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Punters think WH2024 will be a 2020 re-run – politicalbetting.com

SystemSystem Posts: 11,002
edited June 2023 in General
imagePunters think WH2024 will be a 2020 re-run – politicalbetting.com

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  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,772
    Still think Trump is going to come a cropper with these indictments. Isn't there supposed to be one today?
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,575
    edited June 2023
    DavidL said:

    Still think Trump is going to come a cropper with these indictments. Isn't there supposed to be one today?

    (FPT) This article makes a pretty decent case for No Trump.

    https://www.emptywheel.net/2023/06/08/this-indictment-will-likely-come-too-early-for-trump-to-consolidate-the-party/
    ...Trump’s first response to the first public confirmation that he will soon be charged was not, as it turned out, to bellow, “Lock him up!” or even reconsider his past obstruction, but instead demand that the insurrectionists in Congress do something.

    His first response was to demand that Republicans turn their focus — as they have for much of the last five years — on defending him at all costs, to the detriment of anything that better serves their interests (to say nothing of the interests of their constituents).

    ..But this indictment — if it indeed gets filed in the next two weeks or so — may come too early for Trump.

    That’s because, as I laid out here, there’s still plenty of time in the GOP primary for other Republicans to take advantage of Trump’s legal woes. Republicans seem to be sensing this opportunity. Chris Christie kicked off his undoubtedly doomed presidential race by focusing on Trump’s epic corruption. Mike Pence kicked off his equally doomed presidential run by emphasizing that he did his duty on January 6, unlike Trump...


    Note also the description of recent events in Congress, where the debt ceiling deal has rendered a visible breach between the MAGA members and the more rational Republicans.

    Of course, for now, it remains only a theory.
    ...If Trump weren’t indicted until September or October — still a realistic timeline for January 6, particularly if interim charges must occur first — Trump might have had an opportunity to seal the GOP primary and force the GOP to defend whatever crimes he gets charged with, to own and normalize those crimes as their own, as the GOP has chosen to do for the past six years.

    But at the moment, there are hints of a mood change..
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,575
    FPT, terrorism contd.

    A shell hits the water just 50m away from these rescuers on their motorboat. Anyone who's been near shelling can tell you how terrifying that 'woosh' is (and how close it is). If that was land, they would have been dead.
    https://twitter.com/NeilPHauer/status/1666783201489047555
  • numbertwelvenumbertwelve Posts: 5,414
    DavidL said:

    Still think Trump is going to come a cropper with these indictments. Isn't there supposed to be one today?

    I don’t think they will stop him getting the nomination - he has persuaded his cult that it is all politically motivated Democrat overrreach and more indictments will just fire them up even more.

    I do think it means he’ll come a cropper in the general election, however, assuming he gets the nomination. He already repulsed enough people in enough places that matter to turn out to stop him, and this will just add to that.
  • Hard to argue with punters on this.

    DeSantis is looking like a poor campaigner and, whilst you can make some case for non-Trumpian Republicans uniting behind another candidate: (a) it's made less likely by the sheer number of other candidates; and (b) there aren't enough non-Trumpian Republicans.

    On Biden, I originally though there may be an issue if a heavyweight (a Governor or Senator) made a play, but I think we'd know by now if a serious competitor was weighing a run. His current opponents aren't credible at all.

    Death and illness are, of course, possible given the age of the frontrunners.
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 113,969
    I think the value might be with Pence.

    #NotAPumpAndDumpStrategy
  • TimSTimS Posts: 9,169
    Did we do latest Savanta poll?

    14pt Labour lead

    🌹Lab 44 (=)
    🌳Con 30 (-1)
    🔶LD 11 (+2)
    ➡️Reform 5 (=)
    🎗️SNP 3 (=)
    🌍Gre 3 (=)
    ⬜️Other 3 (-2)

    2,109 UK adults, 2-4 June

    (chg from 26-28 May)

    https://twitter.com/savanta_uk/status/1666761063101091842?s=46

    Dutch salute etc.
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 113,969
    edited June 2023
    I don’t wish to alarm anybody but I’m now editing PB until Monday.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    edited June 2023
    Nigelb said:

    FPT, terrorism contd.

    A shell hits the water just 50m away from these rescuers on their motorboat. Anyone who's been near shelling can tell you how terrifying that 'woosh' is (and how close it is). If that was land, they would have been dead.
    https://twitter.com/NeilPHauer/status/1666783201489047555

    Shelling rescue workers, seriously? At least we can all see what these people are like. This has been the most documented war in history.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,286
    American democracy has failed in some ways, because polls show that most voters don't want the same main candidates as last time.
  • WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 8,480
    edited June 2023
    TimS said:

    Did we do latest Savanta poll?

    14pt Labour lead

    🌹Lab 44 (=)
    🌳Con 30 (-1)
    🔶LD 11 (+2)
    ➡️Reform 5 (=)
    🎗️SNP 3 (=)
    🌍Gre 3 (=)
    ⬜️Other 3 (-2)

    2,109 UK adults, 2-4 June

    (chg from 26-28 May)

    https://twitter.com/savanta_uk/status/1666761063101091842?s=46

    Dutch salute etc.

    The Yellows creeping up there, again, as in so many polls from various organisations.

    I think the Whigs will do well next year.
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 48,922
    TimS said:

    Did we do latest Savanta poll?

    14pt Labour lead

    🌹Lab 44 (=)
    🌳Con 30 (-1)
    🔶LD 11 (+2)
    ➡️Reform 5 (=)
    🎗️SNP 3 (=)
    🌍Gre 3 (=)
    ⬜️Other 3 (-2)

    2,109 UK adults, 2-4 June

    (chg from 26-28 May)

    https://twitter.com/savanta_uk/status/1666761063101091842?s=46

    Dutch salute etc.

    Broken, sleazy Tories (and others) on the slide!
  • TimS said:

    Did we do latest Savanta poll?

    14pt Labour lead

    🌹Lab 44 (=)
    🌳Con 30 (-1)
    🔶LD 11 (+2)
    ➡️Reform 5 (=)
    🎗️SNP 3 (=)
    🌍Gre 3 (=)
    ⬜️Other 3 (-2)

    2,109 UK adults, 2-4 June

    (chg from 26-28 May)

    https://twitter.com/savanta_uk/status/1666761063101091842?s=46

    Dutch salute etc.

    Broken, sleazy Tories (and others) on the slide!
    SKS fans please explain.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,575
    edited June 2023

    DavidL said:

    Still think Trump is going to come a cropper with these indictments. Isn't there supposed to be one today?

    I don’t think they will stop him getting the nomination - he has persuaded his cult that it is all politically motivated Democrat overrreach and more indictments will just fire them up even more..
    Perhaps.
    But was noted above, there are tentative hints that the mainstream (or what's left of it) party has lost patience with its accommodation with the cult - see recent events in the House.

    An early indictment (or indictments) of Trump gives an opportunity to his opponents in the party. If he were already nominee, I agree, they would back him rathe than their principles.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,575

    I don’t wish to alarm anybody but I’m now editing PB until Monday.

    Heavy fighting, Ukrainian tank advances, overnight in around Orikhiv, southeast of Zaporizhzhya, and Tokmak, per local Russian official. "There is a high-intensity battle going on right now."
    https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1666719504225714177

    Interesting location.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,575
    LOL
    Though even this says something.

    Sorry, Trump — Rishi Sunak’s too busy to see you
    British PM has no time for former president despite meeting a host of other senior US politicians during Washington DC trip.
    https://www.politico.eu/article/sorry-trump-rishi-sunaks-too-busy-to-see-you/
  • NickPalmerNickPalmer Posts: 21,263

    Hard to argue with punters on this.

    DeSantis is looking like a poor campaigner and, whilst you can make some case for non-Trumpian Republicans uniting behind another candidate: (a) it's made less likely by the sheer number of other candidates; and (b) there aren't enough non-Trumpian Republicans.

    On Biden, I originally though there may be an issue if a heavyweight (a Governor or Senator) made a play, but I think we'd know by now if a serious competitor was weighing a run. His current opponents aren't credible at all.

    Death and illness are, of course, possible given the age of the frontrunners.

    Yes, and even if they weren't old! If Biden suddenly became unavailable for re-election, who do we think would jump in? Harris would have the inside track despite the negative polling ratings (slightly worse than Biden, though not massively so). Whitmer?

    Similarly, if Trump quit, who would be favoured? There's no shortage of candidates here, and perhaps DeSantis would get the "heir to the throne" vote despite the current squabbles - he's less ostentatiously anti-Trump than Pence, while being lavishly right-wing.
  • Wulfrun_PhilWulfrun_Phil Posts: 4,572
    FPT

    <

    Sean_F said:

    Pagan2 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Good morning everyone!

    Of course, if Blair hadn’t won such a big majority in 97, then he would have instituted PR along the lines advocated by Lord Jenkins. It was Prescott who stopped him.

    From Labour backbench MPs perspective, Prescott was right.

    Labour would only have won 283 MPs with PR in 1997, compared to the 418 Labour MPs elected under FPTP in 1997
    Labour will never introduce PR, unless it’s the unavoidable price of a coalition with the Liberals.
    And even then LAB would try as hard as possible to water it down to just apply to local elections, and any elected replacement for House of Lords, not for the Commons.
    Do people think pr for national elections could be introduced without a referendum? Technically yes it could however I think politically the answer is no.

    If there is a referendum do you think PR would win? I personally think the answer is no.
    Politically I think the critical determinant is whether it's a manifesto commitment. If it's in the manifesto, and they are elected on that manifesto, then there's no issue. This is one reason why Labour opponents to PR will fight to keep a commitment to PR out of the manifesto.

    If it's not in the manifesto then I suspect that Labour MPs and Lords opposed to PR will be able to force a referendum, and the cross-party opposition will make it hard for a referendum to be won.
    Spot on. And given that Starmer himself opposes PR there is statistically zero chance of it appearing in the manifesto.
    Why would anyone expect Labour (or any other party) to oppose the system that benefits them.
    If STV is good enough for the most fractious part of the UK (as in NI), why not the rest of the country?
    The experience of unstable government in the 2018-19 period is something to be avoided, and PR would make a repeat more likely. However, if you are looking for some form of more proportional system that Labour might be prepared to adopt, and which would promote stable government, I suggest that something similar to the majority bonus system currently in use in Greece and formerly in Italy is your best bet. (The Greece version awards the seat bonus to the largest party, the Italian version awarded the bonus to the largest pre-formed coalition.) It puts a high premium on parties forming a coalition before an election, so that would benefit Labour, the Lib Dems and Greens and the mutual interest would make a coalition likely in order to deliver bonus seats and a stable government. It's much more democratic because the choice of coalition would be made transparent before people vote, just about every other PR system leaves it coalitions to form in smoke filled rooms with no regard to the electorate may have wanted.

    What I cannot see Starmer doing is conceding a form of PR that would in future allow the Lib Dems to play kingmaker once people have voted. The experience of Clegg in 2010 is still a bitter one for many in Labour.
    The experience of unstable government in the 2018-19 period is something to be avoided, and occurred under FPTP. It's hardly a good argument against PR to say we got these problems without PR!

    If you prize "stability" in a system, defined here as a clear winner (be it a single party or a pre-formed coalition), then the approach used in many countries is to directly elect the executive. I think that's neater than a majority bonus system in some ways, but the problem with directly electing the executive is that usually means electing a president and there are downsides to presidential systems.
    I appreciate that the instability of our government in 2018-19 took place under FPTP, but at least it was the exception to the rule. There have been very few instances in my lifetime where a UK government could not properly function under the present system and they were short lived and resolved by a subsequent election. Under some forms of PR that situation it would either become the rule rather than the exception or be resolved by negotiation often lasting months between politicians from which the public is wholly excluded. How many of the Irish electorate when casting their votes thought that they were voting for a FF/FG coalition for example, and what worth are promises made during an election when they can be readily discarded as soon as post election negotiations kick off?

    The majority bonus system seems to me to be a reasonable compromise, incorporating a large dose of PR but with elections being potentially conducted between two coalitions, designed to deliver stable government with the largest coalition being chosen by the electorate.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,772
    Nigelb said:

    LOL
    Though even this says something.

    Sorry, Trump — Rishi Sunak’s too busy to see you
    British PM has no time for former president despite meeting a host of other senior US politicians during Washington DC trip.
    https://www.politico.eu/article/sorry-trump-rishi-sunaks-too-busy-to-see-you/

    Well, he's got baseball games to go to and everything. The FO must be confident he isn't going to win.
  • Northern_AlNorthern_Al Posts: 7,461
    edited June 2023
    Looking at the UK polls over the last month, including today's Savanta, there seems to be less turbulence than earlier in the year. A Labour lead averaging around 14-15% seems pretty consistent, with the only real outlier being Omnisis, which has a larger Labour lead.

    I'm still holding my breath for the moment that Labour's lead goes down to single figures, which was hotly anticipated by quite a few on here back in the spring.
  • DavidL said:

    Nigelb said:

    LOL
    Though even this says something.

    Sorry, Trump — Rishi Sunak’s too busy to see you
    British PM has no time for former president despite meeting a host of other senior US politicians during Washington DC trip.
    https://www.politico.eu/article/sorry-trump-rishi-sunaks-too-busy-to-see-you/

    Well, he's got baseball games to go to and everything. The FO must be confident he isn't going to win.
    He isn't, but he's still going to be PM until the next election.
  • Hard to argue with punters on this.

    DeSantis is looking like a poor campaigner and, whilst you can make some case for non-Trumpian Republicans uniting behind another candidate: (a) it's made less likely by the sheer number of other candidates; and (b) there aren't enough non-Trumpian Republicans.

    On Biden, I originally though there may be an issue if a heavyweight (a Governor or Senator) made a play, but I think we'd know by now if a serious competitor was weighing a run. His current opponents aren't credible at all.

    Death and illness are, of course, possible given the age of the frontrunners.

    Yes, and even if they weren't old! If Biden suddenly became unavailable for re-election, who do we think would jump in? Harris would have the inside track despite the negative polling ratings (slightly worse than Biden, though not massively so). Whitmer?

    Similarly, if Trump quit, who would be favoured? There's no shortage of candidates here, and perhaps DeSantis would get the "heir to the throne" vote despite the current squabbles - he's less ostentatiously anti-Trump than Pence, while being lavishly right-wing.
    If Biden suddenly became unavailable in the sense he ceased to be President, Harris would be supremely well placed as she would be President, and in circumstances where I suspect Democrats at least would rally round in a moment of national crisis (which the death/incapacity of a President is).

    If, however, Biden got a diagnosis (say) that led to a change of heart on standing again later this year but didn't remove him as President, that's a very different matter and it'd be quite open.

    If Trump quit (very unlikely) or died/fell ill (more likely due to age) I think DeSantis is a bit of a shoo-in at this point. He isn't standing as anti-Trump but electable-Trump and is a natural heir. Indeed, he might well have had Trump's endorsement if Trump hadn't decided to go again.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,575

    Hard to argue with punters on this.

    DeSantis is looking like a poor campaigner and, whilst you can make some case for non-Trumpian Republicans uniting behind another candidate: (a) it's made less likely by the sheer number of other candidates; and (b) there aren't enough non-Trumpian Republicans.

    On Biden, I originally though there may be an issue if a heavyweight (a Governor or Senator) made a play, but I think we'd know by now if a serious competitor was weighing a run. His current opponents aren't credible at all.

    Death and illness are, of course, possible given the age of the frontrunners.

    Yes, and even if they weren't old! If Biden suddenly became unavailable for re-election, who do we think would jump in? Harris would have the inside track despite the negative polling ratings (slightly worse than Biden, though not massively so). Whitmer?
    Depends on the timing.
    If it were to happen now, there'd be a mad scramble for the primaries, and it's really anyone's at that point - and Harris's worst chance.
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 23,933

    I think the value might be with Pence.

    #NotAPumpAndDumpStrategy

    I put a small amount on Pence some while ago but now, I struggle to see it. Pence has more chance of another Trump VP run and that's not happening either.
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 23,933
    DavidL said:

    Nigelb said:

    LOL
    Though even this says something.

    Sorry, Trump — Rishi Sunak’s too busy to see you
    British PM has no time for former president despite meeting a host of other senior US politicians during Washington DC trip.
    https://www.politico.eu/article/sorry-trump-rishi-sunaks-too-busy-to-see-you/

    Well, he's got baseball games to go to and everything. The FO must be confident he isn't going to win.
    Didn't the FCO let the serving PM diss Trump last time?
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,772
    Australia all out for 469 and frankly they wasted quite a few overs on 9, 10 and 11 with relatively few runs for it. They may come to regret that. Does anyone know what happens if this test is a draw?
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775

    .

    Farooq said:

    HYUFD said:

    ClippP said:

    HYUFD said:

    ClippP said:

    HYUFD said:

    boulay said:

    MikeL said:

    There's clearly a huge desire to get the Conservatives out.

    But what do all the people desperate for a Labour Government want it to actually do? And what is Starmer actually planning to do?

    Starmer has said he's not going to raise taxes significantly and he's told the Shadow Cabinet not to make any spending promises.

    So if he isn't going to spend any money, what is he actually going to do?

    He seems to be heading for a Gordon Brown scenario - desperate to get into power but with no tangible plans to actually do anything once he gets there.

    So the public will almost certainly get their wish to get the Conservatives out - only for Starmer to come in and do precisely nothing - effectively continuing with existing policies.

    The only change will be that the existing policies will have new branding and of course the rhetoric will be different.

    What do I want it to do?

    Well, Government to stop handing out lucrative contracts and appointments to its mates.

    I'd like it to stop telling barefaced lies to the public, and to Parliament.


    I'd like it to put more of the burden of paying for public services on those that can afford it rather than those that can't.

    I'd like it to act with some integrity, domestically and internationally, so that some public faith in politicians is restored.

    I'd like it to restore good trading relations with our natural trading partners, notably the EU.

    That would do for starters. Anything else would be a bonus.
    This is what I don't get about remaining Tories. This government- and with it the Conservative Party - is openly corrupt. That is not a conservative thing to support.

    And I'm not just talking about financial corruption into the BILLIONS of our money grifted to their spiv friends and patrons. I also refer to the corruption of facts. Lying to parliament is a Bad Thing with a very rapid and swift penalty. Utterly corrupted by the Tories who don't just lie, but try to insist their lie is the truth no matter how egregious that claim is.

    That is also not a conservative thing to support. True conservatives surely need to save the soul of their party, because at the moment they are the anti-Conservatives. Is there no level of filth that some people are prepared to swim in? And for what - to defend a party whose policies they largely oppose and whose principles are a mockery of what they hold dear?

    I can see an awful lot of Tory voters - true lifelong conservatives - trying to save the soul of the party by killing the anti-Tories at the coming election. Kill it with electoral fire. And then you can have your party back.
    Your last paragraph relies on two things, that the rump of remaining Tories are the sensible ones - unlikely, and that if they get wiped out that they learn the right lessons.

    My concern is that a large defeat will leave those in solid seats, the Bill Cash and Edward Leigh’s of the world running the show who have learned nothing and not remotely adapted to the modern world.

    They will also come to the wrong conclusion that they lost because they were “too centrist” and so lurch to bonkers. This will further destroy the Tories as a going concern for a long long time like the Liberals.

    The best situation for Tories (short of an unlikely victory) is a modest defeat where the evidence to them is clear that despite all the shit over the last few years and the damage to their standing they managed to get close with Sunak and a more centrist approach with nods to the right and so replacing him with crazy isn’t the answer.

    It’s also not great for the country to have parties in power with whopping majorities unless they actually have a decent plan how to fix things - either you get bad decisions that are un-opposable due to the majority or you get complacency such as under Blair where a huge majority, where he could have changed the face of the country, is wasted because they are too worried about the next election and losing the broad church that got them that majority and so don’t want to do anything to scare the horses so you end up with stagnation.
    Sane people in Labour managed to save the party from me and BJO, so the Tories can at least try.

    As I posted before, I expect that electoral and constitutional reform will be an inevitable big agenda item in the next parliament. Which means that the restored Tory party may not need distinguished psychopaths like Sir Edward Leigh - they could form their own party.
    And PR also guarantees Farage's Reform UK and a new Corbynite left party 15-20% of the seats in the House of Commons each, so far from removing the hard right and hard left, PR just increases their power........
    Not at all, my dear young HY. Why do you think up to 20% of the country would like to see a Corbynite left party and te same for a Farage style Reform party? There is far more danger under the present voting system where is is comparatively easy for extremists to take over the entire party. They took over the Labour Party not so long ago, and the present profile of the Conservative leadership speaks for itself.

    If you have strict proportional representation (which would have to be country-wide), then parties can easily split up, so that different shades of opinion are fairly represented. At present, if you are a Conservative supporter, you are forced to vote for the official Conservative candidate - don't you? - whatever sub-set of Conservatism he supports. Or vote for another party, as lots of traditional decent Conservatives did at the recent local elections.

    If you have the best form of PR - the Single Transferable Vote in Multi-Member constituencies - a candidate would have to get at least 20% of support in that constituency to get elected. And if there is that amount of support for his position and policies, then those views have a right to be represented.

    Up to now, the Conservative Party has benefited from our broken voting system. The appearance of bodies like the one fronted by Carol Vorderman helps to remove some of that distortion, as a look at their recommendations for the recent council elections shows.

    I have the impression that now it is the Conservative point of view that is seriously under-represented on my local council. And the Labour point of view too, because there are no Labour councillors at all.
    As about 15 to 20% of the country are hard right and 15 to 20% of the country are hard left, only FPTP keeps them voting Tory or Labour.

    See the European elections where when we had PR Farage's party won twice, in 2014 and 2019.

    Sunak is also not Farage and Starmer is not Corbyn. With PR Farage and Corbyn would still be leading their own parties with lots of MPs in Parliament
    Oh dear, young HY! The EU elections were fought on the party list system, based on regions. If you remember, the EU insisted that we should fight EU elections with some system of PR, and the party list system, imposed on us by the then Labour government, was the least proportional one that the Labour Government could get away with. In other words, it was the one where the Party kept greatest control, and individual voters had least say.

    I am still awaiting evidence to support your assertion that 20% of the country is hard right and another 20% hard left. If anything, the vast increase in support for the Lib Dems at the recent local elections would suggest that you might be mistaken.
    If we had PR the likelihood is Farage's RefUK and the Greens or a Corbynite party would overtake the LDs as the 3rd UK wide party within 5 to 10 years.

    In 2015 UKIP won more votes than the LDs even if under FPTP the LDs won more seats than UKIP.

    A few local election protest votes for the LDs to try and stop new housing and mend potholes doesn't translate to national elections.

    PR may on paper benefit the LDs much more than the Conservatives and Labour but in practice it might hit all 3 of the established parties
    No they wouldn't. The thing holding the tiny parties back is the same thing holding the Lib Dems back. In most constituencies, 461 of them, it's Labour and Conservative holding the top two positions. Many people view voting for the third or worse party as a wasted vote, so they feel "forced" into choosing between red and blue.

    There's no reason to suppose this would benefit the parties in 4th, 5th and beyond so much more that they would overtake the 3rd placed party.
    Of course there is, for starters in plenty of constituencies the Lib Dems are the alternative to the incumbent. Then in many constituencies where the Lib Dems aren't even top two they still falsely portray themselves as the alternative.

    FPTP massively assists the Lib Dems over smaller competitor parties.

    The experience of PR where it is used is to see much more churn in who the third party is, with the former third party being relegated or even eliminated altogether quite frequently. Having a consistent third party in PR nations is rather unusual.
    Actually you're right that it's entirely possible the Lib Dems would be overtaken as third party, but it's also possible that would rise up to second or first over time.

    So yes, my statement was far too definitive that it wouldn't happen and I was wrong. But I still think HYUFD was wrong to state that it's likely to pan out the way he thinks. We've both made equal and opposite mistakes here.

    But you're also wrong. "FPTP massively assists the Lib Dems" is obviously nonsense. A party that's getting 1 vote in 9 and is rewarded with 1 seat in 59 can in no sense be described as being "assisted" by the system. Even if the Lib Dem vote share halved under PR (I think it would rise, but just for the sake of argument) they would still end up with more than TREBLE the number of MPs, up from 11 to 37.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,712

    I think the value might be with Pence.

    #NotAPumpAndDumpStrategy

    Yep, if Trump is charged with criminal offences and his support craters much of it would go to Pence not DeSantis.

    Of course the last time a President lost his re election battle after only 1 term of his party in the White House in 1980, Carter, it was Carter's VP Mondale who won the Democrat nomination to take on Reagan having beaten his Democrat rival the somewhat more exciting Gary Hart.

    Could Pence be Mondale, DeSantis Hart and Trump Carter? Albeit Carter declined to run again. 1984 was also an election where there were big questions about the incumbent President's age but Reagan famously quipped in a debate with Mondale 'he would not use his opponent's youth and inexperience against him'
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RtXmnUe9s0
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,712

    Hard to argue with punters on this.

    DeSantis is looking like a poor campaigner and, whilst you can make some case for non-Trumpian Republicans uniting behind another candidate: (a) it's made less likely by the sheer number of other candidates; and (b) there aren't enough non-Trumpian Republicans.

    On Biden, I originally though there may be an issue if a heavyweight (a Governor or Senator) made a play, but I think we'd know by now if a serious competitor was weighing a run. His current opponents aren't credible at all.

    Death and illness are, of course, possible given the age of the frontrunners.

    Yes, and even if they weren't old! If Biden suddenly became unavailable for re-election, who do we think would jump in? Harris would have the inside track despite the negative polling ratings (slightly worse than Biden, though not massively so). Whitmer?

    Similarly, if Trump quit, who would be favoured? There's no shortage of candidates here, and perhaps DeSantis would get the "heir to the throne" vote despite the current squabbles - he's less ostentatiously anti-Trump than Pence, while being lavishly right-wing.
    If Biden suddenly became unavailable in the sense he ceased to be President, Harris would be supremely well placed as she would be President, and in circumstances where I suspect Democrats at least would rally round in a moment of national crisis (which the death/incapacity of a President is).

    If, however, Biden got a diagnosis (say) that led to a change of heart on standing again later this year but didn't remove him as President, that's a very different matter and it'd be quite open.

    If Trump quit (very unlikely) or died/fell ill (more likely due to age) I think DeSantis is a bit of a shoo-in at this point. He isn't standing as anti-Trump but electable-Trump and is a natural heir. Indeed, he might well have had Trump's endorsement if Trump hadn't decided to go again.
    Latest Redfield is Biden 45% Trump 41% but Trump 43% Harris 42%. Harris is a Trump and GOP wet dream!

    https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/joe-biden-administration-approval-ratings-and-hypothetical-voting-intention-31-may-2023/
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,772

    DavidL said:

    Nigelb said:

    LOL
    Though even this says something.

    Sorry, Trump — Rishi Sunak’s too busy to see you
    British PM has no time for former president despite meeting a host of other senior US politicians during Washington DC trip.
    https://www.politico.eu/article/sorry-trump-rishi-sunaks-too-busy-to-see-you/

    Well, he's got baseball games to go to and everything. The FO must be confident he isn't going to win.
    Didn't the FCO let the serving PM diss Trump last time?
    Don't honestly remember.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,712
    edited June 2023
    Nigelb said:

    LOL
    Though even this says something.

    Sorry, Trump — Rishi Sunak’s too busy to see you
    British PM has no time for former president despite meeting a host of other senior US politicians during Washington DC trip.
    https://www.politico.eu/article/sorry-trump-rishi-sunaks-too-busy-to-see-you/

    I suspect Boris meeting Trump for dinner on his trip to the US last month may also be a factor, Sunak is the UK DeSantis for Trump I suspect. Boris in Trump's own words 'Britain Trump'.
    https://www.politico.eu/article/donald-trump-and-boris-johnson-talk-ukraine-russia-war/

    Sunak did meet Speaker McCarthy and Senator Romney however, 2 Republicans Trump hates even more than DeSantis
  • FlatlanderFlatlander Posts: 3,853
    Nigelb said:

    I don’t wish to alarm anybody but I’m now editing PB until Monday.

    Heavy fighting, Ukrainian tank advances, overnight in around Orikhiv, southeast of Zaporizhzhya, and Tokmak, per local Russian official. "There is a high-intensity battle going on right now."
    https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1666719504225714177

    Interesting location.
    Taking Tokmak would cut the land bridge to Crimea.

    Governor has ordered civilians out. Very interesting...
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,625
    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    Nigelb said:

    LOL
    Though even this says something.

    Sorry, Trump — Rishi Sunak’s too busy to see you
    British PM has no time for former president despite meeting a host of other senior US politicians during Washington DC trip.
    https://www.politico.eu/article/sorry-trump-rishi-sunaks-too-busy-to-see-you/

    Well, he's got baseball games to go to and everything. The FO must be confident he isn't going to win.
    Didn't the FCO let the serving PM diss Trump last time?
    Don't honestly remember.
    There was that picture of Boris, Macron and Merkel?? apparently sharing a joke behind Trumps back?
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,772

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    Nigelb said:

    LOL
    Though even this says something.

    Sorry, Trump — Rishi Sunak’s too busy to see you
    British PM has no time for former president despite meeting a host of other senior US politicians during Washington DC trip.
    https://www.politico.eu/article/sorry-trump-rishi-sunaks-too-busy-to-see-you/

    Well, he's got baseball games to go to and everything. The FO must be confident he isn't going to win.
    Didn't the FCO let the serving PM diss Trump last time?
    Don't honestly remember.
    There was that picture of Boris, Macron and Merkel?? apparently sharing a joke behind Trumps back?
    Vaguely. I think that we have to give the elected President of the US due respect but its a challenge when they select someone like Trump.
  • CatManCatMan Posts: 2,722
    DavidL said:

    Australia all out for 469 and frankly they wasted quite a few overs on 9, 10 and 11 with relatively few runs for it. They may come to regret that. Does anyone know what happens if this test is a draw?

    They share the trophy
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,712
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797
    HYUFD said:

    Nigelb said:

    LOL
    Though even this says something.

    Sorry, Trump — Rishi Sunak’s too busy to see you
    British PM has no time for former president despite meeting a host of other senior US politicians during Washington DC trip.
    https://www.politico.eu/article/sorry-trump-rishi-sunaks-too-busy-to-see-you/

    I suspect Boris meeting Trump for dinner on his trip to the US last month may also be a factor, Sunak is the UK DeSantis for Trump I suspect. Boris in Trump's own words 'Britain Trump'.
    https://www.politico.eu/article/donald-trump-and-boris-johnson-talk-ukraine-russia-war/

    Sunak did meet Speaker McCarthy and Senator Romney however, 2 Republicans Trump hates even more than DeSantis
    I can see a big problem with Sunak meeting Trump

    Asked about the prospect of a Trump return to the White House in 18 months, Sunak said the leaders he would be speaking to shared “universal values of freedom and democracy and the rule of law.”
  • TimSTimS Posts: 9,169
    Farooq said:

    .

    Farooq said:

    HYUFD said:

    ClippP said:

    HYUFD said:

    ClippP said:

    HYUFD said:

    boulay said:

    MikeL said:

    There's clearly a huge desire to get the Conservatives out.

    But what do all the people desperate for a Labour Government want it to actually do? And what is Starmer actually planning to do?

    Starmer has said he's not going to raise taxes significantly and he's told the Shadow Cabinet not to make any spending promises.

    So if he isn't going to spend any money, what is he actually going to do?

    He seems to be heading for a Gordon Brown scenario - desperate to get into power but with no tangible plans to actually do anything once he gets there.

    So the public will almost certainly get their wish to get the Conservatives out - only for Starmer to come in and do precisely nothing - effectively continuing with existing policies.

    The only change will be that the existing policies will have new branding and of course the rhetoric will be different.

    What do I want it to do?

    Well, Government to stop handing out lucrative contracts and appointments to its mates.

    I'd like it to stop telling barefaced lies to the public, and to Parliament.


    I'd like it to put more of the burden of paying for public services on those that can afford it rather than those that can't.

    I'd like it to act with some integrity, domestically and internationally, so that some public faith in politicians is restored.

    I'd like it to restore good trading relations with our natural trading partners, notably the EU.

    That would do for starters. Anything else would be a bonus.
    This is what I don't get about remaining Tories. This government- and with it the Conservative Party - is openly corrupt. That is not a conservative thing to support.

    And I'm not just talking about financial corruption into the BILLIONS of our money grifted to their spiv friends and patrons. I also refer to the corruption of facts. Lying to parliament is a Bad Thing with a very rapid and swift penalty. Utterly corrupted by the Tories who don't just lie, but try to insist their lie is the truth no matter how egregious that claim is.

    That is also not a conservative thing to support. True conservatives surely need to save the soul of their party, because at the moment they are the anti-Conservatives. Is there no level of filth that some people are prepared to swim in? And for what - to defend a party whose policies they largely oppose and whose principles are a mockery of what they hold dear?

    I can see an awful lot of Tory voters - true lifelong conservatives - trying to save the soul of the party by killing the anti-Tories at the coming election. Kill it with electoral fire. And then you can have your party back.
    Your last paragraph relies on two things, that the rump of remaining Tories are the sensible ones - unlikely, and that if they get wiped out that they learn the right lessons.

    My concern is that a large defeat will leave those in solid seats, the Bill Cash and Edward Leigh’s of the world running the show who have learned nothing and not remotely adapted to the modern world.

    They will also come to the wrong conclusion that they lost because they were “too centrist” and so lurch to bonkers. This will further destroy the Tories as a going concern for a long long time like the Liberals.

    The best situation for Tories (short of an unlikely victory) is a modest defeat where the evidence to them is clear that despite all the shit over the last few years and the damage to their standing they managed to get close with Sunak and a more centrist approach with nods to the right and so replacing him with crazy isn’t the answer.

    It’s also not great for the country to have parties in power with whopping majorities unless they actually have a decent plan how to fix things - either you get bad decisions that are un-opposable due to the majority or you get complacency such as under Blair where a huge majority, where he could have changed the face of the country, is wasted because they are too worried about the next election and losing the broad church that got them that majority and so don’t want to do anything to scare the horses so you end up with stagnation.
    Sane people in Labour managed to save the party from me and BJO, so the Tories can at least try.

    As I posted before, I expect that electoral and constitutional reform will be an inevitable big agenda item in the next parliament. Which means that the restored Tory party may not need distinguished psychopaths like Sir Edward Leigh - they could form their own party.
    And PR also guarantees Farage's Reform UK and a new Corbynite left party 15-20% of the seats in the House of Commons each, so far from removing the hard right and hard left, PR just increases their power........
    Not at all, my dear young HY. Why do you think up to 20% of the country would like to see a Corbynite left party and te same for a Farage style Reform party? There is far more danger under the present voting system where is is comparatively easy for extremists to take over the entire party. They took over the Labour Party not so long ago, and the present profile of the Conservative leadership speaks for itself.

    If you have strict proportional representation (which would have to be country-wide), then parties can easily split up, so that different shades of opinion are fairly represented. At present, if you are a Conservative supporter, you are forced to vote for the official Conservative candidate - don't you? - whatever sub-set of Conservatism he supports. Or vote for another party, as lots of traditional decent Conservatives did at the recent local elections.

    If you have the best form of PR - the Single Transferable Vote in Multi-Member constituencies - a candidate would have to get at least 20% of support in that constituency to get elected. And if there is that amount of support for his position and policies, then those views have a right to be represented.

    Up to now, the Conservative Party has benefited from our broken voting system. The appearance of bodies like the one fronted by Carol Vorderman helps to remove some of that distortion, as a look at their recommendations for the recent council elections shows.

    I have the impression that now it is the Conservative point of view that is seriously under-represented on my local council. And the Labour point of view too, because there are no Labour councillors at all.
    As about 15 to 20% of the country are hard right and 15 to 20% of the country are hard left, only FPTP keeps them voting Tory or Labour.

    See the European elections where when we had PR Farage's party won twice, in 2014 and 2019.

    Sunak is also not Farage and Starmer is not Corbyn. With PR Farage and Corbyn would still be leading their own parties with lots of MPs in Parliament
    Oh dear, young HY! The EU elections were fought on the party list system, based on regions. If you remember, the EU insisted that we should fight EU elections with some system of PR, and the party list system, imposed on us by the then Labour government, was the least proportional one that the Labour Government could get away with. In other words, it was the one where the Party kept greatest control, and individual voters had least say.

    I am still awaiting evidence to support your assertion that 20% of the country is hard right and another 20% hard left. If anything, the vast increase in support for the Lib Dems at the recent local elections would suggest that you might be mistaken.
    If we had PR the likelihood is Farage's RefUK and the Greens or a Corbynite party would overtake the LDs as the 3rd UK wide party within 5 to 10 years.

    In 2015 UKIP won more votes than the LDs even if under FPTP the LDs won more seats than UKIP.

    A few local election protest votes for the LDs to try and stop new housing and mend potholes doesn't translate to national elections.

    PR may on paper benefit the LDs much more than the Conservatives and Labour but in practice it might hit all 3 of the established parties
    No they wouldn't. The thing holding the tiny parties back is the same thing holding the Lib Dems back. In most constituencies, 461 of them, it's Labour and Conservative holding the top two positions. Many people view voting for the third or worse party as a wasted vote, so they feel "forced" into choosing between red and blue.

    There's no reason to suppose this would benefit the parties in 4th, 5th and beyond so much more that they would overtake the 3rd placed party.
    Of course there is, for starters in plenty of constituencies the Lib Dems are the alternative to the incumbent. Then in many constituencies where the Lib Dems aren't even top two they still falsely portray themselves as the alternative.

    FPTP massively assists the Lib Dems over smaller competitor parties.

    The experience of PR where it is used is to see much more churn in who the third party is, with the former third party being relegated or even eliminated altogether quite frequently. Having a consistent third party in PR nations is rather unusual.
    Actually you're right that it's entirely possible the Lib Dems would be overtaken as third party, but it's also possible that would rise up to second or first over time.

    So yes, my statement was far too definitive that it wouldn't happen and I was wrong. But I still think HYUFD was wrong to state that it's likely to pan out the way he thinks. We've both made equal and opposite mistakes here.

    But you're also wrong. "FPTP massively assists the Lib Dems" is obviously nonsense. A party that's getting 1 vote in 9 and is rewarded with 1 seat in 59 can in no sense be described as being "assisted" by the system. Even if the Lib Dem vote share halved under PR (I think it would rise, but just for the sake of argument) they would still end up with more than TREBLE the number of MPs, up from 11 to 37.
    The whole discussion is very much couched in FPTP thinking. It's like an unconscious bias that affects all of us, whether left or right or centre.

    Under FPTP the fate of your party is tied up closely with the fate and direction of the country. Tories do well, country implements right wing policies (most of the time). Labour does well, country implements left policies. The assumption therefore is that any constitutional change that is good or bad for a particular party is equally good or bad for the ideological bloc they are associated with.

    In a PR system it's the policies and ideologies that matter, not the party label. I'm a Lib Dem party member, but if we ended up with an STV system and it turned out another broadly liberal centrist party had policies more closely aligned with my own, I would happy switch my vote and membership. PR allows people to vote for the party that best represents their viewpoint, which means you get far less of the unease voters have these days feeling they have to vote for one party to keep out the other even though they might hate the leader or front bench.

    Under PR would we have more, or fewer, MPs representing liberal internationalist parties? I expect probably more. That might well be at the expense of the legacy Lib Dem party who might end up with fewer. But Lib Dems shoudn't care. The policy is the important thing.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,625

    Nigelb said:

    I don’t wish to alarm anybody but I’m now editing PB until Monday.

    Heavy fighting, Ukrainian tank advances, overnight in around Orikhiv, southeast of Zaporizhzhya, and Tokmak, per local Russian official. "There is a high-intensity battle going on right now."
    https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1666719504225714177

    Interesting location.
    Taking Tokmak would cut the land bridge to Crimea.

    Governor has ordered civilians out. Very interesting...
    Half way to Melitopol…
  • TimSTimS Posts: 9,169
    HYUFD said:
    There are a few germs of good points in that article but it's fudged by the obvious ideological biases of the writer - towards the US and against the EU. The title of the piece is better and more thought provoking than the content.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,575
    TimS said:

    HYUFD said:
    There are a few germs of good points in that article but it's fudged by the obvious ideological biases of the writer - towards the US and against the EU. The title of the piece is better and more thought provoking than the content.
    Anyone still using the word 'vassal' in a contemporary democratic context is off to a bad start.
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775
    TimS said:

    Farooq said:

    .

    Farooq said:

    HYUFD said:

    ClippP said:

    HYUFD said:

    ClippP said:

    HYUFD said:

    boulay said:

    MikeL said:

    There's clearly a huge desire to get the Conservatives out.

    But what do all the people desperate for a Labour Government want it to actually do? And what is Starmer actually planning to do?

    Starmer has said he's not going to raise taxes significantly and he's told the Shadow Cabinet not to make any spending promises.

    So if he isn't going to spend any money, what is he actually going to do?

    He seems to be heading for a Gordon Brown scenario - desperate to get into power but with no tangible plans to actually do anything once he gets there.

    So the public will almost certainly get their wish to get the Conservatives out - only for Starmer to come in and do precisely nothing - effectively continuing with existing policies.

    The only change will be that the existing policies will have new branding and of course the rhetoric will be different.

    What do I want it to do?

    Well, Government to stop handing out lucrative contracts and appointments to its mates.

    I'd like it to stop telling barefaced lies to the public, and to Parliament.


    I'd like it to put more of the burden of paying for public services on those that can afford it rather than those that can't.

    I'd like it to act with some integrity, domestically and internationally, so that some public faith in politicians is restored.

    I'd like it to restore good trading relations with our natural trading partners, notably the EU.

    That would do for starters. Anything else would be a bonus.
    This is what I don't get about remaining Tories. This government- and with it the Conservative Party - is openly corrupt. That is not a conservative thing to support.

    And I'm not just talking about financial corruption into the BILLIONS of our money grifted to their spiv friends and patrons. I also refer to the corruption of facts. Lying to parliament is a Bad Thing with a very rapid and swift penalty. Utterly corrupted by the Tories who don't just lie, but try to insist their lie is the truth no matter how egregious that claim is.

    That is also not a conservative thing to support. True conservatives surely need to save the soul of their party, because at the moment they are the anti-Conservatives. Is there no level of filth that some people are prepared to swim in? And for what - to defend a party whose policies they largely oppose and whose principles are a mockery of what they hold dear?

    I can see an awful lot of Tory voters - true lifelong conservatives - trying to save the soul of the party by killing the anti-Tories at the coming election. Kill it with electoral fire. And then you can have your party back.
    Your last paragraph relies on two things, that the rump of remaining Tories are the sensible ones - unlikely, and that if they get wiped out that they learn the right lessons.

    My concern is that a large defeat will leave those in solid seats, the Bill Cash and Edward Leigh’s of the world running the show who have learned nothing and not remotely adapted to the modern world.

    They will also come to the wrong conclusion that they lost because they were “too centrist” and so lurch to bonkers. This will further destroy the Tories as a going concern for a long long time like the Liberals.

    The best situation for Tories (short of an unlikely victory) is a modest defeat where the evidence to them is clear that despite all the shit over the last few years and the damage to their standing they managed to get close with Sunak and a more centrist approach with nods to the right and so replacing him with crazy isn’t the answer.

    It’s also not great for the country to have parties in power with whopping majorities unless they actually have a decent plan how to fix things - either you get bad decisions that are un-opposable due to the majority or you get complacency such as under Blair where a huge majority, where he could have changed the face of the country, is wasted because they are too worried about the next election and losing the broad church that got them that majority and so don’t want to do anything to scare the horses so you end up with stagnation.
    Sane people in Labour managed to save the party from me and BJO, so the Tories can at least try.

    As I posted before, I expect that electoral and constitutional reform will be an inevitable big agenda item in the next parliament. Which means that the restored Tory party may not need distinguished psychopaths like Sir Edward Leigh - they could form their own party.
    And PR also guarantees Farage's Reform UK and a new Corbynite left party 15-20% of the seats in the House of Commons each, so far from removing the hard right and hard left, PR just increases their power........
    Not at all, my dear young HY. Why do you think up to 20% of the country would like to see a Corbynite left party and te same for a Farage style Reform party? There is far more danger under the present voting system where is is comparatively easy for extremists to take over the entire party. They took over the Labour Party not so long ago, and the present profile of the Conservative leadership speaks for itself.

    If you have strict proportional representation (which would have to be country-wide), then parties can easily split up, so that different shades of opinion are fairly represented. At present, if you are a Conservative supporter, you are forced to vote for the official Conservative candidate - don't you? - whatever sub-set of Conservatism he supports. Or vote for another party, as lots of traditional decent Conservatives did at the recent local elections.

    If you have the best form of PR - the Single Transferable Vote in Multi-Member constituencies - a candidate would have to get at least 20% of support in that constituency to get elected. And if there is that amount of support for his position and policies, then those views have a right to be represented.

    Up to now, the Conservative Party has benefited from our broken voting system. The appearance of bodies like the one fronted by Carol Vorderman helps to remove some of that distortion, as a look at their recommendations for the recent council elections shows.

    I have the impression that now it is the Conservative point of view that is seriously under-represented on my local council. And the Labour point of view too, because there are no Labour councillors at all.
    As about 15 to 20% of the country are hard right and 15 to 20% of the country are hard left, only FPTP keeps them voting Tory or Labour.

    See the European elections where when we had PR Farage's party won twice, in 2014 and 2019.

    Sunak is also not Farage and Starmer is not Corbyn. With PR Farage and Corbyn would still be leading their own parties with lots of MPs in Parliament
    Oh dear, young HY! The EU elections were fought on the party list system, based on regions. If you remember, the EU insisted that we should fight EU elections with some system of PR, and the party list system, imposed on us by the then Labour government, was the least proportional one that the Labour Government could get away with. In other words, it was the one where the Party kept greatest control, and individual voters had least say.

    I am still awaiting evidence to support your assertion that 20% of the country is hard right and another 20% hard left. If anything, the vast increase in support for the Lib Dems at the recent local elections would suggest that you might be mistaken.
    If we had PR the likelihood is Farage's RefUK and the Greens or a Corbynite party would overtake the LDs as the 3rd UK wide party within 5 to 10 years.

    In 2015 UKIP won more votes than the LDs even if under FPTP the LDs won more seats than UKIP.

    A few local election protest votes for the LDs to try and stop new housing and mend potholes doesn't translate to national elections.

    PR may on paper benefit the LDs much more than the Conservatives and Labour but in practice it might hit all 3 of the established parties
    No they wouldn't. The thing holding the tiny parties back is the same thing holding the Lib Dems back. In most constituencies, 461 of them, it's Labour and Conservative holding the top two positions. Many people view voting for the third or worse party as a wasted vote, so they feel "forced" into choosing between red and blue.

    There's no reason to suppose this would benefit the parties in 4th, 5th and beyond so much more that they would overtake the 3rd placed party.
    Of course there is, for starters in plenty of constituencies the Lib Dems are the alternative to the incumbent. Then in many constituencies where the Lib Dems aren't even top two they still falsely portray themselves as the alternative.

    FPTP massively assists the Lib Dems over smaller competitor parties.

    The experience of PR where it is used is to see much more churn in who the third party is, with the former third party being relegated or even eliminated altogether quite frequently. Having a consistent third party in PR nations is rather unusual.
    Actually you're right that it's entirely possible the Lib Dems would be overtaken as third party, but it's also possible that would rise up to second or first over time.

    So yes, my statement was far too definitive that it wouldn't happen and I was wrong. But I still think HYUFD was wrong to state that it's likely to pan out the way he thinks. We've both made equal and opposite mistakes here.

    But you're also wrong. "FPTP massively assists the Lib Dems" is obviously nonsense. A party that's getting 1 vote in 9 and is rewarded with 1 seat in 59 can in no sense be described as being "assisted" by the system. Even if the Lib Dem vote share halved under PR (I think it would rise, but just for the sake of argument) they would still end up with more than TREBLE the number of MPs, up from 11 to 37.
    The whole discussion is very much couched in FPTP thinking. It's like an unconscious bias that affects all of us, whether left or right or centre.

    Under FPTP the fate of your party is tied up closely with the fate and direction of the country. Tories do well, country implements right wing policies (most of the time). Labour does well, country implements left policies. The assumption therefore is that any constitutional change that is good or bad for a particular party is equally good or bad for the ideological bloc they are associated with.

    In a PR system it's the policies and ideologies that matter, not the party label. I'm a Lib Dem party member, but if we ended up with an STV system and it turned out another broadly liberal centrist party had policies more closely aligned with my own, I would happy switch my vote and membership. PR allows people to vote for the party that best represents their viewpoint, which means you get far less of the unease voters have these days feeling they have to vote for one party to keep out the other even though they might hate the leader or front bench.

    Under PR would we have more, or fewer, MPs representing liberal internationalist parties? I expect probably more. That might well be at the expense of the legacy Lib Dem party who might end up with fewer. But Lib Dems shoudn't care. The policy is the important thing.
    I agree with this view, and as someone who certainly isn't bound to any one party (I voted Lib Dem last time, I'm leaning SNP for the next election but we'll see) my vote is driven by policy choices. In 2019 I felt the Lib Dems were the most vocally anti-Brexit and that was my priority at that time.

    More than anything I want a nuanced choice to be available. You don't really get that with FPTP.
    I look with envy at the choice available to a Danish voter. Then I look at my constituency and hey, wow, it's either Conservative or SNP. Fan fucking tastic.
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 113,969
    OMFG


  • HYUFD said:

    Hard to argue with punters on this.

    DeSantis is looking like a poor campaigner and, whilst you can make some case for non-Trumpian Republicans uniting behind another candidate: (a) it's made less likely by the sheer number of other candidates; and (b) there aren't enough non-Trumpian Republicans.

    On Biden, I originally though there may be an issue if a heavyweight (a Governor or Senator) made a play, but I think we'd know by now if a serious competitor was weighing a run. His current opponents aren't credible at all.

    Death and illness are, of course, possible given the age of the frontrunners.

    Yes, and even if they weren't old! If Biden suddenly became unavailable for re-election, who do we think would jump in? Harris would have the inside track despite the negative polling ratings (slightly worse than Biden, though not massively so). Whitmer?

    Similarly, if Trump quit, who would be favoured? There's no shortage of candidates here, and perhaps DeSantis would get the "heir to the throne" vote despite the current squabbles - he's less ostentatiously anti-Trump than Pence, while being lavishly right-wing.
    If Biden suddenly became unavailable in the sense he ceased to be President, Harris would be supremely well placed as she would be President, and in circumstances where I suspect Democrats at least would rally round in a moment of national crisis (which the death/incapacity of a President is).

    If, however, Biden got a diagnosis (say) that led to a change of heart on standing again later this year but didn't remove him as President, that's a very different matter and it'd be quite open.

    If Trump quit (very unlikely) or died/fell ill (more likely due to age) I think DeSantis is a bit of a shoo-in at this point. He isn't standing as anti-Trump but electable-Trump and is a natural heir. Indeed, he might well have had Trump's endorsement if Trump hadn't decided to go again.
    Latest Redfield is Biden 45% Trump 41% but Trump 43% Harris 42%. Harris is a Trump and GOP wet dream!

    https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/joe-biden-administration-approval-ratings-and-hypothetical-voting-intention-31-may-2023/
    But, crucially given we're talking about a situation where Biden is unavailable, where are the candidates who aren't Harris?

    A point behind Trump on hypothetical polling isn't good... but isn't terrible, and I suspect would improve were she to become President (part of the issue with any non-incumbent other than Trump, and particularly a woman, is "can I see this person as President?" which goes away if she is).

    So it does seem to me that it's pretty challenging to get past Harris as Democrat nominee if she went in to the campaign as President.
  • Farooq said:

    .

    Farooq said:

    HYUFD said:

    ClippP said:

    HYUFD said:

    ClippP said:

    HYUFD said:

    boulay said:

    MikeL said:

    There's clearly a huge desire to get the Conservatives out.

    But what do all the people desperate for a Labour Government want it to actually do? And what is Starmer actually planning to do?

    Starmer has said he's not going to raise taxes significantly and he's told the Shadow Cabinet not to make any spending promises.

    So if he isn't going to spend any money, what is he actually going to do?

    He seems to be heading for a Gordon Brown scenario - desperate to get into power but with no tangible plans to actually do anything once he gets there.

    So the public will almost certainly get their wish to get the Conservatives out - only for Starmer to come in and do precisely nothing - effectively continuing with existing policies.

    The only change will be that the existing policies will have new branding and of course the rhetoric will be different.

    What do I want it to do?

    Well, Government to stop handing out lucrative contracts and appointments to its mates.

    I'd like it to stop telling barefaced lies to the public, and to Parliament.


    I'd like it to put more of the burden of paying for public services on those that can afford it rather than those that can't.

    I'd like it to act with some integrity, domestically and internationally, so that some public faith in politicians is restored.

    I'd like it to restore good trading relations with our natural trading partners, notably the EU.

    That would do for starters. Anything else would be a bonus.
    This is what I don't get about remaining Tories. This government- and with it the Conservative Party - is openly corrupt. That is not a conservative thing to support.

    And I'm not just talking about financial corruption into the BILLIONS of our money grifted to their spiv friends and patrons. I also refer to the corruption of facts. Lying to parliament is a Bad Thing with a very rapid and swift penalty. Utterly corrupted by the Tories who don't just lie, but try to insist their lie is the truth no matter how egregious that claim is.

    That is also not a conservative thing to support. True conservatives surely need to save the soul of their party, because at the moment they are the anti-Conservatives. Is there no level of filth that some people are prepared to swim in? And for what - to defend a party whose policies they largely oppose and whose principles are a mockery of what they hold dear?

    I can see an awful lot of Tory voters - true lifelong conservatives - trying to save the soul of the party by killing the anti-Tories at the coming election. Kill it with electoral fire. And then you can have your party back.
    Your last paragraph relies on two things, that the rump of remaining Tories are the sensible ones - unlikely, and that if they get wiped out that they learn the right lessons.

    My concern is that a large defeat will leave those in solid seats, the Bill Cash and Edward Leigh’s of the world running the show who have learned nothing and not remotely adapted to the modern world.

    They will also come to the wrong conclusion that they lost because they were “too centrist” and so lurch to bonkers. This will further destroy the Tories as a going concern for a long long time like the Liberals.

    The best situation for Tories (short of an unlikely victory) is a modest defeat where the evidence to them is clear that despite all the shit over the last few years and the damage to their standing they managed to get close with Sunak and a more centrist approach with nods to the right and so replacing him with crazy isn’t the answer.

    It’s also not great for the country to have parties in power with whopping majorities unless they actually have a decent plan how to fix things - either you get bad decisions that are un-opposable due to the majority or you get complacency such as under Blair where a huge majority, where he could have changed the face of the country, is wasted because they are too worried about the next election and losing the broad church that got them that majority and so don’t want to do anything to scare the horses so you end up with stagnation.
    Sane people in Labour managed to save the party from me and BJO, so the Tories can at least try.

    As I posted before, I expect that electoral and constitutional reform will be an inevitable big agenda item in the next parliament. Which means that the restored Tory party may not need distinguished psychopaths like Sir Edward Leigh - they could form their own party.
    And PR also guarantees Farage's Reform UK and a new Corbynite left party 15-20% of the seats in the House of Commons each, so far from removing the hard right and hard left, PR just increases their power........
    Not at all, my dear young HY. Why do you think up to 20% of the country would like to see a Corbynite left party and te same for a Farage style Reform party? There is far more danger under the present voting system where is is comparatively easy for extremists to take over the entire party. They took over the Labour Party not so long ago, and the present profile of the Conservative leadership speaks for itself.

    If you have strict proportional representation (which would have to be country-wide), then parties can easily split up, so that different shades of opinion are fairly represented. At present, if you are a Conservative supporter, you are forced to vote for the official Conservative candidate - don't you? - whatever sub-set of Conservatism he supports. Or vote for another party, as lots of traditional decent Conservatives did at the recent local elections.

    If you have the best form of PR - the Single Transferable Vote in Multi-Member constituencies - a candidate would have to get at least 20% of support in that constituency to get elected. And if there is that amount of support for his position and policies, then those views have a right to be represented.

    Up to now, the Conservative Party has benefited from our broken voting system. The appearance of bodies like the one fronted by Carol Vorderman helps to remove some of that distortion, as a look at their recommendations for the recent council elections shows.

    I have the impression that now it is the Conservative point of view that is seriously under-represented on my local council. And the Labour point of view too, because there are no Labour councillors at all.
    As about 15 to 20% of the country are hard right and 15 to 20% of the country are hard left, only FPTP keeps them voting Tory or Labour.

    See the European elections where when we had PR Farage's party won twice, in 2014 and 2019.

    Sunak is also not Farage and Starmer is not Corbyn. With PR Farage and Corbyn would still be leading their own parties with lots of MPs in Parliament
    Oh dear, young HY! The EU elections were fought on the party list system, based on regions. If you remember, the EU insisted that we should fight EU elections with some system of PR, and the party list system, imposed on us by the then Labour government, was the least proportional one that the Labour Government could get away with. In other words, it was the one where the Party kept greatest control, and individual voters had least say.

    I am still awaiting evidence to support your assertion that 20% of the country is hard right and another 20% hard left. If anything, the vast increase in support for the Lib Dems at the recent local elections would suggest that you might be mistaken.
    If we had PR the likelihood is Farage's RefUK and the Greens or a Corbynite party would overtake the LDs as the 3rd UK wide party within 5 to 10 years.

    In 2015 UKIP won more votes than the LDs even if under FPTP the LDs won more seats than UKIP.

    A few local election protest votes for the LDs to try and stop new housing and mend potholes doesn't translate to national elections.

    PR may on paper benefit the LDs much more than the Conservatives and Labour but in practice it might hit all 3 of the established parties
    No they wouldn't. The thing holding the tiny parties back is the same thing holding the Lib Dems back. In most constituencies, 461 of them, it's Labour and Conservative holding the top two positions. Many people view voting for the third or worse party as a wasted vote, so they feel "forced" into choosing between red and blue.

    There's no reason to suppose this would benefit the parties in 4th, 5th and beyond so much more that they would overtake the 3rd placed party.
    Of course there is, for starters in plenty of constituencies the Lib Dems are the alternative to the incumbent. Then in many constituencies where the Lib Dems aren't even top two they still falsely portray themselves as the alternative.

    FPTP massively assists the Lib Dems over smaller competitor parties.

    The experience of PR where it is used is to see much more churn in who the third party is, with the former third party being relegated or even eliminated altogether quite frequently. Having a consistent third party in PR nations is rather unusual.
    Actually you're right that it's entirely possible the Lib Dems would be overtaken as third party, but it's also possible that would rise up to second or first over time.

    So yes, my statement was far too definitive that it wouldn't happen and I was wrong. But I still think HYUFD was wrong to state that it's likely to pan out the way he thinks. We've both made equal and opposite mistakes here.

    But you're also wrong. "FPTP massively assists the Lib Dems" is obviously nonsense. A party that's getting 1 vote in 9 and is rewarded with 1 seat in 59 can in no sense be described as being "assisted" by the system. Even if the Lib Dem vote share halved under PR (I think it would rise, but just for the sake of argument) they would still end up with more than TREBLE the number of MPs, up from 11 to 37.
    You cut my quote midsentence. If you cut a sentence in half you change its meaning.

    I never said FPTP massively assists the Lib Dems full stop. I said FPTP massively assists the Lib Dems over smaller competitor parties which is unambiguously correct.

    On your preferred metric of votes cast to seats won (which isn't a measure of 'fairness' unless you're starting from the flawed premise that PR is the only fair system) then the Lib Dems have a massively better ratio of seats won to votes cast than any smaller competitors do.

    The votes cast absolutely could fall, or rise, the party could become a top two party of it could cease to exist altogether. That's unknown.

    But when it comes to competition from below, rather than from above, then FPTP aids the Lib Dems at being the third party none of the above protest vote.
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 47,789
    edited June 2023
    Nigelb said:

    TimS said:

    HYUFD said:
    There are a few germs of good points in that article but it's fudged by the obvious ideological biases of the writer - towards the US and against the EU. The title of the piece is better and more thought provoking than the content.
    Anyone still using the word 'vassal' in a contemporary democratic context is off to a bad start.
    It's acquired a perfectly understandable contemporary meaning of being a rule-taker at the mercy of the decisions of greater powers. It's a favourite of Emmanuel Macron, for one.

    https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-france-election-macron-britain-idUKKBN15B16C

    "Britain becoming U.S. vassal state, says French presidential hopeful Macron"
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,575
    Cuba to Host Secret Chinese Spy Base Focusing on U.S.
    Beijing agrees to pay Havana several billion dollars for eavesdropping facility
    https://www.wsj.com/articles/cuba-to-host-secret-chinese-spy-base-focusing-on-u-s-b2fed0e0
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,575

    Nigelb said:

    TimS said:

    HYUFD said:
    There are a few germs of good points in that article but it's fudged by the obvious ideological biases of the writer - towards the US and against the EU. The title of the piece is better and more thought provoking than the content.
    Anyone still using the word 'vassal' in a contemporary democratic context is off to a bad start.
    It's acquired a perfectly understandable contemporary meaning of being a rule-taker at the mercy of the decisions of greater powers. It's a favourite of Emmanuel Macron, for one.

    https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-france-election-macron-britain-idUKKBN15B16C

    "Britain becoming U.S. vassal state, says French presidential hopeful Macron"
    Yes, it's just empty rhetoric there, too.
  • WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 8,480
    edited June 2023
    A very odd article, to my way of thinking. The author explicitly says we should be happy to be joining a broader international club of smaller mid-sized nations ready to help America.

    We can still support democratic values, and America, in Europe, and even outside the EU, even as part of the new European Political Community, if it develops its own military capacity. It's this readiness to give up up a much more powerful role within Europe, in relative terms, to act as " one of many junior partners of America " that is partly what I find so odd in some of the ideology of ultra-atlanticists. Could this, in fact, spring from a more fundamental lack of self-confidence and self-esteem, somewhere ?
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,575
    edited June 2023

    Farooq said:

    .

    Farooq said:

    HYUFD said:

    ClippP said:

    HYUFD said:

    ClippP said:

    HYUFD said:

    boulay said:

    MikeL said:

    There's clearly a huge desire to get the Conservatives out.

    But what do all the people desperate for a Labour Government want it to actually do? And what is Starmer actually planning to do?

    Starmer has said he's not going to raise taxes significantly and he's told the Shadow Cabinet not to make any spending promises.

    So if he isn't going to spend any money, what is he actually going to do?

    He seems to be heading for a Gordon Brown scenario - desperate to get into power but with no tangible plans to actually do anything once he gets there.

    So the public will almost certainly get their wish to get the Conservatives out - only for Starmer to come in and do precisely nothing - effectively continuing with existing policies.

    The only change will be that the existing policies will have new branding and of course the rhetoric will be different.

    What do I want it to do?

    Well, Government to stop handing out lucrative contracts and appointments to its mates.

    I'd like it to stop telling barefaced lies to the public, and to Parliament.


    I'd like it to put more of the burden of paying for public services on those that can afford it rather than those that can't.

    I'd like it to act with some integrity, domestically and internationally, so that some public faith in politicians is restored.

    I'd like it to restore good trading relations with our natural trading partners, notably the EU.

    That would do for starters. Anything else would be a bonus.
    This is what I don't get about remaining Tories. This government- and with it the Conservative Party - is openly corrupt. That is not a conservative thing to support.

    And I'm not just talking about financial corruption into the BILLIONS of our money grifted to their spiv friends and patrons. I also refer to the corruption of facts. Lying to parliament is a Bad Thing with a very rapid and swift penalty. Utterly corrupted by the Tories who don't just lie, but try to insist their lie is the truth no matter how egregious that claim is.

    That is also not a conservative thing to support. True conservatives surely need to save the soul of their party, because at the moment they are the anti-Conservatives. Is there no level of filth that some people are prepared to swim in? And for what - to defend a party whose policies they largely oppose and whose principles are a mockery of what they hold dear?

    I can see an awful lot of Tory voters - true lifelong conservatives - trying to save the soul of the party by killing the anti-Tories at the coming election. Kill it with electoral fire. And then you can have your party back.
    Your last paragraph relies on two things, that the rump of remaining Tories are the sensible ones - unlikely, and that if they get wiped out that they learn the right lessons.

    My concern is that a large defeat will leave those in solid seats, the Bill Cash and Edward Leigh’s of the world running the show who have learned nothing and not remotely adapted to the modern world.

    They will also come to the wrong conclusion that they lost because they were “too centrist” and so lurch to bonkers. This will further destroy the Tories as a going concern for a long long time like the Liberals.

    The best situation for Tories (short of an unlikely victory) is a modest defeat where the evidence to them is clear that despite all the shit over the last few years and the damage to their standing they managed to get close with Sunak and a more centrist approach with nods to the right and so replacing him with crazy isn’t the answer.

    It’s also not great for the country to have parties in power with whopping majorities unless they actually have a decent plan how to fix things - either you get bad decisions that are un-opposable due to the majority or you get complacency such as under Blair where a huge majority, where he could have changed the face of the country, is wasted because they are too worried about the next election and losing the broad church that got them that majority and so don’t want to do anything to scare the horses so you end up with stagnation.
    Sane people in Labour managed to save the party from me and BJO, so the Tories can at least try.

    As I posted before, I expect that electoral and constitutional reform will be an inevitable big agenda item in the next parliament. Which means that the restored Tory party may not need distinguished psychopaths like Sir Edward Leigh - they could form their own party.
    And PR also guarantees Farage's Reform UK and a new Corbynite left party 15-20% of the seats in the House of Commons each, so far from removing the hard right and hard left, PR just increases their power........
    Not at all, my dear young HY. Why do you think up to 20% of the country would like to see a Corbynite left party and te same for a Farage style Reform party? There is far more danger under the present voting system where is is comparatively easy for extremists to take over the entire party. They took over the Labour Party not so long ago, and the present profile of the Conservative leadership speaks for itself.

    If you have strict proportional representation (which would have to be country-wide), then parties can easily split up, so that different shades of opinion are fairly represented. At present, if you are a Conservative supporter, you are forced to vote for the official Conservative candidate - don't you? - whatever sub-set of Conservatism he supports. Or vote for another party, as lots of traditional decent Conservatives did at the recent local elections.

    If you have the best form of PR - the Single Transferable Vote in Multi-Member constituencies - a candidate would have to get at least 20% of support in that constituency to get elected. And if there is that amount of support for his position and policies, then those views have a right to be represented.

    Up to now, the Conservative Party has benefited from our broken voting system. The appearance of bodies like the one fronted by Carol Vorderman helps to remove some of that distortion, as a look at their recommendations for the recent council elections shows.

    I have the impression that now it is the Conservative point of view that is seriously under-represented on my local council. And the Labour point of view too, because there are no Labour councillors at all.
    As about 15 to 20% of the country are hard right and 15 to 20% of the country are hard left, only FPTP keeps them voting Tory or Labour.

    See the European elections where when we had PR Farage's party won twice, in 2014 and 2019.

    Sunak is also not Farage and Starmer is not Corbyn. With PR Farage and Corbyn would still be leading their own parties with lots of MPs in Parliament
    Oh dear, young HY! The EU elections were fought on the party list system, based on regions. If you remember, the EU insisted that we should fight EU elections with some system of PR, and the party list system, imposed on us by the then Labour government, was the least proportional one that the Labour Government could get away with. In other words, it was the one where the Party kept greatest control, and individual voters had least say.

    I am still awaiting evidence to support your assertion that 20% of the country is hard right and another 20% hard left. If anything, the vast increase in support for the Lib Dems at the recent local elections would suggest that you might be mistaken.
    If we had PR the likelihood is Farage's RefUK and the Greens or a Corbynite party would overtake the LDs as the 3rd UK wide party within 5 to 10 years.

    In 2015 UKIP won more votes than the LDs even if under FPTP the LDs won more seats than UKIP.

    A few local election protest votes for the LDs to try and stop new housing and mend potholes doesn't translate to national elections.

    PR may on paper benefit the LDs much more than the Conservatives and Labour but in practice it might hit all 3 of the established parties
    No they wouldn't. The thing holding the tiny parties back is the same thing holding the Lib Dems back. In most constituencies, 461 of them, it's Labour and Conservative holding the top two positions. Many people view voting for the third or worse party as a wasted vote, so they feel "forced" into choosing between red and blue.

    There's no reason to suppose this would benefit the parties in 4th, 5th and beyond so much more that they would overtake the 3rd placed party.
    Of course there is, for starters in plenty of constituencies the Lib Dems are the alternative to the incumbent. Then in many constituencies where the Lib Dems aren't even top two they still falsely portray themselves as the alternative.

    FPTP massively assists the Lib Dems over smaller competitor parties.

    The experience of PR where it is used is to see much more churn in who the third party is, with the former third party being relegated or even eliminated altogether quite frequently. Having a consistent third party in PR nations is rather unusual.
    Actually you're right that it's entirely possible the Lib Dems would be overtaken as third party, but it's also possible that would rise up to second or first over time.

    So yes, my statement was far too definitive that it wouldn't happen and I was wrong. But I still think HYUFD was wrong to state that it's likely to pan out the way he thinks. We've both made equal and opposite mistakes here.

    But you're also wrong. "FPTP massively assists the Lib Dems" is obviously nonsense. A party that's getting 1 vote in 9 and is rewarded with 1 seat in 59 can in no sense be described as being "assisted" by the system. Even if the Lib Dem vote share halved under PR (I think it would rise, but just for the sake of argument) they would still end up with more than TREBLE the number of MPs, up from 11 to 37.
    You cut my quote midsentence. If you cut a sentence in half you change its meaning.

    I never said FPTP massively assists the Lib Dems full stop. I said FPTP massively assists the Lib Dems over smaller competitor parties which is unambiguously correct.

    On your preferred metric of votes cast to seats won (which isn't a measure of 'fairness' unless you're starting from the flawed premise that PR is the only fair system) then the Lib Dems have a massively better ratio of seats won to votes cast than any smaller competitors do.

    So what you actually mean, but avoid saying, is that FPTP advantages the two major parties even more disproportionally at their expense than it does at the LibDems' expense.

    Not the most compelling of arguments.
    And to say that's to the LibDem's benefit is taking the piss.
  • A very odd article, to my way of thinking. The author explicitly says we should be happy to be joining a broader international club of smaller mid-sized nations ready to help America.

    We can still support democratic values, and America, in Europe. It's this readiness to give up a much powerful role within Europe to act as " one of many junior partners of America " that is partly what I find so odd in some of the ideology of ultra-atlanticists. Could this, in fact, spring from a lack of self-confidence and self-esteem, somewhere ?

    Quite the opposite.

    We can and should work with like minded countries whether they be European, American, Oceanic, Asian or any other.

    What we don't need to do is join a power sharing club to do so where decisions are made at a transnational level rather than by democratically elected individuals held to account at national elections.

    It working with France is in our interests we should do so. If it ceases to be, we should stop. And we can review that regularly. And on some issues it may suit us to work with them, and on others it might not.

    That's a mature and responsible way independent nations act around the globe. No need to demean and lower ourselves to the lowest common denominator or let people like Victor Orban have a say on rules that apply in this country.
  • TazTaz Posts: 10,704
    edited June 2023

    OMFG


    For those of us not au fait with motorsport is this our Lewis with Mr Pique’s other half ?
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    Nigelb said:

    LOL
    Though even this says something.

    Sorry, Trump — Rishi Sunak’s too busy to see you
    British PM has no time for former president despite meeting a host of other senior US politicians during Washington DC trip.
    https://www.politico.eu/article/sorry-trump-rishi-sunaks-too-busy-to-see-you/

    It would be a bad look to meet any of the Republican candidates, except very clearly in the context of their incumbent position, and in the context of his trip.
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 113,969
    Taz said:

    OMFG


    For those of us not au fait with motorsport is this our Lewis with Mr Alonso’s other half ?
    No, Gerard Pique's ex wife
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 47,789

    A very odd article, to my way of thinking. The author explicitly says we should be happy to be joining a broader international club of smaller mid-sized nations ready to help America.

    We can still support democratic values, and America, in Europe. It's this readiness to give up a much powerful role within Europe to act as " one of many junior partners of America " that is partly what I find so odd in some of the ideology of ultra-atlanticists. Could this, in fact, spring from a lack of self-confidence and self-esteem, somewhere ?

    There is inevitably a tension in the EU between those who think the whole point of it is to shake off US/Anglosphere influence and those who see the point of it as anchoring themsleves within the broader West. The UK is the only European country where this tension doesn't exist because it is part of the Anglosphere by definition.
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775

    Farooq said:

    .

    Farooq said:

    HYUFD said:

    ClippP said:

    HYUFD said:

    ClippP said:

    HYUFD said:

    boulay said:

    MikeL said:

    There's clearly a huge desire to get the Conservatives out.

    But what do all the people desperate for a Labour Government want it to actually do? And what is Starmer actually planning to do?

    Starmer has said he's not going to raise taxes significantly and he's told the Shadow Cabinet not to make any spending promises.

    So if he isn't going to spend any money, what is he actually going to do?

    He seems to be heading for a Gordon Brown scenario - desperate to get into power but with no tangible plans to actually do anything once he gets there.

    So the public will almost certainly get their wish to get the Conservatives out - only for Starmer to come in and do precisely nothing - effectively continuing with existing policies.

    The only change will be that the existing policies will have new branding and of course the rhetoric will be different.

    What do I want it to do?

    Well, Government to stop handing out lucrative contracts and appointments to its mates.

    I'd like it to stop telling barefaced lies to the public, and to Parliament.


    I'd like it to put more of the burden of paying for public services on those that can afford it rather than those that can't.

    I'd like it to act with some integrity, domestically and internationally, so that some public faith in politicians is restored.

    I'd like it to restore good trading relations with our natural trading partners, notably the EU.

    That would do for starters. Anything else would be a bonus.
    This is what I don't get about remaining Tories. This government- and with it the Conservative Party - is openly corrupt. That is not a conservative thing to support.

    And I'm not just talking about financial corruption into the BILLIONS of our money grifted to their spiv friends and patrons. I also refer to the corruption of facts. Lying to parliament is a Bad Thing with a very rapid and swift penalty. Utterly corrupted by the Tories who don't just lie, but try to insist their lie is the truth no matter how egregious that claim is.

    That is also not a conservative thing to support. True conservatives surely need to save the soul of their party, because at the moment they are the anti-Conservatives. Is there no level of filth that some people are prepared to swim in? And for what - to defend a party whose policies they largely oppose and whose principles are a mockery of what they hold dear?

    I can see an awful lot of Tory voters - true lifelong conservatives - trying to save the soul of the party by killing the anti-Tories at the coming election. Kill it with electoral fire. And then you can have your party back.
    Your last paragraph relies on two things, that the rump of remaining Tories are the sensible ones - unlikely, and that if they get wiped out that they learn the right lessons.

    My concern is that a large defeat will leave those in solid seats, the Bill Cash and Edward Leigh’s of the world running the show who have learned nothing and not remotely adapted to the modern world.

    They will also come to the wrong conclusion that they lost because they were “too centrist” and so lurch to bonkers. This will further destroy the Tories as a going concern for a long long time like the Liberals.

    The best situation for Tories (short of an unlikely victory) is a modest defeat where the evidence to them is clear that despite all the shit over the last few years and the damage to their standing they managed to get close with Sunak and a more centrist approach with nods to the right and so replacing him with crazy isn’t the answer.

    It’s also not great for the country to have parties in power with whopping majorities unless they actually have a decent plan how to fix things - either you get bad decisions that are un-opposable due to the majority or you get complacency such as under Blair where a huge majority, where he could have changed the face of the country, is wasted because they are too worried about the next election and losing the broad church that got them that majority and so don’t want to do anything to scare the horses so you end up with stagnation.
    Sane people in Labour managed to save the party from me and BJO, so the Tories can at least try.

    As I posted before, I expect that electoral and constitutional reform will be an inevitable big agenda item in the next parliament. Which means that the restored Tory party may not need distinguished psychopaths like Sir Edward Leigh - they could form their own party.
    And PR also guarantees Farage's Reform UK and a new Corbynite left party 15-20% of the seats in the House of Commons each, so far from removing the hard right and hard left, PR just increases their power........
    Not at all, my dear young HY. Why do you think up to 20% of the country would like to see a Corbynite left party and te same for a Farage style Reform party? There is far more danger under the present voting system where is is comparatively easy for extremists to take over the entire party. They took over the Labour Party not so long ago, and the present profile of the Conservative leadership speaks for itself.

    If you have strict proportional representation (which would have to be country-wide), then parties can easily split up, so that different shades of opinion are fairly represented. At present, if you are a Conservative supporter, you are forced to vote for the official Conservative candidate - don't you? - whatever sub-set of Conservatism he supports. Or vote for another party, as lots of traditional decent Conservatives did at the recent local elections.

    If you have the best form of PR - the Single Transferable Vote in Multi-Member constituencies - a candidate would have to get at least 20% of support in that constituency to get elected. And if there is that amount of support for his position and policies, then those views have a right to be represented.

    Up to now, the Conservative Party has benefited from our broken voting system. The appearance of bodies like the one fronted by Carol Vorderman helps to remove some of that distortion, as a look at their recommendations for the recent council elections shows.

    I have the impression that now it is the Conservative point of view that is seriously under-represented on my local council. And the Labour point of view too, because there are no Labour councillors at all.
    As about 15 to 20% of the country are hard right and 15 to 20% of the country are hard left, only FPTP keeps them voting Tory or Labour.

    See the European elections where when we had PR Farage's party won twice, in 2014 and 2019.

    Sunak is also not Farage and Starmer is not Corbyn. With PR Farage and Corbyn would still be leading their own parties with lots of MPs in Parliament
    Oh dear, young HY! The EU elections were fought on the party list system, based on regions. If you remember, the EU insisted that we should fight EU elections with some system of PR, and the party list system, imposed on us by the then Labour government, was the least proportional one that the Labour Government could get away with. In other words, it was the one where the Party kept greatest control, and individual voters had least say.

    I am still awaiting evidence to support your assertion that 20% of the country is hard right and another 20% hard left. If anything, the vast increase in support for the Lib Dems at the recent local elections would suggest that you might be mistaken.
    If we had PR the likelihood is Farage's RefUK and the Greens or a Corbynite party would overtake the LDs as the 3rd UK wide party within 5 to 10 years.

    In 2015 UKIP won more votes than the LDs even if under FPTP the LDs won more seats than UKIP.

    A few local election protest votes for the LDs to try and stop new housing and mend potholes doesn't translate to national elections.

    PR may on paper benefit the LDs much more than the Conservatives and Labour but in practice it might hit all 3 of the established parties
    No they wouldn't. The thing holding the tiny parties back is the same thing holding the Lib Dems back. In most constituencies, 461 of them, it's Labour and Conservative holding the top two positions. Many people view voting for the third or worse party as a wasted vote, so they feel "forced" into choosing between red and blue.

    There's no reason to suppose this would benefit the parties in 4th, 5th and beyond so much more that they would overtake the 3rd placed party.
    Of course there is, for starters in plenty of constituencies the Lib Dems are the alternative to the incumbent. Then in many constituencies where the Lib Dems aren't even top two they still falsely portray themselves as the alternative.

    FPTP massively assists the Lib Dems over smaller competitor parties.

    The experience of PR where it is used is to see much more churn in who the third party is, with the former third party being relegated or even eliminated altogether quite frequently. Having a consistent third party in PR nations is rather unusual.
    Actually you're right that it's entirely possible the Lib Dems would be overtaken as third party, but it's also possible that would rise up to second or first over time.

    So yes, my statement was far too definitive that it wouldn't happen and I was wrong. But I still think HYUFD was wrong to state that it's likely to pan out the way he thinks. We've both made equal and opposite mistakes here.

    But you're also wrong. "FPTP massively assists the Lib Dems" is obviously nonsense. A party that's getting 1 vote in 9 and is rewarded with 1 seat in 59 can in no sense be described as being "assisted" by the system. Even if the Lib Dem vote share halved under PR (I think it would rise, but just for the sake of argument) they would still end up with more than TREBLE the number of MPs, up from 11 to 37.
    You cut my quote midsentence. If you cut a sentence in half you change its meaning.

    I never said FPTP massively assists the Lib Dems full stop. I said FPTP massively assists the Lib Dems over smaller competitor parties which is unambiguously correct.

    On your preferred metric of votes cast to seats won (which isn't a measure of 'fairness' unless you're starting from the flawed premise that PR is the only fair system) then the Lib Dems have a massively better ratio of seats won to votes cast than any smaller competitors do.

    The votes cast absolutely could fall, or rise, the party could become a top two party of it could cease to exist altogether. That's unknown.

    But when it comes to competition from below, rather than from above, then FPTP aids the Lib Dems at being the third party none of the above protest vote.
    Yes I cut your sentence mid way because the qualifying clause at the end doesn't matter. It's like breaking three of someone's limbs and claiming they are massively assisted over those people who've had all four limbs crushed.

    Yes, my metric for fairness is that votes for parties translate more or less into bums on seats in the Commons. I firmly believe that most people vote with a party in mind and that the there is a disconnect between that intention and the legal truth that you vote for an MP. I would like to see these things aligned, and there are two ways for that to happen: you change the way people think, or you change the way the system represents them. I prefer to fit systems to people, not the other way around.

    So under my metric of fairness, which I believe to be based on the intentions of voters, it doesn't make sense to say a party that receives an unfairly small representation compared to the actual votes it won has been "assisted". I stand by that statement with or without the qualifying clause you put in your original post.

    I did not want to get bogged down in a semantic tussle over whether getting hurt less is the same as benefiting more, because I think it's besides the point and it would demean both of us to engage in that level of pedantic flappery.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,286
    India lose their second wicket.
  • Nigelb said:

    Farooq said:

    .

    Farooq said:

    HYUFD said:

    ClippP said:

    HYUFD said:

    ClippP said:

    HYUFD said:

    boulay said:

    MikeL said:

    There's clearly a huge desire to get the Conservatives out.

    But what do all the people desperate for a Labour Government want it to actually do? And what is Starmer actually planning to do?

    Starmer has said he's not going to raise taxes significantly and he's told the Shadow Cabinet not to make any spending promises.

    So if he isn't going to spend any money, what is he actually going to do?

    He seems to be heading for a Gordon Brown scenario - desperate to get into power but with no tangible plans to actually do anything once he gets there.

    So the public will almost certainly get their wish to get the Conservatives out - only for Starmer to come in and do precisely nothing - effectively continuing with existing policies.

    The only change will be that the existing policies will have new branding and of course the rhetoric will be different.

    What do I want it to do?

    Well, Government to stop handing out lucrative contracts and appointments to its mates.

    I'd like it to stop telling barefaced lies to the public, and to Parliament.


    I'd like it to put more of the burden of paying for public services on those that can afford it rather than those that can't.

    I'd like it to act with some integrity, domestically and internationally, so that some public faith in politicians is restored.

    I'd like it to restore good trading relations with our natural trading partners, notably the EU.

    That would do for starters. Anything else would be a bonus.
    This is what I don't get about remaining Tories. This government- and with it the Conservative Party - is openly corrupt. That is not a conservative thing to support.

    And I'm not just talking about financial corruption into the BILLIONS of our money grifted to their spiv friends and patrons. I also refer to the corruption of facts. Lying to parliament is a Bad Thing with a very rapid and swift penalty. Utterly corrupted by the Tories who don't just lie, but try to insist their lie is the truth no matter how egregious that claim is.

    That is also not a conservative thing to support. True conservatives surely need to save the soul of their party, because at the moment they are the anti-Conservatives. Is there no level of filth that some people are prepared to swim in? And for what - to defend a party whose policies they largely oppose and whose principles are a mockery of what they hold dear?

    I can see an awful lot of Tory voters - true lifelong conservatives - trying to save the soul of the party by killing the anti-Tories at the coming election. Kill it with electoral fire. And then you can have your party back.
    Your last paragraph relies on two things, that the rump of remaining Tories are the sensible ones - unlikely, and that if they get wiped out that they learn the right lessons.

    My concern is that a large defeat will leave those in solid seats, the Bill Cash and Edward Leigh’s of the world running the show who have learned nothing and not remotely adapted to the modern world.

    They will also come to the wrong conclusion that they lost because they were “too centrist” and so lurch to bonkers. This will further destroy the Tories as a going concern for a long long time like the Liberals.

    The best situation for Tories (short of an unlikely victory) is a modest defeat where the evidence to them is clear that despite all the shit over the last few years and the damage to their standing they managed to get close with Sunak and a more centrist approach with nods to the right and so replacing him with crazy isn’t the answer.

    It’s also not great for the country to have parties in power with whopping majorities unless they actually have a decent plan how to fix things - either you get bad decisions that are un-opposable due to the majority or you get complacency such as under Blair where a huge majority, where he could have changed the face of the country, is wasted because they are too worried about the next election and losing the broad church that got them that majority and so don’t want to do anything to scare the horses so you end up with stagnation.
    Sane people in Labour managed to save the party from me and BJO, so the Tories can at least try.

    As I posted before, I expect that electoral and constitutional reform will be an inevitable big agenda item in the next parliament. Which means that the restored Tory party may not need distinguished psychopaths like Sir Edward Leigh - they could form their own party.
    And PR also guarantees Farage's Reform UK and a new Corbynite left party 15-20% of the seats in the House of Commons each, so far from removing the hard right and hard left, PR just increases their power........
    Not at all, my dear young HY. Why do you think up to 20% of the country would like to see a Corbynite left party and te same for a Farage style Reform party? There is far more danger under the present voting system where is is comparatively easy for extremists to take over the entire party. They took over the Labour Party not so long ago, and the present profile of the Conservative leadership speaks for itself.

    If you have strict proportional representation (which would have to be country-wide), then parties can easily split up, so that different shades of opinion are fairly represented. At present, if you are a Conservative supporter, you are forced to vote for the official Conservative candidate - don't you? - whatever sub-set of Conservatism he supports. Or vote for another party, as lots of traditional decent Conservatives did at the recent local elections.

    If you have the best form of PR - the Single Transferable Vote in Multi-Member constituencies - a candidate would have to get at least 20% of support in that constituency to get elected. And if there is that amount of support for his position and policies, then those views have a right to be represented.

    Up to now, the Conservative Party has benefited from our broken voting system. The appearance of bodies like the one fronted by Carol Vorderman helps to remove some of that distortion, as a look at their recommendations for the recent council elections shows.

    I have the impression that now it is the Conservative point of view that is seriously under-represented on my local council. And the Labour point of view too, because there are no Labour councillors at all.
    As about 15 to 20% of the country are hard right and 15 to 20% of the country are hard left, only FPTP keeps them voting Tory or Labour.

    See the European elections where when we had PR Farage's party won twice, in 2014 and 2019.

    Sunak is also not Farage and Starmer is not Corbyn. With PR Farage and Corbyn would still be leading their own parties with lots of MPs in Parliament
    Oh dear, young HY! The EU elections were fought on the party list system, based on regions. If you remember, the EU insisted that we should fight EU elections with some system of PR, and the party list system, imposed on us by the then Labour government, was the least proportional one that the Labour Government could get away with. In other words, it was the one where the Party kept greatest control, and individual voters had least say.

    I am still awaiting evidence to support your assertion that 20% of the country is hard right and another 20% hard left. If anything, the vast increase in support for the Lib Dems at the recent local elections would suggest that you might be mistaken.
    If we had PR the likelihood is Farage's RefUK and the Greens or a Corbynite party would overtake the LDs as the 3rd UK wide party within 5 to 10 years.

    In 2015 UKIP won more votes than the LDs even if under FPTP the LDs won more seats than UKIP.

    A few local election protest votes for the LDs to try and stop new housing and mend potholes doesn't translate to national elections.

    PR may on paper benefit the LDs much more than the Conservatives and Labour but in practice it might hit all 3 of the established parties
    No they wouldn't. The thing holding the tiny parties back is the same thing holding the Lib Dems back. In most constituencies, 461 of them, it's Labour and Conservative holding the top two positions. Many people view voting for the third or worse party as a wasted vote, so they feel "forced" into choosing between red and blue.

    There's no reason to suppose this would benefit the parties in 4th, 5th and beyond so much more that they would overtake the 3rd placed party.
    Of course there is, for starters in plenty of constituencies the Lib Dems are the alternative to the incumbent. Then in many constituencies where the Lib Dems aren't even top two they still falsely portray themselves as the alternative.

    FPTP massively assists the Lib Dems over smaller competitor parties.

    The experience of PR where it is used is to see much more churn in who the third party is, with the former third party being relegated or even eliminated altogether quite frequently. Having a consistent third party in PR nations is rather unusual.
    Actually you're right that it's entirely possible the Lib Dems would be overtaken as third party, but it's also possible that would rise up to second or first over time.

    So yes, my statement was far too definitive that it wouldn't happen and I was wrong. But I still think HYUFD was wrong to state that it's likely to pan out the way he thinks. We've both made equal and opposite mistakes here.

    But you're also wrong. "FPTP massively assists the Lib Dems" is obviously nonsense. A party that's getting 1 vote in 9 and is rewarded with 1 seat in 59 can in no sense be described as being "assisted" by the system. Even if the Lib Dem vote share halved under PR (I think it would rise, but just for the sake of argument) they would still end up with more than TREBLE the number of MPs, up from 11 to 37.
    You cut my quote midsentence. If you cut a sentence in half you change its meaning.

    I never said FPTP massively assists the Lib Dems full stop. I said FPTP massively assists the Lib Dems over smaller competitor parties which is unambiguously correct.

    On your preferred metric of votes cast to seats won (which isn't a measure of 'fairness' unless you're starting from the flawed premise that PR is the only fair system) then the Lib Dems have a massively better ratio of seats won to votes cast than any smaller competitors do.

    So what you actually mean, but avoid saying, is that FPTP advantages the two major parties even more disproportionally at their expense than it does at the LibDems' expense.

    Not the most compelling of arguments.
    And to say that's to the LibDem's benefit is taking the piss.
    I never said it was to the Lib Dems benefit, I said it was over smaller competitors and I said that in response to a comment saying there's no reason parties in 4th or 5th might benefit from PR more than the Lib Dems do - when history shows that is exactly what can happen.

    Yes Labour and the Tories benefit over the Lib Dems to, I never denied that. Nor is there anything wrong with that. They only benefit over them as long as the voters cast their votes that way.
  • Farooq said:

    Farooq said:

    .

    Farooq said:

    HYUFD said:

    ClippP said:

    HYUFD said:

    ClippP said:

    HYUFD said:

    boulay said:

    MikeL said:

    There's clearly a huge desire to get the Conservatives out.

    But what do all the people desperate for a Labour Government want it to actually do? And what is Starmer actually planning to do?

    Starmer has said he's not going to raise taxes significantly and he's told the Shadow Cabinet not to make any spending promises.

    So if he isn't going to spend any money, what is he actually going to do?

    He seems to be heading for a Gordon Brown scenario - desperate to get into power but with no tangible plans to actually do anything once he gets there.

    So the public will almost certainly get their wish to get the Conservatives out - only for Starmer to come in and do precisely nothing - effectively continuing with existing policies.

    The only change will be that the existing policies will have new branding and of course the rhetoric will be different.

    What do I want it to do?

    Well, Government to stop handing out lucrative contracts and appointments to its mates.

    I'd like it to stop telling barefaced lies to the public, and to Parliament.


    I'd like it to put more of the burden of paying for public services on those that can afford it rather than those that can't.

    I'd like it to act with some integrity, domestically and internationally, so that some public faith in politicians is restored.

    I'd like it to restore good trading relations with our natural trading partners, notably the EU.

    That would do for starters. Anything else would be a bonus.
    This is what I don't get about remaining Tories. This government- and with it the Conservative Party - is openly corrupt. That is not a conservative thing to support.

    And I'm not just talking about financial corruption into the BILLIONS of our money grifted to their spiv friends and patrons. I also refer to the corruption of facts. Lying to parliament is a Bad Thing with a very rapid and swift penalty. Utterly corrupted by the Tories who don't just lie, but try to insist their lie is the truth no matter how egregious that claim is.

    That is also not a conservative thing to support. True conservatives surely need to save the soul of their party, because at the moment they are the anti-Conservatives. Is there no level of filth that some people are prepared to swim in? And for what - to defend a party whose policies they largely oppose and whose principles are a mockery of what they hold dear?

    I can see an awful lot of Tory voters - true lifelong conservatives - trying to save the soul of the party by killing the anti-Tories at the coming election. Kill it with electoral fire. And then you can have your party back.
    Your last paragraph relies on two things, that the rump of remaining Tories are the sensible ones - unlikely, and that if they get wiped out that they learn the right lessons.

    My concern is that a large defeat will leave those in solid seats, the Bill Cash and Edward Leigh’s of the world running the show who have learned nothing and not remotely adapted to the modern world.

    They will also come to the wrong conclusion that they lost because they were “too centrist” and so lurch to bonkers. This will further destroy the Tories as a going concern for a long long time like the Liberals.

    The best situation for Tories (short of an unlikely victory) is a modest defeat where the evidence to them is clear that despite all the shit over the last few years and the damage to their standing they managed to get close with Sunak and a more centrist approach with nods to the right and so replacing him with crazy isn’t the answer.

    It’s also not great for the country to have parties in power with whopping majorities unless they actually have a decent plan how to fix things - either you get bad decisions that are un-opposable due to the majority or you get complacency such as under Blair where a huge majority, where he could have changed the face of the country, is wasted because they are too worried about the next election and losing the broad church that got them that majority and so don’t want to do anything to scare the horses so you end up with stagnation.
    Sane people in Labour managed to save the party from me and BJO, so the Tories can at least try.

    As I posted before, I expect that electoral and constitutional reform will be an inevitable big agenda item in the next parliament. Which means that the restored Tory party may not need distinguished psychopaths like Sir Edward Leigh - they could form their own party.
    And PR also guarantees Farage's Reform UK and a new Corbynite left party 15-20% of the seats in the House of Commons each, so far from removing the hard right and hard left, PR just increases their power........
    Not at all, my dear young HY. Why do you think up to 20% of the country would like to see a Corbynite left party and te same for a Farage style Reform party? There is far more danger under the present voting system where is is comparatively easy for extremists to take over the entire party. They took over the Labour Party not so long ago, and the present profile of the Conservative leadership speaks for itself.

    If you have strict proportional representation (which would have to be country-wide), then parties can easily split up, so that different shades of opinion are fairly represented. At present, if you are a Conservative supporter, you are forced to vote for the official Conservative candidate - don't you? - whatever sub-set of Conservatism he supports. Or vote for another party, as lots of traditional decent Conservatives did at the recent local elections.

    If you have the best form of PR - the Single Transferable Vote in Multi-Member constituencies - a candidate would have to get at least 20% of support in that constituency to get elected. And if there is that amount of support for his position and policies, then those views have a right to be represented.

    Up to now, the Conservative Party has benefited from our broken voting system. The appearance of bodies like the one fronted by Carol Vorderman helps to remove some of that distortion, as a look at their recommendations for the recent council elections shows.

    I have the impression that now it is the Conservative point of view that is seriously under-represented on my local council. And the Labour point of view too, because there are no Labour councillors at all.
    As about 15 to 20% of the country are hard right and 15 to 20% of the country are hard left, only FPTP keeps them voting Tory or Labour.

    See the European elections where when we had PR Farage's party won twice, in 2014 and 2019.

    Sunak is also not Farage and Starmer is not Corbyn. With PR Farage and Corbyn would still be leading their own parties with lots of MPs in Parliament
    Oh dear, young HY! The EU elections were fought on the party list system, based on regions. If you remember, the EU insisted that we should fight EU elections with some system of PR, and the party list system, imposed on us by the then Labour government, was the least proportional one that the Labour Government could get away with. In other words, it was the one where the Party kept greatest control, and individual voters had least say.

    I am still awaiting evidence to support your assertion that 20% of the country is hard right and another 20% hard left. If anything, the vast increase in support for the Lib Dems at the recent local elections would suggest that you might be mistaken.
    If we had PR the likelihood is Farage's RefUK and the Greens or a Corbynite party would overtake the LDs as the 3rd UK wide party within 5 to 10 years.

    In 2015 UKIP won more votes than the LDs even if under FPTP the LDs won more seats than UKIP.

    A few local election protest votes for the LDs to try and stop new housing and mend potholes doesn't translate to national elections.

    PR may on paper benefit the LDs much more than the Conservatives and Labour but in practice it might hit all 3 of the established parties
    No they wouldn't. The thing holding the tiny parties back is the same thing holding the Lib Dems back. In most constituencies, 461 of them, it's Labour and Conservative holding the top two positions. Many people view voting for the third or worse party as a wasted vote, so they feel "forced" into choosing between red and blue.

    There's no reason to suppose this would benefit the parties in 4th, 5th and beyond so much more that they would overtake the 3rd placed party.
    Of course there is, for starters in plenty of constituencies the Lib Dems are the alternative to the incumbent. Then in many constituencies where the Lib Dems aren't even top two they still falsely portray themselves as the alternative.

    FPTP massively assists the Lib Dems over smaller competitor parties.

    The experience of PR where it is used is to see much more churn in who the third party is, with the former third party being relegated or even eliminated altogether quite frequently. Having a consistent third party in PR nations is rather unusual.
    Actually you're right that it's entirely possible the Lib Dems would be overtaken as third party, but it's also possible that would rise up to second or first over time.

    So yes, my statement was far too definitive that it wouldn't happen and I was wrong. But I still think HYUFD was wrong to state that it's likely to pan out the way he thinks. We've both made equal and opposite mistakes here.

    But you're also wrong. "FPTP massively assists the Lib Dems" is obviously nonsense. A party that's getting 1 vote in 9 and is rewarded with 1 seat in 59 can in no sense be described as being "assisted" by the system. Even if the Lib Dem vote share halved under PR (I think it would rise, but just for the sake of argument) they would still end up with more than TREBLE the number of MPs, up from 11 to 37.
    You cut my quote midsentence. If you cut a sentence in half you change its meaning.

    I never said FPTP massively assists the Lib Dems full stop. I said FPTP massively assists the Lib Dems over smaller competitor parties which is unambiguously correct.

    On your preferred metric of votes cast to seats won (which isn't a measure of 'fairness' unless you're starting from the flawed premise that PR is the only fair system) then the Lib Dems have a massively better ratio of seats won to votes cast than any smaller competitors do.

    The votes cast absolutely could fall, or rise, the party could become a top two party of it could cease to exist altogether. That's unknown.

    But when it comes to competition from below, rather than from above, then FPTP aids the Lib Dems at being the third party none of the above protest vote.
    Yes I cut your sentence mid way because the qualifying clause at the end doesn't matter. It's like breaking three of someone's limbs and claiming they are massively assisted over those people who've had all four limbs crushed.

    Yes, my metric for fairness is that votes for parties translate more or less into bums on seats in the Commons. I firmly believe that most people vote with a party in mind and that the there is a disconnect between that intention and the legal truth that you vote for an MP. I would like to see these things aligned, and there are two ways for that to happen: you change the way people think, or you change the way the system represents them. I prefer to fit systems to people, not the other way around.

    So under my metric of fairness, which I believe to be based on the intentions of voters, it doesn't make sense to say a party that receives an unfairly small representation compared to the actual votes it won has been "assisted". I stand by that statement with or without the qualifying clause you put in your original post.

    I did not want to get bogged down in a semantic tussle over whether getting hurt less is the same as benefiting more, because I think it's besides the point and it would demean both of us to engage in that level of pedantic flappery.
    The clause at the end absolutely mattered, especially in context to what I replied to.

    In the land of the blind the one eyed man is king. The Lib Dems are that one eyed man out of the small parties.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    CatMan said:

    DavidL said:

    Australia all out for 469 and frankly they wasted quite a few overs on 9, 10 and 11 with relatively few runs for it. They may come to regret that. Does anyone know what happens if this test is a draw?

    They share the trophy
    They do have an extra day if they need it, but presumably only for weather stoppages and they won’t go past 450 overs plus half an hour.
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 47,789

    Taz said:

    OMFG


    For those of us not au fait with motorsport is this our Lewis with Mr Alonso’s other half ?
    No, Gerard Pique's ex wife
    And after Piqué left her for someone half her age she wrote a song with the lyric: "I'm worth two 22 year olds. You've swapped a Ferrari for a Twingo. You've swapped a Rolex for a Casio."
  • WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 8,480
    edited June 2023

    A very odd article, to my way of thinking. The author explicitly says we should be happy to be joining a broader international club of smaller mid-sized nations ready to help America.

    We can still support democratic values, and America, in Europe. It's this readiness to give up a much powerful role within Europe to act as " one of many junior partners of America " that is partly what I find so odd in some of the ideology of ultra-atlanticists. Could this, in fact, spring from a lack of self-confidence and self-esteem, somewhere ?

    There is inevitably a tension in the EU between those who think the whole point of it is to shake off US/Anglosphere influence and those who see the point of it as anchoring themsleves within the broader West. The UK is the only European country where this tension doesn't exist because it is part of the Anglosphere by definition.
    And yet the UK we come back to the fact that the UK os also one of the three major economic and military powers in Europe, always giving it disproportionate influence over a wide area, if or whenever wants it. Hence the single market, or the fact that an EU army failed for years because Britain vetoed it.

    It can exercise a similar role in the European Political Community, if it wants, giving it an outsized influence as that bridge between the English-speaking world and one of the three centres of European power, or it can be happy merely to be a very junior but helpful, scurrying little butler with Pacific pretensions. It simply makes no sense not to take advantage of the disproportionate increase in influence this bridge gives, whether in the EU or the EPC.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614

    OMFG


    That’s a relatively old photo, from Miami, and there were a dozen people at the table.

    Not that we wouldn’t all take that opportunity, were it to arise!
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 10,343
    Roger said:
    I have just read it. Thank you for the link. Who is he by the way? Is he real, or is this the parody, like Peter Simple's Ron Frabb, it feels like.

  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,575
    .

    Farooq said:

    Farooq said:

    .

    Farooq said:

    HYUFD said:

    ClippP said:

    HYUFD said:

    ClippP said:

    HYUFD said:

    boulay said:

    MikeL said:

    There's clearly a huge desire to get the Conservatives out.

    But what do all the people desperate for a Labour Government want it to actually do? And what is Starmer actually planning to do?

    Starmer has said he's not going to raise taxes significantly and he's told the Shadow Cabinet not to make any spending promises.

    So if he isn't going to spend any money, what is he actually going to do?

    He seems to be heading for a Gordon Brown scenario - desperate to get into power but with no tangible plans to actually do anything once he gets there.

    So the public will almost certainly get their wish to get the Conservatives out - only for Starmer to come in and do precisely nothing - effectively continuing with existing policies.

    The only change will be that the existing policies will have new branding and of course the rhetoric will be different.

    What do I want it to do?

    Well, Government to stop handing out lucrative contracts and appointments to its mates.

    I'd like it to stop telling barefaced lies to the public, and to Parliament.


    I'd like it to put more of the burden of paying for public services on those that can afford it rather than those that can't.

    I'd like it to act with some integrity, domestically and internationally, so that some public faith in politicians is restored.

    I'd like it to restore good trading relations with our natural trading partners, notably the EU.

    That would do for starters. Anything else would be a bonus.
    This is what I don't get about remaining Tories. This government- and with it the Conservative Party - is openly corrupt. That is not a conservative thing to support.

    And I'm not just talking about financial corruption into the BILLIONS of our money grifted to their spiv friends and patrons. I also refer to the corruption of facts. Lying to parliament is a Bad Thing with a very rapid and swift penalty. Utterly corrupted by the Tories who don't just lie, but try to insist their lie is the truth no matter how egregious that claim is.

    That is also not a conservative thing to support. True conservatives surely need to save the soul of their party, because at the moment they are the anti-Conservatives. Is there no level of filth that some people are prepared to swim in? And for what - to defend a party whose policies they largely oppose and whose principles are a mockery of what they hold dear?

    I can see an awful lot of Tory voters - true lifelong conservatives - trying to save the soul of the party by killing the anti-Tories at the coming election. Kill it with electoral fire. And then you can have your party back.
    Your last paragraph relies on two things, that the rump of remaining Tories are the sensible ones - unlikely, and that if they get wiped out that they learn the right lessons.

    My concern is that a large defeat will leave those in solid seats, the Bill Cash and Edward Leigh’s of the world running the show who have learned nothing and not remotely adapted to the modern world.

    They will also come to the wrong conclusion that they lost because they were “too centrist” and so lurch to bonkers. This will further destroy the Tories as a going concern for a long long time like the Liberals.

    The best situation for Tories (short of an unlikely victory) is a modest defeat where the evidence to them is clear that despite all the shit over the last few years and the damage to their standing they managed to get close with Sunak and a more centrist approach with nods to the right and so replacing him with crazy isn’t the answer.

    It’s also not great for the country to have parties in power with whopping majorities unless they actually have a decent plan how to fix things - either you get bad decisions that are un-opposable due to the majority or you get complacency such as under Blair where a huge majority, where he could have changed the face of the country, is wasted because they are too worried about the next election and losing the broad church that got them that majority and so don’t want to do anything to scare the horses so you end up with stagnation.
    Sane people in Labour managed to save the party from me and BJO, so the Tories can at least try.

    As I posted before, I expect that electoral and constitutional reform will be an inevitable big agenda item in the next parliament. Which means that the restored Tory party may not need distinguished psychopaths like Sir Edward Leigh - they could form their own party.
    And PR also guarantees Farage's Reform UK and a new Corbynite left party 15-20% of the seats in the House of Commons each, so far from removing the hard right and hard left, PR just increases their power........
    Not at all, my dear young HY. Why do you think up to 20% of the country would like to see a Corbynite left party and te same for a Farage style Reform party? There is far more danger under the present voting system where is is comparatively easy for extremists to take over the entire party. They took over the Labour Party not so long ago, and the present profile of the Conservative leadership speaks for itself.

    If you have strict proportional representation (which would have to be country-wide), then parties can easily split up, so that different shades of opinion are fairly represented. At present, if you are a Conservative supporter, you are forced to vote for the official Conservative candidate - don't you? - whatever sub-set of Conservatism he supports. Or vote for another party, as lots of traditional decent Conservatives did at the recent local elections.

    If you have the best form of PR - the Single Transferable Vote in Multi-Member constituencies - a candidate would have to get at least 20% of support in that constituency to get elected. And if there is that amount of support for his position and policies, then those views have a right to be represented.

    Up to now, the Conservative Party has benefited from our broken voting system. The appearance of bodies like the one fronted by Carol Vorderman helps to remove some of that distortion, as a look at their recommendations for the recent council elections shows.

    I have the impression that now it is the Conservative point of view that is seriously under-represented on my local council. And the Labour point of view too, because there are no Labour councillors at all.
    As about 15 to 20% of the country are hard right and 15 to 20% of the country are hard left, only FPTP keeps them voting Tory or Labour.

    See the European elections where when we had PR Farage's party won twice, in 2014 and 2019.

    Sunak is also not Farage and Starmer is not Corbyn. With PR Farage and Corbyn would still be leading their own parties with lots of MPs in Parliament
    Oh dear, young HY! The EU elections were fought on the party list system, based on regions. If you remember, the EU insisted that we should fight EU elections with some system of PR, and the party list system, imposed on us by the then Labour government, was the least proportional one that the Labour Government could get away with. In other words, it was the one where the Party kept greatest control, and individual voters had least say.

    I am still awaiting evidence to support your assertion that 20% of the country is hard right and another 20% hard left. If anything, the vast increase in support for the Lib Dems at the recent local elections would suggest that you might be mistaken.
    If we had PR the likelihood is Farage's RefUK and the Greens or a Corbynite party would overtake the LDs as the 3rd UK wide party within 5 to 10 years.

    In 2015 UKIP won more votes than the LDs even if under FPTP the LDs won more seats than UKIP.

    A few local election protest votes for the LDs to try and stop new housing and mend potholes doesn't translate to national elections.

    PR may on paper benefit the LDs much more than the Conservatives and Labour but in practice it might hit all 3 of the established parties
    No they wouldn't. The thing holding the tiny parties back is the same thing holding the Lib Dems back. In most constituencies, 461 of them, it's Labour and Conservative holding the top two positions. Many people view voting for the third or worse party as a wasted vote, so they feel "forced" into choosing between red and blue.

    There's no reason to suppose this would benefit the parties in 4th, 5th and beyond so much more that they would overtake the 3rd placed party.
    Of course there is, for starters in plenty of constituencies the Lib Dems are the alternative to the incumbent. Then in many constituencies where the Lib Dems aren't even top two they still falsely portray themselves as the alternative.

    FPTP massively assists the Lib Dems over smaller competitor parties.

    The experience of PR where it is used is to see much more churn in who the third party is, with the former third party being relegated or even eliminated altogether quite frequently. Having a consistent third party in PR nations is rather unusual.
    Actually you're right that it's entirely possible the Lib Dems would be overtaken as third party, but it's also possible that would rise up to second or first over time.

    So yes, my statement was far too definitive that it wouldn't happen and I was wrong. But I still think HYUFD was wrong to state that it's likely to pan out the way he thinks. We've both made equal and opposite mistakes here.

    But you're also wrong. "FPTP massively assists the Lib Dems" is obviously nonsense. A party that's getting 1 vote in 9 and is rewarded with 1 seat in 59 can in no sense be described as being "assisted" by the system. Even if the Lib Dem vote share halved under PR (I think it would rise, but just for the sake of argument) they would still end up with more than TREBLE the number of MPs, up from 11 to 37.
    You cut my quote midsentence. If you cut a sentence in half you change its meaning.

    I never said FPTP massively assists the Lib Dems full stop. I said FPTP massively assists the Lib Dems over smaller competitor parties which is unambiguously correct.

    On your preferred metric of votes cast to seats won (which isn't a measure of 'fairness' unless you're starting from the flawed premise that PR is the only fair system) then the Lib Dems have a massively better ratio of seats won to votes cast than any smaller competitors do.

    The votes cast absolutely could fall, or rise, the party could become a top two party of it could cease to exist altogether. That's unknown.

    But when it comes to competition from below, rather than from above, then FPTP aids the Lib Dems at being the third party none of the above protest vote.
    Yes I cut your sentence mid way because the qualifying clause at the end doesn't matter. It's like breaking three of someone's limbs and claiming they are massively assisted over those people who've had all four limbs crushed.

    Yes, my metric for fairness is that votes for parties translate more or less into bums on seats in the Commons. I firmly believe that most people vote with a party in mind and that the there is a disconnect between that intention and the legal truth that you vote for an MP. I would like to see these things aligned, and there are two ways for that to happen: you change the way people think, or you change the way the system represents them. I prefer to fit systems to people, not the other way around.

    So under my metric of fairness, which I believe to be based on the intentions of voters, it doesn't make sense to say a party that receives an unfairly small representation compared to the actual votes it won has been "assisted". I stand by that statement with or without the qualifying clause you put in your original post.

    I did not want to get bogged down in a semantic tussle over whether getting hurt less is the same as benefiting more, because I think it's besides the point and it would demean both of us to engage in that level of pedantic flappery.
    The clause at the end absolutely mattered, especially in context to what I replied to.

    In the land of the blind the one eyed man is king. The Lib Dems are that one eyed man out of the small parties.
    Since they notice the unfairness, and wish to remedy it, who are then the blind ?
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 14,772
    Nigelb said:

    I don’t wish to alarm anybody but I’m now editing PB until Monday.

    Heavy fighting, Ukrainian tank advances, overnight in around Orikhiv, southeast of Zaporizhzhya, and Tokmak, per local Russian official. "There is a high-intensity battle going on right now."
    https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1666719504225714177

    Interesting location.
    I would have chosen further east, from Vuhledar towards Volnovakha and Mariupol.
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 47,789

    A very odd article, to my way of thinking. The author explicitly says we should be happy to be joining a broader international club of smaller mid-sized nations ready to help America.

    We can still support democratic values, and America, in Europe. It's this readiness to give up a much powerful role within Europe to act as " one of many junior partners of America " that is partly what I find so odd in some of the ideology of ultra-atlanticists. Could this, in fact, spring from a lack of self-confidence and self-esteem, somewhere ?

    There is inevitably a tension in the EU between those who think the whole point of it is to shake off US/Anglosphere influence and those who see the point of it as anchoring themsleves within the broader West. The UK is the only European country where this tension doesn't exist because it is part of the Anglosphere by definition.
    And yet the UK is also one of the three major economic and military powers in Europe, always giving it disproportionate influence over a wide area if it wants it. Hence the single market, or the fact that an EU army failed because Britain vetoed it.

    It can exercise a similar role in the European Political Community, if it wants, giving it an outside influence as that the bridge between the English-speaking world and one of the centres of European power, or it can be happy merely to be a very junior but helpful butler with Pacific pretensions. It simply makes no not to take advantage of the disproportionate increase in influence this bridge gives, whether in the EU or the EPC.
    And that's what we've been doing. To take an obvious example, it's indisputable that the has UK played a more influential role over the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 than it did after the annexation of Crimea and incursion into Donetsk and Lugansk in 2014.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    Nigelb said:

    I don’t wish to alarm anybody but I’m now editing PB until Monday.

    Heavy fighting, Ukrainian tank advances, overnight in around Orikhiv, southeast of Zaporizhzhya, and Tokmak, per local Russian official. "There is a high-intensity battle going on right now."
    https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1666719504225714177

    Interesting location.
    That’s a lot of ground in four days. Close to cutting the Crimea land bridge, which is the other side of Tokmak towards Melitopol.
  • WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 8,480
    edited June 2023

    A very odd article, to my way of thinking. The author explicitly says we should be happy to be joining a broader international club of smaller mid-sized nations ready to help America.

    We can still support democratic values, and America, in Europe. It's this readiness to give up a much powerful role within Europe to act as " one of many junior partners of America " that is partly what I find so odd in some of the ideology of ultra-atlanticists. Could this, in fact, spring from a lack of self-confidence and self-esteem, somewhere ?

    There is inevitably a tension in the EU between those who think the whole point of it is to shake off US/Anglosphere influence and those who see the point of it as anchoring themsleves within the broader West. The UK is the only European country where this tension doesn't exist because it is part of the Anglosphere by definition.
    And yet the UK is also one of the three major economic and military powers in Europe, always giving it disproportionate influence over a wide area if it wants it. Hence the single market, or the fact that an EU army failed because Britain vetoed it.

    It can exercise a similar role in the European Political Community, if it wants, giving it an outside influence as that the bridge between the English-speaking world and one of the centres of European power, or it can be happy merely to be a very junior but helpful butler with Pacific pretensions. It simply makes no not to take advantage of the disproportionate increase in influence this bridge gives, whether in the EU or the EPC.
    And that's what we've been doing. To take an obvious example, it's indisputable that the has UK played a more influential role over the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 than it did after the annexation of Crimea and incursion into Donetsk and Lugansk in 2014.
    That's true, but leaving the EU has made that more, not less difficult.

    It's also interesting how little reference or importance that article gives to pan-European security. This is because it still fundamentally isn't in the Brexit mindset, so the Ukraine War has wrongfooted that.
  • Nigelb said:

    .

    Farooq said:

    Farooq said:

    .

    Farooq said:

    HYUFD said:

    ClippP said:

    HYUFD said:

    ClippP said:

    HYUFD said:

    boulay said:

    MikeL said:

    There's clearly a huge desire to get the Conservatives out.

    But what do all the people desperate for a Labour Government want it to actually do? And what is Starmer actually planning to do?

    Starmer has said he's not going to raise taxes significantly and he's told the Shadow Cabinet not to make any spending promises.

    So if he isn't going to spend any money, what is he actually going to do?

    He seems to be heading for a Gordon Brown scenario - desperate to get into power but with no tangible plans to actually do anything once he gets there.

    So the public will almost certainly get their wish to get the Conservatives out - only for Starmer to come in and do precisely nothing - effectively continuing with existing policies.

    The only change will be that the existing policies will have new branding and of course the rhetoric will be different.

    What do I want it to do?

    Well, Government to stop handing out lucrative contracts and appointments to its mates.

    I'd like it to stop telling barefaced lies to the public, and to Parliament.


    I'd like it to put more of the burden of paying for public services on those that can afford it rather than those that can't.

    I'd like it to act with some integrity, domestically and internationally, so that some public faith in politicians is restored.

    I'd like it to restore good trading relations with our natural trading partners, notably the EU.

    That would do for starters. Anything else would be a bonus.
    This is what I don't get about remaining Tories. This government- and with it the Conservative Party - is openly corrupt. That is not a conservative thing to support.

    And I'm not just talking about financial corruption into the BILLIONS of our money grifted to their spiv friends and patrons. I also refer to the corruption of facts. Lying to parliament is a Bad Thing with a very rapid and swift penalty. Utterly corrupted by the Tories who don't just lie, but try to insist their lie is the truth no matter how egregious that claim is.

    That is also not a conservative thing to support. True conservatives surely need to save the soul of their party, because at the moment they are the anti-Conservatives. Is there no level of filth that some people are prepared to swim in? And for what - to defend a party whose policies they largely oppose and whose principles are a mockery of what they hold dear?

    I can see an awful lot of Tory voters - true lifelong conservatives - trying to save the soul of the party by killing the anti-Tories at the coming election. Kill it with electoral fire. And then you can have your party back.
    Your last paragraph relies on two things, that the rump of remaining Tories are the sensible ones - unlikely, and that if they get wiped out that they learn the right lessons.

    My concern is that a large defeat will leave those in solid seats, the Bill Cash and Edward Leigh’s of the world running the show who have learned nothing and not remotely adapted to the modern world.

    They will also come to the wrong conclusion that they lost because they were “too centrist” and so lurch to bonkers. This will further destroy the Tories as a going concern for a long long time like the Liberals.

    The best situation for Tories (short of an unlikely victory) is a modest defeat where the evidence to them is clear that despite all the shit over the last few years and the damage to their standing they managed to get close with Sunak and a more centrist approach with nods to the right and so replacing him with crazy isn’t the answer.

    It’s also not great for the country to have parties in power with whopping majorities unless they actually have a decent plan how to fix things - either you get bad decisions that are un-opposable due to the majority or you get complacency such as under Blair where a huge majority, where he could have changed the face of the country, is wasted because they are too worried about the next election and losing the broad church that got them that majority and so don’t want to do anything to scare the horses so you end up with stagnation.
    Sane people in Labour managed to save the party from me and BJO, so the Tories can at least try.

    As I posted before, I expect that electoral and constitutional reform will be an inevitable big agenda item in the next parliament. Which means that the restored Tory party may not need distinguished psychopaths like Sir Edward Leigh - they could form their own party.
    And PR also guarantees Farage's Reform UK and a new Corbynite left party 15-20% of the seats in the House of Commons each, so far from removing the hard right and hard left, PR just increases their power........
    Not at all, my dear young HY. Why do you think up to 20% of the country would like to see a Corbynite left party and te same for a Farage style Reform party? There is far more danger under the present voting system where is is comparatively easy for extremists to take over the entire party. They took over the Labour Party not so long ago, and the present profile of the Conservative leadership speaks for itself.

    If you have strict proportional representation (which would have to be country-wide), then parties can easily split up, so that different shades of opinion are fairly represented. At present, if you are a Conservative supporter, you are forced to vote for the official Conservative candidate - don't you? - whatever sub-set of Conservatism he supports. Or vote for another party, as lots of traditional decent Conservatives did at the recent local elections.

    If you have the best form of PR - the Single Transferable Vote in Multi-Member constituencies - a candidate would have to get at least 20% of support in that constituency to get elected. And if there is that amount of support for his position and policies, then those views have a right to be represented.

    Up to now, the Conservative Party has benefited from our broken voting system. The appearance of bodies like the one fronted by Carol Vorderman helps to remove some of that distortion, as a look at their recommendations for the recent council elections shows.

    I have the impression that now it is the Conservative point of view that is seriously under-represented on my local council. And the Labour point of view too, because there are no Labour councillors at all.
    As about 15 to 20% of the country are hard right and 15 to 20% of the country are hard left, only FPTP keeps them voting Tory or Labour.

    See the European elections where when we had PR Farage's party won twice, in 2014 and 2019.

    Sunak is also not Farage and Starmer is not Corbyn. With PR Farage and Corbyn would still be leading their own parties with lots of MPs in Parliament
    Oh dear, young HY! The EU elections were fought on the party list system, based on regions. If you remember, the EU insisted that we should fight EU elections with some system of PR, and the party list system, imposed on us by the then Labour government, was the least proportional one that the Labour Government could get away with. In other words, it was the one where the Party kept greatest control, and individual voters had least say.

    I am still awaiting evidence to support your assertion that 20% of the country is hard right and another 20% hard left. If anything, the vast increase in support for the Lib Dems at the recent local elections would suggest that you might be mistaken.
    If we had PR the likelihood is Farage's RefUK and the Greens or a Corbynite party would overtake the LDs as the 3rd UK wide party within 5 to 10 years.

    In 2015 UKIP won more votes than the LDs even if under FPTP the LDs won more seats than UKIP.

    A few local election protest votes for the LDs to try and stop new housing and mend potholes doesn't translate to national elections.

    PR may on paper benefit the LDs much more than the Conservatives and Labour but in practice it might hit all 3 of the established parties
    No they wouldn't. The thing holding the tiny parties back is the same thing holding the Lib Dems back. In most constituencies, 461 of them, it's Labour and Conservative holding the top two positions. Many people view voting for the third or worse party as a wasted vote, so they feel "forced" into choosing between red and blue.

    There's no reason to suppose this would benefit the parties in 4th, 5th and beyond so much more that they would overtake the 3rd placed party.
    Of course there is, for starters in plenty of constituencies the Lib Dems are the alternative to the incumbent. Then in many constituencies where the Lib Dems aren't even top two they still falsely portray themselves as the alternative.

    FPTP massively assists the Lib Dems over smaller competitor parties.

    The experience of PR where it is used is to see much more churn in who the third party is, with the former third party being relegated or even eliminated altogether quite frequently. Having a consistent third party in PR nations is rather unusual.
    Actually you're right that it's entirely possible the Lib Dems would be overtaken as third party, but it's also possible that would rise up to second or first over time.

    So yes, my statement was far too definitive that it wouldn't happen and I was wrong. But I still think HYUFD was wrong to state that it's likely to pan out the way he thinks. We've both made equal and opposite mistakes here.

    But you're also wrong. "FPTP massively assists the Lib Dems" is obviously nonsense. A party that's getting 1 vote in 9 and is rewarded with 1 seat in 59 can in no sense be described as being "assisted" by the system. Even if the Lib Dem vote share halved under PR (I think it would rise, but just for the sake of argument) they would still end up with more than TREBLE the number of MPs, up from 11 to 37.
    You cut my quote midsentence. If you cut a sentence in half you change its meaning.

    I never said FPTP massively assists the Lib Dems full stop. I said FPTP massively assists the Lib Dems over smaller competitor parties which is unambiguously correct.

    On your preferred metric of votes cast to seats won (which isn't a measure of 'fairness' unless you're starting from the flawed premise that PR is the only fair system) then the Lib Dems have a massively better ratio of seats won to votes cast than any smaller competitors do.

    The votes cast absolutely could fall, or rise, the party could become a top two party of it could cease to exist altogether. That's unknown.

    But when it comes to competition from below, rather than from above, then FPTP aids the Lib Dems at being the third party none of the above protest vote.
    Yes I cut your sentence mid way because the qualifying clause at the end doesn't matter. It's like breaking three of someone's limbs and claiming they are massively assisted over those people who've had all four limbs crushed.

    Yes, my metric for fairness is that votes for parties translate more or less into bums on seats in the Commons. I firmly believe that most people vote with a party in mind and that the there is a disconnect between that intention and the legal truth that you vote for an MP. I would like to see these things aligned, and there are two ways for that to happen: you change the way people think, or you change the way the system represents them. I prefer to fit systems to people, not the other way around.

    So under my metric of fairness, which I believe to be based on the intentions of voters, it doesn't make sense to say a party that receives an unfairly small representation compared to the actual votes it won has been "assisted". I stand by that statement with or without the qualifying clause you put in your original post.

    I did not want to get bogged down in a semantic tussle over whether getting hurt less is the same as benefiting more, because I think it's besides the point and it would demean both of us to engage in that level of pedantic flappery.
    The clause at the end absolutely mattered, especially in context to what I replied to.

    In the land of the blind the one eyed man is king. The Lib Dems are that one eyed man out of the small parties.
    Since they notice the unfairness, and wish to remedy it, who are then the blind ?
    In the context of the discussion the 4th, 5th and other potential smaller parties who disproportionately lose out to the Lib Dems, which was the point.
  • OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 14,915
    Roger said:
    Presumably this means that Liam will be appearing at a UKIP rally in the next few days.
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775

    Farooq said:

    Farooq said:

    .

    Farooq said:

    HYUFD said:

    ClippP said:

    HYUFD said:

    ClippP said:

    HYUFD said:

    boulay said:

    MikeL said:

    There's clearly a huge desire to get the Conservatives out.

    But what do all the people desperate for a Labour Government want it to actually do? And what is Starmer actually planning to do?

    Starmer has said he's not going to raise taxes significantly and he's told the Shadow Cabinet not to make any spending promises.

    So if he isn't going to spend any money, what is he actually going to do?

    He seems to be heading for a Gordon Brown scenario - desperate to get into power but with no tangible plans to actually do anything once he gets there.

    So the public will almost certainly get their wish to get the Conservatives out - only for Starmer to come in and do precisely nothing - effectively continuing with existing policies.

    The only change will be that the existing policies will have new branding and of course the rhetoric will be different.

    What do I want it to do?

    Well, Government to stop handing out lucrative contracts and appointments to its mates.

    I'd like it to stop telling barefaced lies to the public, and to Parliament.


    I'd like it to put more of the burden of paying for public services on those that can afford it rather than those that can't.

    I'd like it to act with some integrity, domestically and internationally, so that some public faith in politicians is restored.

    I'd like it to restore good trading relations with our natural trading partners, notably the EU.

    That would do for starters. Anything else would be a bonus.
    This is what I don't get about remaining Tories. This government- and with it the Conservative Party - is openly corrupt. That is not a conservative thing to support.

    And I'm not just talking about financial corruption into the BILLIONS of our money grifted to their spiv friends and patrons. I also refer to the corruption of facts. Lying to parliament is a Bad Thing with a very rapid and swift penalty. Utterly corrupted by the Tories who don't just lie, but try to insist their lie is the truth no matter how egregious that claim is.

    That is also not a conservative thing to support. True conservatives surely need to save the soul of their party, because at the moment they are the anti-Conservatives. Is there no level of filth that some people are prepared to swim in? And for what - to defend a party whose policies they largely oppose and whose principles are a mockery of what they hold dear?

    I can see an awful lot of Tory voters - true lifelong conservatives - trying to save the soul of the party by killing the anti-Tories at the coming election. Kill it with electoral fire. And then you can have your party back.
    Your last paragraph relies on two things, that the rump of remaining Tories are the sensible ones - unlikely, and that if they get wiped out that they learn the right lessons.

    My concern is that a large defeat will leave those in solid seats, the Bill Cash and Edward Leigh’s of the world running the show who have learned nothing and not remotely adapted to the modern world.

    They will also come to the wrong conclusion that they lost because they were “too centrist” and so lurch to bonkers. This will further destroy the Tories as a going concern for a long long time like the Liberals.

    The best situation for Tories (short of an unlikely victory) is a modest defeat where the evidence to them is clear that despite all the shit over the last few years and the damage to their standing they managed to get close with Sunak and a more centrist approach with nods to the right and so replacing him with crazy isn’t the answer.

    It’s also not great for the country to have parties in power with whopping majorities unless they actually have a decent plan how to fix things - either you get bad decisions that are un-opposable due to the majority or you get complacency such as under Blair where a huge majority, where he could have changed the face of the country, is wasted because they are too worried about the next election and losing the broad church that got them that majority and so don’t want to do anything to scare the horses so you end up with stagnation.
    Sane people in Labour managed to save the party from me and BJO, so the Tories can at least try.

    As I posted before, I expect that electoral and constitutional reform will be an inevitable big agenda item in the next parliament. Which means that the restored Tory party may not need distinguished psychopaths like Sir Edward Leigh - they could form their own party.
    And PR also guarantees Farage's Reform UK and a new Corbynite left party 15-20% of the seats in the House of Commons each, so far from removing the hard right and hard left, PR just increases their power........
    Not at all, my dear young HY. Why do you think up to 20% of the country would like to see a Corbynite left party and te same for a Farage style Reform party? There is far more danger under the present voting system where is is comparatively easy for extremists to take over the entire party. They took over the Labour Party not so long ago, and the present profile of the Conservative leadership speaks for itself.

    If you have strict proportional representation (which would have to be country-wide), then parties can easily split up, so that different shades of opinion are fairly represented. At present, if you are a Conservative supporter, you are forced to vote for the official Conservative candidate - don't you? - whatever sub-set of Conservatism he supports. Or vote for another party, as lots of traditional decent Conservatives did at the recent local elections.

    If you have the best form of PR - the Single Transferable Vote in Multi-Member constituencies - a candidate would have to get at least 20% of support in that constituency to get elected. And if there is that amount of support for his position and policies, then those views have a right to be represented.

    Up to now, the Conservative Party has benefited from our broken voting system. The appearance of bodies like the one fronted by Carol Vorderman helps to remove some of that distortion, as a look at their recommendations for the recent council elections shows.

    I have the impression that now it is the Conservative point of view that is seriously under-represented on my local council. And the Labour point of view too, because there are no Labour councillors at all.
    As about 15 to 20% of the country are hard right and 15 to 20% of the country are hard left, only FPTP keeps them voting Tory or Labour.

    See the European elections where when we had PR Farage's party won twice, in 2014 and 2019.

    Sunak is also not Farage and Starmer is not Corbyn. With PR Farage and Corbyn would still be leading their own parties with lots of MPs in Parliament
    Oh dear, young HY! The EU elections were fought on the party list system, based on regions. If you remember, the EU insisted that we should fight EU elections with some system of PR, and the party list system, imposed on us by the then Labour government, was the least proportional one that the Labour Government could get away with. In other words, it was the one where the Party kept greatest control, and individual voters had least say.

    I am still awaiting evidence to support your assertion that 20% of the country is hard right and another 20% hard left. If anything, the vast increase in support for the Lib Dems at the recent local elections would suggest that you might be mistaken.
    If we had PR the likelihood is Farage's RefUK and the Greens or a Corbynite party would overtake the LDs as the 3rd UK wide party within 5 to 10 years.

    In 2015 UKIP won more votes than the LDs even if under FPTP the LDs won more seats than UKIP.

    A few local election protest votes for the LDs to try and stop new housing and mend potholes doesn't translate to national elections.

    PR may on paper benefit the LDs much more than the Conservatives and Labour but in practice it might hit all 3 of the established parties
    No they wouldn't. The thing holding the tiny parties back is the same thing holding the Lib Dems back. In most constituencies, 461 of them, it's Labour and Conservative holding the top two positions. Many people view voting for the third or worse party as a wasted vote, so they feel "forced" into choosing between red and blue.

    There's no reason to suppose this would benefit the parties in 4th, 5th and beyond so much more that they would overtake the 3rd placed party.
    Of course there is, for starters in plenty of constituencies the Lib Dems are the alternative to the incumbent. Then in many constituencies where the Lib Dems aren't even top two they still falsely portray themselves as the alternative.

    FPTP massively assists the Lib Dems over smaller competitor parties.

    The experience of PR where it is used is to see much more churn in who the third party is, with the former third party being relegated or even eliminated altogether quite frequently. Having a consistent third party in PR nations is rather unusual.
    Actually you're right that it's entirely possible the Lib Dems would be overtaken as third party, but it's also possible that would rise up to second or first over time.

    So yes, my statement was far too definitive that it wouldn't happen and I was wrong. But I still think HYUFD was wrong to state that it's likely to pan out the way he thinks. We've both made equal and opposite mistakes here.

    But you're also wrong. "FPTP massively assists the Lib Dems" is obviously nonsense. A party that's getting 1 vote in 9 and is rewarded with 1 seat in 59 can in no sense be described as being "assisted" by the system. Even if the Lib Dem vote share halved under PR (I think it would rise, but just for the sake of argument) they would still end up with more than TREBLE the number of MPs, up from 11 to 37.
    You cut my quote midsentence. If you cut a sentence in half you change its meaning.

    I never said FPTP massively assists the Lib Dems full stop. I said FPTP massively assists the Lib Dems over smaller competitor parties which is unambiguously correct.

    On your preferred metric of votes cast to seats won (which isn't a measure of 'fairness' unless you're starting from the flawed premise that PR is the only fair system) then the Lib Dems have a massively better ratio of seats won to votes cast than any smaller competitors do.

    The votes cast absolutely could fall, or rise, the party could become a top two party of it could cease to exist altogether. That's unknown.

    But when it comes to competition from below, rather than from above, then FPTP aids the Lib Dems at being the third party none of the above protest vote.
    Yes I cut your sentence mid way because the qualifying clause at the end doesn't matter. It's like breaking three of someone's limbs and claiming they are massively assisted over those people who've had all four limbs crushed.

    Yes, my metric for fairness is that votes for parties translate more or less into bums on seats in the Commons. I firmly believe that most people vote with a party in mind and that the there is a disconnect between that intention and the legal truth that you vote for an MP. I would like to see these things aligned, and there are two ways for that to happen: you change the way people think, or you change the way the system represents them. I prefer to fit systems to people, not the other way around.

    So under my metric of fairness, which I believe to be based on the intentions of voters, it doesn't make sense to say a party that receives an unfairly small representation compared to the actual votes it won has been "assisted". I stand by that statement with or without the qualifying clause you put in your original post.

    I did not want to get bogged down in a semantic tussle over whether getting hurt less is the same as benefiting more, because I think it's besides the point and it would demean both of us to engage in that level of pedantic flappery.
    The clause at the end absolutely mattered, especially in context to what I replied to.

    In the land of the blind the one eyed man is king. The Lib Dems are that one eyed man out of the small parties.
    But if the system is responsible for you having one of your eyes poked out, then it's a bit rich to say the system is "massively assisting" you compared to those poor sods who've had both eyes poked out :lol:
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 47,789
    Sandpit said:

    Nigelb said:

    I don’t wish to alarm anybody but I’m now editing PB until Monday.

    Heavy fighting, Ukrainian tank advances, overnight in around Orikhiv, southeast of Zaporizhzhya, and Tokmak, per local Russian official. "There is a high-intensity battle going on right now."
    https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1666719504225714177

    Interesting location.
    That’s a lot of ground in four days. Close to cutting the Crimea land bridge, which is the other side of Tokmak towards Melitopol.
    There have been a lot of reports from Russian sources about sucessful Storm Shadow strikes in territory they hold.
  • WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 8,480
    edited June 2023
    ""And yet the UK we come back to the fact that the UK os also one of the three major economic and military powers in Europe""

    <<And yet we come back to the fact that the UK is also one of the three major economic and military powers in Europe>>, that should ofcourse say ! Apologies.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,575
    .

    Nigelb said:

    I don’t wish to alarm anybody but I’m now editing PB until Monday.

    Heavy fighting, Ukrainian tank advances, overnight in around Orikhiv, southeast of Zaporizhzhya, and Tokmak, per local Russian official. "There is a high-intensity battle going on right now."
    https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1666719504225714177

    Interesting location.
    I would have chosen further east, from Vuhledar towards Volnovakha and Mariupol.
    I have no idea - though that would increase the risk if counterflanking manoeuvre, would it not ?

    That's why we're not generals.
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 47,789

    A very odd article, to my way of thinking. The author explicitly says we should be happy to be joining a broader international club of smaller mid-sized nations ready to help America.

    We can still support democratic values, and America, in Europe. It's this readiness to give up a much powerful role within Europe to act as " one of many junior partners of America " that is partly what I find so odd in some of the ideology of ultra-atlanticists. Could this, in fact, spring from a lack of self-confidence and self-esteem, somewhere ?

    There is inevitably a tension in the EU between those who think the whole point of it is to shake off US/Anglosphere influence and those who see the point of it as anchoring themsleves within the broader West. The UK is the only European country where this tension doesn't exist because it is part of the Anglosphere by definition.
    And yet the UK is also one of the three major economic and military powers in Europe, always giving it disproportionate influence over a wide area if it wants it. Hence the single market, or the fact that an EU army failed because Britain vetoed it.

    It can exercise a similar role in the European Political Community, if it wants, giving it an outside influence as that the bridge between the English-speaking world and one of the centres of European power, or it can be happy merely to be a very junior but helpful butler with Pacific pretensions. It simply makes no not to take advantage of the disproportionate increase in influence this bridge gives, whether in the EU or the EPC.
    And that's what we've been doing. To take an obvious example, it's indisputable that the has UK played a more influential role over the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 than it did after the annexation of Crimea and incursion into Donetsk and Lugansk in 2014.
    That's true, but leaving the EU has made that more, not less difficult.

    It's also interesting how little reference or importance that article gives to pan-European security. This is because it still fundamentally isn't in the Brexit mindset, so the Ukraine War has wrongfooted that,
    Whether it's made it more or less difficult is very debatable. It's meant that we've been free to act without any concern for achieving a European consensus beforehand. If we had allowed German and French sensitivities to restrict the arms lift to Ukraine before the invasion started, we might be in a very different position today. By acting to influence the facts on the ground, we effectively coerced Germany into changing their long-standing policy towards Russia.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,575

    Nigelb said:

    .

    Farooq said:

    Farooq said:

    .

    Farooq said:

    HYUFD said:

    ClippP said:

    HYUFD said:

    ClippP said:

    HYUFD said:

    boulay said:

    MikeL said:

    There's clearly a huge desire to get the Conservatives out.

    But what do all the people desperate for a Labour Government want it to actually do? And what is Starmer actually planning to do?

    Starmer has said he's not going to raise taxes significantly and he's told the Shadow Cabinet not to make any spending promises.

    So if he isn't going to spend any money, what is he actually going to do?

    He seems to be heading for a Gordon Brown scenario - desperate to get into power but with no tangible plans to actually do anything once he gets there.

    So the public will almost certainly get their wish to get the Conservatives out - only for Starmer to come in and do precisely nothing - effectively continuing with existing policies.

    The only change will be that the existing policies will have new branding and of course the rhetoric will be different.

    What do I want it to do?

    Well, Government to stop handing out lucrative contracts and appointments to its mates.

    I'd like it to stop telling barefaced lies to the public, and to Parliament.


    I'd like it to put more of the burden of paying for public services on those that can afford it rather than those that can't.

    I'd like it to act with some integrity, domestically and internationally, so that some public faith in politicians is restored.

    I'd like it to restore good trading relations with our natural trading partners, notably the EU.

    That would do for starters. Anything else would be a bonus.
    This is what I don't get about remaining Tories. This government- and with it the Conservative Party - is openly corrupt. That is not a conservative thing to support.

    And I'm not just talking about financial corruption into the BILLIONS of our money grifted to their spiv friends and patrons. I also refer to the corruption of facts. Lying to parliament is a Bad Thing with a very rapid and swift penalty. Utterly corrupted by the Tories who don't just lie, but try to insist their lie is the truth no matter how egregious that claim is.

    That is also not a conservative thing to support. True conservatives surely need to save the soul of their party, because at the moment they are the anti-Conservatives. Is there no level of filth that some people are prepared to swim in? And for what - to defend a party whose policies they largely oppose and whose principles are a mockery of what they hold dear?

    I can see an awful lot of Tory voters - true lifelong conservatives - trying to save the soul of the party by killing the anti-Tories at the coming election. Kill it with electoral fire. And then you can have your party back.
    Your last paragraph relies on two things, that the rump of remaining Tories are the sensible ones - unlikely, and that if they get wiped out that they learn the right lessons.

    My concern is that a large defeat will leave those in solid seats, the Bill Cash and Edward Leigh’s of the world running the show who have learned nothing and not remotely adapted to the modern world.

    They will also come to the wrong conclusion that they lost because they were “too centrist” and so lurch to bonkers. This will further destroy the Tories as a going concern for a long long time like the Liberals.

    The best situation for Tories (short of an unlikely victory) is a modest defeat where the evidence to them is clear that despite all the shit over the last few years and the damage to their standing they managed to get close with Sunak and a more centrist approach with nods to the right and so replacing him with crazy isn’t the answer.

    It’s also not great for the country to have parties in power with whopping majorities unless they actually have a decent plan how to fix things - either you get bad decisions that are un-opposable due to the majority or you get complacency such as under Blair where a huge majority, where he could have changed the face of the country, is wasted because they are too worried about the next election and losing the broad church that got them that majority and so don’t want to do anything to scare the horses so you end up with stagnation.
    Sane people in Labour managed to save the party from me and BJO, so the Tories can at least try.

    As I posted before, I expect that electoral and constitutional reform will be an inevitable big agenda item in the next parliament. Which means that the restored Tory party may not need distinguished psychopaths like Sir Edward Leigh - they could form their own party.
    And PR also guarantees Farage's Reform UK and a new Corbynite left party 15-20% of the seats in the House of Commons each, so far from removing the hard right and hard left, PR just increases their power........
    Not at all, my dear young HY. Why do you think up to 20% of the country would like to see a Corbynite left party and te same for a Farage style Reform party? There is far more danger under the present voting system where is is comparatively easy for extremists to take over the entire party. They took over the Labour Party not so long ago, and the present profile of the Conservative leadership speaks for itself.

    If you have strict proportional representation (which would have to be country-wide), then parties can easily split up, so that different shades of opinion are fairly represented. At present, if you are a Conservative supporter, you are forced to vote for the official Conservative candidate - don't you? - whatever sub-set of Conservatism he supports. Or vote for another party, as lots of traditional decent Conservatives did at the recent local elections.

    If you have the best form of PR - the Single Transferable Vote in Multi-Member constituencies - a candidate would have to get at least 20% of support in that constituency to get elected. And if there is that amount of support for his position and policies, then those views have a right to be represented.

    Up to now, the Conservative Party has benefited from our broken voting system. The appearance of bodies like the one fronted by Carol Vorderman helps to remove some of that distortion, as a look at their recommendations for the recent council elections shows.

    I have the impression that now it is the Conservative point of view that is seriously under-represented on my local council. And the Labour point of view too, because there are no Labour councillors at all.
    As about 15 to 20% of the country are hard right and 15 to 20% of the country are hard left, only FPTP keeps them voting Tory or Labour.

    See the European elections where when we had PR Farage's party won twice, in 2014 and 2019.

    Sunak is also not Farage and Starmer is not Corbyn. With PR Farage and Corbyn would still be leading their own parties with lots of MPs in Parliament
    Oh dear, young HY! The EU elections were fought on the party list system, based on regions. If you remember, the EU insisted that we should fight EU elections with some system of PR, and the party list system, imposed on us by the then Labour government, was the least proportional one that the Labour Government could get away with. In other words, it was the one where the Party kept greatest control, and individual voters had least say.

    I am still awaiting evidence to support your assertion that 20% of the country is hard right and another 20% hard left. If anything, the vast increase in support for the Lib Dems at the recent local elections would suggest that you might be mistaken.
    If we had PR the likelihood is Farage's RefUK and the Greens or a Corbynite party would overtake the LDs as the 3rd UK wide party within 5 to 10 years.

    In 2015 UKIP won more votes than the LDs even if under FPTP the LDs won more seats than UKIP.

    A few local election protest votes for the LDs to try and stop new housing and mend potholes doesn't translate to national elections.

    PR may on paper benefit the LDs much more than the Conservatives and Labour but in practice it might hit all 3 of the established parties
    No they wouldn't. The thing holding the tiny parties back is the same thing holding the Lib Dems back. In most constituencies, 461 of them, it's Labour and Conservative holding the top two positions. Many people view voting for the third or worse party as a wasted vote, so they feel "forced" into choosing between red and blue.

    There's no reason to suppose this would benefit the parties in 4th, 5th and beyond so much more that they would overtake the 3rd placed party.
    Of course there is, for starters in plenty of constituencies the Lib Dems are the alternative to the incumbent. Then in many constituencies where the Lib Dems aren't even top two they still falsely portray themselves as the alternative.

    FPTP massively assists the Lib Dems over smaller competitor parties.

    The experience of PR where it is used is to see much more churn in who the third party is, with the former third party being relegated or even eliminated altogether quite frequently. Having a consistent third party in PR nations is rather unusual.
    Actually you're right that it's entirely possible the Lib Dems would be overtaken as third party, but it's also possible that would rise up to second or first over time.

    So yes, my statement was far too definitive that it wouldn't happen and I was wrong. But I still think HYUFD was wrong to state that it's likely to pan out the way he thinks. We've both made equal and opposite mistakes here.

    But you're also wrong. "FPTP massively assists the Lib Dems" is obviously nonsense. A party that's getting 1 vote in 9 and is rewarded with 1 seat in 59 can in no sense be described as being "assisted" by the system. Even if the Lib Dem vote share halved under PR (I think it would rise, but just for the sake of argument) they would still end up with more than TREBLE the number of MPs, up from 11 to 37.
    You cut my quote midsentence. If you cut a sentence in half you change its meaning.

    I never said FPTP massively assists the Lib Dems full stop. I said FPTP massively assists the Lib Dems over smaller competitor parties which is unambiguously correct.

    On your preferred metric of votes cast to seats won (which isn't a measure of 'fairness' unless you're starting from the flawed premise that PR is the only fair system) then the Lib Dems have a massively better ratio of seats won to votes cast than any smaller competitors do.

    The votes cast absolutely could fall, or rise, the party could become a top two party of it could cease to exist altogether. That's unknown.

    But when it comes to competition from below, rather than from above, then FPTP aids the Lib Dems at being the third party none of the above protest vote.
    Yes I cut your sentence mid way because the qualifying clause at the end doesn't matter. It's like breaking three of someone's limbs and claiming they are massively assisted over those people who've had all four limbs crushed.

    Yes, my metric for fairness is that votes for parties translate more or less into bums on seats in the Commons. I firmly believe that most people vote with a party in mind and that the there is a disconnect between that intention and the legal truth that you vote for an MP. I would like to see these things aligned, and there are two ways for that to happen: you change the way people think, or you change the way the system represents them. I prefer to fit systems to people, not the other way around.

    So under my metric of fairness, which I believe to be based on the intentions of voters, it doesn't make sense to say a party that receives an unfairly small representation compared to the actual votes it won has been "assisted". I stand by that statement with or without the qualifying clause you put in your original post.

    I did not want to get bogged down in a semantic tussle over whether getting hurt less is the same as benefiting more, because I think it's besides the point and it would demean both of us to engage in that level of pedantic flappery.
    The clause at the end absolutely mattered, especially in context to what I replied to.

    In the land of the blind the one eyed man is king. The Lib Dems are that one eyed man out of the small parties.
    Since they notice the unfairness, and wish to remedy it, who are then the blind ?
    In the context of the discussion the 4th, 5th and other potential smaller parties who disproportionately lose out to the Lib Dems, which was the point.
    On the context of the system you wish to perpetuate, and they don't.
  • RogerRoger Posts: 18,891
    TimS said:

    HYUFD said:
    There are a few germs of good points in that article but it's fudged by the obvious ideological biases of the writer - towards the US and against the EU. The title of the piece is better and more thought provoking than the content.
    It read to me like rubbish from start to finish. Sunak looked like he was drowning last night. A pitifully embarrassing performance and showed up the paucity of his position like nothing else I've so far seen which involved him. His American audience-if there was one-must have wondered why he wanted to 'stop boats'
  • A very odd article, to my way of thinking. The author explicitly says we should be happy to be joining a broader international club of smaller mid-sized nations ready to help America.

    We can still support democratic values, and America, in Europe. It's this readiness to give up a much powerful role within Europe to act as " one of many junior partners of America " that is partly what I find so odd in some of the ideology of ultra-atlanticists. Could this, in fact, spring from a lack of self-confidence and self-esteem, somewhere ?

    There is inevitably a tension in the EU between those who think the whole point of it is to shake off US/Anglosphere influence and those who see the point of it as anchoring themsleves within the broader West. The UK is the only European country where this tension doesn't exist because it is part of the Anglosphere by definition.
    And yet the UK we come back to the fact that the UK os also one of the three major economic and military powers in Europe, always giving it disproportionate influence over a wide area, if or whenever wants it. Hence the single market, or the fact that an EU army failed for years because Britain vetoed it.

    It can exercise a similar role in the European Political Community, if it wants, giving it an outsized influence as that bridge between the English-speaking world and one of the three centres of European power, or it can be happy merely to be a very junior but helpful, scurrying little butler with Pacific pretensions. It simply makes no sense not to take advantage of the disproportionate increase in influence this bridge gives, whether in the EU or the EPC.
    Which we unambiguously can and are doing eg with Ukraine. We have provided more leadership than any EU nation and had other nations now follow our lead, even Germany and France have both turned towards the British led (within Europe) framework and policy.

    There is no need to sacrifice our sovereignty or ability to act unilaterally in order to provide that leadership. In fact part of the way you cando that is to be a first mover while other nations aren't yet convinced that you are doing the right thing until you show them that you are.

    It's a very bizarre logic to think you need to sacrifice sovereignty to some mythical European Political Community in order to show leadership or have an influence.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614

    Sandpit said:

    Nigelb said:

    I don’t wish to alarm anybody but I’m now editing PB until Monday.

    Heavy fighting, Ukrainian tank advances, overnight in around Orikhiv, southeast of Zaporizhzhya, and Tokmak, per local Russian official. "There is a high-intensity battle going on right now."
    https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1666719504225714177

    Interesting location.
    That’s a lot of ground in four days. Close to cutting the Crimea land bridge, which is the other side of Tokmak towards Melitopol.
    There have been a lot of reports from Russian sources about sucessful Storm Shadow strikes in territory they hold.
    Yes, it was a remarkable effort to get them integrated into the Ukrainian Su-24 fleet. A significant increase in firepower and range for the defenders.

    I wonder if that story about 50 British special forces stationed in Ukraine, had something to do with this project, or if they worked out of Poland?
  • Nigelb said:

    Nigelb said:

    .

    Farooq said:

    Farooq said:

    .

    Farooq said:

    HYUFD said:

    ClippP said:

    HYUFD said:

    ClippP said:

    HYUFD said:

    boulay said:

    MikeL said:

    There's clearly a huge desire to get the Conservatives out.

    But what do all the people desperate for a Labour Government want it to actually do? And what is Starmer actually planning to do?

    Starmer has said he's not going to raise taxes significantly and he's told the Shadow Cabinet not to make any spending promises.

    So if he isn't going to spend any money, what is he actually going to do?

    He seems to be heading for a Gordon Brown scenario - desperate to get into power but with no tangible plans to actually do anything once he gets there.

    So the public will almost certainly get their wish to get the Conservatives out - only for Starmer to come in and do precisely nothing - effectively continuing with existing policies.

    The only change will be that the existing policies will have new branding and of course the rhetoric will be different.

    What do I want it to do?

    Well, Government to stop handing out lucrative contracts and appointments to its mates.

    I'd like it to stop telling barefaced lies to the public, and to Parliament.


    I'd like it to put more of the burden of paying for public services on those that can afford it rather than those that can't.

    I'd like it to act with some integrity, domestically and internationally, so that some public faith in politicians is restored.

    I'd like it to restore good trading relations with our natural trading partners, notably the EU.

    That would do for starters. Anything else would be a bonus.
    This is what I don't get about remaining Tories. This government- and with it the Conservative Party - is openly corrupt. That is not a conservative thing to support.

    And I'm not just talking about financial corruption into the BILLIONS of our money grifted to their spiv friends and patrons. I also refer to the corruption of facts. Lying to parliament is a Bad Thing with a very rapid and swift penalty. Utterly corrupted by the Tories who don't just lie, but try to insist their lie is the truth no matter how egregious that claim is.

    That is also not a conservative thing to support. True conservatives surely need to save the soul of their party, because at the moment they are the anti-Conservatives. Is there no level of filth that some people are prepared to swim in? And for what - to defend a party whose policies they largely oppose and whose principles are a mockery of what they hold dear?

    I can see an awful lot of Tory voters - true lifelong conservatives - trying to save the soul of the party by killing the anti-Tories at the coming election. Kill it with electoral fire. And then you can have your party back.
    Your last paragraph relies on two things, that the rump of remaining Tories are the sensible ones - unlikely, and that if they get wiped out that they learn the right lessons.

    My concern is that a large defeat will leave those in solid seats, the Bill Cash and Edward Leigh’s of the world running the show who have learned nothing and not remotely adapted to the modern world.

    They will also come to the wrong conclusion that they lost because they were “too centrist” and so lurch to bonkers. This will further destroy the Tories as a going concern for a long long time like the Liberals.

    The best situation for Tories (short of an unlikely victory) is a modest defeat where the evidence to them is clear that despite all the shit over the last few years and the damage to their standing they managed to get close with Sunak and a more centrist approach with nods to the right and so replacing him with crazy isn’t the answer.

    It’s also not great for the country to have parties in power with whopping majorities unless they actually have a decent plan how to fix things - either you get bad decisions that are un-opposable due to the majority or you get complacency such as under Blair where a huge majority, where he could have changed the face of the country, is wasted because they are too worried about the next election and losing the broad church that got them that majority and so don’t want to do anything to scare the horses so you end up with stagnation.
    Sane people in Labour managed to save the party from me and BJO, so the Tories can at least try.

    As I posted before, I expect that electoral and constitutional reform will be an inevitable big agenda item in the next parliament. Which means that the restored Tory party may not need distinguished psychopaths like Sir Edward Leigh - they could form their own party.
    And PR also guarantees Farage's Reform UK and a new Corbynite left party 15-20% of the seats in the House of Commons each, so far from removing the hard right and hard left, PR just increases their power........
    Not at all, my dear young HY. Why do you think up to 20% of the country would like to see a Corbynite left party and te same for a Farage style Reform party? There is far more danger under the present voting system where is is comparatively easy for extremists to take over the entire party. They took over the Labour Party not so long ago, and the present profile of the Conservative leadership speaks for itself.

    If you have strict proportional representation (which would have to be country-wide), then parties can easily split up, so that different shades of opinion are fairly represented. At present, if you are a Conservative supporter, you are forced to vote for the official Conservative candidate - don't you? - whatever sub-set of Conservatism he supports. Or vote for another party, as lots of traditional decent Conservatives did at the recent local elections.

    If you have the best form of PR - the Single Transferable Vote in Multi-Member constituencies - a candidate would have to get at least 20% of support in that constituency to get elected. And if there is that amount of support for his position and policies, then those views have a right to be represented.

    Up to now, the Conservative Party has benefited from our broken voting system. The appearance of bodies like the one fronted by Carol Vorderman helps to remove some of that distortion, as a look at their recommendations for the recent council elections shows.

    I have the impression that now it is the Conservative point of view that is seriously under-represented on my local council. And the Labour point of view too, because there are no Labour councillors at all.
    As about 15 to 20% of the country are hard right and 15 to 20% of the country are hard left, only FPTP keeps them voting Tory or Labour.

    See the European elections where when we had PR Farage's party won twice, in 2014 and 2019.

    Sunak is also not Farage and Starmer is not Corbyn. With PR Farage and Corbyn would still be leading their own parties with lots of MPs in Parliament
    Oh dear, young HY! The EU elections were fought on the party list system, based on regions. If you remember, the EU insisted that we should fight EU elections with some system of PR, and the party list system, imposed on us by the then Labour government, was the least proportional one that the Labour Government could get away with. In other words, it was the one where the Party kept greatest control, and individual voters had least say.

    I am still awaiting evidence to support your assertion that 20% of the country is hard right and another 20% hard left. If anything, the vast increase in support for the Lib Dems at the recent local elections would suggest that you might be mistaken.
    If we had PR the likelihood is Farage's RefUK and the Greens or a Corbynite party would overtake the LDs as the 3rd UK wide party within 5 to 10 years.

    In 2015 UKIP won more votes than the LDs even if under FPTP the LDs won more seats than UKIP.

    A few local election protest votes for the LDs to try and stop new housing and mend potholes doesn't translate to national elections.

    PR may on paper benefit the LDs much more than the Conservatives and Labour but in practice it might hit all 3 of the established parties
    No they wouldn't. The thing holding the tiny parties back is the same thing holding the Lib Dems back. In most constituencies, 461 of them, it's Labour and Conservative holding the top two positions. Many people view voting for the third or worse party as a wasted vote, so they feel "forced" into choosing between red and blue.

    There's no reason to suppose this would benefit the parties in 4th, 5th and beyond so much more that they would overtake the 3rd placed party.
    Of course there is, for starters in plenty of constituencies the Lib Dems are the alternative to the incumbent. Then in many constituencies where the Lib Dems aren't even top two they still falsely portray themselves as the alternative.

    FPTP massively assists the Lib Dems over smaller competitor parties.

    The experience of PR where it is used is to see much more churn in who the third party is, with the former third party being relegated or even eliminated altogether quite frequently. Having a consistent third party in PR nations is rather unusual.
    Actually you're right that it's entirely possible the Lib Dems would be overtaken as third party, but it's also possible that would rise up to second or first over time.

    So yes, my statement was far too definitive that it wouldn't happen and I was wrong. But I still think HYUFD was wrong to state that it's likely to pan out the way he thinks. We've both made equal and opposite mistakes here.

    But you're also wrong. "FPTP massively assists the Lib Dems" is obviously nonsense. A party that's getting 1 vote in 9 and is rewarded with 1 seat in 59 can in no sense be described as being "assisted" by the system. Even if the Lib Dem vote share halved under PR (I think it would rise, but just for the sake of argument) they would still end up with more than TREBLE the number of MPs, up from 11 to 37.
    You cut my quote midsentence. If you cut a sentence in half you change its meaning.

    I never said FPTP massively assists the Lib Dems full stop. I said FPTP massively assists the Lib Dems over smaller competitor parties which is unambiguously correct.

    On your preferred metric of votes cast to seats won (which isn't a measure of 'fairness' unless you're starting from the flawed premise that PR is the only fair system) then the Lib Dems have a massively better ratio of seats won to votes cast than any smaller competitors do.

    The votes cast absolutely could fall, or rise, the party could become a top two party of it could cease to exist altogether. That's unknown.

    But when it comes to competition from below, rather than from above, then FPTP aids the Lib Dems at being the third party none of the above protest vote.
    Yes I cut your sentence mid way because the qualifying clause at the end doesn't matter. It's like breaking three of someone's limbs and claiming they are massively assisted over those people who've had all four limbs crushed.

    Yes, my metric for fairness is that votes for parties translate more or less into bums on seats in the Commons. I firmly believe that most people vote with a party in mind and that the there is a disconnect between that intention and the legal truth that you vote for an MP. I would like to see these things aligned, and there are two ways for that to happen: you change the way people think, or you change the way the system represents them. I prefer to fit systems to people, not the other way around.

    So under my metric of fairness, which I believe to be based on the intentions of voters, it doesn't make sense to say a party that receives an unfairly small representation compared to the actual votes it won has been "assisted". I stand by that statement with or without the qualifying clause you put in your original post.

    I did not want to get bogged down in a semantic tussle over whether getting hurt less is the same as benefiting more, because I think it's besides the point and it would demean both of us to engage in that level of pedantic flappery.
    The clause at the end absolutely mattered, especially in context to what I replied to.

    In the land of the blind the one eyed man is king. The Lib Dems are that one eyed man out of the small parties.
    Since they notice the unfairness, and wish to remedy it, who are then the blind ?
    In the context of the discussion the 4th, 5th and other potential smaller parties who disproportionately lose out to the Lib Dems, which was the point.
    On the context of the system you wish to perpetuate, and they don't.
    Absolutely, never said or insinuated otherwise.

    But if they're thinking they only stand to gain from reform then they're in denial. Yes they'll probably gain, which is why they want the reform, but it's a gamble and they could lose out too.
  • OmniumOmnium Posts: 9,688

    Sandpit said:

    Nigelb said:

    I don’t wish to alarm anybody but I’m now editing PB until Monday.

    Heavy fighting, Ukrainian tank advances, overnight in around Orikhiv, southeast of Zaporizhzhya, and Tokmak, per local Russian official. "There is a high-intensity battle going on right now."
    https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1666719504225714177

    Interesting location.
    That’s a lot of ground in four days. Close to cutting the Crimea land bridge, which is the other side of Tokmak towards Melitopol.
    There have been a lot of reports from Russian sources about sucessful Storm Shadow strikes in territory they hold.
    Wouldn't it be quite hard to tell?
    If I was a Ukrainian general I'd be saving the good stuff.
    Unlike the Russian missiles I don't think it'll be intercepted.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,842

    Sandpit said:

    Nigelb said:

    I don’t wish to alarm anybody but I’m now editing PB until Monday.

    Heavy fighting, Ukrainian tank advances, overnight in around Orikhiv, southeast of Zaporizhzhya, and Tokmak, per local Russian official. "There is a high-intensity battle going on right now."
    https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1666719504225714177

    Interesting location.
    That’s a lot of ground in four days. Close to cutting the Crimea land bridge, which is the other side of Tokmak towards Melitopol.
    There have been a lot of reports from Russian sources about sucessful Storm Shadow strikes in territory they hold.
    Which telegram channel are you getting that from ?
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,520

    Nigelb said:

    I don’t wish to alarm anybody but I’m now editing PB until Monday.

    Heavy fighting, Ukrainian tank advances, overnight in around Orikhiv, southeast of Zaporizhzhya, and Tokmak, per local Russian official. "There is a high-intensity battle going on right now."
    https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1666719504225714177

    Interesting location.
    I would have chosen further east, from Vuhledar towards Volnovakha and Mariupol.
    Shhh, you'll trigger some PBers! How *dare* you have opinions on this war? ;)
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 14,772
    Nigelb said:

    .

    Nigelb said:

    I don’t wish to alarm anybody but I’m now editing PB until Monday.

    Heavy fighting, Ukrainian tank advances, overnight in around Orikhiv, southeast of Zaporizhzhya, and Tokmak, per local Russian official. "There is a high-intensity battle going on right now."
    https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1666719504225714177

    Interesting location.
    I would have chosen further east, from Vuhledar towards Volnovakha and Mariupol.
    I have no idea - though that would increase the risk if counterflanking manoeuvre, would it not ?

    That's why we're not generals.
    Yes. I suspect the Ukrainians know what they're doing.
  • SelebianSelebian Posts: 7,257
    Taz said:

    OMFG


    For those of us not au fait with motorsport is this our Lewis with Mr Pique’s other half ?
    I (genuinely) read it as "Pique out! Hamilton is flying low!"

    I couldn't tell from the picture quality whether that was true, nor whether anything was 'pique'-ing out :open_mouth:
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    Pulpstar said:

    Sandpit said:

    Nigelb said:

    I don’t wish to alarm anybody but I’m now editing PB until Monday.

    Heavy fighting, Ukrainian tank advances, overnight in around Orikhiv, southeast of Zaporizhzhya, and Tokmak, per local Russian official. "There is a high-intensity battle going on right now."
    https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1666719504225714177

    Interesting location.
    That’s a lot of ground in four days. Close to cutting the Crimea land bridge, which is the other side of Tokmak towards Melitopol.
    There have been a lot of reports from Russian sources about sucessful Storm Shadow strikes in territory they hold.
    Which telegram channel are you getting that from ?
    The Russians have been posting photos of bits of the missiles, which clearly show the identifiers. Mostly wondering where the Hell they came from!
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 47,789
    Pulpstar said:

    Sandpit said:

    Nigelb said:

    I don’t wish to alarm anybody but I’m now editing PB until Monday.

    Heavy fighting, Ukrainian tank advances, overnight in around Orikhiv, southeast of Zaporizhzhya, and Tokmak, per local Russian official. "There is a high-intensity battle going on right now."
    https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1666719504225714177

    Interesting location.
    That’s a lot of ground in four days. Close to cutting the Crimea land bridge, which is the other side of Tokmak towards Melitopol.
    There have been a lot of reports from Russian sources about sucessful Storm Shadow strikes in territory they hold.
    Which telegram channel are you getting that from ?
    For example rybar and military_corner.
  • SelebianSelebian Posts: 7,257

    Nigelb said:

    .

    Farooq said:

    Farooq said:

    .

    Farooq said:

    HYUFD said:

    ClippP said:

    HYUFD said:

    ClippP said:

    HYUFD said:

    boulay said:

    MikeL said:

    There's clearly a huge desire to get the Conservatives out.

    But what do all the people desperate for a Labour Government want it to actually do? And what is Starmer actually planning to do?

    Starmer has said he's not going to raise taxes significantly and he's told the Shadow Cabinet not to make any spending promises.

    So if he isn't going to spend any money, what is he actually going to do?

    He seems to be heading for a Gordon Brown scenario - desperate to get into power but with no tangible plans to actually do anything once he gets there.

    So the public will almost certainly get their wish to get the Conservatives out - only for Starmer to come in and do precisely nothing - effectively continuing with existing policies.

    The only change will be that the existing policies will have new branding and of course the rhetoric will be different.

    What do I want it to do?

    Well, Government to stop handing out lucrative contracts and appointments to its mates.

    I'd like it to stop telling barefaced lies to the public, and to Parliament.


    I'd like it to put more of the burden of paying for public services on those that can afford it rather than those that can't.

    I'd like it to act with some integrity, domestically and internationally, so that some public faith in politicians is restored.

    I'd like it to restore good trading relations with our natural trading partners, notably the EU.

    That would do for starters. Anything else would be a bonus.
    This is what I don't get about remaining Tories. This government- and with it the Conservative Party - is openly corrupt. That is not a conservative thing to support.

    And I'm not just talking about financial corruption into the BILLIONS of our money grifted to their spiv friends and patrons. I also refer to the corruption of facts. Lying to parliament is a Bad Thing with a very rapid and swift penalty. Utterly corrupted by the Tories who don't just lie, but try to insist their lie is the truth no matter how egregious that claim is.

    That is also not a conservative thing to support. True conservatives surely need to save the soul of their party, because at the moment they are the anti-Conservatives. Is there no level of filth that some people are prepared to swim in? And for what - to defend a party whose policies they largely oppose and whose principles are a mockery of what they hold dear?

    I can see an awful lot of Tory voters - true lifelong conservatives - trying to save the soul of the party by killing the anti-Tories at the coming election. Kill it with electoral fire. And then you can have your party back.
    Your last paragraph relies on two things, that the rump of remaining Tories are the sensible ones - unlikely, and that if they get wiped out that they learn the right lessons.

    My concern is that a large defeat will leave those in solid seats, the Bill Cash and Edward Leigh’s of the world running the show who have learned nothing and not remotely adapted to the modern world.

    They will also come to the wrong conclusion that they lost because they were “too centrist” and so lurch to bonkers. This will further destroy the Tories as a going concern for a long long time like the Liberals.

    The best situation for Tories (short of an unlikely victory) is a modest defeat where the evidence to them is clear that despite all the shit over the last few years and the damage to their standing they managed to get close with Sunak and a more centrist approach with nods to the right and so replacing him with crazy isn’t the answer.

    It’s also not great for the country to have parties in power with whopping majorities unless they actually have a decent plan how to fix things - either you get bad decisions that are un-opposable due to the majority or you get complacency such as under Blair where a huge majority, where he could have changed the face of the country, is wasted because they are too worried about the next election and losing the broad church that got them that majority and so don’t want to do anything to scare the horses so you end up with stagnation.
    Sane people in Labour managed to save the party from me and BJO, so the Tories can at least try.

    As I posted before, I expect that electoral and constitutional reform will be an inevitable big agenda item in the next parliament. Which means that the restored Tory party may not need distinguished psychopaths like Sir Edward Leigh - they could form their own party.
    And PR also guarantees Farage's Reform UK and a new Corbynite left party 15-20% of the seats in the House of Commons each, so far from removing the hard right and hard left, PR just increases their power........
    Not at all, my dear young HY. Why do you think up to 20% of the country would like to see a Corbynite left party and te same for a Farage style Reform party? There is far more danger under the present voting system where is is comparatively easy for extremists to take over the entire party. They took over the Labour Party not so long ago, and the present profile of the Conservative leadership speaks for itself.

    If you have strict proportional representation (which would have to be country-wide), then parties can easily split up, so that different shades of opinion are fairly represented. At present, if you are a Conservative supporter, you are forced to vote for the official Conservative candidate - don't you? - whatever sub-set of Conservatism he supports. Or vote for another party, as lots of traditional decent Conservatives did at the recent local elections.

    If you have the best form of PR - the Single Transferable Vote in Multi-Member constituencies - a candidate would have to get at least 20% of support in that constituency to get elected. And if there is that amount of support for his position and policies, then those views have a right to be represented.

    Up to now, the Conservative Party has benefited from our broken voting system. The appearance of bodies like the one fronted by Carol Vorderman helps to remove some of that distortion, as a look at their recommendations for the recent council elections shows.

    I have the impression that now it is the Conservative point of view that is seriously under-represented on my local council. And the Labour point of view too, because there are no Labour councillors at all.
    As about 15 to 20% of the country are hard right and 15 to 20% of the country are hard left, only FPTP keeps them voting Tory or Labour.

    See the European elections where when we had PR Farage's party won twice, in 2014 and 2019.

    Sunak is also not Farage and Starmer is not Corbyn. With PR Farage and Corbyn would still be leading their own parties with lots of MPs in Parliament
    Oh dear, young HY! The EU elections were fought on the party list system, based on regions. If you remember, the EU insisted that we should fight EU elections with some system of PR, and the party list system, imposed on us by the then Labour government, was the least proportional one that the Labour Government could get away with. In other words, it was the one where the Party kept greatest control, and individual voters had least say.

    I am still awaiting evidence to support your assertion that 20% of the country is hard right and another 20% hard left. If anything, the vast increase in support for the Lib Dems at the recent local elections would suggest that you might be mistaken.
    If we had PR the likelihood is Farage's RefUK and the Greens or a Corbynite party would overtake the LDs as the 3rd UK wide party within 5 to 10 years.

    In 2015 UKIP won more votes than the LDs even if under FPTP the LDs won more seats than UKIP.

    A few local election protest votes for the LDs to try and stop new housing and mend potholes doesn't translate to national elections.

    PR may on paper benefit the LDs much more than the Conservatives and Labour but in practice it might hit all 3 of the established parties
    No they wouldn't. The thing holding the tiny parties back is the same thing holding the Lib Dems back. In most constituencies, 461 of them, it's Labour and Conservative holding the top two positions. Many people view voting for the third or worse party as a wasted vote, so they feel "forced" into choosing between red and blue.

    There's no reason to suppose this would benefit the parties in 4th, 5th and beyond so much more that they would overtake the 3rd placed party.
    Of course there is, for starters in plenty of constituencies the Lib Dems are the alternative to the incumbent. Then in many constituencies where the Lib Dems aren't even top two they still falsely portray themselves as the alternative.

    FPTP massively assists the Lib Dems over smaller competitor parties.

    The experience of PR where it is used is to see much more churn in who the third party is, with the former third party being relegated or even eliminated altogether quite frequently. Having a consistent third party in PR nations is rather unusual.
    Actually you're right that it's entirely possible the Lib Dems would be overtaken as third party, but it's also possible that would rise up to second or first over time.

    So yes, my statement was far too definitive that it wouldn't happen and I was wrong. But I still think HYUFD was wrong to state that it's likely to pan out the way he thinks. We've both made equal and opposite mistakes here.

    But you're also wrong. "FPTP massively assists the Lib Dems" is obviously nonsense. A party that's getting 1 vote in 9 and is rewarded with 1 seat in 59 can in no sense be described as being "assisted" by the system. Even if the Lib Dem vote share halved under PR (I think it would rise, but just for the sake of argument) they would still end up with more than TREBLE the number of MPs, up from 11 to 37.
    You cut my quote midsentence. If you cut a sentence in half you change its meaning.

    I never said FPTP massively assists the Lib Dems full stop. I said FPTP massively assists the Lib Dems over smaller competitor parties which is unambiguously correct.

    On your preferred metric of votes cast to seats won (which isn't a measure of 'fairness' unless you're starting from the flawed premise that PR is the only fair system) then the Lib Dems have a massively better ratio of seats won to votes cast than any smaller competitors do.

    The votes cast absolutely could fall, or rise, the party could become a top two party of it could cease to exist altogether. That's unknown.

    But when it comes to competition from below, rather than from above, then FPTP aids the Lib Dems at being the third party none of the above protest vote.
    Yes I cut your sentence mid way because the qualifying clause at the end doesn't matter. It's like breaking three of someone's limbs and claiming they are massively assisted over those people who've had all four limbs crushed.

    Yes, my metric for fairness is that votes for parties translate more or less into bums on seats in the Commons. I firmly believe that most people vote with a party in mind and that the there is a disconnect between that intention and the legal truth that you vote for an MP. I would like to see these things aligned, and there are two ways for that to happen: you change the way people think, or you change the way the system represents them. I prefer to fit systems to people, not the other way around.

    So under my metric of fairness, which I believe to be based on the intentions of voters, it doesn't make sense to say a party that receives an unfairly small representation compared to the actual votes it won has been "assisted". I stand by that statement with or without the qualifying clause you put in your original post.

    I did not want to get bogged down in a semantic tussle over whether getting hurt less is the same as benefiting more, because I think it's besides the point and it would demean both of us to engage in that level of pedantic flappery.
    The clause at the end absolutely mattered, especially in context to what I replied to.

    In the land of the blind the one eyed man is king. The Lib Dems are that one eyed man out of the small parties.
    Since they notice the unfairness, and wish to remedy it, who are then the blind ?
    In the context of the discussion the 4th, 5th and other potential smaller parties who disproportionately lose out to the Lib Dems, which was the point.
    It would be interesting to see an analysis on ranked choices (wonder whether the BES has any?). Instinctively, I can't help thinking that UKIP would have gained more from Con than LD under PR and - probably - Green more from Lab than LD, even allowing for the lower LD vote to start with, i.e. proportionally. But then I remember those polls with the LD voters firmly in favour of Brexit, even in the run up to GE2019. :lol:
  • WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 8,480
    edited June 2023

    A very odd article, to my way of thinking. The author explicitly says we should be happy to be joining a broader international club of smaller mid-sized nations ready to help America.

    We can still support democratic values, and America, in Europe. It's this readiness to give up a much powerful role within Europe to act as " one of many junior partners of America " that is partly what I find so odd in some of the ideology of ultra-atlanticists. Could this, in fact, spring from a lack of self-confidence and self-esteem, somewhere ?

    There is inevitably a tension in the EU between those who think the whole point of it is to shake off US/Anglosphere influence and those who see the point of it as anchoring themsleves within the broader West. The UK is the only European country where this tension doesn't exist because it is part of the Anglosphere by definition.
    And yet the UK we come back to the fact that the UK os also one of the three major economic and military powers in Europe, always giving it disproportionate influence over a wide area, if or whenever wants it. Hence the single market, or the fact that an EU army failed for years because Britain vetoed it.

    It can exercise a similar role in the European Political Community, if it wants, giving it an outsized influence as that bridge between the English-speaking world and one of the three centres of European power, or it can be happy merely to be a very junior but helpful, scurrying little butler with Pacific pretensions. It simply makes no sense not to take advantage of the disproportionate increase in influence this bridge gives, whether in the EU or the EPC.
    Which we unambiguously can and are doing eg with Ukraine. We have provided more leadership than any EU nation and had other nations now follow our lead, even Germany and France have both turned towards the British led (within Europe) framework and policy.

    There is no need to sacrifice our sovereignty or ability to act unilaterally in order to provide that leadership. In fact part of the way you cando that is to be a first mover while other nations aren't yet convinced that you are doing the right thing until you show them that you are.

    It's a very bizarre logic to think you need to sacrifice sovereignty to some mythical European Political Community in order to show leadership or have an influence.
    It's more to do with the realities of power. Britain simply doesn't have the power to act alone in Europe any more, unless solely as the US's ambassador. Hence Britain's positions on Ukraine have been helpful, but also extremely closely co-ordinated with the U.S., at every stage.

    If you want genuine influence, but are not a hegemon, you generally have to pool and share power. That's just the realities of international power relationships, and will apply to the EPC as much as the EU.
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775
    edited June 2023
    Lots of military jets out and about today. North Sea, east coast of England, Irish Sea.
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 19,618

    Nigelb said:

    I don’t wish to alarm anybody but I’m now editing PB until Monday.

    Heavy fighting, Ukrainian tank advances, overnight in around Orikhiv, southeast of Zaporizhzhya, and Tokmak, per local Russian official. "There is a high-intensity battle going on right now."
    https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1666719504225714177

    Interesting location.
    I would have chosen further east, from Vuhledar towards Volnovakha and Mariupol.
    Shhh, you'll trigger some PBers! How *dare* you have opinions on this war? ;)
    As Strawberry Field Marshall of the PB Toy Soldiers (Armchair Regiment), you’d know all about that.
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 113,969
    Well.

    WHOA! The Supreme Court's final decision of the day is a 5–4 ruling that AFFIRMS the Voting Rights Act's protection against racial vote dilution! Roberts and Kavanaugh join the liberals. This is a HUGE surprise and a major voting rights victory.

    https://twitter.com/mjs_dc/status/1666811655609810945?s=46
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,625

    Nigelb said:

    I don’t wish to alarm anybody but I’m now editing PB until Monday.

    Heavy fighting, Ukrainian tank advances, overnight in around Orikhiv, southeast of Zaporizhzhya, and Tokmak, per local Russian official. "There is a high-intensity battle going on right now."
    https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1666719504225714177

    Interesting location.
    I would have chosen further east, from Vuhledar towards Volnovakha and Mariupol.
    Shhh, you'll trigger some PBers! How *dare* you have opinions on this war? ;)
    The 122nd Chairborne Anti-Chairborne Keyboard Warriors?
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 113,969
    🚨🚨BREAKING: SCOTUS in 5-4 opinion by Chief Justice Roberts upholds ruling that Alabama must redraw congressional map to create second Black district. Opinion here:

    https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/21-1086_1co6.pdf


    https://twitter.com/mcpli/status/1666812463231438848?s=46
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 14,772
    Farooq said:

    Lots of military jets out and about today. North Sea, east coast of England, Irish Sea.

    Hawk trainer jets off the coast of Cumbria.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,625

    Nigelb said:

    I don’t wish to alarm anybody but I’m now editing PB until Monday.

    Heavy fighting, Ukrainian tank advances, overnight in around Orikhiv, southeast of Zaporizhzhya, and Tokmak, per local Russian official. "There is a high-intensity battle going on right now."
    https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1666719504225714177

    Interesting location.
    I would have chosen further east, from Vuhledar towards Volnovakha and Mariupol.
    Shhh, you'll trigger some PBers! How *dare* you have opinions on this war? ;)
    As Strawberry Field Marshall of the PB Toy Soldiers (Armchair Regiment), you’d know all about that.
    The Admiral General of the 122nd Chairborne Anti-Chairborne Keyboard Warriors speaks…
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,760

    Nigelb said:

    .

    Nigelb said:

    I don’t wish to alarm anybody but I’m now editing PB until Monday.

    Heavy fighting, Ukrainian tank advances, overnight in around Orikhiv, southeast of Zaporizhzhya, and Tokmak, per local Russian official. "There is a high-intensity battle going on right now."
    https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1666719504225714177

    Interesting location.
    I would have chosen further east, from Vuhledar towards Volnovakha and Mariupol.
    I have no idea - though that would increase the risk if counterflanking manoeuvre, would it not ?

    That's why we're not generals.
    Yes. I suspect the Ukrainians know what they're doing.
    We can be fairly sure the Russians don't know what they're doing, anyway.

    With luck they will be surprised by the Ukrainians as well.
This discussion has been closed.