.....they dont get to tell us how to do the interview. Any party that tries to change the system without a referendum is going to land itself in the shit with voters.
The voting belongs to us not fuckwit politicians
If the Lib Dems demand PR and Labour agree, they should implement it. They'll have a mandate and it will be better for us all.
Then they wont mind if we just implement lamppost protocol
Do you honestly think PR is bad? Really?
PR is different. Under FPTP parties are coalitions. Generally in the U.K. we have majority governments which represent the coalition of the ruling party, and broadly implements manifestos. Under PM parties tend to splinter, and government relies on horse trading after the election. At which point manifestos get ripped up, Pace tuition fees and the Lib Dems. I don’t know which is best. For minor parties FPTP is unfair. UKIP representaed a lot of people but struggled to gain representation in parliament, as does the greens etc. But many would not like the act of a coalition formation either.
For all its faults, FPTP post has tended to deliver stable government in the U.K., which is probably why it’s lasted so long.
Where have you been?
Which bit are you saying is wrong?
FPTP has largely produced poor governments. It persists not because it is good, it persists because it is in the vested interest of the two biggest parties.
It produces stable governments, not necessarily good ones. It allows parties time to try to change the country. It’s not necessarily to best form of government. I’m not sure PR is either.
You’re wrong. In the 100 years it produced stable government in the 40s, 50s, 80s and 2000s. The rest was not hugely stable. The last 13 years have been dismal from that point of view. You might also question the quality of the so called stable governments.
Time to give something else a go.
How was the nineties not stable? And which governments collapsed since 2010? Stable means unable to govern and thus a new election is needed.
You’re confusing stability for ‘has a majority’. They are not the same thing, as the last few years demonstrate. Boris won a majority, but no one thinks this government is remotely stable.
From the poll tax riots the two Tory leadership election, black Wednesday and the Maarstricht rebellions , the 1990s weren’t very stable.
I think we have a different definition of stability then. The ability to pass legislation, to win a vote of no confidence equals stable for me, but clearly not for you.
Is the Tory administration 2019-2023 stable?
Yes. See all the rather pathetic ‘general election now’ posters. The Tories remain in power, can pass legislation and can call the next election when they choose, up to Jan 2025. So yes. Unstable governments cannot pass laws, lose votes of no confidence and require fresh elections to try to achieve stability.
If you can’t get your economic policy accepted by the market, or you change your leader twice in 50days, I suggest your government is not stable. There is more to stability than HoC arithmetic.
A brief interruption that was resolved in record time. How long did Labour hang on to their Truss (Corbyn)?
The collapse of the government’s economic policy is more than a brief interruption, and we’re still paying for it.
To my knowledge Corbyn didn’t make it to government.
FPTP is so broken that the only reason the Government didn't collapse in 2019 was because we'd put in a stupid law to maintain FPTP in the event of a minority government, which was something FPTP was supposed to prevent.
That's rubbish. FPTP isn't meant to prevent minority governments. If it has a defining characteristic it's that it maintains a strict link between the constituency and the MP, so anybody can be voted out directly by their constituents.
The thing with FPTP is it’s exceptional globally. Vanishingly few democracies have such a system. The norm is something more proportional. One obvious other exception is the US presidential system, with all its odd distortions.
If FPTP is so great then its proponents really need to show how it delivers better government than the myriad proportional systems in our near neighbourhood. The evidence is not particularly compelling.
Comments
https://twitter.com/rncresearch/status/1660230905628114946
We don't need a referendum on it, referendums are a disaster. Just do it.
There ar many ways that the current sitiation could be improved if people had the will to do so. But there are very few politicians out there honest and trustworthy enough to be entrusted with that task.
https://twitter.com/ExplainThisBob/status/1660290615462985728
The Quad, also known as the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, was formed in 2007 by India, Japan, the United States, and Australia.
You are being left behind by the sweep of social progress and you don't like it. 15 years ago you would have been arguing against gay marriage. But society has moved on.
To reiterate, 'the woke left' are not fighting a so-called 'culture war', you are. (And you're losing btw.)
Starmer is trying to resolve Brexit without rejoining yet whenever he speaks people say he is secretly trying to take us back in. So if that's what he is dealing with, how can you expect anything to change?
185 Unionist (122 DUP, 54 UUP, 9 TUV) councillors (-18) (40.0% of seats)
183 Nationalist (144 SF, 39 SDLP) councillors (+19) (39.6% of seats)
94 "other" (67 APNI, etc.) (+4) (20.3% of seats)
Vote share:
Nationalist 39.6% (30.9% SF, 8.7% SDLP) (+4.4)
Unionist 38.1% (23.3% DUP, 10.9% UUP, 3.9% TUV) (-2.3)
"other" 22.2% (inc. 13.3% APNI, etc.) (-2.2)
So, the Nationalists won 39.6% of seats on 39.6% of the vote!
Four councils have a Unionist seat majority:
Antrim & Newtownabbey (just! 20/40; 7 UUP, 13 DUP)
Ards & North Down (22/40; 8 UUP, 14 DUP)
Lisburn & Castlereagh (just! 20/40; 6 UUP, 14 DUP)
Mid & East Antrim (27/40; 8 UUP, 14 DUP, 5 TUV )
Four councils have a Nationalist seat majority:
Derry & Strabane (28/40; 18 SF, 10 SDLP)
Fermanagh & Omagh (24/40; 21 SF, 3 SDLP)
Mid Ulster (24/40; 19 SF, 5 SDLP)
Newry, Mourne & Down (28/40; 20 SF, 8 SDLP)
I think it's the first time ever that SF have got an overall majority on any councils: 21 seats in Fermanagh, 20 in Newry (just!).
One council has a Nationalist plurality:
Belfast (27/60; 22 SF, 5 SDLP)
Two councils have a Unionist plurality:
Armagh, Banbridge & Craigavon (20/41; 6 UUP, 13 DUP, 1 TUV )
Causeway Coast & Glens (19/40; 4 UUP, 13 DUP, 2 TUV)
Also worth noting that one of the reasons so many of those MPs were held in contempt by their electorate was because they broke their promises. Sarah Wollaston and Anna Soubry are classic examples of that. Lying to get yourself re-elected is not a good look.
No that doesn't mean rejoining before you accuse me of that too.
So there's a whole bunch of things that a reactionary segment of society can't cope with, but are somewhat mainstream, like net zero, gender neutral toilets, including slavery in historical reviews and bundle them up into a culture war.
But people who cannot accept he has so far done a good job will be defeated by him.
has liedused tactics to change the Labour Party. So people see his actions over trying to overturn Brexit before 2020 and think he’slyingusing tactics now.Now I have nothing against homosexual marriage in civil law or immigration where it brings needed skills but the balance has gone too far for many. Sometimes power for its own sake is worthless and it is better to be in opposition where you are at least true to your principles and values
but imposing pr on people without their say so is also egregious. If the electorate dont want pr that should be their choice same as if they want pr.
Politicians should not get to choose how they are elected they are meant to represent us....changing how we choose them should be our choice not theirs
In fact, I'm pretty confident that the proportion of students actively involved in such 'wars' is much lower now than it was 50 years ago. Now, most students are passive observers, preferring a life of consumption rather than activism.
https://twitter.com/SkySports/status/1659992069832671233
Too woke for some.
£397bn of service exports in 2022, an increase of 20% compared to 2021, and up 23% on exports in 2018. These comparators are obviously flattered by Covid but even so. The forecasts that the UK was going to be the bottom performer of the G7 are wrong. Our growth this year, whilst far from exciting, is going to be ahead of the Eurozone.
The relentless negativity of those who want to refight the battles of some years ago now are distorting where we are and where we are going. The west as a whole are suffering from an energy shock on the back of Ukraine and we are very far from immune from that but we need as a country to focus on what we need to do now to grow quickly, improve our tax base, improve our balance of payments from the disastrous years in the SM (our own fault, not the SM's) and give better chances to our children.
Time to give something else a go.
Personally I want to rip up our democracy and implement a completely different system but again while I think it better I would not claim we should implement it without consent of the electorate
But, a more plausible figure, say a Conservative version of Kate F Armagh also has Paul Berry, ex DUP, Causeway Coast has one PUP, and Lisburn has one ex UUP.
As I understand it, Truss sacking her was a hour shouting match between the two ladies. She’s unlikely to go quietly.
Our current immigration policy should be a marked improvement on freedom of movement but it requires both better controls from the likes of Border Force and more active management by the government in terms of targets.
Our existing arrangements with the EU are capable of being improved and I very much hope that the Windsor agreement will be the start of that.
Our civil service seem very reluctant to implement changes that might cause divergence from the EU. Some of this, such as manufacturing standards, is understandable, some less so.
But I think, on balance, we are doing ok. Economic policy is much more important than Brexit and is the job of the government. I wanted more incentives to invest and train in the budget. I want to see our education system more integrated with the industries and skills of the future. The cost of gas following on the cost of Covid has made this very difficult but I would barely give the government a pass mark to date. Again, we should be doing better but it is not Brexit that is holding us back.
NAACP issues travel advisory for Florida, saying the state is "openly hostile toward African Americans" under Gov. DeSantis' administration
PR with whipping in place will make no improvements to this but will give the parties the justification to claim that votes were for them rather than for the indiviual MPs. This will make the situation even worse rather than better.
Starmer is likely going to win the next GE not because he has the best policies or vision for the country, but because in a two-horse race one of the horses is lame and needs to be shot.
At least with PR there is a proper path to smaller parties gaining ground, establishing image and influence, and eventually becoming larger parties/parties of government.
None of which is to say that powerful political parties are an adornment to politics. But like branded groceries, they're probably necessary to make things work on a mass market basis.
Picking up on a couple of your points. GDP it depends how you slice it. 2022 was a good growth year for the UK, but it has definitely done the worst of the G7 since Covid, which happens to coincide with Brexit. We only managed to not to be the last in the G7 in Q1 2023 because Germany did marginally worse.
Our exports are also underperforming our peers with growth less than them in a booming market. Not surprising given the increase in trade barriers because of Brexit of course.
Personally I don't think there's a lot of point in dwelling on what went wrong. We are where are. But I do think it's important to acknowledge the damage caused because only then can we start to limit it.
If conservatives are prepared to fight for it social liberals won't always get their own way
The improvement in relations between S Korea and Japan, and new commitment to cooperation has been nothing short of dramatic.
Trump didn’t give a shit.
We’ll never get a change to the duopoly with FPTP. It’s the main reason the Big Two are so resolved to maintain it - the system that cements them as the only two choices.
You want FPTP? Then you want only the revolving door of Tory PM and Labour PM, for now and always.
Remove the power of the parties to suspend MPs for having voted the 'wrong' way and at the same time remove the power of the parties to impose candidates on constituencies. Make that entirely the remit of the constituency organisations. The parties will hate it but they will have to live with it.
This happened in the SM and the EU. It wasn't the fault of either but the economic incompetence of our own governments. Trying to pretend the same problems now are caused by Brexit is not, in my view, acknowledging the damage, it is recognising that our path has been unsustainable for a long time and it has caught up with us. We need to change and the excuse of the EU not letting us (which was never more than marginally true, at best) is no longer available.
If Sunak wants to get rid of her, fair enough, but this is a pretty weak excuse
From the poll tax riots the two Tory leadership election, black Wednesday and the Maarstricht rebellions , the 1990s weren’t very stable.
Current account deficits look to be in the second category. Already present but made worse by Brexit.
A majority on the whole don't get a government comprising of a party or parties they voted for. Government for the 40%.
So yes.
Unstable governments cannot pass laws, lose votes of no confidence and require fresh elections to try to achieve stability.
On the other hand it was quite politically conservative (as the obverse of the conservative/revolutionary coin.)
To my knowledge Corbyn didn’t make it to government.
If FPTP is so great then its proponents really need to show how it delivers better government than the myriad proportional systems in our near neighbourhood. The evidence is not particularly compelling.