Dont they say all PMs have a relative who causes embarrassing headlines for them?
With Thatcher it was her son - which is a bit more embarrassing as you're not really responsible for an embarrassing parent.....
Technically Johnson Sr has not broken Greek regulations as the ban is not on visitors from the UK, but on direct flights, according to this Greek story:
Travelling without insurance as a 79 year old is "brave".....
What would you insure? I think the reciprocal health agreement still holds.
I believe the EHIC only entitles you to whatever the local population gets in terms of national health care in the EU. So if the system is privately run, but partially re-imbursed by the state and partially by private or mutual insurance as it is in France for instance, then you’d have to pay up front and then apply to be re-imbursed by the DWP when you got home to the UK. (and the DWP might only cover the state-paid fraction, but I don’t know whether that’s the case.)
Plus, the EHIC won’t cover the cost of shipping you back to the UK if there’s something wrong that means you can’t travel by ordinary transport.
I don’t know what the situation is with Greece, but regardless: insurance will cover all of this with far less hassle & thanks to the reciprocal health agreement is cheap within the EU.
The bounties were allegedly to kill coalition -- including British -- troops. What's our new National Security Adviser said about it? Or the old one? And when will Boris publish the report into Russian interference in our politics?
If the Conservatives were clean, they would publish it. They haven´t, so they aren´t. The Johnson government is not legitimate.
You may not like this government, you may want to attack it, but it is the most legitimate government in recent history after winning an 80 seat majority just 8 months ago
Err, with only a minority (43%) of the vote and with more people voting for parties opposing its principal Brexit policy than voted for it.
Name one party opposing Brexit that you think should be the government?
The government won millions of votes more than any other party. You can't sum up all other parties votes and add them together that's not legitimate, if the other parties voters all wanted the same thing they'd have all voted for the same party. They chose not to do so.
Whilst what you say is obviously true, and of course the govt should be in power, there are different levels of legitimacy. If it had won over half the vote that would have made it more legitimate even if thats a extremely harsh bar to set given our political system. Similarly if they paid more respect to the rule of law and our unwritten constitution they would be more legitimate. Of course they are the most legitimate available because they won the election but their actions and behaviour undermine that.
Can you name any western countries in your definition which are legitimate with your phrasing?
And no coalitions don't count unless they were a defined coalition standing in the election united (like the Coalition in Australia) since the public did not vote for them.
"coalitions don't count" is just something you made up because you seem to like the not so democratic UK system.
I didn't make it up, coalitions did not get voted for at the election unless they were a defined coalition at the election.
If the desire is to get the mandate of 50% plus of votes at the election then you need 50% plus of votes at the election. The coalitions only got 50% plus at the election if they stood at the election.
As I said, something you just made up.
Here in Germany there is a legitimate elected coalition government. The proportion of people complaining about the voting system here is tiny compared to the UK. Once you've persuaded some Germans that their government is less legitimate than the UK's I'll start listening to your nonsense.
The only ones whinging here are those who don't like the results. When it was put to a referendum two-thirds of the country chose to keep our voting system.
Just because sore losers whinge doesn't make them right.
The German government is less legitimate than the British government. In Britain quite self-evidently 44% of the country voted for Johnson to be PM and 44% of the country voted for the government we have.
In Germany by contrast 33% of the country voted for Merkel to be Chancellor and 0% of the country voted for the government they have.
The fact that our government was determined on election night while the German government was determined SIX MONTHS after the election shows the farce of claims that electoral system is "more legitimate".
This is absolutely right. With PR the only ones who win are the politicians. No one can know what the final Government make up will be so no one can say they got the Government they voted for.
If there were any truth in that, there would be a lot more politicians angling for PR!
That our politicians remain so keen on our current system, where most of them have jobs for life mostly immune from electoral pressure, tells us all we need to know.
If you are in a safe seat yes, if you are in a marginal constituency you would be less safe than being elected on the list in your region under PR
This is right. There will be no portillo moment in Germany (which has a FPTP/PR hybrid). If a high-up candidate looses their seat (direct mandate) then they will almost always get into the Bundestag via the party list for the PR part.
I still prefer PR and variants to pure FPTP.
Having just read futher up the thread. The idea that a coalition government is illigitmate is just absurd. Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
Not by what they voted for they're not.
Yes they are. Voters who voted SPD are being represented by SPD MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for. Voters who voted CDU are being represented by CDU MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for. Voters who voted CSU are being represented by CSU MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for.
Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
No, the politicians elected are getting their bums into government, getting ministerial salaries and limousines etc but the voters aren't getting what they voted for.
We only need to look in the UK. In 2010 are you claiming that Liberal Democrat voters in 2010 voted to make David Cameron Prime Minister and to have Tuition Fees trebled?
I wasn't a member at the time, but wasn't the Coalition agreement endorsed in a members ballot of LibDems?
I don't think so, I believe it was endorsed by LD MPs and the Executive but not members and certainly not voters.
The idea you can simply add all LD voters and all Tory voters together and by magic claim a majority voted for this agreement is nonsense. Two Liberal Democrat MPs (including Charles Kennedy himself) voted against the agreement. There would have been a great many Liberal Democrat voters thinking the same as Charles Kennedy.
Same too for the Tories.
And they got the opportunity to pass judgement on them at the next election.
Precisely. 2015 was hardly a ringing endorsement that the Lib Dem voters approved of what they did, but it was five years later.
That is why coalitions are not a sum of their voters - unless the voters knew about the coalition agreement before they voted.
The Derby (hmm -- I wonder if the common land at Epsom will be open to watch the race, even though the racecourse is closed to spectators) is on Saturday and the entries have just been released. Note that the betting market is no longer ante-post so there will be deductions for non-runners.
I'd suggest the outsider, and one of six trained by Aidan O'Brien, Amhran Na Bhfiann is worth a second look at 50/1 generally. He might even drift. He has never won a race and last time out was an inauspicious fourth in a Leopardstown maiden -- but what a maiden! The first three home finished second, third and fourth in the Irish Derby. Wealth warning: I've not studied the card which has only just been released!.
The best thing I can say about Boris Johnson is that he’s not a real Tory. The Prime Minister belongs instead to the popular liberal right, though he seems to get less popular by the day. His appeal to right-wing voters is based on his promise to ‘get Brexit done’ and the demented, 30-tweet-thread rage-pain he stirs in the hearts of some progressives. What these supporters have not yet but one day will have to confront is the fact that Boris is not one of them. Not on immigration, not on climate change, not on the culture wars. Anyone who can establish a substantive difference between his response to the riots and that of Sir Keir Starmer, feel free to fire in down in the comments......
....FDR drew upon grand rhetoric to sell grand ideas; Boris talks big to retail small change. The idea of reform seems to energise him but not enough to make the necessary financial outlay. He is a liberal in his head but still a conservative in his pocketbook.
Yes, I thought the same thing. "A liberal in his head but still a conservative in his pocketbook." If it was as simple as that he would be ideal. I have reservations about his conservatism so far as money goes, however.
Lockdown has shredded my already reduced clinic. Half the patients have cancelled today. Some serious stuff in the referrals too.
My experience on behalf of a relative who has suffered in lockdown is that everything that can be done to stop people trying to see or speak to a medical professional even now is being done, and they can get quite patronising and rude if you persist in trying to progress things. As a result of increasing pain and numbness they can barely even get about on crutches (3 months ago they were walking 10 miles a day) but they are explicitly told so long as they are not technically paralysed and can take a shit, it's not important.
It's been a real eye opener.
This is going to sound terrible but I think some hospitals and doctor's surgeries are enjoying being quiet, and will continue to use Covid as an excuse to not see people. Surgeries round here are still locked, and it is very very difficult to get an appointment. People think that surgeries are still closed.
This has to change.
I know a few people who seem to be either afraid or unwilling to see patients, but nearly all my colleagues are itching to get back to seeing and treating. Social distancing and hygiene is a problem, but so is fear from patients. The new local lockdown has frit the punters.
"If a wife tells her husband that he is shirking child care responsibilities and he responds by refusing to acknowledge that it’s even happening, he is gaslighting her."
You ask "what isn't clear about that explanation?"
You did X. No I didn't do X.
That is gaslighting?
If he is shirking childcare responsibilities and he knows he is but pretends to her that it isn't happening, I think that is an example of gaslighting. You are presuming that he actually isn't shirking childcare responsibilities. I think the unspoken assumption underlying the example is that the shirking is in fact taking place. I took that as read. What may be happening is that the husband doesn't know he has the childcare responsibilities, simply assuming that the kid will get looked after even if he does nothing about it and failing to acknowledge the burden that places on his wife. In which case he is not gaslighting her, just being a twat.
It is what I imagine is a fairly typical argument amongst people that happens all the time. How you get to gaslighting from "You did this" "No I didn't" is quite a stretch.
That you have to go into "unspoken assumptions" proves my point.
The bounties were allegedly to kill coalition -- including British -- troops. What's our new National Security Adviser said about it? Or the old one? And when will Boris publish the report into Russian interference in our politics?
If the Conservatives were clean, they would publish it. They haven´t, so they aren´t. The Johnson government is not legitimate.
You may not like this government, you may want to attack it, but it is the most legitimate government in recent history after winning an 80 seat majority just 8 months ago
Err, with only a minority (43%) of the vote and with more people voting for parties opposing its principal Brexit policy than voted for it.
Name one party opposing Brexit that you think should be the government?
The government won millions of votes more than any other party. You can't sum up all other parties votes and add them together that's not legitimate, if the other parties voters all wanted the same thing they'd have all voted for the same party. They chose not to do so.
Whilst what you say is obviously true, and of course the govt should be in power, there are different levels of legitimacy. If it had won over half the vote that would have made it more legitimate even if thats a extremely harsh bar to set given our political system. Similarly if they paid more respect to the rule of law and our unwritten constitution they would be more legitimate. Of course they are the most legitimate available because they won the election but their actions and behaviour undermine that.
Can you name any western countries in your definition which are legitimate with your phrasing?
And no coalitions don't count unless they were a defined coalition standing in the election united (like the Coalition in Australia) since the public did not vote for them.
"coalitions don't count" is just something you made up because you seem to like the not so democratic UK system.
I didn't make it up, coalitions did not get voted for at the election unless they were a defined coalition at the election.
If the desire is to get the mandate of 50% plus of votes at the election then you need 50% plus of votes at the election. The coalitions only got 50% plus at the election if they stood at the election.
As I said, something you just made up.
Here in Germany there is a legitimate elected coalition government. The proportion of people complaining about the voting system here is tiny compared to the UK. Once you've persuaded some Germans that their government is less legitimate than the UK's I'll start listening to your nonsense.
To try an analogy:
A party runs in the policy of painting Buckingham Palace blue (and nothing else) and wins 35% of the vote.
Another party wins 20% support for their sole policy of painting it red.
They agree to form a coalition.
@IanB2@PClipp et al argue that it legitimate because they received over 50% of the vote
@Philip_Thompson argues that no one voted for a coalition government with a compromise policy of painting Buckingham Palace purple and therefore it is illegitimate
Aren't they both right?
Ultimately, if they paint it purple they will have betrayed their manifestos. But that would also be true if they'd not painted it at all because of a plague of locusts.
They have been elected, and they will need to face the electorate next time around.
They can’t both be right! You can’t be legitimate and illegitimate at the same time...
Legitimacy is our system comes from the ability to command a majority of the House of Commons. Doesn’t matter which party they sit for.
Your argument appears to be that the system is by definition legitimate, and therefore by extension that any other system would be so. Which is obviously nonsense.
My argument is that any government elected according to the rules currently in force in that country is legitimate.
Where a government loses legitimacy is where it uses force or the fear of force to retain power.
You say “I don’t like the rules therefore the government is not legitimate” which implies that determining legitimacy is your prerogative. I respectfully disagree.
That's why I argue other systems would be better, not that the current one is illegitimate, which not only do I not agree with I think it makes it harder to persuade the public, who may not like plenty about this country's systems but dont think its swimming in injustice and illegitimacy.
But don´t forget the Russians.
Unless they are supervillains I find it hard to credit them sufficient impact when the simplest explanation is we got what we voted for and are not lemmings
Then why don´t the Conservatives publish the report into Russian interference? Their not doing so leads one to suspect the worst.
And I would have thought the Tory herd here on PB was very similar to a herd of lemmings. They are rushing the whole country to the edge of the cliff.
Surely there must be a mechanism to make the government publish the Russian report. Wasn't it delayed originally to avoid the GE 6 months or more ago and we were told it would be published after?
The best thing I can say about Boris Johnson is that he’s not a real Tory. The Prime Minister belongs instead to the popular liberal right, though he seems to get less popular by the day. His appeal to right-wing voters is based on his promise to ‘get Brexit done’ and the demented, 30-tweet-thread rage-pain he stirs in the hearts of some progressives. What these supporters have not yet but one day will have to confront is the fact that Boris is not one of them. Not on immigration, not on climate change, not on the culture wars. Anyone who can establish a substantive difference between his response to the riots and that of Sir Keir Starmer, feel free to fire in down in the comments......
....FDR drew upon grand rhetoric to sell grand ideas; Boris talks big to retail small change. The idea of reform seems to energise him but not enough to make the necessary financial outlay. He is a liberal in his head but still a conservative in his pocketbook.
But is the government plan remotely up to the task of rebuilding the post-COVID economy?
In today's money Roosevelt spent £660 billion. We're in roundings of a percentage of that territory....
No we're not, that's the media telling fibs.
Roosevelt spent £660 billion when you add all of his spending up together. Not in a single day, not in a single speech.
Yesterday's speech was £5 billion but yesterday's speech was just one single element of what the govenrment is doing. How much has the government spent when it comes to furlough? That absolutely must be included when it comes to any comparisons with Roosevelt.
As someone once said "a billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you're talking real money."
I think about £25bn so far
I think that understates it. I have been reading about the last year or so of the Hoover administration and the introduction of the New Deal.
The crucial mistake by Hoover was to insist upon a tightening of the money supply reducing demand in the economy. This was followed by wage cuts and the non payment of many public servants, notably teachers, as state governments literally ran out of money. In contrast the UK has quite correctly kept all the spending at normal levels and has essentially deferred tax bills in a very big way, hence the massive deficits. On one view we are over £100bn already and will be over £150bn when the numbers for June come out.
If sheer weight of money is all that is needed we are spending enough.
The bounties were allegedly to kill coalition -- including British -- troops. What's our new National Security Adviser said about it? Or the old one? And when will Boris publish the report into Russian interference in our politics?
If the Conservatives were clean, they would publish it. They haven´t, so they aren´t. The Johnson government is not legitimate.
You may not like this government, you may want to attack it, but it is the most legitimate government in recent history after winning an 80 seat majority just 8 months ago
Err, with only a minority (43%) of the vote and with more people voting for parties opposing its principal Brexit policy than voted for it.
Name one party opposing Brexit that you think should be the government?
The government won millions of votes more than any other party. You can't sum up all other parties votes and add them together that's not legitimate, if the other parties voters all wanted the same thing they'd have all voted for the same party. They chose not to do so.
Whilst what you say is obviously true, and of course the govt should be in power, there are different levels of legitimacy. If it had won over half the vote that would have made it more legitimate even if thats a extremely harsh bar to set given our political system. Similarly if they paid more respect to the rule of law and our unwritten constitution they would be more legitimate. Of course they are the most legitimate available because they won the election but their actions and behaviour undermine that.
Can you name any western countries in your definition which are legitimate with your phrasing?
And no coalitions don't count unless they were a defined coalition standing in the election united (like the Coalition in Australia) since the public did not vote for them.
"coalitions don't count" is just something you made up because you seem to like the not so democratic UK system.
I didn't make it up, coalitions did not get voted for at the election unless they were a defined coalition at the election.
If the desire is to get the mandate of 50% plus of votes at the election then you need 50% plus of votes at the election. The coalitions only got 50% plus at the election if they stood at the election.
As I said, something you just made up.
Here in Germany there is a legitimate elected coalition government. The proportion of people complaining about the voting system here is tiny compared to the UK. Once you've persuaded some Germans that their government is less legitimate than the UK's I'll start listening to your nonsense.
The only ones whinging here are those who don't like the results. When it was put to a referendum two-thirds of the country chose to keep our voting system.
Just because sore losers whinge doesn't make them right.
The German government is less legitimate than the British government. In Britain quite self-evidently 44% of the country voted for Johnson to be PM and 44% of the country voted for the government we have.
In Germany by contrast 33% of the country voted for Merkel to be Chancellor and 0% of the country voted for the government they have.
The fact that our government was determined on election night while the German government was determined SIX MONTHS after the election shows the farce of claims that electoral system is "more legitimate".
This is absolutely right. With PR the only ones who win are the politicians. No one can know what the final Government make up will be so no one can say they got the Government they voted for.
If there were any truth in that, there would be a lot more politicians angling for PR!
That our politicians remain so keen on our current system, where most of them have jobs for life mostly immune from electoral pressure, tells us all we need to know.
If you are in a safe seat yes, if you are in a marginal constituency you would be less safe than being elected on the list in your region under PR
In Montana, Bullock is ahead of Daines for the Senate so it looks like the Republicans will need to spend money in what should have been a safe Senate seat. I still think the GOP will keep it but obviously more of a hassle. In terms of Presidential vote, Trump is polling not far off the 56% he received last time, which seems a bit at odds with some other polling suggesting a big swing in the Midwest.
In Michigan, Trump's net disapproval rating is not that bad at -8. What I found interesting was one of the supplemental questions on judges' appointees which showed a dead heat between the two parties - 38% said they would vote for a candidate supported by the Democrats and 37% said for a candidate supported by the Republicans. I'm wondering whether that points to a possible latent Republican support not present in the headline numbers.
Worth keeping an eye out on the Michigan Senate race as a possible GOP pick-up. Peters is 8% ahead of James. When James ran in 2016, he was down strong double digits behind Stabenow in the polls but had a very strong late surge and ended up adding 10 pts to his poll share in July.
The bounties were allegedly to kill coalition -- including British -- troops. What's our new National Security Adviser said about it? Or the old one? And when will Boris publish the report into Russian interference in our politics?
If the Conservatives were clean, they would publish it. They haven´t, so they aren´t. The Johnson government is not legitimate.
You may not like this government, you may want to attack it, but it is the most legitimate government in recent history after winning an 80 seat majority just 8 months ago
Err, with only a minority (43%) of the vote and with more people voting for parties opposing its principal Brexit policy than voted for it.
Name one party opposing Brexit that you think should be the government?
The government won millions of votes more than any other party. You can't sum up all other parties votes and add them together that's not legitimate, if the other parties voters all wanted the same thing they'd have all voted for the same party. They chose not to do so.
Whilst what you say is obviously true, and of course the govt should be in power, there are different levels of legitimacy. If it had won over half the vote that would have made it more legitimate even if thats a extremely harsh bar to set given our political system. Similarly if they paid more respect to the rule of law and our unwritten constitution they would be more legitimate. Of course they are the most legitimate available because they won the election but their actions and behaviour undermine that.
Can you name any western countries in your definition which are legitimate with your phrasing?
And no coalitions don't count unless they were a defined coalition standing in the election united (like the Coalition in Australia) since the public did not vote for them.
"coalitions don't count" is just something you made up because you seem to like the not so democratic UK system.
I didn't make it up, coalitions did not get voted for at the election unless they were a defined coalition at the election.
If the desire is to get the mandate of 50% plus of votes at the election then you need 50% plus of votes at the election. The coalitions only got 50% plus at the election if they stood at the election.
As I said, something you just made up.
Here in Germany there is a legitimate elected coalition government. The proportion of people complaining about the voting system here is tiny compared to the UK. Once you've persuaded some Germans that their government is less legitimate than the UK's I'll start listening to your nonsense.
The only ones whinging here are those who don't like the results. When it was put to a referendum two-thirds of the country chose to keep our voting system.
Just because sore losers whinge doesn't make them right.
The German government is less legitimate than the British government. In Britain quite self-evidently 44% of the country voted for Johnson to be PM and 44% of the country voted for the government we have.
In Germany by contrast 33% of the country voted for Merkel to be Chancellor and 0% of the country voted for the government they have.
The fact that our government was determined on election night while the German government was determined SIX MONTHS after the election shows the farce of claims that electoral system is "more legitimate".
This is absolutely right. With PR the only ones who win are the politicians. No one can know what the final Government make up will be so no one can say they got the Government they voted for.
If there were any truth in that, there would be a lot more politicians angling for PR!
That our politicians remain so keen on our current system, where most of them have jobs for life mostly immune from electoral pressure, tells us all we need to know.
If you are in a safe seat yes, if you are in a marginal constituency you would be less safe than being elected on the list in your region under PR
This is right. There will be no portillo moment in Germany (which has a FPTP/PR hybrid). If a high-up candidate looses their seat (direct mandate) then they will almost always get into the Bundestag via the party list for the PR part.
I still prefer PR and variants to pure FPTP.
Having just read futher up the thread. The idea that a coalition government is illigitmate is just absurd. Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
Not by what they voted for they're not.
Yes they are. Voters who voted SPD are being represented by SPD MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for. Voters who voted CDU are being represented by CDU MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for. Voters who voted CSU are being represented by CSU MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for.
Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
No, the politicians elected are getting their bums into government, getting ministerial salaries and limousines etc but the voters aren't getting what they voted for.
We only need to look in the UK. In 2010 are you claiming that Liberal Democrat voters in 2010 voted to make David Cameron Prime Minister and to have Tuition Fees trebled?
I wasn't a member at the time, but wasn't the Coalition agreement endorsed in a members ballot of LibDems?
I don't think so, I believe it was endorsed by LD MPs and the Executive but not members and certainly not voters.
The idea you can simply add all LD voters and all Tory voters together and by magic claim a majority voted for this agreement is nonsense. Two Liberal Democrat MPs (including Charles Kennedy himself) voted against the agreement. There would have been a great many Liberal Democrat voters thinking the same as Charles Kennedy.
Same too for the Tories.
I do not claim "a majority voted for this agreement". I claim that a majority voted for that collection of politicians. Those politicians then (should) negotiate the best they can for those who voted for them. That is what democratic politics is about.
But our system is better.
Under our system the negotiations to form a coalition, a manifesto took place before the election and the voters go into the election fully educated on what the various internal coalitions look like and choose the most popular one of those. That is what democratic politics is about.
The flip side is that you get far reduced choice. There are loads of areas involved, and these get boiled down to two choices - and if both parties offer the same thing, you get no choice at all.
It's arguably why the entire Brexit debacle happened. Neither party offered an exit or even a meaningful reduction in EU measures.
A PR system gives the voters the opportunity to determine the representation of their views in Parliament - all their views, across the entire spectrum. Not based on the Party Leaders second-guessing and judging what the electorate is allowed to choose from.
If 35% of the population want x, 35% of the representatives will argue for x in Parliament, and will have an opportunity to push for x in coalition negotiations. They probably won't get it all (unless the rest of the population and their representatives don't really mind either way), but they may get some of it, or at least will get to represent that view and push for it.
If they make a bad job of representing that view, we kick the representatives out and try with others.
Under FPTP, they get nothing. Unless the vote is split between other parties which may be standing on completely different things, in which case they could even get a majority (like Labour in 2005). They don't get moderated by other views, they don't have to seek consensus or agreement - they just impose it.
For me, it's a sort of free market thing. FPTP reduces the choices and feedback mechanisms on the views and ideologies. You get what the top politicians of two specific parties decide to offer, and nothing else. They're second-guessing which elements of a huge and interrelated offering are what does or does not appeal (and that also depends on the offering the other one gave, which might have attraction and repulsion in completely different areas and for different reasons). It gives monopolistic strength to the Big Two and insulates them from the feedback (doesn't matter how bad they are, they're incredibly unlikely to weaken below 160 seats (Tories) or 200 seats (Labour), and to ever be more than 2 elections from absolute power.
The true strength of liberalism, euroscepticism, secularism, internationalism, collectivism, conservatism, environmentalism, moralism, or whatever in the electorate isn't represented in our representative democracy. It can't be.
The bounties were allegedly to kill coalition -- including British -- troops. What's our new National Security Adviser said about it? Or the old one? And when will Boris publish the report into Russian interference in our politics?
If the Conservatives were clean, they would publish it. They haven´t, so they aren´t. The Johnson government is not legitimate.
You may not like this government, you may want to attack it, but it is the most legitimate government in recent history after winning an 80 seat majority just 8 months ago
Err, with only a minority (43%) of the vote and with more people voting for parties opposing its principal Brexit policy than voted for it.
Name one party opposing Brexit that you think should be the government?
The government won millions of votes more than any other party. You can't sum up all other parties votes and add them together that's not legitimate, if the other parties voters all wanted the same thing they'd have all voted for the same party. They chose not to do so.
Whilst what you say is obviously true, and of course the govt should be in power, there are different levels of legitimacy. If it had won over half the vote that would have made it more legitimate even if thats a extremely harsh bar to set given our political system. Similarly if they paid more respect to the rule of law and our unwritten constitution they would be more legitimate. Of course they are the most legitimate available because they won the election but their actions and behaviour undermine that.
Can you name any western countries in your definition which are legitimate with your phrasing?
And no coalitions don't count unless they were a defined coalition standing in the election united (like the Coalition in Australia) since the public did not vote for them.
"coalitions don't count" is just something you made up because you seem to like the not so democratic UK system.
I didn't make it up, coalitions did not get voted for at the election unless they were a defined coalition at the election.
If the desire is to get the mandate of 50% plus of votes at the election then you need 50% plus of votes at the election. The coalitions only got 50% plus at the election if they stood at the election.
As I said, something you just made up.
Here in Germany there is a legitimate elected coalition government. The proportion of people complaining about the voting system here is tiny compared to the UK. Once you've persuaded some Germans that their government is less legitimate than the UK's I'll start listening to your nonsense.
The only ones whinging here are those who don't like the results. When it was put to a referendum two-thirds of the country chose to keep our voting system.
Just because sore losers whinge doesn't make them right.
The German government is less legitimate than the British government. In Britain quite self-evidently 44% of the country voted for Johnson to be PM and 44% of the country voted for the government we have.
In Germany by contrast 33% of the country voted for Merkel to be Chancellor and 0% of the country voted for the government they have.
The fact that our government was determined on election night while the German government was determined SIX MONTHS after the election shows the farce of claims that electoral system is "more legitimate".
This is absolutely right. With PR the only ones who win are the politicians. No one can know what the final Government make up will be so no one can say they got the Government they voted for.
If there were any truth in that, there would be a lot more politicians angling for PR!
That our politicians remain so keen on our current system, where most of them have jobs for life mostly immune from electoral pressure, tells us all we need to know.
If you are in a safe seat yes, if you are in a marginal constituency you would be less safe than being elected on the list in your region under PR
This is right. There will be no portillo moment in Germany (which has a FPTP/PR hybrid). If a high-up candidate looses their seat (direct mandate) then they will almost always get into the Bundestag via the party list for the PR part.
I still prefer PR and variants to pure FPTP.
Having just read futher up the thread. The idea that a coalition government is illigitmate is just absurd. Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
Not by what they voted for they're not.
Yes they are. Voters who voted SPD are being represented by SPD MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for. Voters who voted CDU are being represented by CDU MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for. Voters who voted CSU are being represented by CSU MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for.
Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
No, the politicians elected are getting their bums into government, getting ministerial salaries and limousines etc but the voters aren't getting what they voted for.
We only need to look in the UK. In 2010 are you claiming that Liberal Democrat voters in 2010 voted to make David Cameron Prime Minister and to have Tuition Fees trebled?
I wasn't a member at the time, but wasn't the Coalition agreement endorsed in a members ballot of LibDems?
I don't think so, I believe it was endorsed by LD MPs and the Executive but not members and certainly not voters.
The idea you can simply add all LD voters and all Tory voters together and by magic claim a majority voted for this agreement is nonsense. Two Liberal Democrat MPs (including Charles Kennedy himself) voted against the agreement. There would have been a great many Liberal Democrat voters thinking the same as Charles Kennedy.
Same too for the Tories.
I do not claim "a majority voted for this agreement". I claim that a majority voted for that collection of politicians. Those politicians then (should) negotiate the best they can for those who voted for them. That is what democratic politics is about.
Backroom deals after the election to decide the policies that will be implemented? Very democratic.
It's called representative democracy. If you want voters to directly decide then argue for direct democracy and endless referendums.
As said on previous thread: A lot more German voters are happy with German democracy than British voters are happy with British democracy.
"If a wife tells her husband that he is shirking child care responsibilities and he responds by refusing to acknowledge that it’s even happening, he is gaslighting her."
You ask "what isn't clear about that explanation?"
You did X. No I didn't do X.
That is gaslighting?
If he is shirking childcare responsibilities and he knows he is but pretends to her that it isn't happening, I think that is an example of gaslighting. You are presuming that he actually isn't shirking childcare responsibilities. I think the unspoken assumption underlying the example is that the shirking is in fact taking place. I took that as read. What may be happening is that the husband doesn't know he has the childcare responsibilities, simply assuming that the kid will get looked after even if he does nothing about it and failing to acknowledge the burden that places on his wife. In which case he is not gaslighting her, just being a twat.
It is what I imagine is a fairly typical argument amongst people that happens all the time. How you get to gaslighting from "You did this" "No I didn't" is quite a stretch.
That you have to go into "unspoken assumptions" proves my point.
Hopefully we have now discussed the etymology of the phrase enough for you to understand its meaning though.
Dont they say all PMs have a relative who causes embarrassing headlines for them?
With Thatcher it was her son - which is a bit more embarrassing as you're not really responsible for an embarrassing parent.....
Technically Johnson Sr has not broken Greek regulations as the ban is not on visitors from the UK, but on direct flights, according to this Greek story:
The bounties were allegedly to kill coalition -- including British -- troops. What's our new National Security Adviser said about it? Or the old one? And when will Boris publish the report into Russian interference in our politics?
If the Conservatives were clean, they would publish it. They haven´t, so they aren´t. The Johnson government is not legitimate.
You may not like this government, you may want to attack it, but it is the most legitimate government in recent history after winning an 80 seat majority just 8 months ago
Err, with only a minority (43%) of the vote and with more people voting for parties opposing its principal Brexit policy than voted for it.
Name one party opposing Brexit that you think should be the government?
The government won millions of votes more than any other party. You can't sum up all other parties votes and add them together that's not legitimate, if the other parties voters all wanted the same thing they'd have all voted for the same party. They chose not to do so.
Whilst what you say is obviously true, and of course the govt should be in power, there are different levels of legitimacy. If it had won over half the vote that would have made it more legitimate even if thats a extremely harsh bar to set given our political system. Similarly if they paid more respect to the rule of law and our unwritten constitution they would be more legitimate. Of course they are the most legitimate available because they won the election but their actions and behaviour undermine that.
Can you name any western countries in your definition which are legitimate with your phrasing?
And no coalitions don't count unless they were a defined coalition standing in the election united (like the Coalition in Australia) since the public did not vote for them.
"coalitions don't count" is just something you made up because you seem to like the not so democratic UK system.
I didn't make it up, coalitions did not get voted for at the election unless they were a defined coalition at the election.
If the desire is to get the mandate of 50% plus of votes at the election then you need 50% plus of votes at the election. The coalitions only got 50% plus at the election if they stood at the election.
As I said, something you just made up.
Here in Germany there is a legitimate elected coalition government. The proportion of people complaining about the voting system here is tiny compared to the UK. Once you've persuaded some Germans that their government is less legitimate than the UK's I'll start listening to your nonsense.
The only ones whinging here are those who don't like the results. When it was put to a referendum two-thirds of the country chose to keep our voting system.
Just because sore losers whinge doesn't make them right.
The German government is less legitimate than the British government. In Britain quite self-evidently 44% of the country voted for Johnson to be PM and 44% of the country voted for the government we have.
In Germany by contrast 33% of the country voted for Merkel to be Chancellor and 0% of the country voted for the government they have.
The fact that our government was determined on election night while the German government was determined SIX MONTHS after the election shows the farce of claims that electoral system is "more legitimate".
This is absolutely right. With PR the only ones who win are the politicians. No one can know what the final Government make up will be so no one can say they got the Government they voted for.
If there were any truth in that, there would be a lot more politicians angling for PR!
That our politicians remain so keen on our current system, where most of them have jobs for life mostly immune from electoral pressure, tells us all we need to know.
If you are in a safe seat yes, if you are in a marginal constituency you would be less safe than being elected on the list in your region under PR
This is right. There will be no portillo moment in Germany (which has a FPTP/PR hybrid). If a high-up candidate looses their seat (direct mandate) then they will almost always get into the Bundestag via the party list for the PR part.
I still prefer PR and variants to pure FPTP.
Having just read futher up the thread. The idea that a coalition government is illigitmate is just absurd. Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
So those who voted Liberal Democrat were "represented" when their MPs supported a big rise in tuition fees? That's nice.
"If a wife tells her husband that he is shirking child care responsibilities and he responds by refusing to acknowledge that it’s even happening, he is gaslighting her."
You ask "what isn't clear about that explanation?"
You did X. No I didn't do X.
That is gaslighting?
If he is shirking childcare responsibilities and he knows he is but pretends to her that it isn't happening, I think that is an example of gaslighting. You are presuming that he actually isn't shirking childcare responsibilities. I think the unspoken assumption underlying the example is that the shirking is in fact taking place. I took that as read. What may be happening is that the husband doesn't know he has the childcare responsibilities, simply assuming that the kid will get looked after even if he does nothing about it and failing to acknowledge the burden that places on his wife. In which case he is not gaslighting her, just being a twat.
It is what I imagine is a fairly typical argument amongst people that happens all the time. How you get to gaslighting from "You did this" "No I didn't" is quite a stretch.
That you have to go into "unspoken assumptions" proves my point.
Hopefully we have now discussed the etymology of the phrase enough for you to understand its meaning though.
I understand its etymology but it is a meaningless phrase.
Give me a current day usage to help me (ie not involving actual gaslights).
Under our system the negotiations to form a coalition, a manifesto took place before the election and the voters go into the election fully educated on what the various internal coalitions look like and choose the most popular one of those. That is what democratic politics is about.
The flip side is that you get far reduced choice. There are loads of areas involved, and these get boiled down to two choices - and if both parties offer the same thing, you get no choice at all.
It's arguably why the entire Brexit debacle happened. Neither party offered an exit or even a meaningful reduction in EU measures.
A PR system gives the voters the opportunity to determine the representation of their views in Parliament - all their views, across the entire spectrum. Not based on the Party Leaders second-guessing and judging what the electorate is allowed to choose from.
If 35% of the population want x, 35% of the representatives will argue for x in Parliament, and will have an opportunity to push for x in coalition negotiations. They probably won't get it all (unless the rest of the population and their representatives don't really mind either way), but they may get some of it, or at least will get to represent that view and push for it.
If they make a bad job of representing that view, we kick the representatives out and try with others.
Under FPTP, they get nothing. Unless the vote is split between other parties which may be standing on completely different things, in which case they could even get a majority (like Labour in 2005). They don't get moderated by other views, they don't have to seek consensus or agreement - they just impose it.
For me, it's a sort of free market thing. FPTP reduces the choices and feedback mechanisms on the views and ideologies. You get what the top politicians of two specific parties decide to offer, and nothing else. They're second-guessing which elements of a huge and interrelated offering are what does or does not appeal (and that also depends on the offering the other one gave, which might have attraction and repulsion in completely different areas and for different reasons). It gives monopolistic strength to the Big Two and insulates them from the feedback (doesn't matter how bad they are, they're incredibly unlikely to weaken below 160 seats (Tories) or 200 seats (Labour), and to ever be more than 2 elections from absolute power.
The true strength of liberalism, euroscepticism, secularism, internationalism, collectivism, conservatism, environmentalism, moralism, or whatever in the electorate isn't represented in our representative democracy. It can't be.
A very good post, Andy, with which I am entirely in agreement. I'm slightly surprised that Philip doesn't agree, too.
"If a wife tells her husband that he is shirking child care responsibilities and he responds by refusing to acknowledge that it’s even happening, he is gaslighting her."
You ask "what isn't clear about that explanation?"
You did X. No I didn't do X.
That is gaslighting?
If he is shirking childcare responsibilities and he knows he is but pretends to her that it isn't happening, I think that is an example of gaslighting. You are presuming that he actually isn't shirking childcare responsibilities. I think the unspoken assumption underlying the example is that the shirking is in fact taking place. I took that as read. What may be happening is that the husband doesn't know he has the childcare responsibilities, simply assuming that the kid will get looked after even if he does nothing about it and failing to acknowledge the burden that places on his wife. In which case he is not gaslighting her, just being a twat.
It is what I imagine is a fairly typical argument amongst people that happens all the time. How you get to gaslighting from "You did this" "No I didn't" is quite a stretch.
That you have to go into "unspoken assumptions" proves my point.
Indeed there's a difference between gaslighting and arguing or simply lying. Which is why the term is nearly always used inappropriately right now.
Gaslighting is meant to make the victim doubt their own sanity - not doubt the sanity of the person who is clearly lying.
The bounties were allegedly to kill coalition -- including British -- troops. What's our new National Security Adviser said about it? Or the old one? And when will Boris publish the report into Russian interference in our politics?
If the Conservatives were clean, they would publish it. They haven´t, so they aren´t. The Johnson government is not legitimate.
You may not like this government, you may want to attack it, but it is the most legitimate government in recent history after winning an 80 seat majority just 8 months ago
Err, with only a minority (43%) of the vote and with more people voting for parties opposing its principal Brexit policy than voted for it.
Name one party opposing Brexit that you think should be the government?
The government won millions of votes more than any other party. You can't sum up all other parties votes and add them together that's not legitimate, if the other parties voters all wanted the same thing they'd have all voted for the same party. They chose not to do so.
Whilst what you say is obviously true, and of course the govt should be in power, there are different levels of legitimacy. If it had won over half the vote that would have made it more legitimate even if thats a extremely harsh bar to set given our political system. Similarly if they paid more respect to the rule of law and our unwritten constitution they would be more legitimate. Of course they are the most legitimate available because they won the election but their actions and behaviour undermine that.
Can you name any western countries in your definition which are legitimate with your phrasing?
And no coalitions don't count unless they were a defined coalition standing in the election united (like the Coalition in Australia) since the public did not vote for them.
"coalitions don't count" is just something you made up because you seem to like the not so democratic UK system.
I didn't make it up, coalitions did not get voted for at the election unless they were a defined coalition at the election.
If the desire is to get the mandate of 50% plus of votes at the election then you need 50% plus of votes at the election. The coalitions only got 50% plus at the election if they stood at the election.
As I said, something you just made up.
Here in Germany there is a legitimate elected coalition government. The proportion of people complaining about the voting system here is tiny compared to the UK. Once you've persuaded some Germans that their government is less legitimate than the UK's I'll start listening to your nonsense.
The only ones whinging here are those who don't like the results. When it was put to a referendum two-thirds of the country chose to keep our voting system.
Just because sore losers whinge doesn't make them right.
The German government is less legitimate than the British government. In Britain quite self-evidently 44% of the country voted for Johnson to be PM and 44% of the country voted for the government we have.
In Germany by contrast 33% of the country voted for Merkel to be Chancellor and 0% of the country voted for the government they have.
The fact that our government was determined on election night while the German government was determined SIX MONTHS after the election shows the farce of claims that electoral system is "more legitimate".
This is absolutely right. With PR the only ones who win are the politicians. No one can know what the final Government make up will be so no one can say they got the Government they voted for.
If there were any truth in that, there would be a lot more politicians angling for PR!
That our politicians remain so keen on our current system, where most of them have jobs for life mostly immune from electoral pressure, tells us all we need to know.
Not really because the power of MPs is even less under many PR systems than it is under FPTP. Power rests with party leaders and management not with the MPs.
The bounties were allegedly to kill coalition -- including British -- troops. What's our new National Security Adviser said about it? Or the old one? And when will Boris publish the report into Russian interference in our politics?
If the Conservatives were clean, they would publish it. They haven´t, so they aren´t. The Johnson government is not legitimate.
You may not like this government, you may want to attack it, but it is the most legitimate government in recent history after winning an 80 seat majority just 8 months ago
Err, with only a minority (43%) of the vote and with more people voting for parties opposing its principal Brexit policy than voted for it.
Name one party opposing Brexit that you think should be the government?
The government won millions of votes more than any other party. You can't sum up all other parties votes and add them together that's not legitimate, if the other parties voters all wanted the same thing they'd have all voted for the same party. They chose not to do so.
Whilst what you say is obviously true, and of course the govt should be in power, there are different levels of legitimacy. If it had won over half the vote that would have made it more legitimate even if thats a extremely harsh bar to set given our political system. Similarly if they paid more respect to the rule of law and our unwritten constitution they would be more legitimate. Of course they are the most legitimate available because they won the election but their actions and behaviour undermine that.
Can you name any western countries in your definition which are legitimate with your phrasing?
And no coalitions don't count unless they were a defined coalition standing in the election united (like the Coalition in Australia) since the public did not vote for them.
"coalitions don't count" is just something you made up because you seem to like the not so democratic UK system.
I didn't make it up, coalitions did not get voted for at the election unless they were a defined coalition at the election.
If the desire is to get the mandate of 50% plus of votes at the election then you need 50% plus of votes at the election. The coalitions only got 50% plus at the election if they stood at the election.
As I said, something you just made up.
Here in Germany there is a legitimate elected coalition government. The proportion of people complaining about the voting system here is tiny compared to the UK. Once you've persuaded some Germans that their government is less legitimate than the UK's I'll start listening to your nonsense.
The only ones whinging here are those who don't like the results. When it was put to a referendum two-thirds of the country chose to keep our voting system.
Just because sore losers whinge doesn't make them right.
The German government is less legitimate than the British government. In Britain quite self-evidently 44% of the country voted for Johnson to be PM and 44% of the country voted for the government we have.
In Germany by contrast 33% of the country voted for Merkel to be Chancellor and 0% of the country voted for the government they have.
The fact that our government was determined on election night while the German government was determined SIX MONTHS after the election shows the farce of claims that electoral system is "more legitimate".
This is absolutely right. With PR the only ones who win are the politicians. No one can know what the final Government make up will be so no one can say they got the Government they voted for.
If there were any truth in that, there would be a lot more politicians angling for PR!
That our politicians remain so keen on our current system, where most of them have jobs for life mostly immune from electoral pressure, tells us all we need to know.
If you are in a safe seat yes, if you are in a marginal constituency you would be less safe than being elected on the list in your region under PR
This is right. There will be no portillo moment in Germany (which has a FPTP/PR hybrid). If a high-up candidate looses their seat (direct mandate) then they will almost always get into the Bundestag via the party list for the PR part.
I still prefer PR and variants to pure FPTP.
Having just read futher up the thread. The idea that a coalition government is illigitmate is just absurd. Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
So those who voted Liberal Democrat were "represented" when their MPs supported a big rise in tuition fees? That's nice.
Yes. That is what coalition government means - making compromises for both partners. That was of course a helluva compromise but presumably they weighed up what they would achieve in return. Plus as junior partner they had no real choice.
The coalition imo was a perfect example of, er, a coalition. Of course many still don't forgive the LDs for going into power and not enacting 100% of the LD manifesto.
The bounties were allegedly to kill coalition -- including British -- troops. What's our new National Security Adviser said about it? Or the old one? And when will Boris publish the report into Russian interference in our politics?
If the Conservatives were clean, they would publish it. They haven´t, so they aren´t. The Johnson government is not legitimate.
You may not like this government, you may want to attack it, but it is the most legitimate government in recent history after winning an 80 seat majority just 8 months ago
Err, with only a minority (43%) of the vote and with more people voting for parties opposing its principal Brexit policy than voted for it.
Name one party opposing Brexit that you think should be the government?
The government won millions of votes more than any other party. You can't sum up all other parties votes and add them together that's not legitimate, if the other parties voters all wanted the same thing they'd have all voted for the same party. They chose not to do so.
Whilst what you say is obviously true, and of course the govt should be in power, there are different levels of legitimacy. If it had won over half the vote that would have made it more legitimate even if thats a extremely harsh bar to set given our political system. Similarly if they paid more respect to the rule of law and our unwritten constitution they would be more legitimate. Of course they are the most legitimate available because they won the election but their actions and behaviour undermine that.
Can you name any western countries in your definition which are legitimate with your phrasing?
And no coalitions don't count unless they were a defined coalition standing in the election united (like the Coalition in Australia) since the public did not vote for them.
"coalitions don't count" is just something you made up because you seem to like the not so democratic UK system.
I didn't make it up, coalitions did not get voted for at the election unless they were a defined coalition at the election.
If the desire is to get the mandate of 50% plus of votes at the election then you need 50% plus of votes at the election. The coalitions only got 50% plus at the election if they stood at the election.
As I said, something you just made up.
Here in Germany there is a legitimate elected coalition government. The proportion of people complaining about the voting system here is tiny compared to the UK. Once you've persuaded some Germans that their government is less legitimate than the UK's I'll start listening to your nonsense.
The only ones whinging here are those who don't like the results. When it was put to a referendum two-thirds of the country chose to keep our voting system.
Just because sore losers whinge doesn't make them right.
The German government is less legitimate than the British government. In Britain quite self-evidently 44% of the country voted for Johnson to be PM and 44% of the country voted for the government we have.
In Germany by contrast 33% of the country voted for Merkel to be Chancellor and 0% of the country voted for the government they have.
The fact that our government was determined on election night while the German government was determined SIX MONTHS after the election shows the farce of claims that electoral system is "more legitimate".
This is absolutely right. With PR the only ones who win are the politicians. No one can know what the final Government make up will be so no one can say they got the Government they voted for.
If there were any truth in that, there would be a lot more politicians angling for PR!
That our politicians remain so keen on our current system, where most of them have jobs for life mostly immune from electoral pressure, tells us all we need to know.
If you are in a safe seat yes, if you are in a marginal constituency you would be less safe than being elected on the list in your region under PR
Yes, list PR is also awful in different ways.
Have you heard of STV..?
Yes, thankfully it has kept Sinn Fein out of government in Ireland despite getting most votes at the last Irish general election for a Fianna Fail and Fine Gael and Green coalitiin
The bounties were allegedly to kill coalition -- including British -- troops. What's our new National Security Adviser said about it? Or the old one? And when will Boris publish the report into Russian interference in our politics?
If the Conservatives were clean, they would publish it. They haven´t, so they aren´t. The Johnson government is not legitimate.
You may not like this government, you may want to attack it, but it is the most legitimate government in recent history after winning an 80 seat majority just 8 months ago
Err, with only a minority (43%) of the vote and with more people voting for parties opposing its principal Brexit policy than voted for it.
Name one party opposing Brexit that you think should be the government?
The government won millions of votes more than any other party. You can't sum up all other parties votes and add them together that's not legitimate, if the other parties voters all wanted the same thing they'd have all voted for the same party. They chose not to do so.
Whilst what you say is obviously true, and of course the govt should be in power, there are different levels of legitimacy. If it had won over half the vote that would have made it more legitimate even if thats a extremely harsh bar to set given our political system. Similarly if they paid more respect to the rule of law and our unwritten constitution they would be more legitimate. Of course they are the most legitimate available because they won the election but their actions and behaviour undermine that.
Can you name any western countries in your definition which are legitimate with your phrasing?
And no coalitions don't count unless they were a defined coalition standing in the election united (like the Coalition in Australia) since the public did not vote for them.
"coalitions don't count" is just something you made up because you seem to like the not so democratic UK system.
I didn't make it up, coalitions did not get voted for at the election unless they were a defined coalition at the election.
If the desire is to get the mandate of 50% plus of votes at the election then you need 50% plus of votes at the election. The coalitions only got 50% plus at the election if they stood at the election.
As I said, something you just made up.
Here in Germany there is a legitimate elected coalition government. The proportion of people complaining about the voting system here is tiny compared to the UK. Once you've persuaded some Germans that their government is less legitimate than the UK's I'll start listening to your nonsense.
The only ones whinging here are those who don't like the results. When it was put to a referendum two-thirds of the country chose to keep our voting system.
Just because sore losers whinge doesn't make them right.
The German government is less legitimate than the British government. In Britain quite self-evidently 44% of the country voted for Johnson to be PM and 44% of the country voted for the government we have.
In Germany by contrast 33% of the country voted for Merkel to be Chancellor and 0% of the country voted for the government they have.
The fact that our government was determined on election night while the German government was determined SIX MONTHS after the election shows the farce of claims that electoral system is "more legitimate".
This is absolutely right. With PR the only ones who win are the politicians. No one can know what the final Government make up will be so no one can say they got the Government they voted for.
If there were any truth in that, there would be a lot more politicians angling for PR!
That our politicians remain so keen on our current system, where most of them have jobs for life mostly immune from electoral pressure, tells us all we need to know.
If you are in a safe seat yes, if you are in a marginal constituency you would be less safe than being elected on the list in your region under PR
This is right. There will be no portillo moment in Germany (which has a FPTP/PR hybrid). If a high-up candidate looses their seat (direct mandate) then they will almost always get into the Bundestag via the party list for the PR part.
I still prefer PR and variants to pure FPTP.
Having just read futher up the thread. The idea that a coalition government is illigitmate is just absurd. Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
Not by what they voted for they're not.
Yes they are. Voters who voted SPD are being represented by SPD MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for. Voters who voted CDU are being represented by CDU MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for. Voters who voted CSU are being represented by CSU MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for.
Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
No, the politicians elected are getting their bums into government, getting ministerial salaries and limousines etc but the voters aren't getting what they voted for.
We only need to look in the UK. In 2010 are you claiming that Liberal Democrat voters in 2010 voted to make David Cameron Prime Minister and to have Tuition Fees trebled?
I wasn't a member at the time, but wasn't the Coalition agreement endorsed in a members ballot of LibDems?
I don't think so, I believe it was endorsed by LD MPs and the Executive but not members and certainly not voters.
The idea you can simply add all LD voters and all Tory voters together and by magic claim a majority voted for this agreement is nonsense. Two Liberal Democrat MPs (including Charles Kennedy himself) voted against the agreement. There would have been a great many Liberal Democrat voters thinking the same as Charles Kennedy.
Same too for the Tories.
I do not claim "a majority voted for this agreement". I claim that a majority voted for that collection of politicians. Those politicians then (should) negotiate the best they can for those who voted for them. That is what democratic politics is about.
But our system is better.
Under our system the negotiations to form a coalition, a manifesto took place before the election and the voters go into the election fully educated on what the various internal coalitions look like and choose the most popular one of those. That is what democratic politics is about.
You could equally say that party activists, who often have more extreme and confrontational views than most voters, determine what's on offer in the UK. I know plenty of voters in PR countries who vote for parties knowing that the party they vote for is extremely unlikely to get a majority and also very much want "their" parties policies to be moderated by having to compromise with other parties. They are very much voting for their party to be part of a coalition.
It doesn't take much political maturity to understand this.
Lockdown has shredded my already reduced clinic. Half the patients have cancelled today. Some serious stuff in the referrals too.
My experience on behalf of a relative who has suffered in lockdown is that everything that can be done to stop people trying to see or speak to a medical professional even now is being done, and they can get quite patronising and rude if you persist in trying to progress things. As a result of increasing pain and numbness they can barely even get about on crutches (3 months ago they were walking 10 miles a day) but they are explicitly told so long as they are not technically paralysed and can take a shit, it's not important.
It's been a real eye opener.
This is going to sound terrible but I think some hospitals and doctor's surgeries are enjoying being quiet, and will continue to use Covid as an excuse to not see people. Surgeries round here are still locked, and it is very very difficult to get an appointment. People think that surgeries are still closed.
This has to change.
I have had two appointments by phone with the GP. Also one appt with the consultant at the hospital involving a blood test.
The appt at York District hospital had been moved to the private nuffield hospital. Most of the haemotology and oncology, out patients are seen there. They took your temperature on arrival asked questions and gave you a mask. It felt very safe and well orgainised
The NHS has been brilliant with all my care , can not thank them enough..
Trump is behind the 8 ball and no mistake but he's still in the game. Big move from him overnight on masks. Now says he's "all for them" and indeed quite likes to wear one himself because it makes him "look like the Lone Ranger". Quite the pivot and it may just attract some moderate waverers back into his camp. No mention of Tonto however - a careless oversight which detracts from the inclusiveness of the message and so the announcement will probably cost as many votes as it gains. Sloppy. Needs to up his game PDQ or he's in for a shellacking on Nov 3rd.
Oh the Lone Ranger and Tonto were riding down the line, Fixing everyone's troubles, everyone 'cept mine. Guess someone must have told them I was doing fine.
The bounties were allegedly to kill coalition -- including British -- troops. What's our new National Security Adviser said about it? Or the old one? And when will Boris publish the report into Russian interference in our politics?
If the Conservatives were clean, they would publish it. They haven´t, so they aren´t. The Johnson government is not legitimate.
You may not like this government, you may want to attack it, but it is the most legitimate government in recent history after winning an 80 seat majority just 8 months ago
Err, with only a minority (43%) of the vote and with more people voting for parties opposing its principal Brexit policy than voted for it.
Name one party opposing Brexit that you think should be the government?
The government won millions of votes more than any other party. You can't sum up all other parties votes and add them together that's not legitimate, if the other parties voters all wanted the same thing they'd have all voted for the same party. They chose not to do so.
Whilst what you say is obviously true, and of course the govt should be in power, there are different levels of legitimacy. If it had won over half the vote that would have made it more legitimate even if thats a extremely harsh bar to set given our political system. Similarly if they paid more respect to the rule of law and our unwritten constitution they would be more legitimate. Of course they are the most legitimate available because they won the election but their actions and behaviour undermine that.
Can you name any western countries in your definition which are legitimate with your phrasing?
And no coalitions don't count unless they were a defined coalition standing in the election united (like the Coalition in Australia) since the public did not vote for them.
"coalitions don't count" is just something you made up because you seem to like the not so democratic UK system.
I didn't make it up, coalitions did not get voted for at the election unless they were a defined coalition at the election.
If the desire is to get the mandate of 50% plus of votes at the election then you need 50% plus of votes at the election. The coalitions only got 50% plus at the election if they stood at the election.
As I said, something you just made up.
Here in Germany there is a legitimate elected coalition government. The proportion of people complaining about the voting system here is tiny compared to the UK. Once you've persuaded some Germans that their government is less legitimate than the UK's I'll start listening to your nonsense.
The only ones whinging here are those who don't like the results. When it was put to a referendum two-thirds of the country chose to keep our voting system.
Just because sore losers whinge doesn't make them right.
The German government is less legitimate than the British government. In Britain quite self-evidently 44% of the country voted for Johnson to be PM and 44% of the country voted for the government we have.
In Germany by contrast 33% of the country voted for Merkel to be Chancellor and 0% of the country voted for the government they have.
The fact that our government was determined on election night while the German government was determined SIX MONTHS after the election shows the farce of claims that electoral system is "more legitimate".
This is absolutely right. With PR the only ones who win are the politicians. No one can know what the final Government make up will be so no one can say they got the Government they voted for.
If there were any truth in that, there would be a lot more politicians angling for PR!
That our politicians remain so keen on our current system, where most of them have jobs for life mostly immune from electoral pressure, tells us all we need to know.
If you are in a safe seat yes, if you are in a marginal constituency you would be less safe than being elected on the list in your region under PR
This is right. There will be no portillo moment in Germany (which has a FPTP/PR hybrid). If a high-up candidate looses their seat (direct mandate) then they will almost always get into the Bundestag via the party list for the PR part.
I still prefer PR and variants to pure FPTP.
Having just read futher up the thread. The idea that a coalition government is illigitmate is just absurd. Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
Not by what they voted for they're not.
Yes they are. Voters who voted SPD are being represented by SPD MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for. Voters who voted CDU are being represented by CDU MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for. Voters who voted CSU are being represented by CSU MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for.
Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
That depends entirely on whether or not the views of those MPs is being represented in Government. Would you say that the majority of those who voted Lib Dem in 2010 had their views represented in the 2010-2015 Coalition? I suspect not. The same would apply to many of those who voted Tory in that election.
Coalitions are a great excuse for party leaders to ignore their promises and ignore the electorate.
The electorate want different things. FPTP ignores a lot, in fact usually the majority, of the electorate.
The bounties were allegedly to kill coalition -- including British -- troops. What's our new National Security Adviser said about it? Or the old one? And when will Boris publish the report into Russian interference in our politics?
If the Conservatives were clean, they would publish it. They haven´t, so they aren´t. The Johnson government is not legitimate.
You may not like this government, you may want to attack it, but it is the most legitimate government in recent history after winning an 80 seat majority just 8 months ago
Err, with only a minority (43%) of the vote and with more people voting for parties opposing its principal Brexit policy than voted for it.
Name one party opposing Brexit that you think should be the government?
The government won millions of votes more than any other party. You can't sum up all other parties votes and add them together that's not legitimate, if the other parties voters all wanted the same thing they'd have all voted for the same party. They chose not to do so.
Whilst what you say is obviously true, and of course the govt should be in power, there are different levels of legitimacy. If it had won over half the vote that would have made it more legitimate even if thats a extremely harsh bar to set given our political system. Similarly if they paid more respect to the rule of law and our unwritten constitution they would be more legitimate. Of course they are the most legitimate available because they won the election but their actions and behaviour undermine that.
Can you name any western countries in your definition which are legitimate with your phrasing?
And no coalitions don't count unless they were a defined coalition standing in the election united (like the Coalition in Australia) since the public did not vote for them.
"coalitions don't count" is just something you made up because you seem to like the not so democratic UK system.
I didn't make it up, coalitions did not get voted for at the election unless they were a defined coalition at the election.
If the desire is to get the mandate of 50% plus of votes at the election then you need 50% plus of votes at the election. The coalitions only got 50% plus at the election if they stood at the election.
As I said, something you just made up.
Here in Germany there is a legitimate elected coalition government. The proportion of people complaining about the voting system here is tiny compared to the UK. Once you've persuaded some Germans that their government is less legitimate than the UK's I'll start listening to your nonsense.
The only ones whinging here are those who don't like the results. When it was put to a referendum two-thirds of the country chose to keep our voting system.
Just because sore losers whinge doesn't make them right.
The German government is less legitimate than the British government. In Britain quite self-evidently 44% of the country voted for Johnson to be PM and 44% of the country voted for the government we have.
In Germany by contrast 33% of the country voted for Merkel to be Chancellor and 0% of the country voted for the government they have.
The fact that our government was determined on election night while the German government was determined SIX MONTHS after the election shows the farce of claims that electoral system is "more legitimate".
This is absolutely right. With PR the only ones who win are the politicians. No one can know what the final Government make up will be so no one can say they got the Government they voted for.
If there were any truth in that, there would be a lot more politicians angling for PR!
That our politicians remain so keen on our current system, where most of them have jobs for life mostly immune from electoral pressure, tells us all we need to know.
If you are in a safe seat yes, if you are in a marginal constituency you would be less safe than being elected on the list in your region under PR
This is right. There will be no portillo moment in Germany (which has a FPTP/PR hybrid). If a high-up candidate looses their seat (direct mandate) then they will almost always get into the Bundestag via the party list for the PR part.
I still prefer PR and variants to pure FPTP.
Having just read futher up the thread. The idea that a coalition government is illigitmate is just absurd. Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
Not by what they voted for they're not.
Yes they are. Voters who voted SPD are being represented by SPD MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for. Voters who voted CDU are being represented by CDU MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for. Voters who voted CSU are being represented by CSU MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for.
Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
No, the politicians elected are getting their bums into government, getting ministerial salaries and limousines etc but the voters aren't getting what they voted for.
We only need to look in the UK. In 2010 are you claiming that Liberal Democrat voters in 2010 voted to make David Cameron Prime Minister and to have Tuition Fees trebled?
I wasn't a member at the time, but wasn't the Coalition agreement endorsed in a members ballot of LibDems?
I don't think so, I believe it was endorsed by LD MPs and the Executive but not members and certainly not voters.
The idea you can simply add all LD voters and all Tory voters together and by magic claim a majority voted for this agreement is nonsense. Two Liberal Democrat MPs (including Charles Kennedy himself) voted against the agreement. There would have been a great many Liberal Democrat voters thinking the same as Charles Kennedy.
Same too for the Tories.
I do not claim "a majority voted for this agreement". I claim that a majority voted for that collection of politicians. Those politicians then (should) negotiate the best they can for those who voted for them. That is what democratic politics is about.
But our system is better.
Under our system the negotiations to form a coalition, a manifesto took place before the election and the voters go into the election fully educated on what the various internal coalitions look like and choose the most popular one of those. That is what democratic politics is about.
The flip side is that you get far reduced choice. There are loads of areas involved, and these get boiled down to two choices - and if both parties offer the same thing, you get no choice at all.
It's arguably why the entire Brexit debacle happened. Neither party offered an exit or even a meaningful reduction in EU measures.
A PR system gives the voters the opportunity to determine the representation of their views in Parliament - all their views, across the entire spectrum. Not based on the Party Leaders second-guessing and judging what the electorate is allowed to choose from.
If 35% of the population want x, 35% of the representatives will argue for x in Parliament, and will have an opportunity to push for x in coalition negotiations. They probably won't get it all (unless the rest of the population and their representatives don't really mind either way), but they may get some of it, or at least will get to represent that view and push for it.
If they make a bad job of representing that view, we kick the representatives out and try with others.
Under FPTP, they get nothing. Unless the vote is split between other parties which may be standing on completely different things, in which case they could even get a majority (like Labour in 2005). They don't get moderated by other views, they don't have to seek consensus or agreement - they just impose it.
For me, it's a sort of free market thing. FPTP reduces the choices and feedback mechanisms on the views and ideologies. You get what the top politicians of two specific parties decide to offer, and nothing else. They're second-guessing which elements of a huge and interrelated offering are what does or does not appeal (and that also depends on the offering the other one gave, which might have attraction and repulsion in completely different areas and for different reasons). It gives monopolistic strength to the Big Two and insulates them from the feedback (doesn't matter how bad they are, they're incredibly unlikely to weaken below 160 seats (Tories) or 200 seats (Labour), and to ever be more than 2 elections from absolute power.
The true strength of liberalism, euroscepticism, secularism, internationalism, collectivism, conservatism, environmentalism, moralism, or whatever in the electorate isn't represented in our representative democracy. It can't be.
I disagree with your conclusion. Just because we don't have liberals, eurosceptics, secularist segregated into their own parties doesn't mean they're not represented in our representative democracy.
I could point to an MP of the top of my head who represents every single one of those characterists you've named. Every single one of them.
That's not because their party is necessarily like that, but because our parties form coalitions and those coalitions adapt - but importantly the coalitions present themselves for what they are before the election rather than afterwards. Its more intellectually honest.
For me its a sort of free market thing too. PR is like suggesting that you can only buy alcohol from an off licence, can only buy meat from a butcher, can only buy vegetables from a greengrocer. Whereas FPTP is simply a rough and ready free market where more well rounded parties are formed that do a bit of everything and you can freely choose, with full knowledge, what it is that you want.
Our parties adapt really well to the public because of the ruthless nature of First Past the Post that rewards success and penalises failure. If 35% of the public wants x then that is a major incentive for one or both of the parties to prioritise x in order to win that 35% of the vote, they don't need to wait until after the election to make compromises.
Lockdown has shredded my already reduced clinic. Half the patients have cancelled today. Some serious stuff in the referrals too.
.
Dura Ace said "My wife and her partner furtively opened up their dental practice for the first time in months at the weekend so that they could treat each other's husband's teeth. It felt a bit like going dogging".
I am not sure you have got the hang of the definition of dogging...or maybe dentistry?
Having just read futher up the thread. The idea that a coalition government is illigitmate is just absurd. Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
And yet in the one example in recent times where the UK had such a coalition, the people who most support PR bitched like hell about it, and the party which for decades had been advocating exactly that as their principal political aim now regards that one example of it in practice as a disaster which tainted their party for a generation. Rather odd, is it not, to argue for a great idea in theory but a disaster [in their own view] in practice?
"If a wife tells her husband that he is shirking child care responsibilities and he responds by refusing to acknowledge that it’s even happening, he is gaslighting her."
You ask "what isn't clear about that explanation?"
You did X. No I didn't do X.
That is gaslighting?
If he is shirking childcare responsibilities and he knows he is but pretends to her that it isn't happening, I think that is an example of gaslighting. You are presuming that he actually isn't shirking childcare responsibilities. I think the unspoken assumption underlying the example is that the shirking is in fact taking place. I took that as read. What may be happening is that the husband doesn't know he has the childcare responsibilities, simply assuming that the kid will get looked after even if he does nothing about it and failing to acknowledge the burden that places on his wife. In which case he is not gaslighting her, just being a twat.
It is what I imagine is a fairly typical argument amongst people that happens all the time. How you get to gaslighting from "You did this" "No I didn't" is quite a stretch.
That you have to go into "unspoken assumptions" proves my point.
I think the missing piece, which would perhaps make it more clear to you, is the element of power or control necessary in the relationship.
In the case of, for example, an individual confronting a bureaucracy which simply refuses to acknowledge what it has done, then the term can be quite apt. I'm pretty sure some of the sub postmasters who fell victim to the Post Office accounting debacle began to doubt their own sanity at times.
The bounties were allegedly to kill coalition -- including British -- troops. What's our new National Security Adviser said about it? Or the old one? And when will Boris publish the report into Russian interference in our politics?
If the Conservatives were clean, they would publish it. They haven´t, so they aren´t. The Johnson government is not legitimate.
You may not like this government, you may want to attack it, but it is the most legitimate government in recent history after winning an 80 seat majority just 8 months ago
Err, with only a minority (43%) of the vote and with more people voting for parties opposing its principal Brexit policy than voted for it.
Name one party opposing Brexit that you think should be the government?
The government won millions of votes more than any other party. You can't sum up all other parties votes and add them together that's not legitimate, if the other parties voters all wanted the same thing they'd have all voted for the same party. They chose not to do so.
Whilst what you say is obviously true, and of course the govt should be in power, there are different levels of legitimacy. If it had won over half the vote that would have made it more legitimate even if thats a extremely harsh bar to set given our political system. Similarly if they paid more respect to the rule of law and our unwritten constitution they would be more legitimate. Of course they are the most legitimate available because they won the election but their actions and behaviour undermine that.
Can you name any western countries in your definition which are legitimate with your phrasing?
And no coalitions don't count unless they were a defined coalition standing in the election united (like the Coalition in Australia) since the public did not vote for them.
"coalitions don't count" is just something you made up because you seem to like the not so democratic UK system.
I didn't make it up, coalitions did not get voted for at the election unless they were a defined coalition at the election.
If the desire is to get the mandate of 50% plus of votes at the election then you need 50% plus of votes at the election. The coalitions only got 50% plus at the election if they stood at the election.
As I said, something you just made up.
Here in Germany there is a legitimate elected coalition government. The proportion of people complaining about the voting system here is tiny compared to the UK. Once you've persuaded some Germans that their government is less legitimate than the UK's I'll start listening to your nonsense.
The only ones whinging here are those who don't like the results. When it was put to a referendum two-thirds of the country chose to keep our voting system.
Just because sore losers whinge doesn't make them right.
The German government is less legitimate than the British government. In Britain quite self-evidently 44% of the country voted for Johnson to be PM and 44% of the country voted for the government we have.
In Germany by contrast 33% of the country voted for Merkel to be Chancellor and 0% of the country voted for the government they have.
The fact that our government was determined on election night while the German government was determined SIX MONTHS after the election shows the farce of claims that electoral system is "more legitimate".
This is absolutely right. With PR the only ones who win are the politicians. No one can know what the final Government make up will be so no one can say they got the Government they voted for.
If there were any truth in that, there would be a lot more politicians angling for PR!
That our politicians remain so keen on our current system, where most of them have jobs for life mostly immune from electoral pressure, tells us all we need to know.
If you are in a safe seat yes, if you are in a marginal constituency you would be less safe than being elected on the list in your region under PR
This is right. There will be no portillo moment in Germany (which has a FPTP/PR hybrid). If a high-up candidate looses their seat (direct mandate) then they will almost always get into the Bundestag via the party list for the PR part.
I still prefer PR and variants to pure FPTP.
Having just read futher up the thread. The idea that a coalition government is illigitmate is just absurd. Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
Not by what they voted for they're not.
Yes they are. Voters who voted SPD are being represented by SPD MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for. Voters who voted CDU are being represented by CDU MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for. Voters who voted CSU are being represented by CSU MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for.
Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
That depends entirely on whether or not the views of those MPs is being represented in Government. Would you say that the majority of those who voted Lib Dem in 2010 had their views represented in the 2010-2015 Coalition? I suspect not. The same would apply to many of those who voted Tory in that election.
Coalitions are a great excuse for party leaders to ignore their promises and ignore the electorate.
The electorate want different things. FPTP ignores a lot, in fact usually the majority, of the electorate.
No it doesn't as if the electorate feels ignored under FPTP then they can elect someone else under FPTP. The opposition can appeal to unite those who feel ignored behind them in order to win power.
This is an absurd debate. Of course this government is legitimate. That is not in question. At the same time the demand for people to pay it fealty is also absurd - just because the government is legitimate doesn't mean that you should like or respect the fact that its incompetence has killed tens of thousands of people and that the Brexit bomb is armed and ready to explode.
It it classic Tory gaslighting and hypocrisy.
OH NO!
"gaslighting"
Life is seriously too short to try to work out what it means.
A neologism too far.
Hardly a neologism. The term refers to a play by Patrick Hamilton (one of the greatest novelists of the twentieth century, imho) from 1938 and has been used colloquially as a term to mean a particular kind of psychological abuse since the 1960s. Perhaps you need to lift your ban on learning new things, who knows, you might learn something!
No it hasn't.
Wikipedia disagrees with you.
So what. It has not been in any kind of common usage until a few months ago.
The term gaslighting has been around for years, certainly before the accession of Trump.
Yes indeed. I feel, anecdotally, that its use has ramped up considerably and people are broadening its use to its detriment, but the idea its not been around for a long time us not sustainable
Gaslighting is an excellent term when used correctly. Of course it often isn't but that's the case with most terms coined to describe something both complex and specific.
My theory is that people tend to react adversely to terms which are frequently used by those of the opposite politics to them. They say things like "meaningless" or "pretentious tosh" or "tired old cliche" or "not even a real word" when the reality is they do understand it but don't wish to acknowledge the existence of what it's describing.
So, typically, you will get right wingers bridling at this one - gaslighting - since it is mainly used by the Left. Not sure why but it is. Other examples of this are "islamophobia" and "white privilege" and "mansplaining". These terms irritate the hell out of the reactionary antiwokerati.
But it's not one way traffic. It works the other way too. "Virtue signalling" for example. People on the Left instinctively hate that one. And increasingly "Woke" as it becomes weaponized as an insult rather than offered as a compliment.
They're all good terms though imo. Overused, misused, but invaluable in the right context.
Having just read futher up the thread. The idea that a coalition government is illigitmate is just absurd. Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
And yet in the one example in recent times where the UK had such a coalition, the people who most support PR bitched like hell about it, and the party which for decades had been advocating exactly that as their principal political aim now regards that one example of it in practice as a disaster which tainted their party for a generation. Rather odd, is it not, to argue for a great idea in theory but a disaster [in their own view] in practice?
Looking back, what was so wrong with the 10-15 gov't ?
The bounties were allegedly to kill coalition -- including British -- troops. What's our new National Security Adviser said about it? Or the old one? And when will Boris publish the report into Russian interference in our politics?
If the Conservatives were clean, they would publish it. They haven´t, so they aren´t. The Johnson government is not legitimate.
You may not like this government, you may want to attack it, but it is the most legitimate government in recent history after winning an 80 seat majority just 8 months ago
Err, with only a minority (43%) of the vote and with more people voting for parties opposing its principal Brexit policy than voted for it.
Name one party opposing Brexit that you think should be the government?
The government won millions of votes more than any other party. You can't sum up all other parties votes and add them together that's not legitimate, if the other parties voters all wanted the same thing they'd have all voted for the same party. They chose not to do so.
Whilst what you say is obviously true, and of course the govt should be in power, there are different levels of legitimacy. If it had won over half the vote that would have made it more legitimate even if thats a extremely harsh bar to set given our political system. Similarly if they paid more respect to the rule of law and our unwritten constitution they would be more legitimate. Of course they are the most legitimate available because they won the election but their actions and behaviour undermine that.
Can you name any western countries in your definition which are legitimate with your phrasing?
And no coalitions don't count unless they were a defined coalition standing in the election united (like the Coalition in Australia) since the public did not vote for them.
"coalitions don't count" is just something you made up because you seem to like the not so democratic UK system.
I didn't make it up, coalitions did not get voted for at the election unless they were a defined coalition at the election.
If the desire is to get the mandate of 50% plus of votes at the election then you need 50% plus of votes at the election. The coalitions only got 50% plus at the election if they stood at the election.
As I said, something you just made up.
Here in Germany there is a legitimate elected coalition government. The proportion of people complaining about the voting system here is tiny compared to the UK. Once you've persuaded some Germans that their government is less legitimate than the UK's I'll start listening to your nonsense.
The only ones whinging here are those who don't like the results. When it was put to a referendum two-thirds of the country chose to keep our voting system.
Just because sore losers whinge doesn't make them right.
The German government is less legitimate than the British government. In Britain quite self-evidently 44% of the country voted for Johnson to be PM and 44% of the country voted for the government we have.
In Germany by contrast 33% of the country voted for Merkel to be Chancellor and 0% of the country voted for the government they have.
The fact that our government was determined on election night while the German government was determined SIX MONTHS after the election shows the farce of claims that electoral system is "more legitimate".
This is absolutely right. With PR the only ones who win are the politicians. No one can know what the final Government make up will be so no one can say they got the Government they voted for.
If there were any truth in that, there would be a lot more politicians angling for PR!
That our politicians remain so keen on our current system, where most of them have jobs for life mostly immune from electoral pressure, tells us all we need to know.
If you are in a safe seat yes, if you are in a marginal constituency you would be less safe than being elected on the list in your region under PR
This is right. There will be no portillo moment in Germany (which has a FPTP/PR hybrid). If a high-up candidate looses their seat (direct mandate) then they will almost always get into the Bundestag via the party list for the PR part.
I still prefer PR and variants to pure FPTP.
Having just read futher up the thread. The idea that a coalition government is illigitmate is just absurd. Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
Not by what they voted for they're not.
Yes they are. Voters who voted SPD are being represented by SPD MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for. Voters who voted CDU are being represented by CDU MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for. Voters who voted CSU are being represented by CSU MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for.
Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
No, the politicians elected are getting their bums into government, getting ministerial salaries and limousines etc but the voters aren't getting what they voted for.
We only need to look in the UK. In 2010 are you claiming that Liberal Democrat voters in 2010 voted to make David Cameron Prime Minister and to have Tuition Fees trebled?
I wasn't a member at the time, but wasn't the Coalition agreement endorsed in a members ballot of LibDems?
I don't think so, I believe it was endorsed by LD MPs and the Executive but not members and certainly not voters.
The idea you can simply add all LD voters and all Tory voters together and by magic claim a majority voted for this agreement is nonsense. Two Liberal Democrat MPs (including Charles Kennedy himself) voted against the agreement. There would have been a great many Liberal Democrat voters thinking the same as Charles Kennedy.
Same too for the Tories.
I do not claim "a majority voted for this agreement". I claim that a majority voted for that collection of politicians. Those politicians then (should) negotiate the best they can for those who voted for them. That is what democratic politics is about.
But our system is better.
Under our system the negotiations to form a coalition, a manifesto took place before the election and the voters go into the election fully educated on what the various internal coalitions look like and choose the most popular one of those. That is what democratic politics is about.
You could equally say that party activists, who often have more extreme and confrontational views than most voters, determine what's on offer in the UK. I know plenty of voters in PR countries who vote for parties knowing that the party they vote for is extremely unlikely to get a majority and also very much want "their" parties policies to be moderated by having to compromise with other parties. They are very much voting for their party to be part of a coalition.
It doesn't take much political maturity to understand this.
This comes back to one of the small elephants in the room about GB political parties; their tiny memberships.
Go back to the 1950s, and it's thought that there were about 2.8 million Conservative party members. That was about 1 in 5 of their voters in the 1951 election. Now that ratio is more like 1 in 50.
Now, it's probably the case that a lot of those 2.8 million were there for social respectability, cheap drinks and the marriage bureau. But I'd happily bet a shiny sixpence that the gap between the views of members and voters is waaaaay wider now than then.
"If a wife tells her husband that he is shirking child care responsibilities and he responds by refusing to acknowledge that it’s even happening, he is gaslighting her."
You ask "what isn't clear about that explanation?"
You did X. No I didn't do X.
That is gaslighting?
If he is shirking childcare responsibilities and he knows he is but pretends to her that it isn't happening, I think that is an example of gaslighting. You are presuming that he actually isn't shirking childcare responsibilities. I think the unspoken assumption underlying the example is that the shirking is in fact taking place. I took that as read. What may be happening is that the husband doesn't know he has the childcare responsibilities, simply assuming that the kid will get looked after even if he does nothing about it and failing to acknowledge the burden that places on his wife. In which case he is not gaslighting her, just being a twat.
It is what I imagine is a fairly typical argument amongst people that happens all the time. How you get to gaslighting from "You did this" "No I didn't" is quite a stretch.
That you have to go into "unspoken assumptions" proves my point.
I think the missing piece, which would perhaps make it more clear to you, is the element of power or control necessary in the relationship.
In the case of, for example, an individual confronting a bureaucracy which simply refuses to acknowledge what it has done, then the term can be quite apt. I'm pretty sure some of the sub postmasters who fell victim to the Post Office accounting debacle began to doubt their own sanity at times.
It is undoubtedly abusive or corrupt or inept behaviour but calling it "gaslighting" doesn't help clarity.
The bounties were allegedly to kill coalition -- including British -- troops. What's our new National Security Adviser said about it? Or the old one? And when will Boris publish the report into Russian interference in our politics?
If the Conservatives were clean, they would publish it. They haven´t, so they aren´t. The Johnson government is not legitimate.
You may not like this government, you may want to attack it, but it is the most legitimate government in recent history after winning an 80 seat majority just 8 months ago
Err, with only a minority (43%) of the vote and with more people voting for parties opposing its principal Brexit policy than voted for it.
Name one party opposing Brexit that you think should be the government?
The government won millions of votes more than any other party. You can't sum up all other parties votes and add them together that's not legitimate, if the other parties voters all wanted the same thing they'd have all voted for the same party. They chose not to do so.
Whilst what you say is obviously true, and of course the govt should be in power, there are different levels of legitimacy. If it had won over half the vote that would have made it more legitimate even if thats a extremely harsh bar to set given our political system. Similarly if they paid more respect to the rule of law and our unwritten constitution they would be more legitimate. Of course they are the most legitimate available because they won the election but their actions and behaviour undermine that.
Can you name any western countries in your definition which are legitimate with your phrasing?
And no coalitions don't count unless they were a defined coalition standing in the election united (like the Coalition in Australia) since the public did not vote for them.
"coalitions don't count" is just something you made up because you seem to like the not so democratic UK system.
I didn't make it up, coalitions did not get voted for at the election unless they were a defined coalition at the election.
If the desire is to get the mandate of 50% plus of votes at the election then you need 50% plus of votes at the election. The coalitions only got 50% plus at the election if they stood at the election.
As I said, something you just made up.
Here in Germany there is a legitimate elected coalition government. The proportion of people complaining about the voting system here is tiny compared to the UK. Once you've persuaded some Germans that their government is less legitimate than the UK's I'll start listening to your nonsense.
The only ones whinging here are those who don't like the results. When it was put to a referendum two-thirds of the country chose to keep our voting system.
Just because sore losers whinge doesn't make them right.
The German government is less legitimate than the British government. In Britain quite self-evidently 44% of the country voted for Johnson to be PM and 44% of the country voted for the government we have.
In Germany by contrast 33% of the country voted for Merkel to be Chancellor and 0% of the country voted for the government they have.
The fact that our government was determined on election night while the German government was determined SIX MONTHS after the election shows the farce of claims that electoral system is "more legitimate".
This is absolutely right. With PR the only ones who win are the politicians. No one can know what the final Government make up will be so no one can say they got the Government they voted for.
If there were any truth in that, there would be a lot more politicians angling for PR!
That our politicians remain so keen on our current system, where most of them have jobs for life mostly immune from electoral pressure, tells us all we need to know.
If you are in a safe seat yes, if you are in a marginal constituency you would be less safe than being elected on the list in your region under PR
This is right. There will be no portillo moment in Germany (which has a FPTP/PR hybrid). If a high-up candidate looses their seat (direct mandate) then they will almost always get into the Bundestag via the party list for the PR part.
I still prefer PR and variants to pure FPTP.
Having just read futher up the thread. The idea that a coalition government is illigitmate is just absurd. Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
Not by what they voted for they're not.
Yes they are. Voters who voted SPD are being represented by SPD MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for. Voters who voted CDU are being represented by CDU MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for. Voters who voted CSU are being represented by CSU MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for.
Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
No, the politicians elected are getting their bums into government, getting ministerial salaries and limousines etc but the voters aren't getting what they voted for.
We only need to look in the UK. In 2010 are you claiming that Liberal Democrat voters in 2010 voted to make David Cameron Prime Minister and to have Tuition Fees trebled?
I wasn't a member at the time, but wasn't the Coalition agreement endorsed in a members ballot of LibDems?
I don't think so, I believe it was endorsed by LD MPs and the Executive but not members and certainly not voters.
The idea you can simply add all LD voters and all Tory voters together and by magic claim a majority voted for this agreement is nonsense. Two Liberal Democrat MPs (including Charles Kennedy himself) voted against the agreement. There would have been a great many Liberal Democrat voters thinking the same as Charles Kennedy.
Same too for the Tories.
I do not claim "a majority voted for this agreement". I claim that a majority voted for that collection of politicians. Those politicians then (should) negotiate the best they can for those who voted for them. That is what democratic politics is about.
But our system is better.
Under our system the negotiations to form a coalition, a manifesto took place before the election and the voters go into the election fully educated on what the various internal coalitions look like and choose the most popular one of those. That is what democratic politics is about.
You could equally say that party activists, who often have more extreme and confrontational views than most voters, determine what's on offer in the UK. I know plenty of voters in PR countries who vote for parties knowing that the party they vote for is extremely unlikely to get a majority and also very much want "their" parties policies to be moderated by having to compromise with other parties. They are very much voting for their party to be part of a coalition.
It doesn't take much political maturity to understand this.
No it doesn't, but nor does it take much political maturity to understand that our own parties are themselves coalitions.
PR fans who believe that Labour should split into a centre left party and a far left party, or believe the Tories should split have failed to comprehend or demonstrate the maturity to understand the parties are coalitions - and that coalitions will be needed under PR. But in our system the public knows about the coalitions before they vote not after it.
Election winners in this country are parties that can form the greatest coalition before the election.
Trump is behind the 8 ball and no mistake but he's still in the game. Big move from him overnight on masks. Now says he's "all for them" and indeed quite likes to wear one himself because it makes him "look like the Lone Ranger". Quite the pivot and it may just attract some moderate waverers back into his camp.
The bright spark who thought to tell Trump he looked like the lone ranger saved thousands, maybe tens of thousands of lives.
Having just read futher up the thread. The idea that a coalition government is illigitmate is just absurd. Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
And yet in the one example in recent times where the UK had such a coalition, the people who most support PR bitched like hell about it, and the party which for decades had been advocating exactly that as their principal political aim now regards that one example of it in practice as a disaster which tainted their party for a generation. Rather odd, is it not, to argue for a great idea in theory but a disaster [in their own view] in practice?
Looking back, what was so wrong with the 10-15 gov't ?
Nothing, it was the best in 50 years with the exception of the Thatcher governments, which were a very special case. All the more bizarre that the LibDems regard it as a badge of shame.
The bounties were allegedly to kill coalition -- including British -- troops. What's our new National Security Adviser said about it? Or the old one? And when will Boris publish the report into Russian interference in our politics?
If the Conservatives were clean, they would publish it. They haven´t, so they aren´t. The Johnson government is not legitimate.
You may not like this government, you may want to attack it, but it is the most legitimate government in recent history after winning an 80 seat majority just 8 months ago
Err, with only a minority (43%) of the vote and with more people voting for parties opposing its principal Brexit policy than voted for it.
Name one party opposing Brexit that you think should be the government?
The government won millions of votes more than any other party. You can't sum up all other parties votes and add them together that's not legitimate, if the other parties voters all wanted the same thing they'd have all voted for the same party. They chose not to do so.
Whilst what you say is obviously true, and of course the govt should be in power, there are different levels of legitimacy. If it had won over half the vote that would have made it more legitimate even if thats a extremely harsh bar to set given our political system. Similarly if they paid more respect to the rule of law and our unwritten constitution they would be more legitimate. Of course they are the most legitimate available because they won the election but their actions and behaviour undermine that.
Can you name any western countries in your definition which are legitimate with your phrasing?
And no coalitions don't count unless they were a defined coalition standing in the election united (like the Coalition in Australia) since the public did not vote for them.
"coalitions don't count" is just something you made up because you seem to like the not so democratic UK system.
I didn't make it up, coalitions did not get voted for at the election unless they were a defined coalition at the election.
If the desire is to get the mandate of 50% plus of votes at the election then you need 50% plus of votes at the election. The coalitions only got 50% plus at the election if they stood at the election.
As I said, something you just made up.
Here in Germany there is a legitimate elected coalition government. The proportion of people complaining about the voting system here is tiny compared to the UK. Once you've persuaded some Germans that their government is less legitimate than the UK's I'll start listening to your nonsense.
The only ones whinging here are those who don't like the results. When it was put to a referendum two-thirds of the country chose to keep our voting system.
Just because sore losers whinge doesn't make them right.
The German government is less legitimate than the British government. In Britain quite self-evidently 44% of the country voted for Johnson to be PM and 44% of the country voted for the government we have.
In Germany by contrast 33% of the country voted for Merkel to be Chancellor and 0% of the country voted for the government they have.
The fact that our government was determined on election night while the German government was determined SIX MONTHS after the election shows the farce of claims that electoral system is "more legitimate".
This is absolutely right. With PR the only ones who win are the politicians. No one can know what the final Government make up will be so no one can say they got the Government they voted for.
If there were any truth in that, there would be a lot more politicians angling for PR!
That our politicians remain so keen on our current system, where most of them have jobs for life mostly immune from electoral pressure, tells us all we need to know.
If you are in a safe seat yes, if you are in a marginal constituency you would be less safe than being elected on the list in your region under PR
This is right. There will be no portillo moment in Germany (which has a FPTP/PR hybrid). If a high-up candidate looses their seat (direct mandate) then they will almost always get into the Bundestag via the party list for the PR part.
I still prefer PR and variants to pure FPTP.
Having just read futher up the thread. The idea that a coalition government is illigitmate is just absurd. Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
So those who voted Liberal Democrat were "represented" when their MPs supported a big rise in tuition fees? That's nice.
Yes. That is what coalition government means - making compromises for both partners. That was of course a helluva compromise but presumably they weighed up what they would achieve in return. Plus as junior partner they had no real choice.
The coalition imo was a perfect example of, er, a coalition. Of course many still don't forgive the LDs for going into power and not enacting 100% of the LD manifesto.
The flaw in the argument for me is that if people vote for someone who says they are going to do X and they then agree to do Not X it is meretricious to claim that those who voted for them on the basis of X are represented. They are not. They are deceived and adding their votes to the votes for the government is simply wrong.
I accept that countries that are used to Coalitions will learn this and vote in the knowledge that this is likely to happen but those who voted Lib Dem in 2010 really struggled to get over it.
The bounties were allegedly to kill coalition -- including British -- troops. What's our new National Security Adviser said about it? Or the old one? And when will Boris publish the report into Russian interference in our politics?
If the Conservatives were clean, they would publish it. They haven´t, so they aren´t. The Johnson government is not legitimate.
You may not like this government, you may want to attack it, but it is the most legitimate government in recent history after winning an 80 seat majority just 8 months ago
Err, with only a minority (43%) of the vote and with more people voting for parties opposing its principal Brexit policy than voted for it.
Name one party opposing Brexit that you think should be the government?
The government won millions of votes more than any other party. You can't sum up all other parties votes and add them together that's not legitimate, if the other parties voters all wanted the same thing they'd have all voted for the same party. They chose not to do so.
Whilst what you say is obviously true, and of course the govt should be in power, there are different levels of legitimacy. If it had won over half the vote that would have made it more legitimate even if thats a extremely harsh bar to set given our political system. Similarly if they paid more respect to the rule of law and our unwritten constitution they would be more legitimate. Of course they are the most legitimate available because they won the election but their actions and behaviour undermine that.
Can you name any western countries in your definition which are legitimate with your phrasing?
And no coalitions don't count unless they were a defined coalition standing in the election united (like the Coalition in Australia) since the public did not vote for them.
"coalitions don't count" is just something you made up because you seem to like the not so democratic UK system.
I didn't make it up, coalitions did not get voted for at the election unless they were a defined coalition at the election.
If the desire is to get the mandate of 50% plus of votes at the election then you need 50% plus of votes at the election. The coalitions only got 50% plus at the election if they stood at the election.
As I said, something you just made up.
Here in Germany there is a legitimate elected coalition government. The proportion of people complaining about the voting system here is tiny compared to the UK. Once you've persuaded some Germans that their government is less legitimate than the UK's I'll start listening to your nonsense.
The only ones whinging here are those who don't like the results. When it was put to a referendum two-thirds of the country chose to keep our voting system.
Just because sore losers whinge doesn't make them right.
The German government is less legitimate than the British government. In Britain quite self-evidently 44% of the country voted for Johnson to be PM and 44% of the country voted for the government we have.
In Germany by contrast 33% of the country voted for Merkel to be Chancellor and 0% of the country voted for the government they have.
The fact that our government was determined on election night while the German government was determined SIX MONTHS after the election shows the farce of claims that electoral system is "more legitimate".
This is absolutely right. With PR the only ones who win are the politicians. No one can know what the final Government make up will be so no one can say they got the Government they voted for.
If there were any truth in that, there would be a lot more politicians angling for PR!
That our politicians remain so keen on our current system, where most of them have jobs for life mostly immune from electoral pressure, tells us all we need to know.
If you are in a safe seat yes, if you are in a marginal constituency you would be less safe than being elected on the list in your region under PR
This is right. There will be no portillo moment in Germany (which has a FPTP/PR hybrid). If a high-up candidate looses their seat (direct mandate) then they will almost always get into the Bundestag via the party list for the PR part.
I still prefer PR and variants to pure FPTP.
Having just read futher up the thread. The idea that a coalition government is illigitmate is just absurd. Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
Not by what they voted for they're not.
Yes they are. Voters who voted SPD are being represented by SPD MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for. Voters who voted CDU are being represented by CDU MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for. Voters who voted CSU are being represented by CSU MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for.
Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
No, the politicians elected are getting their bums into government, getting ministerial salaries and limousines etc but the voters aren't getting what they voted for.
We only need to look in the UK. In 2010 are you claiming that Liberal Democrat voters in 2010 voted to make David Cameron Prime Minister and to have Tuition Fees trebled?
I wasn't a member at the time, but wasn't the Coalition agreement endorsed in a members ballot of LibDems?
I don't think so, I believe it was endorsed by LD MPs and the Executive but not members and certainly not voters.
The idea you can simply add all LD voters and all Tory voters together and by magic claim a majority voted for this agreement is nonsense. Two Liberal Democrat MPs (including Charles Kennedy himself) voted against the agreement. There would have been a great many Liberal Democrat voters thinking the same as Charles Kennedy.
Same too for the Tories.
And they got the opportunity to pass judgement on them at the next election.
Precisely. 2015 was hardly a ringing endorsement that the Lib Dem voters approved of what they did, but it was five years later.
That is why coalitions are not a sum of their voters - unless the voters knew about the coalition agreement before they voted.
That's the same as any other government. There's no legal obligation for them to implement the manifesto they were elected on, and the voters can only punish them for that failure at the next election.
That's one reason for implementing the Chartist demand for annual Parliaments.
The bounties were allegedly to kill coalition -- including British -- troops. What's our new National Security Adviser said about it? Or the old one? And when will Boris publish the report into Russian interference in our politics?
If the Conservatives were clean, they would publish it. They haven´t, so they aren´t. The Johnson government is not legitimate.
You may not like this government, you may want to attack it, but it is the most legitimate government in recent history after winning an 80 seat majority just 8 months ago
Err, with only a minority (43%) of the vote and with more people voting for parties opposing its principal Brexit policy than voted for it.
Name one party opposing Brexit that you think should be the government?
The government won millions of votes more than any other party. You can't sum up all other parties votes and add them together that's not legitimate, if the other parties voters all wanted the same thing they'd have all voted for the same party. They chose not to do so.
Whilst what you say is obviously true, and of course the govt should be in power, there are different levels of legitimacy. If it had won over half the vote that would have made it more legitimate even if thats a extremely harsh bar to set given our political system. Similarly if they paid more respect to the rule of law and our unwritten constitution they would be more legitimate. Of course they are the most legitimate available because they won the election but their actions and behaviour undermine that.
Can you name any western countries in your definition which are legitimate with your phrasing?
And no coalitions don't count unless they were a defined coalition standing in the election united (like the Coalition in Australia) since the public did not vote for them.
"coalitions don't count" is just something you made up because you seem to like the not so democratic UK system.
I didn't make it up, coalitions did not get voted for at the election unless they were a defined coalition at the election.
If the desire is to get the mandate of 50% plus of votes at the election then you need 50% plus of votes at the election. The coalitions only got 50% plus at the election if they stood at the election.
As I said, something you just made up.
Here in Germany there is a legitimate elected coalition government. The proportion of people complaining about the voting system here is tiny compared to the UK. Once you've persuaded some Germans that their government is less legitimate than the UK's I'll start listening to your nonsense.
The only ones whinging here are those who don't like the results. When it was put to a referendum two-thirds of the country chose to keep our voting system.
Just because sore losers whinge doesn't make them right.
The German government is less legitimate than the British government. In Britain quite self-evidently 44% of the country voted for Johnson to be PM and 44% of the country voted for the government we have.
In Germany by contrast 33% of the country voted for Merkel to be Chancellor and 0% of the country voted for the government they have.
The fact that our government was determined on election night while the German government was determined SIX MONTHS after the election shows the farce of claims that electoral system is "more legitimate".
This is absolutely right. With PR the only ones who win are the politicians. No one can know what the final Government make up will be so no one can say they got the Government they voted for.
If there were any truth in that, there would be a lot more politicians angling for PR!
That our politicians remain so keen on our current system, where most of them have jobs for life mostly immune from electoral pressure, tells us all we need to know.
If you are in a safe seat yes, if you are in a marginal constituency you would be less safe than being elected on the list in your region under PR
This is right. There will be no portillo moment in Germany (which has a FPTP/PR hybrid). If a high-up candidate looses their seat (direct mandate) then they will almost always get into the Bundestag via the party list for the PR part.
I still prefer PR and variants to pure FPTP.
Having just read futher up the thread. The idea that a coalition government is illigitmate is just absurd. Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
Not by what they voted for they're not.
Yes they are. Voters who voted SPD are being represented by SPD MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for. Voters who voted CDU are being represented by CDU MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for. Voters who voted CSU are being represented by CSU MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for.
Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
No, the politicians elected are getting their bums into government, getting ministerial salaries and limousines etc but the voters aren't getting what they voted for.
We only need to look in the UK. In 2010 are you claiming that Liberal Democrat voters in 2010 voted to make David Cameron Prime Minister and to have Tuition Fees trebled?
I wasn't a member at the time, but wasn't the Coalition agreement endorsed in a members ballot of LibDems?
I don't think so, I believe it was endorsed by LD MPs and the Executive but not members and certainly not voters.
The idea you can simply add all LD voters and all Tory voters together and by magic claim a majority voted for this agreement is nonsense. Two Liberal Democrat MPs (including Charles Kennedy himself) voted against the agreement. There would have been a great many Liberal Democrat voters thinking the same as Charles Kennedy.
Same too for the Tories.
I do not claim "a majority voted for this agreement". I claim that a majority voted for that collection of politicians. Those politicians then (should) negotiate the best they can for those who voted for them. That is what democratic politics is about.
But our system is better.
Under our system the negotiations to form a coalition, a manifesto took place before the election and the voters go into the election fully educated on what the various internal coalitions look like and choose the most popular one of those. That is what democratic politics is about.
You could equally say that party activists, who often have more extreme and confrontational views than most voters, determine what's on offer in the UK. I know plenty of voters in PR countries who vote for parties knowing that the party they vote for is extremely unlikely to get a majority and also very much want "their" parties policies to be moderated by having to compromise with other parties. They are very much voting for their party to be part of a coalition.
It doesn't take much political maturity to understand this.
This comes back to one of the small elephants in the room about GB political parties; their tiny memberships.
Go back to the 1950s, and it's thought that there were about 2.8 million Conservative party members. That was about 1 in 5 of their voters in the 1951 election. Now that ratio is more like 1 in 50.
Now, it's probably the case that a lot of those 2.8 million were there for social respectability, cheap drinks and the marriage bureau. But I'd happily bet a shiny sixpence that the gap between the views of members and voters is waaaaay wider now than then.
Interestingly, the SNP's December 2019 figures are a midge's whisker over 10% compared to your 2% for the (GB-as-a-whole?) Conservatives.
The bounties were allegedly to kill coalition -- including British -- troops. What's our new National Security Adviser said about it? Or the old one? And when will Boris publish the report into Russian interference in our politics?
If the Conservatives were clean, they would publish it. They haven´t, so they aren´t. The Johnson government is not legitimate.
You may not like this government, you may want to attack it, but it is the most legitimate government in recent history after winning an 80 seat majority just 8 months ago
Err, with only a minority (43%) of the vote and with more people voting for parties opposing its principal Brexit policy than voted for it.
Name one party opposing Brexit that you think should be the government?
The government won millions of votes more than any other party. You can't sum up all other parties votes and add them together that's not legitimate, if the other parties voters all wanted the same thing they'd have all voted for the same party. They chose not to do so.
Whilst what you say is obviously true, and of course the govt should be in power, there are different levels of legitimacy. If it had won over half the vote that would have made it more legitimate even if thats a extremely harsh bar to set given our political system. Similarly if they paid more respect to the rule of law and our unwritten constitution they would be more legitimate. Of course they are the most legitimate available because they won the election but their actions and behaviour undermine that.
Can you name any western countries in your definition which are legitimate with your phrasing?
And no coalitions don't count unless they were a defined coalition standing in the election united (like the Coalition in Australia) since the public did not vote for them.
"coalitions don't count" is just something you made up because you seem to like the not so democratic UK system.
I didn't make it up, coalitions did not get voted for at the election unless they were a defined coalition at the election.
If the desire is to get the mandate of 50% plus of votes at the election then you need 50% plus of votes at the election. The coalitions only got 50% plus at the election if they stood at the election.
As I said, something you just made up.
Here in Germany there is a legitimate elected coalition government. The proportion of people complaining about the voting system here is tiny compared to the UK. Once you've persuaded some Germans that their government is less legitimate than the UK's I'll start listening to your nonsense.
The only ones whinging here are those who don't like the results. When it was put to a referendum two-thirds of the country chose to keep our voting system.
Just because sore losers whinge doesn't make them right.
The German government is less legitimate than the British government. In Britain quite self-evidently 44% of the country voted for Johnson to be PM and 44% of the country voted for the government we have.
In Germany by contrast 33% of the country voted for Merkel to be Chancellor and 0% of the country voted for the government they have.
The fact that our government was determined on election night while the German government was determined SIX MONTHS after the election shows the farce of claims that electoral system is "more legitimate".
This is absolutely right. With PR the only ones who win are the politicians. No one can know what the final Government make up will be so no one can say they got the Government they voted for.
If there were any truth in that, there would be a lot more politicians angling for PR!
That our politicians remain so keen on our current system, where most of them have jobs for life mostly immune from electoral pressure, tells us all we need to know.
If you are in a safe seat yes, if you are in a marginal constituency you would be less safe than being elected on the list in your region under PR
This is right. There will be no portillo moment in Germany (which has a FPTP/PR hybrid). If a high-up candidate looses their seat (direct mandate) then they will almost always get into the Bundestag via the party list for the PR part.
I still prefer PR and variants to pure FPTP.
Having just read futher up the thread. The idea that a coalition government is illigitmate is just absurd. Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
Not by what they voted for they're not.
Yes they are. Voters who voted SPD are being represented by SPD MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for. Voters who voted CDU are being represented by CDU MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for. Voters who voted CSU are being represented by CSU MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for.
Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
No, the politicians elected are getting their bums into government, getting ministerial salaries and limousines etc but the voters aren't getting what they voted for.
We only need to look in the UK. In 2010 are you claiming that Liberal Democrat voters in 2010 voted to make David Cameron Prime Minister and to have Tuition Fees trebled?
I wasn't a member at the time, but wasn't the Coalition agreement endorsed in a members ballot of LibDems?
I don't think so, I believe it was endorsed by LD MPs and the Executive but not members and certainly not voters.
The idea you can simply add all LD voters and all Tory voters together and by magic claim a majority voted for this agreement is nonsense. Two Liberal Democrat MPs (including Charles Kennedy himself) voted against the agreement. There would have been a great many Liberal Democrat voters thinking the same as Charles Kennedy.
Same too for the Tories.
I do not claim "a majority voted for this agreement". I claim that a majority voted for that collection of politicians. Those politicians then (should) negotiate the best they can for those who voted for them. That is what democratic politics is about.
But our system is better.
Under our system the negotiations to form a coalition, a manifesto took place before the election and the voters go into the election fully educated on what the various internal coalitions look like and choose the most popular one of those. That is what democratic politics is about.
You could equally say that party activists, who often have more extreme and confrontational views than most voters, determine what's on offer in the UK. I know plenty of voters in PR countries who vote for parties knowing that the party they vote for is extremely unlikely to get a majority and also very much want "their" parties policies to be moderated by having to compromise with other parties. They are very much voting for their party to be part of a coalition.
It doesn't take much political maturity to understand this.
This comes back to one of the small elephants in the room about GB political parties; their tiny memberships.
Go back to the 1950s, and it's thought that there were about 2.8 million Conservative party members. That was about 1 in 5 of their voters in the 1951 election. Now that ratio is more like 1 in 50.
Now, it's probably the case that a lot of those 2.8 million were there for social respectability, cheap drinks and the marriage bureau. But I'd happily bet a shiny sixpence that the gap between the views of members and voters is waaaaay wider now than then.
But the parties represent the voters not the members.
Parties that have tried to be more purist to what the members want - like eg Corbyn's Labour - have not won general elections.
General election winners are parties that have formed a broad coalition of voters.
Are we still debating legitimacy? Its very simple - voters vote for their MP. Not the party that candidate is in. Not the leader of that party. Not any other inferred grouping. Just the MP. So if the election concludes and that MP is in a party group that has a majority thats a legitimate government. If they are in a party group that can join other party groups to have a majority that also is legitimate government. If that MP represents a party manifesto and then resigns from government in principled objection to some / all of that manifesto, its legitimate. As is crossing the floor etc etc. Because we elect the individual candidate only.
Yes, a lot of people think they are voting for a party or a leader or a manifesto. They aren't. That doesn't make our system any less painfully stupid than it is, but that is the system. So any government formed of any group of MPs carrying out any policy it can get a majority for in parliament is legitimate.
Trump is behind the 8 ball and no mistake but he's still in the game. Big move from him overnight on masks. Now says he's "all for them" and indeed quite likes to wear one himself because it makes him "look like the Lone Ranger". Quite the pivot and it may just attract some moderate waverers back into his camp. No mention of Tonto however - a careless oversight which detracts from the inclusiveness of the message and so the announcement will probably cost as many votes as it gains. Sloppy. Needs to up his game PDQ or he's in for a shellacking on Nov 3rd.
Oh the Lone Ranger and Tonto were riding down the line, Fixing everyone's troubles, everyone 'cept mine. Guess someone must have told them I was doing fine.
MUCH classier song.
My offering has the following rather striking verse -
"Tonto know that Kimosabi Never ever have a woman Tonto sometime stop and wonder What the trip with the great white brother Maybe masked man he a poofter Try it on with surly Tonto Let me say to mister lawman Tonto doesn't mind"
Having just read futher up the thread. The idea that a coalition government is illigitmate is just absurd. Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
And yet in the one example in recent times where the UK had such a coalition, the people who most support PR bitched like hell about it, and the party which for decades had been advocating exactly that as their principal political aim now regards that one example of it in practice as a disaster which tainted their party for a generation. Rather odd, is it not, to argue for a great idea in theory but a disaster [in their own view] in practice?
Looking back, what was so wrong with the 10-15 gov't ?
Nothing, it was the best in 50 years with the exception of the Thatcher governments, which were a very special case. All the more bizarre that the LibDems regard it as a badge of shame.
As Tony Blair said, if you run three general elections to the left of Labour and end up in government with the Tories, you have something of a problem.
The bounties were allegedly to kill coalition -- including British -- troops. What's our new National Security Adviser said about it? Or the old one? And when will Boris publish the report into Russian interference in our politics?
If the Conservatives were clean, they would publish it. They haven´t, so they aren´t. The Johnson government is not legitimate.
You may not like this government, you may want to attack it, but it is the most legitimate government in recent history after winning an 80 seat majority just 8 months ago
Err, with only a minority (43%) of the vote and with more people voting for parties opposing its principal Brexit policy than voted for it.
Name one party opposing Brexit that you think should be the government?
The government won millions of votes more than any other party. You can't sum up all other parties votes and add them together that's not legitimate, if the other parties voters all wanted the same thing they'd have all voted for the same party. They chose not to do so.
Whilst what you say is obviously true, and of course the govt should be in power, there are different levels of legitimacy. If it had won over half the vote that would have made it more legitimate even if thats a extremely harsh bar to set given our political system. Similarly if they paid more respect to the rule of law and our unwritten constitution they would be more legitimate. Of course they are the most legitimate available because they won the election but their actions and behaviour undermine that.
Can you name any western countries in your definition which are legitimate with your phrasing?
And no coalitions don't count unless they were a defined coalition standing in the election united (like the Coalition in Australia) since the public did not vote for them.
"coalitions don't count" is just something you made up because you seem to like the not so democratic UK system.
I didn't make it up, coalitions did not get voted for at the election unless they were a defined coalition at the election.
If the desire is to get the mandate of 50% plus of votes at the election then you need 50% plus of votes at the election. The coalitions only got 50% plus at the election if they stood at the election.
As I said, something you just made up.
Here in Germany there is a legitimate elected coalition government. The proportion of people complaining about the voting system here is tiny compared to the UK. Once you've persuaded some Germans that their government is less legitimate than the UK's I'll start listening to your nonsense.
The only ones whinging here are those who don't like the results. When it was put to a referendum two-thirds of the country chose to keep our voting system.
Just because sore losers whinge doesn't make them right.
The German government is less legitimate than the British government. In Britain quite self-evidently 44% of the country voted for Johnson to be PM and 44% of the country voted for the government we have.
In Germany by contrast 33% of the country voted for Merkel to be Chancellor and 0% of the country voted for the government they have.
The fact that our government was determined on election night while the German government was determined SIX MONTHS after the election shows the farce of claims that electoral system is "more legitimate".
This is absolutely right. With PR the only ones who win are the politicians. No one can know what the final Government make up will be so no one can say they got the Government they voted for.
If there were any truth in that, there would be a lot more politicians angling for PR!
That our politicians remain so keen on our current system, where most of them have jobs for life mostly immune from electoral pressure, tells us all we need to know.
If you are in a safe seat yes, if you are in a marginal constituency you would be less safe than being elected on the list in your region under PR
This is right. There will be no portillo moment in Germany (which has a FPTP/PR hybrid). If a high-up candidate looses their seat (direct mandate) then they will almost always get into the Bundestag via the party list for the PR part.
I still prefer PR and variants to pure FPTP.
Having just read futher up the thread. The idea that a coalition government is illigitmate is just absurd. Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
Not by what they voted for they're not.
Yes they are. Voters who voted SPD are being represented by SPD MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for. Voters who voted CDU are being represented by CDU MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for. Voters who voted CSU are being represented by CSU MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for.
Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
No, the politicians elected are getting their bums into government, getting ministerial salaries and limousines etc but the voters aren't getting what they voted for.
We only need to look in the UK. In 2010 are you claiming that Liberal Democrat voters in 2010 voted to make David Cameron Prime Minister and to have Tuition Fees trebled?
I wasn't a member at the time, but wasn't the Coalition agreement endorsed in a members ballot of LibDems?
I don't think so, I believe it was endorsed by LD MPs and the Executive but not members and certainly not voters.
The idea you can simply add all LD voters and all Tory voters together and by magic claim a majority voted for this agreement is nonsense. Two Liberal Democrat MPs (including Charles Kennedy himself) voted against the agreement. There would have been a great many Liberal Democrat voters thinking the same as Charles Kennedy.
Same too for the Tories.
And they got the opportunity to pass judgement on them at the next election.
Precisely. 2015 was hardly a ringing endorsement that the Lib Dem voters approved of what they did, but it was five years later.
That is why coalitions are not a sum of their voters - unless the voters knew about the coalition agreement before they voted.
That's the same as any other government. There's no legal obligation for them to implement the manifesto they were elected on, and the voters can only punish them for that failure at the next election.
That's one reason for implementing the Chartist demand for annual Parliaments.
No legal one but there is a moral one. And if the party wins a majority at an election then little excuse for failure, whereas if the parties intend to just junk their manifesto immediately as they know they'd never get a majority then that makes it utterly meaningless.
"If a wife tells her husband that he is shirking child care responsibilities and he responds by refusing to acknowledge that it’s even happening, he is gaslighting her."
You ask "what isn't clear about that explanation?"
You did X. No I didn't do X.
That is gaslighting?
If he is shirking childcare responsibilities and he knows he is but pretends to her that it isn't happening, I think that is an example of gaslighting. You are presuming that he actually isn't shirking childcare responsibilities. I think the unspoken assumption underlying the example is that the shirking is in fact taking place. I took that as read. What may be happening is that the husband doesn't know he has the childcare responsibilities, simply assuming that the kid will get looked after even if he does nothing about it and failing to acknowledge the burden that places on his wife. In which case he is not gaslighting her, just being a twat.
It is what I imagine is a fairly typical argument amongst people that happens all the time. How you get to gaslighting from "You did this" "No I didn't" is quite a stretch.
That you have to go into "unspoken assumptions" proves my point.
Hopefully we have now discussed the etymology of the phrase enough for you to understand its meaning though.
I understand its etymology but it is a meaningless phrase.
Give me a current day usage to help me (ie not involving actual gaslights).
The bounties were allegedly to kill coalition -- including British -- troops. What's our new National Security Adviser said about it? Or the old one? And when will Boris publish the report into Russian interference in our politics?
If the Conservatives were clean, they would publish it. They haven´t, so they aren´t. The Johnson government is not legitimate.
You may not like this government, you may want to attack it, but it is the most legitimate government in recent history after winning an 80 seat majority just 8 months ago
Err, with only a minority (43%) of the vote and with more people voting for parties opposing its principal Brexit policy than voted for it.
Name one party opposing Brexit that you think should be the government?
The government won millions of votes more than any other party. You can't sum up all other parties votes and add them together that's not legitimate, if the other parties voters all wanted the same thing they'd have all voted for the same party. They chose not to do so.
Whilst what you say is obviously true, and of course the govt should be in power, there are different levels of legitimacy. If it had won over half the vote that would have made it more legitimate even if thats a extremely harsh bar to set given our political system. Similarly if they paid more respect to the rule of law and our unwritten constitution they would be more legitimate. Of course they are the most legitimate available because they won the election but their actions and behaviour undermine that.
Can you name any western countries in your definition which are legitimate with your phrasing?
And no coalitions don't count unless they were a defined coalition standing in the election united (like the Coalition in Australia) since the public did not vote for them.
"coalitions don't count" is just something you made up because you seem to like the not so democratic UK system.
I didn't make it up, coalitions did not get voted for at the election unless they were a defined coalition at the election.
If the desire is to get the mandate of 50% plus of votes at the election then you need 50% plus of votes at the election. The coalitions only got 50% plus at the election if they stood at the election.
As I said, something you just made up.
Here in Germany there is a legitimate elected coalition government. The proportion of people complaining about the voting system here is tiny compared to the UK. Once you've persuaded some Germans that their government is less legitimate than the UK's I'll start listening to your nonsense.
The only ones whinging here are those who don't like the results. When it was put to a referendum two-thirds of the country chose to keep our voting system.
Just because sore losers whinge doesn't make them right.
The German government is less legitimate than the British government. In Britain quite self-evidently 44% of the country voted for Johnson to be PM and 44% of the country voted for the government we have.
In Germany by contrast 33% of the country voted for Merkel to be Chancellor and 0% of the country voted for the government they have.
The fact that our government was determined on election night while the German government was determined SIX MONTHS after the election shows the farce of claims that electoral system is "more legitimate".
This is absolutely right. With PR the only ones who win are the politicians. No one can know what the final Government make up will be so no one can say they got the Government they voted for.
If there were any truth in that, there would be a lot more politicians angling for PR!
That our politicians remain so keen on our current system, where most of them have jobs for life mostly immune from electoral pressure, tells us all we need to know.
If you are in a safe seat yes, if you are in a marginal constituency you would be less safe than being elected on the list in your region under PR
Yes, list PR is also awful in different ways.
Have you heard of STV..?
Yes, thankfully it has kept Sinn Fein out of government in Ireland despite getting most votes at the last Irish general election for a Fianna Fail and Fine Gael and Green coalitiin
A great example. With FPTP Siin Fein could have got an overall majority with just 24.5% of the vote. With STV, the FF/FG/Gn coalition got 50.2% of the vote and have trashed out a coalition agreement that incorporates all their redline policies. Which do you prefer?
Trump is behind the 8 ball and no mistake but he's still in the game. Big move from him overnight on masks. Now says he's "all for them" and indeed quite likes to wear one himself because it makes him "look like the Lone Ranger". Quite the pivot and it may just attract some moderate waverers back into his camp.
The bright spark who thought to tell Trump he looked like the lone ranger saved thousands, maybe tens of thousands of lives.
- Guy has to be managed. Parents of early teens will relate.
Having just read futher up the thread. The idea that a coalition government is illigitmate is just absurd. Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
And yet in the one example in recent times where the UK had such a coalition, the people who most support PR bitched like hell about it, and the party which for decades had been advocating exactly that as their principal political aim now regards that one example of it in practice as a disaster which tainted their party for a generation. Rather odd, is it not, to argue for a great idea in theory but a disaster [in their own view] in practice?
Looking back, what was so wrong with the 10-15 gov't ?
Nothing, it was the best in 50 years with the exception of the Thatcher governments, which were a very special case. All the more bizarre that the LibDems regard it as a badge of shame.
Not really. The student fees blunder was as disastrous for them and their political project as was Cameron's subsequent referendum blunder. The fact that the rest of the administration was pretty good afterwards paled into insignificance (similarly for Cameron's reputation as PM).
Lockdown has shredded my already reduced clinic. Half the patients have cancelled today. Some serious stuff in the referrals too.
My experience on behalf of a relative who has suffered in lockdown is that everything that can be done to stop people trying to see or speak to a medical professional even now is being done, and they can get quite patronising and rude if you persist in trying to progress things. As a result of increasing pain and numbness they can barely even get about on crutches (3 months ago they were walking 10 miles a day) but they are explicitly told so long as they are not technically paralysed and can take a shit, it's not important.
It's been a real eye opener.
This is going to sound terrible but I think some hospitals and doctor's surgeries are enjoying being quiet, and will continue to use Covid as an excuse to not see people. Surgeries round here are still locked, and it is very very difficult to get an appointment. People think that surgeries are still closed.
This has to change.
I have had two appointments by phone with the GP. Also one appt with the consultant at the hospital involving a blood test.
The appt at York District hospital had been moved to the private nuffield hospital. Most of the haemotology and oncology, out patients are seen there. They took your temperature on arrival asked questions and gave you a mask. It felt very safe and well orgainised
The NHS has been brilliant with all my care , can not thank them enough..
"If a wife tells her husband that he is shirking child care responsibilities and he responds by refusing to acknowledge that it’s even happening, he is gaslighting her."
You ask "what isn't clear about that explanation?"
You did X. No I didn't do X.
That is gaslighting?
If he is shirking childcare responsibilities and he knows he is but pretends to her that it isn't happening, I think that is an example of gaslighting. You are presuming that he actually isn't shirking childcare responsibilities. I think the unspoken assumption underlying the example is that the shirking is in fact taking place. I took that as read. What may be happening is that the husband doesn't know he has the childcare responsibilities, simply assuming that the kid will get looked after even if he does nothing about it and failing to acknowledge the burden that places on his wife. In which case he is not gaslighting her, just being a twat.
It is what I imagine is a fairly typical argument amongst people that happens all the time. How you get to gaslighting from "You did this" "No I didn't" is quite a stretch.
That you have to go into "unspoken assumptions" proves my point.
Hopefully we have now discussed the etymology of the phrase enough for you to understand its meaning though.
I understand its etymology but it is a meaningless phrase.
Give me a current day usage to help me (ie not involving actual gaslights).
I also struggle with it and with 'meme'.
Oh and red pill and blue pill, which is described as a meme.
Having just read futher up the thread. The idea that a coalition government is illigitmate is just absurd. Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
And yet in the one example in recent times where the UK had such a coalition, the people who most support PR bitched like hell about it, and the party which for decades had been advocating exactly that as their principal political aim now regards that one example of it in practice as a disaster which tainted their party for a generation. Rather odd, is it not, to argue for a great idea in theory but a disaster [in their own view] in practice?
Looking back, what was so wrong with the 10-15 gov't ?
Nothing, it was the best in 50 years with the exception of the Thatcher governments, which were a very special case. All the more bizarre that the LibDems regard it as a badge of shame.
I know it's a line you like to punt, but do your genuinely believe that folk stopped voting LD because they weren't blowing their own coalition trumpet rather than voters making their own judgment on the LD's 5 years in government?
The bounties were allegedly to kill coalition -- including British -- troops. What's our new National Security Adviser said about it? Or the old one? And when will Boris publish the report into Russian interference in our politics?
If the Conservatives were clean, they would publish it. They haven´t, so they aren´t. The Johnson government is not legitimate.
You may not like this government, you may want to attack it, but it is the most legitimate government in recent history after winning an 80 seat majority just 8 months ago
Err, with only a minority (43%) of the vote and with more people voting for parties opposing its principal Brexit policy than voted for it.
Name one party opposing Brexit that you think should be the government?
The government won millions of votes more than any other party. You can't sum up all other parties votes and add them together that's not legitimate, if the other parties voters all wanted the same thing they'd have all voted for the same party. They chose not to do so.
Whilst what you say is obviously true, and of course the govt should be in power, there are different levels of legitimacy. If it had won over half the vote that would have made it more legitimate even if thats a extremely harsh bar to set given our political system. Similarly if they paid more respect to the rule of law and our unwritten constitution they would be more legitimate. Of course they are the most legitimate available because they won the election but their actions and behaviour undermine that.
Can you name any western countries in your definition which are legitimate with your phrasing?
And no coalitions don't count unless they were a defined coalition standing in the election united (like the Coalition in Australia) since the public did not vote for them.
"coalitions don't count" is just something you made up because you seem to like the not so democratic UK system.
I didn't make it up, coalitions did not get voted for at the election unless they were a defined coalition at the election.
If the desire is to get the mandate of 50% plus of votes at the election then you need 50% plus of votes at the election. The coalitions only got 50% plus at the election if they stood at the election.
As I said, something you just made up.
Here in Germany there is a legitimate elected coalition government. The proportion of people complaining about the voting system here is tiny compared to the UK. Once you've persuaded some Germans that their government is less legitimate than the UK's I'll start listening to your nonsense.
The only ones whinging here are those who don't like the results. When it was put to a referendum two-thirds of the country chose to keep our voting system.
Just because sore losers whinge doesn't make them right.
The German government is less legitimate than the British government. In Britain quite self-evidently 44% of the country voted for Johnson to be PM and 44% of the country voted for the government we have.
In Germany by contrast 33% of the country voted for Merkel to be Chancellor and 0% of the country voted for the government they have.
The fact that our government was determined on election night while the German government was determined SIX MONTHS after the election shows the farce of claims that electoral system is "more legitimate".
This is absolutely right. With PR the only ones who win are the politicians. No one can know what the final Government make up will be so no one can say they got the Government they voted for.
If there were any truth in that, there would be a lot more politicians angling for PR!
That our politicians remain so keen on our current system, where most of them have jobs for life mostly immune from electoral pressure, tells us all we need to know.
If you are in a safe seat yes, if you are in a marginal constituency you would be less safe than being elected on the list in your region under PR
This is right. There will be no portillo moment in Germany (which has a FPTP/PR hybrid). If a high-up candidate looses their seat (direct mandate) then they will almost always get into the Bundestag via the party list for the PR part.
I still prefer PR and variants to pure FPTP.
Having just read futher up the thread. The idea that a coalition government is illigitmate is just absurd. Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
So those who voted Liberal Democrat were "represented" when their MPs supported a big rise in tuition fees? That's nice.
Yes. That is what coalition government means - making compromises for both partners. That was of course a helluva compromise but presumably they weighed up what they would achieve in return. Plus as junior partner they had no real choice.
The coalition imo was a perfect example of, er, a coalition. Of course many still don't forgive the LDs for going into power and not enacting 100% of the LD manifesto.
The flaw in the argument for me is that if people vote for someone who says they are going to do X and they then agree to do Not X it is meretricious to claim that those who voted for them on the basis of X are represented. They are not. They are deceived and adding their votes to the votes for the government is simply wrong.
I accept that countries that are used to Coalitions will learn this and vote in the knowledge that this is likely to happen but those who voted Lib Dem in 2010 really struggled to get over it.
But the LDs (in this instance) didn't get voted into government. No one did. The closest was the Cons. Surely people appreciate that if you are not voted into government with a majority then you can't be held to your election promises. I'm sure the LDs said words to the effect of "if we form the next government we will...." Which I'm sure they would have.
But they didn't form the next government, they were invited in as junior partners to a coalition.
That was the only shot at limited power they were given and they took it. Rightly in my view.
The bounties were allegedly to kill coalition -- including British -- troops. What's our new National Security Adviser said about it? Or the old one? And when will Boris publish the report into Russian interference in our politics?
If the Conservatives were clean, they would publish it. They haven´t, so they aren´t. The Johnson government is not legitimate.
You may not like this government, you may want to attack it, but it is the most legitimate government in recent history after winning an 80 seat majority just 8 months ago
Err, with only a minority (43%) of the vote and with more people voting for parties opposing its principal Brexit policy than voted for it.
Name one party opposing Brexit that you think should be the government?
The government won millions of votes more than any other party. You can't sum up all other parties votes and add them together that's not legitimate, if the other parties voters all wanted the same thing they'd have all voted for the same party. They chose not to do so.
Whilst what you say is obviously true, and of course the govt should be in power, there are different levels of legitimacy. If it had won over half the vote that would have made it more legitimate even if thats a extremely harsh bar to set given our political system. Similarly if they paid more respect to the rule of law and our unwritten constitution they would be more legitimate. Of course they are the most legitimate available because they won the election but their actions and behaviour undermine that.
Can you name any western countries in your definition which are legitimate with your phrasing?
And no coalitions don't count unless they were a defined coalition standing in the election united (like the Coalition in Australia) since the public did not vote for them.
"coalitions don't count" is just something you made up because you seem to like the not so democratic UK system.
I didn't make it up, coalitions did not get voted for at the election unless they were a defined coalition at the election.
If the desire is to get the mandate of 50% plus of votes at the election then you need 50% plus of votes at the election. The coalitions only got 50% plus at the election if they stood at the election.
As I said, something you just made up.
Here in Germany there is a legitimate elected coalition government. The proportion of people complaining about the voting system here is tiny compared to the UK. Once you've persuaded some Germans that their government is less legitimate than the UK's I'll start listening to your nonsense.
The only ones whinging here are those who don't like the results. When it was put to a referendum two-thirds of the country chose to keep our voting system.
Just because sore losers whinge doesn't make them right.
The German government is less legitimate than the British government. In Britain quite self-evidently 44% of the country voted for Johnson to be PM and 44% of the country voted for the government we have.
In Germany by contrast 33% of the country voted for Merkel to be Chancellor and 0% of the country voted for the government they have.
The fact that our government was determined on election night while the German government was determined SIX MONTHS after the election shows the farce of claims that electoral system is "more legitimate".
This is absolutely right. With PR the only ones who win are the politicians. No one can know what the final Government make up will be so no one can say they got the Government they voted for.
If there were any truth in that, there would be a lot more politicians angling for PR!
That our politicians remain so keen on our current system, where most of them have jobs for life mostly immune from electoral pressure, tells us all we need to know.
If you are in a safe seat yes, if you are in a marginal constituency you would be less safe than being elected on the list in your region under PR
This is right. There will be no portillo moment in Germany (which has a FPTP/PR hybrid). If a high-up candidate looses their seat (direct mandate) then they will almost always get into the Bundestag via the party list for the PR part.
I still prefer PR and variants to pure FPTP.
Having just read futher up the thread. The idea that a coalition government is illigitmate is just absurd. Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
Not by what they voted for they're not.
Yes they are. Voters who voted SPD are being represented by SPD MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for. Voters who voted CDU are being represented by CDU MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for. Voters who voted CSU are being represented by CSU MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for.
Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
No, the politicians elected are getting their bums into government, getting ministerial salaries and limousines etc but the voters aren't getting what they voted for.
We only need to look in the UK. In 2010 are you claiming that Liberal Democrat voters in 2010 voted to make David Cameron Prime Minister and to have Tuition Fees trebled?
I wasn't a member at the time, but wasn't the Coalition agreement endorsed in a members ballot of LibDems?
I don't think so, I believe it was endorsed by LD MPs and the Executive but not members and certainly not voters.
The idea you can simply add all LD voters and all Tory voters together and by magic claim a majority voted for this agreement is nonsense. Two Liberal Democrat MPs (including Charles Kennedy himself) voted against the agreement. There would have been a great many Liberal Democrat voters thinking the same as Charles Kennedy.
Same too for the Tories.
I do not claim "a majority voted for this agreement". I claim that a majority voted for that collection of politicians. Those politicians then (should) negotiate the best they can for those who voted for them. That is what democratic politics is about.
But our system is better.
Under our system the negotiations to form a coalition, a manifesto took place before the election and the voters go into the election fully educated on what the various internal coalitions look like and choose the most popular one of those. That is what democratic politics is about.
You could equally say that party activists, who often have more extreme and confrontational views than most voters, determine what's on offer in the UK. I know plenty of voters in PR countries who vote for parties knowing that the party they vote for is extremely unlikely to get a majority and also very much want "their" parties policies to be moderated by having to compromise with other parties. They are very much voting for their party to be part of a coalition.
It doesn't take much political maturity to understand this.
This comes back to one of the small elephants in the room about GB political parties; their tiny memberships.
Go back to the 1950s, and it's thought that there were about 2.8 million Conservative party members. That was about 1 in 5 of their voters in the 1951 election. Now that ratio is more like 1 in 50.
Now, it's probably the case that a lot of those 2.8 million were there for social respectability, cheap drinks and the marriage bureau. But I'd happily bet a shiny sixpence that the gap between the views of members and voters is waaaaay wider now than then.
But the parties represent the voters not the members.
Parties that have tried to be more purist to what the members want - like eg Corbyn's Labour - have not won general elections.
General election winners are parties that have formed a broad coalition of voters.
That's been true for a long time, but probably not in 2017 or 2019.
In 2017, Corbz managed to pick up a decent number of votes and seats (albeit not enough to win) by looking a bit more reasonable than TMay.
In 2019, Corbz has been fully revealed as a fairly nasty piece of work. BoJo didn't really bother to reach out. He sat back (in a fridge some of the time), confident that he would be seen as marginally but decisively less awful.
"If a wife tells her husband that he is shirking child care responsibilities and he responds by refusing to acknowledge that it’s even happening, he is gaslighting her."
You ask "what isn't clear about that explanation?"
You did X. No I didn't do X.
That is gaslighting?
If he is shirking childcare responsibilities and he knows he is but pretends to her that it isn't happening, I think that is an example of gaslighting. You are presuming that he actually isn't shirking childcare responsibilities. I think the unspoken assumption underlying the example is that the shirking is in fact taking place. I took that as read. What may be happening is that the husband doesn't know he has the childcare responsibilities, simply assuming that the kid will get looked after even if he does nothing about it and failing to acknowledge the burden that places on his wife. In which case he is not gaslighting her, just being a twat.
It is what I imagine is a fairly typical argument amongst people that happens all the time. How you get to gaslighting from "You did this" "No I didn't" is quite a stretch.
That you have to go into "unspoken assumptions" proves my point.
Hopefully we have now discussed the etymology of the phrase enough for you to understand its meaning though.
I understand its etymology but it is a meaningless phrase.
Give me a current day usage to help me (ie not involving actual gaslights).
I also struggle with it and with 'meme'.
S'OK - @OnlyLivingBoy is going to clear matters up for us.
The bounties were allegedly to kill coalition -- including British -- troops. What's our new National Security Adviser said about it? Or the old one? And when will Boris publish the report into Russian interference in our politics?
If the Conservatives were clean, they would publish it. They haven´t, so they aren´t. The Johnson government is not legitimate.
You may not like this government, you may want to attack it, but it is the most legitimate government in recent history after winning an 80 seat majority just 8 months ago
Err, with only a minority (43%) of the vote and with more people voting for parties opposing its principal Brexit policy than voted for it.
Name one party opposing Brexit that you think should be the government?
The government won millions of votes more than any other party. You can't sum up all other parties votes and add them together that's not legitimate, if the other parties voters all wanted the same thing they'd have all voted for the same party. They chose not to do so.
Whilst what you say is obviously true, and of course the govt should be in power, there are different levels of legitimacy. If it had won over half the vote that would have made it more legitimate even if thats a extremely harsh bar to set given our political system. Similarly if they paid more respect to the rule of law and our unwritten constitution they would be more legitimate. Of course they are the most legitimate available because they won the election but their actions and behaviour undermine that.
Can you name any western countries in your definition which are legitimate with your phrasing?
And no coalitions don't count unless they were a defined coalition standing in the election united (like the Coalition in Australia) since the public did not vote for them.
"coalitions don't count" is just something you made up because you seem to like the not so democratic UK system.
I didn't make it up, coalitions did not get voted for at the election unless they were a defined coalition at the election.
If the desire is to get the mandate of 50% plus of votes at the election then you need 50% plus of votes at the election. The coalitions only got 50% plus at the election if they stood at the election.
As I said, something you just made up.
Here in Germany there is a legitimate elected coalition government. The proportion of people complaining about the voting system here is tiny compared to the UK. Once you've persuaded some Germans that their government is less legitimate than the UK's I'll start listening to your nonsense.
The only ones whinging here are those who don't like the results. When it was put to a referendum two-thirds of the country chose to keep our voting system.
Just because sore losers whinge doesn't make them right.
The German government is less legitimate than the British government. In Britain quite self-evidently 44% of the country voted for Johnson to be PM and 44% of the country voted for the government we have.
In Germany by contrast 33% of the country voted for Merkel to be Chancellor and 0% of the country voted for the government they have.
The fact that our government was determined on election night while the German government was determined SIX MONTHS after the election shows the farce of claims that electoral system is "more legitimate".
This is absolutely right. With PR the only ones who win are the politicians. No one can know what the final Government make up will be so no one can say they got the Government they voted for.
If there were any truth in that, there would be a lot more politicians angling for PR!
That our politicians remain so keen on our current system, where most of them have jobs for life mostly immune from electoral pressure, tells us all we need to know.
If you are in a safe seat yes, if you are in a marginal constituency you would be less safe than being elected on the list in your region under PR
This is right. There will be no portillo moment in Germany (which has a FPTP/PR hybrid). If a high-up candidate looses their seat (direct mandate) then they will almost always get into the Bundestag via the party list for the PR part.
I still prefer PR and variants to pure FPTP.
Having just read futher up the thread. The idea that a coalition government is illigitmate is just absurd. Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
Not by what they voted for they're not.
Yes they are. Voters who voted SPD are being represented by SPD MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for. Voters who voted CDU are being represented by CDU MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for. Voters who voted CSU are being represented by CSU MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for.
Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
No, the politicians elected are getting their bums into government, getting ministerial salaries and limousines etc but the voters aren't getting what they voted for.
We only need to look in the UK. In 2010 are you claiming that Liberal Democrat voters in 2010 voted to make David Cameron Prime Minister and to have Tuition Fees trebled?
I wasn't a member at the time, but wasn't the Coalition agreement endorsed in a members ballot of LibDems?
I don't think so, I believe it was endorsed by LD MPs and the Executive but not members and certainly not voters.
The idea you can simply add all LD voters and all Tory voters together and by magic claim a majority voted for this agreement is nonsense. Two Liberal Democrat MPs (including Charles Kennedy himself) voted against the agreement. There would have been a great many Liberal Democrat voters thinking the same as Charles Kennedy.
Same too for the Tories.
And they got the opportunity to pass judgement on them at the next election.
Precisely. 2015 was hardly a ringing endorsement that the Lib Dem voters approved of what they did, but it was five years later.
That is why coalitions are not a sum of their voters - unless the voters knew about the coalition agreement before they voted.
That's the same as any other government. There's no legal obligation for them to implement the manifesto they were elected on, and the voters can only punish them for that failure at the next election.
That's one reason for implementing the Chartist demand for annual Parliaments.
No legal one but there is a moral one. And if the party wins a majority at an election then little excuse for failure, whereas if the parties intend to just junk their manifesto immediately as they know they'd never get a majority then that makes it utterly meaningless.
We have the Lib Dems experience in 2015 to prove that it isn't meaningless, because the voters gave their judgement on the compromises the Lib Dems chose to make.
Exactly as the voters give their judgement on every other government.
Parties in Ireland have literally ceased to exist after disappointing their voters with their actions in coalition under the STV system there. It doesn't lead to small parties wielding permanent power in government, or a lack of accountability.
The bounties were allegedly to kill coalition -- including British -- troops. What's our new National Security Adviser said about it? Or the old one? And when will Boris publish the report into Russian interference in our politics?
If the Conservatives were clean, they would publish it. They haven´t, so they aren´t. The Johnson government is not legitimate.
You may not like this government, you may want to attack it, but it is the most legitimate government in recent history after winning an 80 seat majority just 8 months ago
Err, with only a minority (43%) of the vote and with more people voting for parties opposing its principal Brexit policy than voted for it.
Name one party opposing Brexit that you think should be the government?
The government won millions of votes more than any other party. You can't sum up all other parties votes and add them together that's not legitimate, if the other parties voters all wanted the same thing they'd have all voted for the same party. They chose not to do so.
Whilst what you say is obviously true, and of course the govt should be in power, there are different levels of legitimacy. If it had won over half the vote that would have made it more legitimate even if thats a extremely harsh bar to set given our political system. Similarly if they paid more respect to the rule of law and our unwritten constitution they would be more legitimate. Of course they are the most legitimate available because they won the election but their actions and behaviour undermine that.
Can you name any western countries in your definition which are legitimate with your phrasing?
And no coalitions don't count unless they were a defined coalition standing in the election united (like the Coalition in Australia) since the public did not vote for them.
"coalitions don't count" is just something you made up because you seem to like the not so democratic UK system.
I didn't make it up, coalitions did not get voted for at the election unless they were a defined coalition at the election.
If the desire is to get the mandate of 50% plus of votes at the election then you need 50% plus of votes at the election. The coalitions only got 50% plus at the election if they stood at the election.
As I said, something you just made up.
Here in Germany there is a legitimate elected coalition government. The proportion of people complaining about the voting system here is tiny compared to the UK. Once you've persuaded some Germans that their government is less legitimate than the UK's I'll start listening to your nonsense.
The only ones whinging here are those who don't like the results. When it was put to a referendum two-thirds of the country chose to keep our voting system.
Just because sore losers whinge doesn't make them right.
The German government is less legitimate than the British government. In Britain quite self-evidently 44% of the country voted for Johnson to be PM and 44% of the country voted for the government we have.
In Germany by contrast 33% of the country voted for Merkel to be Chancellor and 0% of the country voted for the government they have.
The fact that our government was determined on election night while the German government was determined SIX MONTHS after the election shows the farce of claims that electoral system is "more legitimate".
This is absolutely right. With PR the only ones who win are the politicians. No one can know what the final Government make up will be so no one can say they got the Government they voted for.
If there were any truth in that, there would be a lot more politicians angling for PR!
That our politicians remain so keen on our current system, where most of them have jobs for life mostly immune from electoral pressure, tells us all we need to know.
If you are in a safe seat yes, if you are in a marginal constituency you would be less safe than being elected on the list in your region under PR
This is right. There will be no portillo moment in Germany (which has a FPTP/PR hybrid). If a high-up candidate looses their seat (direct mandate) then they will almost always get into the Bundestag via the party list for the PR part.
I still prefer PR and variants to pure FPTP.
Having just read futher up the thread. The idea that a coalition government is illigitmate is just absurd. Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
Not by what they voted for they're not.
Yes they are. Voters who voted SPD are being represented by SPD MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for. Voters who voted CDU are being represented by CDU MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for. Voters who voted CSU are being represented by CSU MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for.
Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
No, the politicians elected are getting their bums into government, getting ministerial salaries and limousines etc but the voters aren't getting what they voted for.
We only need to look in the UK. In 2010 are you claiming that Liberal Democrat voters in 2010 voted to make David Cameron Prime Minister and to have Tuition Fees trebled?
I wasn't a member at the time, but wasn't the Coalition agreement endorsed in a members ballot of LibDems?
I don't think so, I believe it was endorsed by LD MPs and the Executive but not members and certainly not voters.
The idea you can simply add all LD voters and all Tory voters together and by magic claim a majority voted for this agreement is nonsense. Two Liberal Democrat MPs (including Charles Kennedy himself) voted against the agreement. There would have been a great many Liberal Democrat voters thinking the same as Charles Kennedy.
Same too for the Tories.
I do not claim "a majority voted for this agreement". I claim that a majority voted for that collection of politicians. Those politicians then (should) negotiate the best they can for those who voted for them. That is what democratic politics is about.
But our system is better.
Under our system the negotiations to form a coalition, a manifesto took place before the election and the voters go into the election fully educated on what the various internal coalitions look like and choose the most popular one of those. That is what democratic politics is about.
You could equally say that party activists, who often have more extreme and confrontational views than most voters, determine what's on offer in the UK. I know plenty of voters in PR countries who vote for parties knowing that the party they vote for is extremely unlikely to get a majority and also very much want "their" parties policies to be moderated by having to compromise with other parties. They are very much voting for their party to be part of a coalition.
It doesn't take much political maturity to understand this.
This comes back to one of the small elephants in the room about GB political parties; their tiny memberships.
Go back to the 1950s, and it's thought that there were about 2.8 million Conservative party members. That was about 1 in 5 of their voters in the 1951 election. Now that ratio is more like 1 in 50.
Now, it's probably the case that a lot of those 2.8 million were there for social respectability, cheap drinks and the marriage bureau. But I'd happily bet a shiny sixpence that the gap between the views of members and voters is waaaaay wider now than then.
But the parties represent the voters not the members.
Parties that have tried to be more purist to what the members want - like eg Corbyn's Labour - have not won general elections.
General election winners are parties that have formed a broad coalition of voters.
That's been true for a long time, but probably not in 2017 or 2019.
In 2017, Corbz managed to pick up a decent number of votes and seats (albeit not enough to win) by looking a bit more reasonable than TMay.
In 2019, Corbz has been fully revealed as a fairly nasty piece of work. BoJo didn't really bother to reach out. He sat back (in a fridge some of the time), confident that he would be seen as marginally but decisively less awful.
And so it turned out.
In 2019 Boris did reach out, we've had many people on here mocking Boris suggesting he was "stealing Labour's policies" both before the election, in the manifesto and afterwards too.
If Boris only appealed to his own core vote and those utterly repulsed by Corbyn he wouldn't have won 14 million votes.
I know it's a line you like to punt, but do your genuinely believe that folk stopped voting LD because they weren't blowing their own coalition trumpet rather than voters making their own judgment on the LD's 5 years in government?
Yes, why on earth would anyone vote for a party which trashes its own record on its most distinctive policy position?
The bounties were allegedly to kill coalition -- including British -- troops. What's our new National Security Adviser said about it? Or the old one? And when will Boris publish the report into Russian interference in our politics?
If the Conservatives were clean, they would publish it. They haven´t, so they aren´t. The Johnson government is not legitimate.
You may not like this government, you may want to attack it, but it is the most legitimate government in recent history after winning an 80 seat majority just 8 months ago
Err, with only a minority (43%) of the vote and with more people voting for parties opposing its principal Brexit policy than voted for it.
Name one party opposing Brexit that you think should be the government?
The government won millions of votes more than any other party. You can't sum up all other parties votes and add them together that's not legitimate, if the other parties voters all wanted the same thing they'd have all voted for the same party. They chose not to do so.
Whilst what you say is obviously true, and of course the govt should be in power, there are different levels of legitimacy. If it had won over half the vote that would have made it more legitimate even if thats a extremely harsh bar to set given our political system. Similarly if they paid more respect to the rule of law and our unwritten constitution they would be more legitimate. Of course they are the most legitimate available because they won the election but their actions and behaviour undermine that.
Can you name any western countries in your definition which are legitimate with your phrasing?
And no coalitions don't count unless they were a defined coalition standing in the election united (like the Coalition in Australia) since the public did not vote for them.
"coalitions don't count" is just something you made up because you seem to like the not so democratic UK system.
I didn't make it up, coalitions did not get voted for at the election unless they were a defined coalition at the election.
If the desire is to get the mandate of 50% plus of votes at the election then you need 50% plus of votes at the election. The coalitions only got 50% plus at the election if they stood at the election.
As I said, something you just made up.
Here in Germany there is a legitimate elected coalition government. The proportion of people complaining about the voting system here is tiny compared to the UK. Once you've persuaded some Germans that their government is less legitimate than the UK's I'll start listening to your nonsense.
The only ones whinging here are those who don't like the results. When it was put to a referendum two-thirds of the country chose to keep our voting system.
Just because sore losers whinge doesn't make them right.
The German government is less legitimate than the British government. In Britain quite self-evidently 44% of the country voted for Johnson to be PM and 44% of the country voted for the government we have.
In Germany by contrast 33% of the country voted for Merkel to be Chancellor and 0% of the country voted for the government they have.
The fact that our government was determined on election night while the German government was determined SIX MONTHS after the election shows the farce of claims that electoral system is "more legitimate".
This is absolutely right. With PR the only ones who win are the politicians. No one can know what the final Government make up will be so no one can say they got the Government they voted for.
If there were any truth in that, there would be a lot more politicians angling for PR!
That our politicians remain so keen on our current system, where most of them have jobs for life mostly immune from electoral pressure, tells us all we need to know.
If you are in a safe seat yes, if you are in a marginal constituency you would be less safe than being elected on the list in your region under PR
This is right. There will be no portillo moment in Germany (which has a FPTP/PR hybrid). If a high-up candidate looses their seat (direct mandate) then they will almost always get into the Bundestag via the party list for the PR part.
I still prefer PR and variants to pure FPTP.
Having just read futher up the thread. The idea that a coalition government is illigitmate is just absurd. Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
Not by what they voted for they're not.
Yes they are. Voters who voted SPD are being represented by SPD MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for. Voters who voted CDU are being represented by CDU MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for. Voters who voted CSU are being represented by CSU MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for.
Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
No, the politicians elected are getting their bums into government, getting ministerial salaries and limousines etc but the voters aren't getting what they voted for.
We only need to look in the UK. In 2010 are you claiming that Liberal Democrat voters in 2010 voted to make David Cameron Prime Minister and to have Tuition Fees trebled?
I wasn't a member at the time, but wasn't the Coalition agreement endorsed in a members ballot of LibDems?
I don't think so, I believe it was endorsed by LD MPs and the Executive but not members and certainly not voters.
The idea you can simply add all LD voters and all Tory voters together and by magic claim a majority voted for this agreement is nonsense. Two Liberal Democrat MPs (including Charles Kennedy himself) voted against the agreement. There would have been a great many Liberal Democrat voters thinking the same as Charles Kennedy.
Same too for the Tories.
I do not claim "a majority voted for this agreement". I claim that a majority voted for that collection of politicians. Those politicians then (should) negotiate the best they can for those who voted for them. That is what democratic politics is about.
But our system is better.
Under our system the negotiations to form a coalition, a manifesto took place before the election and the voters go into the election fully educated on what the various internal coalitions look like and choose the most popular one of those. That is what democratic politics is about.
You could equally say that party activists, who often have more extreme and confrontational views than most voters, determine what's on offer in the UK. I know plenty of voters in PR countries who vote for parties knowing that the party they vote for is extremely unlikely to get a majority and also very much want "their" parties policies to be moderated by having to compromise with other parties. They are very much voting for their party to be part of a coalition.
It doesn't take much political maturity to understand this.
This comes back to one of the small elephants in the room about GB political parties; their tiny memberships.
Go back to the 1950s, and it's thought that there were about 2.8 million Conservative party members. That was about 1 in 5 of their voters in the 1951 election. Now that ratio is more like 1 in 50.
Now, it's probably the case that a lot of those 2.8 million were there for social respectability, cheap drinks and the marriage bureau. But I'd happily bet a shiny sixpence that the gap between the views of members and voters is waaaaay wider now than then.
I thought that the charts on social policy showing the position of the general public, those who voted for each party , those who were members and those who were MPs, were fascinating but also indicative of exactly this problem.
MPs were generally much more extreme than the members who in turn were much more extreme than those who voted for them. Being extreme or "pure" is positively rewarded in a system with a small membership out of step with those who actually vote for the party. We see the same thing in the US where primaries by someone from the extremes of their party are generally a much greater threat to a sitting incumbent than the opposition. It makes cross party co-operation incredibly difficult and makes it inevitable that things like the NHS and Social Care become political footballs rather than something that a long term solution can be found for.
Having just read futher up the thread. The idea that a coalition government is illigitmate is just absurd. Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
And yet in the one example in recent times where the UK had such a coalition, the people who most support PR bitched like hell about it, and the party which for decades had been advocating exactly that as their principal political aim now regards that one example of it in practice as a disaster which tainted their party for a generation. Rather odd, is it not, to argue for a great idea in theory but a disaster [in their own view] in practice?
Looking back, what was so wrong with the 10-15 gov't ?
Nothing, it was the best in 50 years with the exception of the Thatcher governments, which were a very special case. All the more bizarre that the LibDems regard it as a badge of shame.
The Tories screwed the Lib Dems over. Which at one level is normal. They have no interest in boosting a rival party. On the other hand the Tory government needed the Lib Dems at the time and the latter made real contributions to the government. Making the experience so unpleasant for their partners doesn't encourage them to engage with it later on. Not sure Cameron managed that tension well.
"If a wife tells her husband that he is shirking child care responsibilities and he responds by refusing to acknowledge that it’s even happening, he is gaslighting her."
You ask "what isn't clear about that explanation?"
You did X. No I didn't do X.
That is gaslighting?
If he is shirking childcare responsibilities and he knows he is but pretends to her that it isn't happening, I think that is an example of gaslighting. You are presuming that he actually isn't shirking childcare responsibilities. I think the unspoken assumption underlying the example is that the shirking is in fact taking place. I took that as read. What may be happening is that the husband doesn't know he has the childcare responsibilities, simply assuming that the kid will get looked after even if he does nothing about it and failing to acknowledge the burden that places on his wife. In which case he is not gaslighting her, just being a twat.
It is what I imagine is a fairly typical argument amongst people that happens all the time. How you get to gaslighting from "You did this" "No I didn't" is quite a stretch.
That you have to go into "unspoken assumptions" proves my point.
Hopefully we have now discussed the etymology of the phrase enough for you to understand its meaning though.
I understand its etymology but it is a meaningless phrase.
Give me a current day usage to help me (ie not involving actual gaslights).
I also struggle with it and with 'meme'.
S'OK - @OnlyLivingBoy is going to clear matters up for us.
Trouble is I learn them, don't use them, then when they appear again I have to look them up again even though I know their origins!!!! They just don't feel natural to me. I don't want to think of the source to think what they mean.
On the other hand maybe it is age cos I have no issue with Catch 22.
The bounties were allegedly to kill coalition -- including British -- troops. What's our new National Security Adviser said about it? Or the old one? And when will Boris publish the report into Russian interference in our politics?
If the Conservatives were clean, they would publish it. They haven´t, so they aren´t. The Johnson government is not legitimate.
You may not like this government, you may want to attack it, but it is the most legitimate government in recent history after winning an 80 seat majority just 8 months ago
Err, with only a minority (43%) of the vote and with more people voting for parties opposing its principal Brexit policy than voted for it.
Name one party opposing Brexit that you think should be the government?
The government won millions of votes more than any other party. You can't sum up all other parties votes and add them together that's not legitimate, if the other parties voters all wanted the same thing they'd have all voted for the same party. They chose not to do so.
Whilst what you say is obviously true, and of course the govt should be in power, there are different levels of legitimacy. If it had won over half the vote that would have made it more legitimate even if thats a extremely harsh bar to set given our political system. Similarly if they paid more respect to the rule of law and our unwritten constitution they would be more legitimate. Of course they are the most legitimate available because they won the election but their actions and behaviour undermine that.
Can you name any western countries in your definition which are legitimate with your phrasing?
And no coalitions don't count unless they were a defined coalition standing in the election united (like the Coalition in Australia) since the public did not vote for them.
"coalitions don't count" is just something you made up because you seem to like the not so democratic UK system.
I didn't make it up, coalitions did not get voted for at the election unless they were a defined coalition at the election.
If the desire is to get the mandate of 50% plus of votes at the election then you need 50% plus of votes at the election. The coalitions only got 50% plus at the election if they stood at the election.
As I said, something you just made up.
Here in Germany there is a legitimate elected coalition government. The proportion of people complaining about the voting system here is tiny compared to the UK. Once you've persuaded some Germans that their government is less legitimate than the UK's I'll start listening to your nonsense.
The only ones whinging here are those who don't like the results. When it was put to a referendum two-thirds of the country chose to keep our voting system.
Just because sore losers whinge doesn't make them right.
The German government is less legitimate than the British government. In Britain quite self-evidently 44% of the country voted for Johnson to be PM and 44% of the country voted for the government we have.
In Germany by contrast 33% of the country voted for Merkel to be Chancellor and 0% of the country voted for the government they have.
The fact that our government was determined on election night while the German government was determined SIX MONTHS after the election shows the farce of claims that electoral system is "more legitimate".
This is absolutely right. With PR the only ones who win are the politicians. No one can know what the final Government make up will be so no one can say they got the Government they voted for.
If there were any truth in that, there would be a lot more politicians angling for PR!
That our politicians remain so keen on our current system, where most of them have jobs for life mostly immune from electoral pressure, tells us all we need to know.
If you are in a safe seat yes, if you are in a marginal constituency you would be less safe than being elected on the list in your region under PR
This is right. There will be no portillo moment in Germany (which has a FPTP/PR hybrid). If a high-up candidate looses their seat (direct mandate) then they will almost always get into the Bundestag via the party list for the PR part.
I still prefer PR and variants to pure FPTP.
Having just read futher up the thread. The idea that a coalition government is illigitmate is just absurd. Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
Not by what they voted for they're not.
Yes they are. Voters who voted SPD are being represented by SPD MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for. Voters who voted CDU are being represented by CDU MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for. Voters who voted CSU are being represented by CSU MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for.
Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
No, the politicians elected are getting their bums into government, getting ministerial salaries and limousines etc but the voters aren't getting what they voted for.
We only need to look in the UK. In 2010 are you claiming that Liberal Democrat voters in 2010 voted to make David Cameron Prime Minister and to have Tuition Fees trebled?
I wasn't a member at the time, but wasn't the Coalition agreement endorsed in a members ballot of LibDems?
I don't think so, I believe it was endorsed by LD MPs and the Executive but not members and certainly not voters.
The idea you can simply add all LD voters and all Tory voters together and by magic claim a majority voted for this agreement is nonsense. Two Liberal Democrat MPs (including Charles Kennedy himself) voted against the agreement. There would have been a great many Liberal Democrat voters thinking the same as Charles Kennedy.
Same too for the Tories.
I do not claim "a majority voted for this agreement". I claim that a majority voted for that collection of politicians. Those politicians then (should) negotiate the best they can for those who voted for them. That is what democratic politics is about.
But our system is better.
Under our system the negotiations to form a coalition, a manifesto took place before the election and the voters go into the election fully educated on what the various internal coalitions look like and choose the most popular one of those. That is what democratic politics is about.
You could equally say that party activists, who often have more extreme and confrontational views than most voters, determine what's on offer in the UK. I know plenty of voters in PR countries who vote for parties knowing that the party they vote for is extremely unlikely to get a majority and also very much want "their" parties policies to be moderated by having to compromise with other parties. They are very much voting for their party to be part of a coalition.
It doesn't take much political maturity to understand this.
This comes back to one of the small elephants in the room about GB political parties; their tiny memberships.
Go back to the 1950s, and it's thought that there were about 2.8 million Conservative party members. That was about 1 in 5 of their voters in the 1951 election. Now that ratio is more like 1 in 50.
Now, it's probably the case that a lot of those 2.8 million were there for social respectability, cheap drinks and the marriage bureau. But I'd happily bet a shiny sixpence that the gap between the views of members and voters is waaaaay wider now than then.
I thought that the charts on social policy showing the position of the general public, those who voted for each party , those who were members and those who were MPs, were fascinating but also indicative of exactly this problem.
MPs were generally much more extreme than the members who in turn were much more extreme than those who voted for them. Being extreme or "pure" is positively rewarded in a system with a small membership out of step with those who actually vote for the party. We see the same thing in the US where primaries by someone from the extremes of their party are generally a much greater threat to a sitting incumbent than the opposition. It makes cross party co-operation incredibly difficult and makes it inevitable that things like the NHS and Social Care become political footballs rather than something that a long term solution can be found for.
I think that was only clearly true of the tories, the labour MPs were generally pretty close to the labour voters - with Labour it was the active members and councillors who were the most extreme. Corbynism was the result of that with a push to get more extreme MPs and bully out the moderates. Hopefully its failure means that it has been seen off for a generation for a two.
Having just read futher up the thread. The idea that a coalition government is illigitmate is just absurd. Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
And yet in the one example in recent times where the UK had such a coalition, the people who most support PR bitched like hell about it, and the party which for decades had been advocating exactly that as their principal political aim now regards that one example of it in practice as a disaster which tainted their party for a generation. Rather odd, is it not, to argue for a great idea in theory but a disaster [in their own view] in practice?
Looking back, what was so wrong with the 10-15 gov't ?
Nothing, it was the best in 50 years with the exception of the Thatcher governments, which were a very special case. All the more bizarre that the LibDems regard it as a badge of shame.
The Tories screwed the Lib Dems over. Which at one level is normal. They have no interest in boosting a rival party. On the other hand the Tory government needed the Lib Dems at the time and the latter made real contributions to the government. Making the experience so unpleasant for their partners doesn't encourage them to engage with it later on. Not sure Cameron managed that tension well.
The Tories didn't screw the Lib Dems over, they screwed themselves over.
The Lib Dems brought good ideas to the table and the Tories happily took them then spent years saying "we've done this".
The Lib Dems didn't shout about their achievements, they looked weak and infirm. They didn't seem proud of what they'd done - and if they're not why should anyone else?
Things like the pupil premium, raising the tax threshold, the Tories more happily boast about what they've done than the party that suggested them at the election.
"If a wife tells her husband that he is shirking child care responsibilities and he responds by refusing to acknowledge that it’s even happening, he is gaslighting her."
You ask "what isn't clear about that explanation?"
You did X. No I didn't do X.
That is gaslighting?
If he is shirking childcare responsibilities and he knows he is but pretends to her that it isn't happening, I think that is an example of gaslighting. You are presuming that he actually isn't shirking childcare responsibilities. I think the unspoken assumption underlying the example is that the shirking is in fact taking place. I took that as read. What may be happening is that the husband doesn't know he has the childcare responsibilities, simply assuming that the kid will get looked after even if he does nothing about it and failing to acknowledge the burden that places on his wife. In which case he is not gaslighting her, just being a twat.
It is what I imagine is a fairly typical argument amongst people that happens all the time. How you get to gaslighting from "You did this" "No I didn't" is quite a stretch.
That you have to go into "unspoken assumptions" proves my point.
I think the missing piece, which would perhaps make it more clear to you, is the element of power or control necessary in the relationship.
In the case of, for example, an individual confronting a bureaucracy which simply refuses to acknowledge what it has done, then the term can be quite apt. I'm pretty sure some of the sub postmasters who fell victim to the Post Office accounting debacle began to doubt their own sanity at times.
It is undoubtedly abusive or corrupt or inept behaviour but calling it "gaslighting" doesn't help clarity.
Say you and I were in a relationship (I know, hard to believe, you don't seem my type, but let's suspend disbelief). You start to feel like you are left to do all the housework, and confront me about it. I know that you are right, I am a lazy shit and waste my time arguing with right wing loons on the internet instead of ever doing anything useful. But instead of saying Yes, you are right, I will try to pull my weight more in the future, I lie and tell you that I actually cleaned the house when you were out. Didn't you notice? That's typical, whenever I do anything to help you don't even notice it, you're just a stupid nag. You think, wow maybe he's right, come to think of it maybe the house did look a bit cleaner on Thursday, I must have just not really noticed, I don't know what's wrong with me. I'm so stupid. That is gaslighting. Hope that helps.
Having just read futher up the thread. The idea that a coalition government is illigitmate is just absurd. Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
And yet in the one example in recent times where the UK had such a coalition, the people who most support PR bitched like hell about it, and the party which for decades had been advocating exactly that as their principal political aim now regards that one example of it in practice as a disaster which tainted their party for a generation. Rather odd, is it not, to argue for a great idea in theory but a disaster [in their own view] in practice?
Looking back, what was so wrong with the 10-15 gov't ?
Nothing, it was the best in 50 years with the exception of the Thatcher governments, which were a very special case. All the more bizarre that the LibDems regard it as a badge of shame.
The Tories screwed the Lib Dems over. Which at one level is normal. They have no interest in boosting a rival party. On the other hand the Tory government needed the Lib Dems at the time and the latter made real contributions to the government. Making the experience so unpleasant for their partners doesn't encourage them to engage with it later on. Not sure Cameron managed that tension well.
Quite the opposite, he managed it exceptionally well. The government worked well, and the LibDems were fully involved via the Quad. It wasn't Cameron's fault that the LibDems went around looking thoroughly miserable at having finally got what they'd wanted for decades.
Perhaps they always would have been miserable in any government, which is exactly the point - if so, it rather torpedoes the whole concept of coalitions, and therefore of PR, in the UK at least.
This is an absurd debate. Of course this government is legitimate. That is not in question. At the same time the demand for people to pay it fealty is also absurd - just because the government is legitimate doesn't mean that you should like or respect the fact that its incompetence has killed tens of thousands of people and that the Brexit bomb is armed and ready to explode.
It it classic Tory gaslighting and hypocrisy.
OH NO!
"gaslighting"
Life is seriously too short to try to work out what it means.
A neologism too far.
Hardly a neologism. The term refers to a play by Patrick Hamilton (one of the greatest novelists of the twentieth century, imho) from 1938 and has been used colloquially as a term to mean a particular kind of psychological abuse since the 1960s. Perhaps you need to lift your ban on learning new things, who knows, you might learn something!
No it hasn't.
Wikipedia disagrees with you.
So what. It has not been in any kind of common usage until a few months ago.
The term gaslighting has been around for years, certainly before the accession of Trump.
Yes indeed. I feel, anecdotally, that its use has ramped up considerably and people are broadening its use to its detriment, but the idea its not been around for a long time us not sustainable
Gaslighting is an excellent term when used correctly. Of course it often isn't but that's the case with most terms coined to describe something both complex and specific.
My theory is that people tend to react adversely to terms which are frequently used by those of the opposite politics to them. They say things like "meaningless" or "pretentious tosh" or "tired old cliche" or "not even a real word" when the reality is they do understand it but don't wish to acknowledge the existence of what it's describing.
So, typically, you will get right wingers bridling at this one - gaslighting - since it is mainly used by the Left. Not sure why but it is. Other examples of this are "islamophobia" and "white privilege" and "mansplaining". These terms irritate the hell out of the reactionary antiwokerati.
But it's not one way traffic. It works the other way too. "Virtue signalling" for example. People on the Left instinctively hate that one. And increasingly "Woke" as it becomes weaponized as an insult rather than offered as a compliment.
They're all good terms though imo. Overused, misused, but invaluable in the right context.
I think you're right, and that's why I think ones like virtue signalling and snowflake can be very useful and applicable across the spectrum.
The bounties were allegedly to kill coalition -- including British -- troops. What's our new National Security Adviser said about it? Or the old one? And when will Boris publish the report into Russian interference in our politics?
If the Conservatives were clean, they would publish it. They haven´t, so they aren´t. The Johnson government is not legitimate.
You may not like this government, you may want to attack it, but it is the most legitimate government in recent history after winning an 80 seat majority just 8 months ago
Err, with only a minority (43%) of the vote and with more people voting for parties opposing its principal Brexit policy than voted for it.
Name one party opposing Brexit that you think should be the government?
The government won millions of votes more than any other party. You can't sum up all other parties votes and add them together that's not legitimate, if the other parties voters all wanted the same thing they'd have all voted for the same party. They chose not to do so.
Whilst what you say is obviously true, and of course the govt should be in power, there are different levels of legitimacy. If it had won over half the vote that would have made it more legitimate even if thats a extremely harsh bar to set given our political system. Similarly if they paid more respect to the rule of law and our unwritten constitution they would be more legitimate. Of course they are the most legitimate available because they won the election but their actions and behaviour undermine that.
Can you name any western countries in your definition which are legitimate with your phrasing?
And no coalitions don't count unless they were a defined coalition standing in the election united (like the Coalition in Australia) since the public did not vote for them.
"coalitions don't count" is just something you made up because you seem to like the not so democratic UK system.
I didn't make it up, coalitions did not get voted for at the election unless they were a defined coalition at the election.
If the desire is to get the mandate of 50% plus of votes at the election then you need 50% plus of votes at the election. The coalitions only got 50% plus at the election if they stood at the election.
As I said, something you just made up.
Here in Germany there is a legitimate elected coalition government. The proportion of people complaining about the voting system here is tiny compared to the UK. Once you've persuaded some Germans that their government is less legitimate than the UK's I'll start listening to your nonsense.
The only ones whinging here are those who don't like the results. When it was put to a referendum two-thirds of the country chose to keep our voting system.
Just because sore losers whinge doesn't make them right.
The German government is less legitimate than the British government. In Britain quite self-evidently 44% of the country voted for Johnson to be PM and 44% of the country voted for the government we have.
In Germany by contrast 33% of the country voted for Merkel to be Chancellor and 0% of the country voted for the government they have.
The fact that our government was determined on election night while the German government was determined SIX MONTHS after the election shows the farce of claims that electoral system is "more legitimate".
This is absolutely right. With PR the only ones who win are the politicians. No one can know what the final Government make up will be so no one can say they got the Government they voted for.
If there were any truth in that, there would be a lot more politicians angling for PR!
That our politicians remain so keen on our current system, where most of them have jobs for life mostly immune from electoral pressure, tells us all we need to know.
If you are in a safe seat yes, if you are in a marginal constituency you would be less safe than being elected on the list in your region under PR
This is right. There will be no portillo moment in Germany (which has a FPTP/PR hybrid). If a high-up candidate looses their seat (direct mandate) then they will almost always get into the Bundestag via the party list for the PR part.
I still prefer PR and variants to pure FPTP.
Having just read futher up the thread. The idea that a coalition government is illigitmate is just absurd. Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
Not by what they voted for they're not.
Yes they are. Voters who voted SPD are being represented by SPD MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for. Voters who voted CDU are being represented by CDU MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for. Voters who voted CSU are being represented by CSU MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for.
Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
No, the politicians elected are getting their bums into government, getting ministerial salaries and limousines etc but the voters aren't getting what they voted for.
We only need to look in the UK. In 2010 are you claiming that Liberal Democrat voters in 2010 voted to make David Cameron Prime Minister and to have Tuition Fees trebled?
I wasn't a member at the time, but wasn't the Coalition agreement endorsed in a members ballot of LibDems?
I don't think so, I believe it was endorsed by LD MPs and the Executive but not members and certainly not voters.
The idea you can simply add all LD voters and all Tory voters together and by magic claim a majority voted for this agreement is nonsense. Two Liberal Democrat MPs (including Charles Kennedy himself) voted against the agreement. There would have been a great many Liberal Democrat voters thinking the same as Charles Kennedy.
Same too for the Tories.
I do not claim "a majority voted for this agreement". I claim that a majority voted for that collection of politicians. Those politicians then (should) negotiate the best they can for those who voted for them. That is what democratic politics is about.
But our system is better.
Under our system the negotiations to form a coalition, a manifesto took place before the election and the voters go into the election fully educated on what the various internal coalitions look like and choose the most popular one of those. That is what democratic politics is about.
You could equally say that party activists, who often have more extreme and confrontational views than most voters, determine what's on offer in the UK. I know plenty of voters in PR countries who vote for parties knowing that the party they vote for is extremely unlikely to get a majority and also very much want "their" parties policies to be moderated by having to compromise with other parties. They are very much voting for their party to be part of a coalition.
It doesn't take much political maturity to understand this.
This comes back to one of the small elephants in the room about GB political parties; their tiny memberships.
Go back to the 1950s, and it's thought that there were about 2.8 million Conservative party members. That was about 1 in 5 of their voters in the 1951 election. Now that ratio is more like 1 in 50.
Now, it's probably the case that a lot of those 2.8 million were there for social respectability, cheap drinks and the marriage bureau. But I'd happily bet a shiny sixpence that the gap between the views of members and voters is waaaaay wider now than then.
I thought that the charts on social policy showing the position of the general public, those who voted for each party , those who were members and those who were MPs, were fascinating but also indicative of exactly this problem.
MPs were generally much more extreme than the members who in turn were much more extreme than those who voted for them. Being extreme or "pure" is positively rewarded in a system with a small membership out of step with those who actually vote for the party. We see the same thing in the US where primaries by someone from the extremes of their party are generally a much greater threat to a sitting incumbent than the opposition. It makes cross party co-operation incredibly difficult and makes it inevitable that things like the NHS and Social Care become political footballs rather than something that a long term solution can be found for.
I think that was only clearly true of the tories, the labour MPs were generally pretty close to the labour voters - with Labour it was the active members and councillors who were the most extreme. Corbynism was the result of that with a push to get more extreme MPs and bully out the moderates. Hopefully its failure means that it has been seen off for a generation for a two.
That poll was terrible misleading, at least economically, as it asked five very left wing questions as a Yes or No, it asked no right wing ones. That is not balanced and not a good survey.
How many people actually read the five economic questions that were asked? It was a prime example of this.
Having just read futher up the thread. The idea that a coalition government is illigitmate is just absurd. Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
And yet in the one example in recent times where the UK had such a coalition, the people who most support PR bitched like hell about it, and the party which for decades had been advocating exactly that as their principal political aim now regards that one example of it in practice as a disaster which tainted their party for a generation. Rather odd, is it not, to argue for a great idea in theory but a disaster [in their own view] in practice?
Looking back, what was so wrong with the 10-15 gov't ?
Nothing, it was the best in 50 years with the exception of the Thatcher governments, which were a very special case. All the more bizarre that the LibDems regard it as a badge of shame.
The Tories screwed the Lib Dems over. Which at one level is normal. They have no interest in boosting a rival party. On the other hand the Tory government needed the Lib Dems at the time and the latter made real contributions to the government. Making the experience so unpleasant for their partners doesn't encourage them to engage with it later on. Not sure Cameron managed that tension well.
Yes and no. Clegg was happy being screwed. The policy shift on tuition fees? Made by him and Laws and not even communicated to his MPs. The decision to stay in lockstep with the Tories right up to dissolution and the election being called? All on Clegg. Soft Tory voters approving of the government decided they may as well vote Tory which is how so many yellow seats went Blue.
The lesson isn't that the coalition government was bad. It wasn't. Its that Clegg was happy to give ground for little reward - LibDem MPs more loyally voted for Tory bills they disagreed with than Tory MPs did. Clegg could have held a gun to Cameron's head as Foster did to May, but didn't. Because he enjoyed being screwed by Cameron.
The bounties were allegedly to kill coalition -- including British -- troops. What's our new National Security Adviser said about it? Or the old one? And when will Boris publish the report into Russian interference in our politics?
If the Conservatives were clean, they would publish it. They haven´t, so they aren´t. The Johnson government is not legitimate.
You may not like this government, you may want to attack it, but it is the most legitimate government in recent history after winning an 80 seat majority just 8 months ago
Err, with only a minority (43%) of the vote and with more people voting for parties opposing its principal Brexit policy than voted for it.
Name one party opposing Brexit that you think should be the government?
The government won millions of votes more than any other party. You can't sum up all other parties votes and add them together that's not legitimate, if the other parties voters all wanted the same thing they'd have all voted for the same party. They chose not to do so.
Whilst what you say is obviously true, and of course the govt should be in power, there are different levels of legitimacy. If it had won over half the vote that would have made it more legitimate even if thats a extremely harsh bar to set given our political system. Similarly if they paid more respect to the rule of law and our unwritten constitution they would be more legitimate. Of course they are the most legitimate available because they won the election but their actions and behaviour undermine that.
Can you name any western countries in your definition which are legitimate with your phrasing?
And no coalitions don't count unless they were a defined coalition standing in the election united (like the Coalition in Australia) since the public did not vote for them.
"coalitions don't count" is just something you made up because you seem to like the not so democratic UK system.
I didn't make it up, coalitions did not get voted for at the election unless they were a defined coalition at the election.
If the desire is to get the mandate of 50% plus of votes at the election then you need 50% plus of votes at the election. The coalitions only got 50% plus at the election if they stood at the election.
As I said, something you just made up.
Here in Germany there is a legitimate elected coalition government. The proportion of people complaining about the voting system here is tiny compared to the UK. Once you've persuaded some Germans that their government is less legitimate than the UK's I'll start listening to your nonsense.
The only ones whinging here are those who don't like the results. When it was put to a referendum two-thirds of the country chose to keep our voting system.
Just because sore losers whinge doesn't make them right.
The German government is less legitimate than the British government. In Britain quite self-evidently 44% of the country voted for Johnson to be PM and 44% of the country voted for the government we have.
In Germany by contrast 33% of the country voted for Merkel to be Chancellor and 0% of the country voted for the government they have.
The fact that our government was determined on election night while the German government was determined SIX MONTHS after the election shows the farce of claims that electoral system is "more legitimate".
This is absolutely right. With PR the only ones who win are the politicians. No one can know what the final Government make up will be so no one can say they got the Government they voted for.
If there were any truth in that, there would be a lot more politicians angling for PR!
That our politicians remain so keen on our current system, where most of them have jobs for life mostly immune from electoral pressure, tells us all we need to know.
If you are in a safe seat yes, if you are in a marginal constituency you would be less safe than being elected on the list in your region under PR
This is right. There will be no portillo moment in Germany (which has a FPTP/PR hybrid). If a high-up candidate looses their seat (direct mandate) then they will almost always get into the Bundestag via the party list for the PR part.
I still prefer PR and variants to pure FPTP.
Having just read futher up the thread. The idea that a coalition government is illigitmate is just absurd. Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
Not by what they voted for they're not.
Yes they are. Voters who voted SPD are being represented by SPD MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for. Voters who voted CDU are being represented by CDU MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for. Voters who voted CSU are being represented by CSU MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for.
Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
No, the politicians elected are getting their bums into government, getting ministerial salaries and limousines etc but the voters aren't getting what they voted for.
We only need to look in the UK. In 2010 are you claiming that Liberal Democrat voters in 2010 voted to make David Cameron Prime Minister and to have Tuition Fees trebled?
I wasn't a member at the time, but wasn't the Coalition agreement endorsed in a members ballot of LibDems?
I don't think so, I believe it was endorsed by LD MPs and the Executive but not members and certainly not voters.
The idea you can simply add all LD voters and all Tory voters together and by magic claim a majority voted for this agreement is nonsense. Two Liberal Democrat MPs (including Charles Kennedy himself) voted against the agreement. There would have been a great many Liberal Democrat voters thinking the same as Charles Kennedy.
Same too for the Tories.
I do not claim "a majority voted for this agreement". I claim that a majority voted for that collection of politicians. Those politicians then (should) negotiate the best they can for those who voted for them. That is what democratic politics is about.
But our system is better.
Under our system the negotiations to form a coalition, a manifesto took place before the election and the voters go into the election fully educated on what the various internal coalitions look like and choose the most popular one of those. That is what democratic politics is about.
You could equally say that party activists, who often have more extreme and confrontational views than most voters, determine what's on offer in the UK. I know plenty of voters in PR countries who vote for parties knowing that the party they vote for is extremely unlikely to get a majority and also very much want "their" parties policies to be moderated by having to compromise with other parties. They are very much voting for their party to be part of a coalition.
It doesn't take much political maturity to understand this.
This comes back to one of the small elephants in the room about GB political parties; their tiny memberships.
Go back to the 1950s, and it's thought that there were about 2.8 million Conservative party members. That was about 1 in 5 of their voters in the 1951 election. Now that ratio is more like 1 in 50.
Now, it's probably the case that a lot of those 2.8 million were there for social respectability, cheap drinks and the marriage bureau. But I'd happily bet a shiny sixpence that the gap between the views of members and voters is waaaaay wider now than then.
But the parties represent the voters not the members.
Parties that have tried to be more purist to what the members want - like eg Corbyn's Labour - have not won general elections.
General election winners are parties that have formed a broad coalition of voters.
Smart parties, parties that want to win, will seek to attract broad coalitions of voters. However, there's plenty of evidence that parties go through phases of thinking more about pleasing themselves than pleasing the public.
Labour in the early 1980's. The Conservatives under IDS. Labour again in the 2010's. I would argue (though I'm sure you'd disagree) Conservatives post-Cameron, and in an ongoing way.
My theory (though I can't prove it) is that is that parties in the 1950's and 1960's were better anchored in the general populace because more of the the populace were party members. Since then, the temptation to drift off into self indulgence has been hard to ignore, and multiple defeats have been needed to bring parties back to their senses. And more recently still, the calculation has been "the other lot are so bad that we can pleasure ourselves and still win".
Having just read futher up the thread. The idea that a coalition government is illigitmate is just absurd. Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
And yet in the one example in recent times where the UK had such a coalition, the people who most support PR bitched like hell about it, and the party which for decades had been advocating exactly that as their principal political aim now regards that one example of it in practice as a disaster which tainted their party for a generation. Rather odd, is it not, to argue for a great idea in theory but a disaster [in their own view] in practice?
Looking back, what was so wrong with the 10-15 gov't ?
Nothing, it was the best in 50 years with the exception of the Thatcher governments, which were a very special case. All the more bizarre that the LibDems regard it as a badge of shame.
It destroyed two parties and is the reason you are now politically homeless.
Having just read futher up the thread. The idea that a coalition government is illigitmate is just absurd. Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
And yet in the one example in recent times where the UK had such a coalition, the people who most support PR bitched like hell about it, and the party which for decades had been advocating exactly that as their principal political aim now regards that one example of it in practice as a disaster which tainted their party for a generation. Rather odd, is it not, to argue for a great idea in theory but a disaster [in their own view] in practice?
Looking back, what was so wrong with the 10-15 gov't ?
Nothing, it was the best in 50 years with the exception of the Thatcher governments, which were a very special case. All the more bizarre that the LibDems regard it as a badge of shame.
The Tories screwed the Lib Dems over. Which at one level is normal. They have no interest in boosting a rival party. On the other hand the Tory government needed the Lib Dems at the time and the latter made real contributions to the government. Making the experience so unpleasant for their partners doesn't encourage them to engage with it later on. Not sure Cameron managed that tension well.
Yes and no. Clegg was happy being screwed. The policy shift on tuition fees? Made by him and Laws and not The lesson isn't that the coalition government was bad. It wasn't. Its that Clegg was happy to give ground for little reward .
That doesn't seem to be the lesson the LDs have learned though. They do seem to have taken the lesson that coalitions are bad, not that they negotiated poorly in the last one, given their torturous reaction to the possibility of being kingmakers, never mind likelihood.
The bounties were allegedly to kill coalition -- including British -- troops. What's our new National Security Adviser said about it? Or the old one? And when will Boris publish the report into Russian interference in our politics?
If the Conservatives were clean, they would publish it. They haven´t, so they aren´t. The Johnson government is not legitimate.
You may not like this government, you may want to attack it, but it is the most legitimate government in recent history after winning an 80 seat majority just 8 months ago
Err, with only a minority (43%) of the vote and with more people voting for parties opposing its principal Brexit policy than voted for it.
Name one party opposing Brexit that you think should be the government?
The government won millions of votes more than any other party. You can't sum up all other parties votes and add them together that's not legitimate, if the other parties voters all wanted the same thing they'd have all voted for the same party. They chose not to do so.
Whilst what you say is obviously true, and of course the govt should be in power, there are different levels of legitimacy. If it had won over half the vote that would have made it more legitimate even if thats a extremely harsh bar to set given our political system. Similarly if they paid more respect to the rule of law and our unwritten constitution they would be more legitimate. Of course they are the most legitimate available because they won the election but their actions and behaviour undermine that.
Can you name any western countries in your definition which are legitimate with your phrasing?
And no coalitions don't count unless they were a defined coalition standing in the election united (like the Coalition in Australia) since the public did not vote for them.
"coalitions don't count" is just something you made up because you seem to like the not so democratic UK system.
I didn't make it up, coalitions did not get voted for at the election unless they were a defined coalition at the election.
If the desire is to get the mandate of 50% plus of votes at the election then you need 50% plus of votes at the election. The coalitions only got 50% plus at the election if they stood at the election.
As I said, something you just made up.
Here in Germany there is a legitimate elected coalition government. The proportion of people complaining about the voting system here is tiny compared to the UK. Once you've persuaded some Germans that their government is less legitimate than the UK's I'll start listening to your nonsense.
The only ones whinging here are those who don't like the results. When it was put to a referendum two-thirds of the country chose to keep our voting system.
Just because sore losers whinge doesn't make them right.
The German government is less legitimate than the British government. In Britain quite self-evidently 44% of the country voted for Johnson to be PM and 44% of the country voted for the government we have.
In Germany by contrast 33% of the country voted for Merkel to be Chancellor and 0% of the country voted for the government they have.
The fact that our government was determined on election night while the German government was determined SIX MONTHS after the election shows the farce of claims that electoral system is "more legitimate".
This is absolutely right. With PR the only ones who win are the politicians. No one can know what the final Government make up will be so no one can say they got the Government they voted for.
If there were any truth in that, there would be a lot more politicians angling for PR!
That our politicians remain so keen on our current system, where most of them have jobs for life mostly immune from electoral pressure, tells us all we need to know.
If you are in a safe seat yes, if you are in a marginal constituency you would be less safe than being elected on the list in your region under PR
This is right. There will be no portillo moment in Germany (which has a FPTP/PR hybrid). If a high-up candidate looses their seat (direct mandate) then they will almost always get into the Bundestag via the party list for the PR part.
I still prefer PR and variants to pure FPTP.
Having just read futher up the thread. The idea that a coalition government is illigitmate is just absurd. Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
Not by what they voted for they're not.
Yes they are. Voters who voted SPD are being represented by SPD MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for. Voters who voted CDU are being represented by CDU MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for. Voters who voted CSU are being represented by CSU MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for.
Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
That depends entirely on whether or not the views of those MPs is being represented in Government. Would you say that the majority of those who voted Lib Dem in 2010 had their views represented in the 2010-2015 Coalition? I suspect not. The same would apply to many of those who voted Tory in that election.
Coalitions are a great excuse for party leaders to ignore their promises and ignore the electorate.
The electorate want different things. FPTP ignores a lot, in fact usually the majority, of the electorate.
No it doesn't as if the electorate feels ignored under FPTP then they can elect someone else under FPTP. The opposition can appeal to unite those who feel ignored behind them in order to win power.
They can elect only one alternative under FPTP. If you didn't like Boris last time, the only feasible alternative was Corbyn. That's not much of a choice.
Having just read futher up the thread. The idea that a coalition government is illigitmate is just absurd. Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
And yet in the one example in recent times where the UK had such a coalition, the people who most support PR bitched like hell about it, and the party which for decades had been advocating exactly that as their principal political aim now regards that one example of it in practice as a disaster which tainted their party for a generation. Rather odd, is it not, to argue for a great idea in theory but a disaster [in their own view] in practice?
Looking back, what was so wrong with the 10-15 gov't ?
Nothing, it was the best in 50 years with the exception of the Thatcher governments, which were a very special case. All the more bizarre that the LibDems regard it as a badge of shame.
It destroyed two parties and is the reason you are now politically homeless.
The bounties were allegedly to kill coalition -- including British -- troops. What's our new National Security Adviser said about it? Or the old one? And when will Boris publish the report into Russian interference in our politics?
If the Conservatives were clean, they would publish it. They haven´t, so they aren´t. The Johnson government is not legitimate.
You may not like this government, you may want to attack it, but it is the most legitimate government in recent history after winning an 80 seat majority just 8 months ago
Err, with only a minority (43%) of the vote and with more people voting for parties opposing its principal Brexit policy than voted for it.
Name one party opposing Brexit that you think should be the government?
The government won millions of votes more than any other party. You can't sum up all other parties votes and add them together that's not legitimate, if the other parties voters all wanted the same thing they'd have all voted for the same party. They chose not to do so.
Whilst what you say is obviously true, and of course the govt should be in power, there are different levels of legitimacy. If it had won over half the vote that would have made it more legitimate even if thats a extremely harsh bar to set given our political system. Similarly if they paid more respect to the rule of law and our unwritten constitution they would be more legitimate. Of course they are the most legitimate available because they won the election but their actions and behaviour undermine that.
Can you name any western countries in your definition which are legitimate with your phrasing?
And no coalitions don't count unless they were a defined coalition standing in the election united (like the Coalition in Australia) since the public did not vote for them.
"coalitions don't count" is just something you made up because you seem to like the not so democratic UK system.
I didn't make it up, coalitions did not get voted for at the election unless they were a defined coalition at the election.
If the desire is to get the mandate of 50% plus of votes at the election then you need 50% plus of votes at the election. The coalitions only got 50% plus at the election if they stood at the election.
As I said, something you just made up.
Here in Germany there is a legitimate elected coalition government. The proportion of people complaining about the voting system here is tiny compared to the UK. Once you've persuaded some Germans that their government is less legitimate than the UK's I'll start listening to your nonsense.
The only ones whinging here are those who don't like the results. When it was put to a referendum two-thirds of the country chose to keep our voting system.
Just because sore losers whinge doesn't make them right.
The German government is less legitimate than the British government. In Britain quite self-evidently 44% of the country voted for Johnson to be PM and 44% of the country voted for the government we have.
In Germany by contrast 33% of the country voted for Merkel to be Chancellor and 0% of the country voted for the government they have.
The fact that our government was determined on election night while the German government was determined SIX MONTHS after the election shows the farce of claims that electoral system is "more legitimate".
This is absolutely right. With PR the only ones who win are the politicians. No one can know what the final Government make up will be so no one can say they got the Government they voted for.
If there were any truth in that, there would be a lot more politicians angling for PR!
That our politicians remain so keen on our current system, where most of them have jobs for life mostly immune from electoral pressure, tells us all we need to know.
If you are in a safe seat yes, if you are in a marginal constituency you would be less safe than being elected on the list in your region under PR
This is right. There will be no portillo moment in Germany (which has a FPTP/PR hybrid). If a high-up candidate looses their seat (direct mandate) then they will almost always get into the Bundestag via the party list for the PR part.
I still prefer PR and variants to pure FPTP.
Having just read futher up the thread. The idea that a coalition government is illigitmate is just absurd. Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
Not by what they voted for they're not.
Yes they are. Voters who voted SPD are being represented by SPD MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for. Voters who voted CDU are being represented by CDU MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for. Voters who voted CSU are being represented by CSU MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for.
Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
No, the politicians elected are getting their bums into government, getting ministerial salaries and limousines etc but the voters aren't getting what they voted for.
We only need to look in the UK. In 2010 are you claiming that Liberal Democrat voters in 2010 voted to make David Cameron Prime Minister and to have Tuition Fees trebled?
I wasn't a member at the time, but wasn't the Coalition agreement endorsed in a members ballot of LibDems?
I don't think so, I believe it was endorsed by LD MPs and the Executive but not members and certainly not voters.
The idea you can simply add all LD voters and all Tory voters together and by magic claim a majority voted for this agreement is nonsense. Two Liberal Democrat MPs (including Charles Kennedy himself) voted against the agreement. There would have been a great many Liberal Democrat voters thinking the same as Charles Kennedy.
Same too for the Tories.
I do not claim "a majority voted for this agreement". I claim that a majority voted for that collection of politicians. Those politicians then (should) negotiate the best they can for those who voted for them. That is what democratic politics is about.
But our system is better.
Under our system the negotiations to form a coalition, a manifesto took place before the election and the voters go into the election fully educated on what the various internal coalitions look like and choose the most popular one of those. That is what democratic politics is about.
You could equally say that party activists, who often have more extreme and confrontational views than most voters, determine what's on offer in the UK. I know plenty of voters in PR countries who vote for parties knowing that the party they vote for is extremely unlikely to get a majority and also very much want "their" parties policies to be moderated by having to compromise with other parties. They are very much voting for their party to be part of a coalition.
It doesn't take much political maturity to understand this.
This comes back to one of the small elephants in the room about GB political parties; their tiny memberships.
Go back to the 1950s, and it's thought that there were about 2.8 million Conservative party members. That was about 1 in 5 of their voters in the 1951 election. Now that ratio is more like 1 in 50.
Now, it's probably the case that a lot of those 2.8 million were there for social respectability, cheap drinks and the marriage bureau. But I'd happily bet a shiny sixpence that the gap between the views of members and voters is waaaaay wider now than then.
But the parties represent the voters not the members.
Parties that have tried to be more purist to what the members want - like eg Corbyn's Labour - have not won general elections.
General election winners are parties that have formed a broad coalition of voters.
Smart parties, parties that want to win, will seek to attract broad coalitions of voters. However, there's plenty of evidence that parties go through phases of thinking more about pleasing themselves than pleasing the public.
Labour in the early 1980's. The Conservatives under IDS. Labour again in the 2010's. I would argue (though I'm sure you'd disagree) post-Cameron, and in an ongoing way.
My theory (though I can't prove it) is that is that parties in the 1950's and 1960's were better anchored in the general populace because more of the the populace were party members. Since then, the temptation to drift off into self indulgence has been hard to ignore, and multiple defeats have been needed to bring parties back to their senses. And more recently still, the calculation has been "the other lot are so bad that we can pleasure ourselves and still win".
I would agree with your first three examples but not your last one.
I see no evidence that the Tories under Johnson aren't trying to please the public, quite the opposite Johnson is routinely attacked as being "populist" - as were Blair and Cameron.
The fact that the parties that seek to please themselves and not the public tend to lose elections is not a fact lost upon smart politicians. Self indulgence leaders to Leaders of the Opposition like Corbyn and William Hague - it doesn't lead to Prime Ministers like them.
I know it's a line you like to punt, but do your genuinely believe that folk stopped voting LD because they weren't blowing their own coalition trumpet rather than voters making their own judgment on the LD's 5 years in government?
Yes, why on earth would anyone vote for a party which trashes its own record on its most distinctive policy position?
If only the LDs had been more fabulous about the coalition they might have stopped those 3 voters going to the Tories and possibly even the 2 going UKIP.
"If a wife tells her husband that he is shirking child care responsibilities and he responds by refusing to acknowledge that it’s even happening, he is gaslighting her."
You ask "what isn't clear about that explanation?"
You did X. No I didn't do X.
That is gaslighting?
If he is shirking childcare responsibilities and he knows he is but pretends to her that it isn't happening, I think that is an example of gaslighting. You are presuming that he actually isn't shirking childcare responsibilities. I think the unspoken assumption underlying the example is that the shirking is in fact taking place. I took that as read. What may be happening is that the husband doesn't know he has the childcare responsibilities, simply assuming that the kid will get looked after even if he does nothing about it and failing to acknowledge the burden that places on his wife. In which case he is not gaslighting her, just being a twat.
It is what I imagine is a fairly typical argument amongst people that happens all the time. How you get to gaslighting from "You did this" "No I didn't" is quite a stretch.
That you have to go into "unspoken assumptions" proves my point.
I think the missing piece, which would perhaps make it more clear to you, is the element of power or control necessary in the relationship.
In the case of, for example, an individual confronting a bureaucracy which simply refuses to acknowledge what it has done, then the term can be quite apt. I'm pretty sure some of the sub postmasters who fell victim to the Post Office accounting debacle began to doubt their own sanity at times.
It is undoubtedly abusive or corrupt or inept behaviour but calling it "gaslighting" doesn't help clarity.
Say you and I were in a relationship (I know, hard to believe, you don't seem my type, but let's suspend disbelief). You start to feel like you are left to do all the housework, and confront me about it. I know that you are right, I am a lazy shit and waste my time arguing with right wing loons on the internet instead of ever doing anything useful. But instead of saying Yes, you are right, I will try to pull my weight more in the future, I lie and tell you that I actually cleaned the house when you were out. Didn't you notice? That's typical, whenever I do anything to help you don't even notice it, you're just a stupid nag. You think, wow maybe he's right, come to think of it maybe the house did look a bit cleaner on Thursday, I must have just not really noticed, I don't know what's wrong with me. I'm so stupid. That is gaslighting. Hope that helps.
Yes I see. But I also see no need for a whole new word to describe it.
It destroyed two parties and is the reason you are now politically homeless.
No, I don't think the coalition destroyed the Conservative Party. It was the referendum result, and even more May's disastrous failure in GE2017, combined with the decades-long problem of EU-hatred in the party, which did that.
The bounties were allegedly to kill coalition -- including British -- troops. What's our new National Security Adviser said about it? Or the old one? And when will Boris publish the report into Russian interference in our politics?
If the Conservatives were clean, they would publish it. They haven´t, so they aren´t. The Johnson government is not legitimate.
You may not like this government, you may want to attack it, but it is the most legitimate government in recent history after winning an 80 seat majority just 8 months ago
Err, with only a minority (43%) of the vote and with more people voting for parties opposing its principal Brexit policy than voted for it.
Name one party opposing Brexit that you think should be the government?
The government won millions of votes more than any other party. You can't sum up all other parties votes and add them together that's not legitimate, if the other parties voters all wanted the same thing they'd have all voted for the same party. They chose not to do so.
Whilst what you say is obviously true, and of course the govt should be in power, there are different levels of legitimacy. If it had won over half the vote that would have made it more legitimate even if thats a extremely harsh bar to set given our political system. Similarly if they paid more respect to the rule of law and our unwritten constitution they would be more legitimate. Of course they are the most legitimate available because they won the election but their actions and behaviour undermine that.
Can you name any western countries in your definition which are legitimate with your phrasing?
And no coalitions don't count unless they were a defined coalition standing in the election united (like the Coalition in Australia) since the public did not vote for them.
"coalitions don't count" is just something you made up because you seem to like the not so democratic UK system.
I didn't make it up, coalitions did not get voted for at the election unless they were a defined coalition at the election.
If the desire is to get the mandate of 50% plus of votes at the election then you need 50% plus of votes at the election. The coalitions only got 50% plus at the election if they stood at the election.
As I said, something you just made up.
Here in Germany there is a legitimate elected coalition government. The proportion of people complaining about the voting system here is tiny compared to the UK. Once you've persuaded some Germans that their government is less legitimate than the UK's I'll start listening to your nonsense.
The only ones whinging here are those who don't like the results. When it was put to a referendum two-thirds of the country chose to keep our voting system.
Just because sore losers whinge doesn't make them right.
The German government is less legitimate than the British government. In Britain quite self-evidently 44% of the country voted for Johnson to be PM and 44% of the country voted for the government we have.
In Germany by contrast 33% of the country voted for Merkel to be Chancellor and 0% of the country voted for the government they have.
The fact that our government was determined on election night while the German government was determined SIX MONTHS after the election shows the farce of claims that electoral system is "more legitimate".
This is absolutely right. With PR the only ones who win are the politicians. No one can know what the final Government make up will be so no one can say they got the Government they voted for.
If there were any truth in that, there would be a lot more politicians angling for PR!
That our politicians remain so keen on our current system, where most of them have jobs for life mostly immune from electoral pressure, tells us all we need to know.
If you are in a safe seat yes, if you are in a marginal constituency you would be less safe than being elected on the list in your region under PR
This is right. There will be no portillo moment in Germany (which has a FPTP/PR hybrid). If a high-up candidate looses their seat (direct mandate) then they will almost always get into the Bundestag via the party list for the PR part.
I still prefer PR and variants to pure FPTP.
Having just read futher up the thread. The idea that a coalition government is illigitmate is just absurd. Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
Not by what they voted for they're not.
Yes they are. Voters who voted SPD are being represented by SPD MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for. Voters who voted CDU are being represented by CDU MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for. Voters who voted CSU are being represented by CSU MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for.
Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
That depends entirely on whether or not the views of those MPs is being represented in Government. Would you say that the majority of those who voted Lib Dem in 2010 had their views represented in the 2010-2015 Coalition? I suspect not. The same would apply to many of those who voted Tory in that election.
Coalitions are a great excuse for party leaders to ignore their promises and ignore the electorate.
The electorate want different things. FPTP ignores a lot, in fact usually the majority, of the electorate.
No it doesn't as if the electorate feels ignored under FPTP then they can elect someone else under FPTP. The opposition can appeal to unite those who feel ignored behind them in order to win power.
They can elect only one alternative under FPTP. If you didn't like Boris last time, the only feasible alternative was Corbyn. That's not much of a choice.
No but its an educated and informed choice. Under PR the public gets no say once the coalition is finally agreed since the election has already happened.
And third parties can arise and be transformative. The SNP, Lib Dems, UKIP/Brexit have all had an impact even under FPTP. Even Labour itself. All it takes is a party that can appeal to the public in a different way to the existing parties - or that is seen doing so, so one of the existing parties responds in order to keep/grab those voters.
It destroyed two parties and is the reason you are now politically homeless.
No, I don't think the coalition destroyed the Conservative Party. It was the referendum result, and even more May's disastrous failure in GE2017, combined with the decades-long problem of EU-hatred in the party, which did that.
Euroscepticism was an issue left unresolved from the late 80s/early 90s at the very least. Major using a three line whip on Maastricht didn't resolve the issue, it just finally blew under Cameron but a reckoning was coming for decades.
Having just read futher up the thread. The idea that a coalition government is illigitmate is just absurd. Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
And yet in the one example in recent times where the UK had such a coalition, the people who most support PR bitched like hell about it, and the party which for decades had been advocating exactly that as their principal political aim now regards that one example of it in practice as a disaster which tainted their party for a generation. Rather odd, is it not, to argue for a great idea in theory but a disaster [in their own view] in practice?
Looking back, what was so wrong with the 10-15 gov't ?
Nothing, it was the best in 50 years with the exception of the Thatcher governments, which were a very special case. All the more bizarre that the LibDems regard it as a badge of shame.
It destroyed two parties and is the reason you are now politically homeless.
Doesn't mean it itself was not a good government.
It was. Indeed increasingly the Coalition will be seen as a golden period of good government, contrasting sharply with the post 2015 shambles on both sides of the House.
No way will the LibDems prop up a Brexiteer Tory government next election. It would have to be a very different Tory party to get supported in the future.
Having just read futher up the thread. The idea that a coalition government is illigitmate is just absurd. Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
And yet in the one example in recent times where the UK had such a coalition, the people who most support PR bitched like hell about it, and the party which for decades had been advocating exactly that as their principal political aim now regards that one example of it in practice as a disaster which tainted their party for a generation. Rather odd, is it not, to argue for a great idea in theory but a disaster [in their own view] in practice?
Looking back, what was so wrong with the 10-15 gov't ?
Nothing, it was the best in 50 years with the exception of the Thatcher governments, which were a very special case. All the more bizarre that the LibDems regard it as a badge of shame.
The Tories screwed the Lib Dems over. Which at one level is normal. They have no interest in boosting a rival party. On the other hand the Tory government needed the Lib Dems at the time and the latter made real contributions to the government. Making the experience so unpleasant for their partners doesn't encourage them to engage with it later on. Not sure Cameron managed that tension well.
Quite the opposite, he managed it exceptionally well. The government worked well, and the LibDems were fully involved via the Quad. It wasn't Cameron's fault that the LibDems went around looking thoroughly miserable at having finally got what they'd wanted for decades.
Perhaps they always would have been miserable in any government, which is exactly the point - if so, it rather torpedoes the whole concept of coalitions, and therefore of PR, in the UK at least.
Why does Libdems looking miserable torpedo the idea of coalitions???
Surely any objective observer would conclude that the 2010-2015 coalition with Cameron as PM, for all its faults, was still a lot better than the 2015-2016 Cameron-led conservative majority government, and the awful Conservative majority governments that followed. And, I would argue, more in tune with the majority of UK people.
Having just read futher up the thread. The idea that a coalition government is illigitmate is just absurd. Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
And yet in the one example in recent times where the UK had such a coalition, the people who most support PR bitched like hell about it, and the party which for decades had been advocating exactly that as their principal political aim now regards that one example of it in practice as a disaster which tainted their party for a generation. Rather odd, is it not, to argue for a great idea in theory but a disaster [in their own view] in practice?
Looking back, what was so wrong with the 10-15 gov't ?
Nothing, it was the best in 50 years with the exception of the Thatcher governments, which were a very special case. All the more bizarre that the LibDems regard it as a badge of shame.
The Tories screwed the Lib Dems over. Which at one level is normal. They have no interest in boosting a rival party. On the other hand the Tory government needed the Lib Dems at the time and the latter made real contributions to the government. Making the experience so unpleasant for their partners doesn't encourage them to engage with it later on. Not sure Cameron managed that tension well.
The Tories didn't screw the Lib Dems over, they screwed themselves over.
The Lib Dems brought good ideas to the table and the Tories happily took them then spent years saying "we've done this".
The Lib Dems didn't shout about their achievements, they looked weak and infirm. They didn't seem proud of what they'd done - and if they're not why should anyone else?
Things like the pupil premium, raising the tax threshold, the Tories more happily boast about what they've done than the party that suggested them at the election.
I agree the Lib Dems willingly walked into the trap set them by the Tories and can be said to be authors of their own misfortune. They won't want to author another misfortune like that again.
My question is whether the Tories should have been in the business of setting traps for their coalition partners and if it ultimately damaged them too. William Hague who was involved in the negotiations boasted at the time that he had killed off the Lib Dems
It destroyed two parties and is the reason you are now politically homeless.
No, I don't think the coalition destroyed the Conservative Party. It was the referendum result, and even more May's disastrous failure in GE2017, combined with the decades-long problem of EU-hatred in the party, which did that.
The referendum, and its result, had a lot to do with Cameron's dire leadership over the previous 6 years.
"If a wife tells her husband that he is shirking child care responsibilities and he responds by refusing to acknowledge that it’s even happening, he is gaslighting her."
You ask "what isn't clear about that explanation?"
You did X. No I didn't do X.
That is gaslighting?
If he is shirking childcare responsibilities and he knows he is but pretends to her that it isn't happening, I think that is an example of gaslighting. You are presuming that he actually isn't shirking childcare responsibilities. I think the unspoken assumption underlying the example is that the shirking is in fact taking place. I took that as read. What may be happening is that the husband doesn't know he has the childcare responsibilities, simply assuming that the kid will get looked after even if he does nothing about it and failing to acknowledge the burden that places on his wife. In which case he is not gaslighting her, just being a twat.
It is what I imagine is a fairly typical argument amongst people that happens all the time. How you get to gaslighting from "You did this" "No I didn't" is quite a stretch.
That you have to go into "unspoken assumptions" proves my point.
I think the missing piece, which would perhaps make it more clear to you, is the element of power or control necessary in the relationship.
In the case of, for example, an individual confronting a bureaucracy which simply refuses to acknowledge what it has done, then the term can be quite apt. I'm pretty sure some of the sub postmasters who fell victim to the Post Office accounting debacle began to doubt their own sanity at times.
It is undoubtedly abusive or corrupt or inept behaviour but calling it "gaslighting" doesn't help clarity.
Say you and I were in a relationship (I know, hard to believe, you don't seem my type, but let's suspend disbelief). You start to feel like you are left to do all the housework, and confront me about it. I know that you are right, I am a lazy shit and waste my time arguing with right wing loons on the internet instead of ever doing anything useful. But instead of saying Yes, you are right, I will try to pull my weight more in the future, I lie and tell you that I actually cleaned the house when you were out. Didn't you notice? That's typical, whenever I do anything to help you don't even notice it, you're just a stupid nag. You think, wow maybe he's right, come to think of it maybe the house did look a bit cleaner on Thursday, I must have just not really noticed, I don't know what's wrong with me. I'm so stupid. That is gaslighting. Hope that helps.
And you drip drip this message out to others so they end up believing it. Victim and abuser have now in the eyes of the world swapped places.
Example in politics? The Kavanagh hearings imo had a gaslighty air at times.
It destroyed two parties and is the reason you are now politically homeless.
No, I don't think the coalition destroyed the Conservative Party. It was the referendum result, and even more May's disastrous failure in GE2017, combined with the decades-long problem of EU-hatred in the party, which did that.
Euroscepticism was an issue left unresolved from the late 80s/early 90s at the very least. Major using a three line whip on Maastricht didn't resolve the issue, it just finally blew under Cameron but a reckoning was coming for decades.
Now that we've taken back control, Mark François has to write begging letters to the EU, pleading for us to be spared the consequences of that reckoning.
The bounties were allegedly to kill coalition -- including British -- troops. What's our new National Security Adviser said about it? Or the old one? And when will Boris publish the report into Russian interference in our politics?
If the Conservatives were clean, they would publish it. They haven´t, so they aren´t. The Johnson government is not legitimate.
You may not like this government, you may want to attack it, but it is the most legitimate government in recent history after winning an 80 seat majority just 8 months ago
Err, with only a minority (43%) of the vote and with more people voting for parties opposing its principal Brexit policy than voted for it.
Name one party opposing Brexit that you think should be the government?
The government won millions of votes more than any other party. You can't sum up all other parties votes and add them together that's not legitimate, if the other parties voters all wanted the same thing they'd have all voted for the same party. They chose not to do so.
Whilst what you say is obviously true, and of course the govt should be in power, there are different levels of legitimacy. If it had won over half the vote that would have made it more legitimate even if thats a extremely harsh bar to set given our political system. Similarly if they paid more respect to the rule of law and our unwritten constitution they would be more legitimate. Of course they are the most legitimate available because they won the election but their actions and behaviour undermine that.
Can you name any western countries in your definition which are legitimate with your phrasing?
And no coalitions don't count unless they were a defined coalition standing in the election united (like the Coalition in Australia) since the public did not vote for them.
"coalitions don't count" is just something you made up because you seem to like the not so democratic UK system.
I didn't make it up, coalitions did not get voted for at the election unless they were a defined coalition at the election.
If the desire is to get the mandate of 50% plus of votes at the election then you need 50% plus of votes at the election. The coalitions only got 50% plus at the election if they stood at the election.
As I said, something you just made up.
Here in Germany there is a legitimate elected coalition government. The proportion of people complaining about the voting system here is tiny compared to the UK. Once you've persuaded some Germans that their government is less legitimate than the UK's I'll start listening to your nonsense.
The only ones whinging here are those who don't like the results. When it was put to a referendum two-thirds of the country chose to keep our voting system.
Just because sore losers whinge doesn't make them right.
The German government is less legitimate than the British government. In Britain quite self-evidently 44% of the country voted for Johnson to be PM and 44% of the country voted for the government we have.
In Germany by contrast 33% of the country voted for Merkel to be Chancellor and 0% of the country voted for the government they have.
The fact that our government was determined on election night while the German government was determined SIX MONTHS after the election shows the farce of claims that electoral system is "more legitimate".
This is absolutely right. With PR the only ones who win are the politicians. No one can know what the final Government make up will be so no one can say they got the Government they voted for.
If there were any truth in that, there would be a lot more politicians angling for PR!
That our politicians remain so keen on our current system, where most of them have jobs for life mostly immune from electoral pressure, tells us all we need to know.
If you are in a safe seat yes, if you are in a marginal constituency you would be less safe than being elected on the list in your region under PR
This is right. There will be no portillo moment in Germany (which has a FPTP/PR hybrid). If a high-up candidate looses their seat (direct mandate) then they will almost always get into the Bundestag via the party list for the PR part.
I still prefer PR and variants to pure FPTP.
Having just read futher up the thread. The idea that a coalition government is illigitmate is just absurd. Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
Not by what they voted for they're not.
Yes they are. Voters who voted SPD are being represented by SPD MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for. Voters who voted CDU are being represented by CDU MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for. Voters who voted CSU are being represented by CSU MPs in the government, for the policies that they voted for.
Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
No, the politicians elected are getting their bums into government, getting ministerial salaries and limousines etc but the voters aren't getting what they voted for.
We only need to look in the UK. In 2010 are you claiming that Liberal Democrat voters in 2010 voted to make David Cameron Prime Minister and to have Tuition Fees trebled?
I wasn't a member at the time, but wasn't the Coalition agreement endorsed in a members ballot of LibDems?
I don't think so, I believe it was endorsed by LD MPs and the Executive but not members and certainly not voters.
The idea you can simply add all LD voters and all Tory voters together and by magic claim a majority voted for this agreement is nonsense. Two Liberal Democrat MPs (including Charles Kennedy himself) voted against the agreement. There would have been a great many Liberal Democrat voters thinking the same as Charles Kennedy.
Same too for the Tories.
I do not claim "a majority voted for this agreement". I claim that a majority voted for that collection of politicians. Those politicians then (should) negotiate the best they can for those who voted for them. That is what democratic politics is about.
But our system is better.
Under our system the negotiations to form a coalition, a manifesto took place before the election and the voters go into the election fully educated on what the various internal coalitions look like and choose the most popular one of those. That is what democratic politics is about.
The flip side is that you get far reduced choice. There are loads of areas involved, and these get boiled down to two choices - and if both parties offer the same thing, you get no choice at all.
It's arguably why the entire Brexit debacle happened. Neither party offered an exit or even a meaningful reduction in EU measures.
A PR system gives the voters the opportunity to determine the representation of their views in Parliament - all their views, across the entire spectrum. Not based on the Party Leaders second-guessing and judging what the electorate is allowed to choose from.
If 35% of the population want x, 35% of the representatives will argue for x in Parliament, and will have an opportunity to push for x in coalition negotiations. They probably won't get it all (unless the rest of the population and their representatives don't really mind either way), but they may get some of it, or at least will get to represent that view and push for it.
If they make a bad job of representing that view, we kick the representatives out and try with others.
Under FPTP, they get nothing. Unless the vote is split between other parties which may be standing on completely different things, in which case they could even get a majority (like Labour in 2005). They don't get moderated by other views, they don't have to seek consensus or agreement - they just impose it.
For me, it's a sort of free market thing. FPTP reduces the choices and feedback mechanisms on the views and ideologies. You get what the top politicians of two specific parties decide to offer, and nothing else. They're second-guessing which elements of a huge and interrelated offering are what does or does not appeal (and that also depends on the offering the other one gave, which might have attraction and repulsion in completely different areas and for different reasons). It gives monopolistic strength to the Big Two and insulates them from the feedback (doesn't matter how bad they are, they're incredibly unlikely to weaken below 160 seats (Tories) or 200 seats (Labour), and to ever be more than 2 elections from absolute power.
The true strength of liberalism, euroscepticism, secularism, internationalism, collectivism, conservatism, environmentalism, moralism, or whatever in the electorate isn't represented in our representative democracy. It can't be.
I disagree with your conclusion. Just because we don't have liberals, eurosceptics, secularist segregated into their own parties doesn't mean they're not represented in our representative democracy.
I could point to an MP of the top of my head who represents every single one of those characterists you've named. Every single one of them.
That's not because their party is necessarily like that, but because our parties form coalitions and those coalitions adapt - but importantly the coalitions present themselves for what they are before the election rather than afterwards. Its more intellectually honest.
For me its a sort of free market thing too. PR is like suggesting that you can only buy alcohol from an off licence, can only buy meat from a butcher, can only buy vegetables from a greengrocer. Whereas FPTP is simply a rough and ready free market where more well rounded parties are formed that do a bit of everything and you can freely choose, with full knowledge, what it is that you want.
Our parties adapt really well to the public because of the ruthless nature of First Past the Post that rewards success and penalises failure. If 35% of the public wants x then that is a major incentive for one or both of the parties to prioritise x in order to win that 35% of the vote, they don't need to wait until after the election to make compromises.
Just because you can see MPs who represent one of each of the characteristics doesn't mean that I (or any particular elector) can vote for that stance.
The Government, under FPTP, will consist of a Conservative one or a Labour one. It doesn't matter if some MP somewhere else in the country is a great match for all of my beliefs and desires. I probably won't get to vote for that MP, and I certainly won't get a Government that represents it - unless Boris or Corbyn (last time around) agreed with it. And the choice boils down to which one I would find least repugnant. Not which one represents my views.
The FPTP offering gives a take-it-or-leave-it offering. You go to the butcher and can get one of two things. You can't even ask for anything else. A or B. Nothing else. No other choice. If your views aren't represented (eg "May or Corbyn"?), it's tough. Your views aren't important in this Parliament. Unless the Party itself just happens to carry out backroom manouevring that ends up with an outcome you like, but that's not down to the voters.
The Parties will adjust to what the voters say they want - based on their own rationalisation of what they really want (the voters say they want this, they mean they want to nationalise everything/ the voters say they want that, they mean they want to kick immigrants out) and what the other party is saying (they've lost touch; we can say or do what we like).
If 35% of the voters want x, then the voters can vote for x (rather than against Corbyn, or against May, or whatever) and don't have to vote for a, b, c, k, l, m, n, o, and p because the other party is offering a load of stuff including more things they find eminently repugnant). And the Parties will be able to see that 35% of the voters do want x, because 35% of the MPs will be elected based on wanting x.
The bounties were allegedly to kill coalition -- including British -- troops. What's our new National Security Adviser said about it? Or the old one? And when will Boris publish the report into Russian interference in our politics?
If the Conservatives were clean, they would publish it. They haven´t, so they aren´t. The Johnson government is not legitimate.
You may not like this government, you may want to attack it, but it is the most legitimate government in recent history after winning an 80 seat majority just 8 months ago
Err, with only a minority (43%) of the vote and with more people voting for parties opposing its principal Brexit policy than voted for it.
Name one party opposing Brexit that you think should be the government?
The government won millions of votes more than any other party. You can't sum up all other parties votes and add them together that's not legitimate, if the other parties voters all wanted the same thing they'd have all voted for the same party. They chose not to do so.
Whilst what you say is obviously true, and of course the govt should be in power, there are different levels of legitimacy. If it had won over half the vote that would have made it more legitimate even if thats a extremely harsh bar to set given our political system. Similarly if they paid more respect to the rule of law and our unwritten constitution they would be more legitimate. Of course they are the most legitimate available because they won the election but their actions and behaviour undermine that.
Can you name any western countries in your definition which are legitimate with your phrasing?
And no coalitions don't count unless they were a defined coalition standing in the election united (like the Coalition in Australia) since the public did not vote for them.
"coalitions don't count" is just something you made up because you seem to like the not so democratic UK system.
I didn't make it up, coalitions did not get voted for at the election unless they were a defined coalition at the election.
If the desire is to get the mandate of 50% plus of votes at the election then you need 50% plus of votes at the election. The coalitions only got 50% plus at the election if they stood at the election.
As I said, something you just made up.
Here in Germany there is a legitimate elected coalition government. The proportion of people complaining about the voting system here is tiny compared to the UK. Once you've persuaded some Germans that their government is less legitimate than the UK's I'll start listening to your nonsense.
The only ones whinging here are those who don't like the results. When it was put to a referendum two-thirds of the country chose to keep our voting system.
Just because sore losers whinge doesn't make them right.
The German government is less legitimate than the British government. In Britain quite self-evidently 44% of the country voted for Johnson to be PM and 44% of the country voted for the government we have.
In Germany by contrast 33% of the country voted for Merkel to be Chancellor and 0% of the country voted for the government they have.
The fact that our government was determined on election night while the German government was determined SIX MONTHS after the election shows the farce of claims that electoral system is "more legitimate".
This is absolutely right. With PR the only ones who win are the politicians. No one can know what the final Government make up will be so no one can say they got the Government they voted for.
If there were any truth in that, there would be a lot more politicians angling for PR!
That our politicians remain so keen on our current system, where most of them have jobs for life mostly immune from electoral pressure, tells us all we need to know.
If you are in a safe seat yes, if you are in a marginal constituency you would be less safe than being elected on the list in your region under PR
This is right. There will be no portillo moment in Germany (which has a FPTP/PR hybrid). If a high-up candidate looses their seat (direct mandate) then they will almost always get into the Bundestag via the party list for the PR part.
I still prefer PR and variants to pure FPTP.
Having just read futher up the thread. The idea that a coalition government is illigitmate is just absurd. Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
So those who voted Liberal Democrat were "represented" when their MPs supported a big rise in tuition fees? That's nice.
Yes. That is what coalition government means - making compromises for both partners. That was of course a helluva compromise but presumably they weighed up what they would achieve in return. Plus as junior partner they had no real choice.
The coalition imo was a perfect example of, er, a coalition. Of course many still don't forgive the LDs for going into power and not enacting 100% of the LD manifesto.
The flaw in the argument for me is that if people vote for someone who says they are going to do X and they then agree to do Not X it is meretricious to claim that those who voted for them on the basis of X are represented. They are not. They are deceived and adding their votes to the votes for the government is simply wrong.
I accept that countries that are used to Coalitions will learn this and vote in the knowledge that this is likely to happen but those who voted Lib Dem in 2010 really struggled to get over it.
But the LDs (in this instance) didn't get voted into government. No one did. The closest was the Cons. Surely people appreciate that if you are not voted into government with a majority then you can't be held to your election promises. I'm sure the LDs said words to the effect of "if we form the next government we will...." Which I'm sure they would have.
But they didn't form the next government, they were invited in as junior partners to a coalition.
That was the only shot at limited power they were given and they took it. Rightly in my view.
I was a fan of the Coalition government. As a socially liberal fiscally conservative voter it probably represented me better than any government in my life time. And I think that the country benefited in a big way so I would certainly agree that they did the right thing. But the argument that they had the support of 50%+ of the electorate is untrue in specific cases of which tuition fees is one of the more egregious examples.
To put it more bluntly, when politicians go into a room and come out with a compromise they don't represent those that voted for them, they represent themselves. It works, it may be necessary but it is not true to say it has democratic legitimacy.
"If a wife tells her husband that he is shirking child care responsibilities and he responds by refusing to acknowledge that it’s even happening, he is gaslighting her."
You ask "what isn't clear about that explanation?"
You did X. No I didn't do X.
That is gaslighting?
If he is shirking childcare responsibilities and he knows he is but pretends to her that it isn't happening, I think that is an example of gaslighting. You are presuming that he actually isn't shirking childcare responsibilities. I think the unspoken assumption underlying the example is that the shirking is in fact taking place. I took that as read. What may be happening is that the husband doesn't know he has the childcare responsibilities, simply assuming that the kid will get looked after even if he does nothing about it and failing to acknowledge the burden that places on his wife. In which case he is not gaslighting her, just being a twat.
It is what I imagine is a fairly typical argument amongst people that happens all the time. How you get to gaslighting from "You did this" "No I didn't" is quite a stretch.
That you have to go into "unspoken assumptions" proves my point.
I think the missing piece, which would perhaps make it more clear to you, is the element of power or control necessary in the relationship.
In the case of, for example, an individual confronting a bureaucracy which simply refuses to acknowledge what it has done, then the term can be quite apt. I'm pretty sure some of the sub postmasters who fell victim to the Post Office accounting debacle began to doubt their own sanity at times.
It is undoubtedly abusive or corrupt or inept behaviour but calling it "gaslighting" doesn't help clarity.
Say you and I were in a relationship (I know, hard to believe, you don't seem my type, but let's suspend disbelief). You start to feel like you are left to do all the housework, and confront me about it. I know that you are right, I am a lazy shit and waste my time arguing with right wing loons on the internet instead of ever doing anything useful. But instead of saying Yes, you are right, I will try to pull my weight more in the future, I lie and tell you that I actually cleaned the house when you were out. Didn't you notice? That's typical, whenever I do anything to help you don't even notice it, you're just a stupid nag. You think, wow maybe he's right, come to think of it maybe the house did look a bit cleaner on Thursday, I must have just not really noticed, I don't know what's wrong with me. I'm so stupid. That is gaslighting. Hope that helps.
Yes I see. But I also see no need for a whole new word to describe it.
How is it used in political discourse if at all?
It's overused. People seem to use it to suggest their opponent doesn't mean what they say they mean, which can be true sometimes, but conveniently means that you can claim your opponent is opposing you for sinister reasons to try to confuse reality rather than just because they oppose you.
And, at the end of the day, voter satisfaction with their governments tends to be higher under PR, turnouts are higher under PR, and they feel better represented under PR.
Doesn't really matter what each of us personally feels - and we've all had our own opinions tinted by growing up in an adversarial FPTP system (although I do find it ironic when advocates of the system bemoan how adversarial it is). The public in such systems tend to prefer it.
The bounties were allegedly to kill coalition -- including British -- troops. What's our new National Security Adviser said about it? Or the old one? And when will Boris publish the report into Russian interference in our politics?
If the Conservatives were clean, they would publish it. They haven´t, so they aren´t. The Johnson government is not legitimate.
You may not like this government, you may want to attack it, but it is the most legitimate government in recent history after winning an 80 seat majority just 8 months ago
Err, with only a minority (43%) of the vote and with more people voting for parties opposing its principal Brexit policy than voted for it.
Name one party opposing Brexit that you think should be the government?
The government won millions of votes more than any other party. You can't sum up all other parties votes and add them together that's not legitimate, if the other parties voters all wanted the same thing they'd have all voted for the same party. They chose not to do so.
Whilst what you say is obviously true, and of course the govt should be in power, there are different levels of legitimacy. If it had won over half the vote that would have made it more legitimate even if thats a extremely harsh bar to set given our political system. Similarly if they paid more respect to the rule of law and our unwritten constitution they would be more legitimate. Of course they are the most legitimate available because they won the election but their actions and behaviour undermine that.
Can you name any western countries in your definition which are legitimate with your phrasing?
And no coalitions don't count unless they were a defined coalition standing in the election united (like the Coalition in Australia) since the public did not vote for them.
"coalitions don't count" is just something you made up because you seem to like the not so democratic UK system.
I didn't make it up, coalitions did not get voted for at the election unless they were a defined coalition at the election.
If the desire is to get the mandate of 50% plus of votes at the election then you need 50% plus of votes at the election. The coalitions only got 50% plus at the election if they stood at the election.
As I said, something you just made up.
Here in Germany there is a legitimate elected coalition government. The proportion of people complaining about the voting system here is tiny compared to the UK. Once you've persuaded some Germans that their government is less legitimate than the UK's I'll start listening to your nonsense.
The only ones whinging here are those who don't like the results. When it was put to a referendum two-thirds of the country chose to keep our voting system.
Just because sore losers whinge doesn't make them right.
The German government is less legitimate than the British government. In Britain quite self-evidently 44% of the country voted for Johnson to be PM and 44% of the country voted for the government we have.
In Germany by contrast 33% of the country voted for Merkel to be Chancellor and 0% of the country voted for the government they have.
The fact that our government was determined on election night while the German government was determined SIX MONTHS after the election shows the farce of claims that electoral system is "more legitimate".
This is absolutely right. With PR the only ones who win are the politicians. No one can know what the final Government make up will be so no one can say they got the Government they voted for.
If there were any truth in that, there would be a lot more politicians angling for PR!
That our politicians remain so keen on our current system, where most of them have jobs for life mostly immune from electoral pressure, tells us all we need to know.
If you are in a safe seat yes, if you are in a marginal constituency you would be less safe than being elected on the list in your region under PR
This is right. There will be no portillo moment in Germany (which has a FPTP/PR hybrid). If a high-up candidate looses their seat (direct mandate) then they will almost always get into the Bundestag via the party list for the PR part.
I still prefer PR and variants to pure FPTP.
Having just read futher up the thread. The idea that a coalition government is illigitmate is just absurd. Over 50% of those who voted are being represented in government.
So those who voted Liberal Democrat were "represented" when their MPs supported a big rise in tuition fees? That's nice.
Yes. That is what coalition government means - making compromises for both partners. That was of course a helluva compromise but presumably they weighed up what they would achieve in return. Plus as junior partner they had no real choice.
The coalition imo was a perfect example of, er, a coalition. Of course many still don't forgive the LDs for going into power and not enacting 100% of the LD manifesto.
The flaw in the argument for me is that if people vote for someone who says they are going to do X and they then agree to do Not X it is meretricious to claim that those who voted for them on the basis of X are represented. They are not. They are deceived and adding their votes to the votes for the government is simply wrong.
I accept that countries that are used to Coalitions will learn this and vote in the knowledge that this is likely to happen but those who voted Lib Dem in 2010 really struggled to get over it.
But the LDs (in this instance) didn't get voted into government. No one did. The closest was the Cons. Surely people appreciate that if you are not voted into government with a majority then you can't be held to your election promises. I'm sure the LDs said words to the effect of "if we form the next government we will...." Which I'm sure they would have.
But they didn't form the next government, they were invited in as junior partners to a coalition.
That was the only shot at limited power they were given and they took it. Rightly in my view.
I was a fan of the Coalition government. As a socially liberal fiscally conservative voter it probably represented me better than any government in my life time. And I think that the country benefited in a big way so I would certainly agree that they did the right thing. But the argument that they had the support of 50%+ of the electorate is untrue in specific cases of which tuition fees is one of the more egregious examples.
To put it more bluntly, when politicians go into a room and come out with a compromise they don't represent those that voted for them, they represent themselves. It works, it may be necessary but it is not true to say it has democratic legitimacy.
Yes it does, because the public democratically entrusted them with the responsibility to sort something out should the situation of a hung parliament arise, even if we did not want that situation to arise.
It is completely democratically legitimate, what it may not be is ideal or desirable, or indeed as democratic as something else. But it is not democratically illegitimate for democratic representatives to act in such a manner.
Comments
Plus, the EHIC won’t cover the cost of shipping you back to the UK if there’s something wrong that means you can’t travel by ordinary transport.
I don’t know what the situation is with Greece, but regardless: insurance will cover all of this with far less hassle & thanks to the reciprocal health agreement is cheap within the EU.
That is why coalitions are not a sum of their voters - unless the voters knew about the coalition agreement before they voted.
I'd suggest the outsider, and one of six trained by Aidan O'Brien, Amhran Na Bhfiann is worth a second look at 50/1 generally. He might even drift. He has never won a race and last time out was an inauspicious fourth in a Leopardstown maiden -- but what a maiden! The first three home finished second, third and fourth in the Irish Derby. Wealth warning: I've not studied the card which has only just been released!.
That you have to go into "unspoken assumptions" proves my point.
In the UK, that concept seems to have been fired resigned.
The crucial mistake by Hoover was to insist upon a tightening of the money supply reducing demand in the economy. This was followed by wage cuts and the non payment of many public servants, notably teachers, as state governments literally ran out of money. In contrast the UK has quite correctly kept all the spending at normal levels and has essentially deferred tax bills in a very big way, hence the massive deficits. On one view we are over £100bn already and will be over £150bn when the numbers for June come out.
If sheer weight of money is all that is needed we are spending enough.
Have you heard of STV..?
In Montana, Bullock is ahead of Daines for the Senate so it looks like the Republicans will need to spend money in what should have been a safe Senate seat. I still think the GOP will keep it but obviously more of a hassle. In terms of Presidential vote, Trump is polling not far off the 56% he received last time, which seems a bit at odds with some other polling suggesting a big swing in the Midwest.
In Michigan, Trump's net disapproval rating is not that bad at -8. What I found interesting was one of the supplemental questions on judges' appointees which showed a dead heat between the two parties - 38% said they would vote for a candidate supported by the Democrats and 37% said for a candidate supported by the Republicans. I'm wondering whether that points to a possible latent Republican support not present in the headline numbers.
Worth keeping an eye out on the Michigan Senate race as a possible GOP pick-up. Peters is 8% ahead of James. When James ran in 2016, he was down strong double digits behind Stabenow in the polls but had a very strong late surge and ended up adding 10 pts to his poll share in July.
There are loads of areas involved, and these get boiled down to two choices - and if both parties offer the same thing, you get no choice at all.
It's arguably why the entire Brexit debacle happened. Neither party offered an exit or even a meaningful reduction in EU measures.
A PR system gives the voters the opportunity to determine the representation of their views in Parliament - all their views, across the entire spectrum. Not based on the Party Leaders second-guessing and judging what the electorate is allowed to choose from.
If 35% of the population want x, 35% of the representatives will argue for x in Parliament, and will have an opportunity to push for x in coalition negotiations. They probably won't get it all (unless the rest of the population and their representatives don't really mind either way), but they may get some of it, or at least will get to represent that view and push for it.
If they make a bad job of representing that view, we kick the representatives out and try with others.
Under FPTP, they get nothing. Unless the vote is split between other parties which may be standing on completely different things, in which case they could even get a majority (like Labour in 2005). They don't get moderated by other views, they don't have to seek consensus or agreement - they just impose it.
For me, it's a sort of free market thing. FPTP reduces the choices and feedback mechanisms on the views and ideologies. You get what the top politicians of two specific parties decide to offer, and nothing else. They're second-guessing which elements of a huge and interrelated offering are what does or does not appeal (and that also depends on the offering the other one gave, which might have attraction and repulsion in completely different areas and for different reasons). It gives monopolistic strength to the Big Two and insulates them from the feedback (doesn't matter how bad they are, they're incredibly unlikely to weaken below 160 seats (Tories) or 200 seats (Labour), and to ever be more than 2 elections from absolute power.
The true strength of liberalism, euroscepticism, secularism, internationalism, collectivism, conservatism, environmentalism, moralism, or whatever in the electorate isn't represented in our representative democracy. It can't be.
As said on previous thread: A lot more German voters are happy with German democracy than British voters are happy with British democracy.
That should tell you something.
Give me a current day usage to help me (ie not involving actual gaslights).
I'm slightly surprised that Philip doesn't agree, too.
Gaslighting is meant to make the victim doubt their own sanity - not doubt the sanity of the person who is clearly lying.
The coalition imo was a perfect example of, er, a coalition. Of course many still don't forgive the LDs for going into power and not enacting 100% of the LD manifesto.
It doesn't take much political maturity to understand this.
Also one appt with the consultant at the hospital involving a blood test.
The appt at York District hospital had been moved to the private nuffield hospital.
Most of the haemotology and oncology, out patients are seen there.
They took your temperature on arrival asked questions and gave you a mask.
It felt very safe and well orgainised
The NHS has been brilliant with all my care , can not thank them enough..
Fixing everyone's troubles, everyone 'cept mine.
Guess someone must have told them I was doing fine.
I could point to an MP of the top of my head who represents every single one of those characterists you've named. Every single one of them.
That's not because their party is necessarily like that, but because our parties form coalitions and those coalitions adapt - but importantly the coalitions present themselves for what they are before the election rather than afterwards. Its more intellectually honest.
For me its a sort of free market thing too. PR is like suggesting that you can only buy alcohol from an off licence, can only buy meat from a butcher, can only buy vegetables from a greengrocer. Whereas FPTP is simply a rough and ready free market where more well rounded parties are formed that do a bit of everything and you can freely choose, with full knowledge, what it is that you want.
Our parties adapt really well to the public because of the ruthless nature of First Past the Post that rewards success and penalises failure. If 35% of the public wants x then that is a major incentive for one or both of the parties to prioritise x in order to win that 35% of the vote, they don't need to wait until after the election to make compromises.
I am not sure you have got the hang of the definition of dogging...or maybe dentistry?
In the case of, for example, an individual confronting a bureaucracy which simply refuses to acknowledge what it has done, then the term can be quite apt. I'm pretty sure some of the sub postmasters who fell victim to the Post Office accounting debacle began to doubt their own sanity at times.
My theory is that people tend to react adversely to terms which are frequently used by those of the opposite politics to them. They say things like "meaningless" or "pretentious tosh" or "tired old cliche" or "not even a real word" when the reality is they do understand it but don't wish to acknowledge the existence of what it's describing.
So, typically, you will get right wingers bridling at this one - gaslighting - since it is mainly used by the Left. Not sure why but it is. Other examples of this are "islamophobia" and "white privilege" and "mansplaining". These terms irritate the hell out of the reactionary antiwokerati.
But it's not one way traffic. It works the other way too. "Virtue signalling" for example. People on the Left instinctively hate that one. And increasingly "Woke" as it becomes weaponized as an insult rather than offered as a compliment.
They're all good terms though imo. Overused, misused, but invaluable in the right context.
Go back to the 1950s, and it's thought that there were about 2.8 million Conservative party members. That was about 1 in 5 of their voters in the 1951 election. Now that ratio is more like 1 in 50.
Now, it's probably the case that a lot of those 2.8 million were there for social respectability, cheap drinks and the marriage bureau. But I'd happily bet a shiny sixpence that the gap between the views of members and voters is waaaaay wider now than then.
Looking forward to @OnlyLivingBoy's example.
PR fans who believe that Labour should split into a centre left party and a far left party, or believe the Tories should split have failed to comprehend or demonstrate the maturity to understand the parties are coalitions - and that coalitions will be needed under PR. But in our system the public knows about the coalitions before they vote not after it.
Election winners in this country are parties that can form the greatest coalition before the election.
I accept that countries that are used to Coalitions will learn this and vote in the knowledge that this is likely to happen but those who voted Lib Dem in 2010 really struggled to get over it.
That's one reason for implementing the Chartist demand for annual Parliaments.
Parties that have tried to be more purist to what the members want - like eg Corbyn's Labour - have not won general elections.
General election winners are parties that have formed a broad coalition of voters.
Yes, a lot of people think they are voting for a party or a leader or a manifesto. They aren't. That doesn't make our system any less painfully stupid than it is, but that is the system. So any government formed of any group of MPs carrying out any policy it can get a majority for in parliament is legitimate.
My offering has the following rather striking verse -
"Tonto know that Kimosabi
Never ever have a woman
Tonto sometime stop and wonder
What the trip with the great white brother
Maybe masked man he a poofter
Try it on with surly Tonto
Let me say to mister lawman
Tonto doesn't mind"
The fact that the rest of the administration was pretty good afterwards paled into insignificance (similarly for Cameron's reputation as PM).
And yes I know where they all come from.
But they didn't form the next government, they were invited in as junior partners to a coalition.
That was the only shot at limited power they were given and they took it. Rightly in my view.
In 2017, Corbz managed to pick up a decent number of votes and seats (albeit not enough to win) by looking a bit more reasonable than TMay.
In 2019, Corbz has been fully revealed as a fairly nasty piece of work. BoJo didn't really bother to reach out. He sat back (in a fridge some of the time), confident that he would be seen as marginally but decisively less awful.
And so it turned out.
Exactly as the voters give their judgement on every other government.
Parties in Ireland have literally ceased to exist after disappointing their voters with their actions in coalition under the STV system there. It doesn't lead to small parties wielding permanent power in government, or a lack of accountability.
If Boris only appealed to his own core vote and those utterly repulsed by Corbyn he wouldn't have won 14 million votes.
MPs were generally much more extreme than the members who in turn were much more extreme than those who voted for them. Being extreme or "pure" is positively rewarded in a system with a small membership out of step with those who actually vote for the party. We see the same thing in the US where primaries by someone from the extremes of their party are generally a much greater threat to a sitting incumbent than the opposition. It makes cross party co-operation incredibly difficult and makes it inevitable that things like the NHS and Social Care become political footballs rather than something that a long term solution can be found for.
On the other hand maybe it is age cos I have no issue with Catch 22.
The Lib Dems brought good ideas to the table and the Tories happily took them then spent years saying "we've done this".
The Lib Dems didn't shout about their achievements, they looked weak and infirm. They didn't seem proud of what they'd done - and if they're not why should anyone else?
Things like the pupil premium, raising the tax threshold, the Tories more happily boast about what they've done than the party that suggested them at the election.
That is gaslighting. Hope that helps.
Perhaps they always would have been miserable in any government, which is exactly the point - if so, it rather torpedoes the whole concept of coalitions, and therefore of PR, in the UK at least.
Edit: @Philip_Thompson has just put it rather better than me.
How many people actually read the five economic questions that were asked? It was a prime example of this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0ZZJXw4MTA
The lesson isn't that the coalition government was bad. It wasn't. Its that Clegg was happy to give ground for little reward - LibDem MPs more loyally voted for Tory bills they disagreed with than Tory MPs did. Clegg could have held a gun to Cameron's head as Foster did to May, but didn't. Because he enjoyed being screwed by Cameron.
Labour in the early 1980's.
The Conservatives under IDS.
Labour again in the 2010's.
I would argue (though I'm sure you'd disagree) Conservatives post-Cameron, and in an ongoing way.
My theory (though I can't prove it) is that is that parties in the 1950's and 1960's were better anchored in the general populace because more of the the populace were party members. Since then, the temptation to drift off into self indulgence has been hard to ignore, and multiple defeats have been needed to bring parties back to their senses. And more recently still, the calculation has been "the other lot are so bad that we can pleasure ourselves and still win".
If you didn't like Boris last time, the only feasible alternative was Corbyn.
That's not much of a choice.
I see no evidence that the Tories under Johnson aren't trying to please the public, quite the opposite Johnson is routinely attacked as being "populist" - as were Blair and Cameron.
The fact that the parties that seek to please themselves and not the public tend to lose elections is not a fact lost upon smart politicians. Self indulgence leaders to Leaders of the Opposition like Corbyn and William Hague - it doesn't lead to Prime Ministers like them.
The 8 going Labour, 2 Green and 1 SNP otoh...
https://tinyurl.com/y85p4895
How is it used in political discourse if at all?
And third parties can arise and be transformative. The SNP, Lib Dems, UKIP/Brexit have all had an impact even under FPTP. Even Labour itself. All it takes is a party that can appeal to the public in a different way to the existing parties - or that is seen doing so, so one of the existing parties responds in order to keep/grab those voters.
No way will the LibDems prop up a Brexiteer Tory government next election. It would have to be a very different Tory party to get supported in the future.
Surely any objective observer would conclude that the 2010-2015 coalition with Cameron as PM, for all its faults, was still a lot better than the 2015-2016 Cameron-led conservative majority government, and the awful Conservative majority governments that followed. And, I would argue, more in tune with the majority of UK people.
My question is whether the Tories should have been in the business of setting traps for their coalition partners and if it ultimately damaged them too. William Hague who was involved in the negotiations boasted at the time that he had killed off the Lib Dems
Example in politics? The Kavanagh hearings imo had a gaslighty air at times.
The Government, under FPTP, will consist of a Conservative one or a Labour one. It doesn't matter if some MP somewhere else in the country is a great match for all of my beliefs and desires. I probably won't get to vote for that MP, and I certainly won't get a Government that represents it - unless Boris or Corbyn (last time around) agreed with it. And the choice boils down to which one I would find least repugnant. Not which one represents my views.
The FPTP offering gives a take-it-or-leave-it offering. You go to the butcher and can get one of two things. You can't even ask for anything else. A or B. Nothing else. No other choice. If your views aren't represented (eg "May or Corbyn"?), it's tough. Your views aren't important in this Parliament. Unless the Party itself just happens to carry out backroom manouevring that ends up with an outcome you like, but that's not down to the voters.
The Parties will adjust to what the voters say they want - based on their own rationalisation of what they really want (the voters say they want this, they mean they want to nationalise everything/ the voters say they want that, they mean they want to kick immigrants out) and what the other party is saying (they've lost touch; we can say or do what we like).
If 35% of the voters want x, then the voters can vote for x (rather than against Corbyn, or against May, or whatever) and don't have to vote for a, b, c, k, l, m, n, o, and p because the other party is offering a load of stuff including more things they find eminently repugnant). And the Parties will be able to see that 35% of the voters do want x, because 35% of the MPs will be elected based on wanting x.
To put it more bluntly, when politicians go into a room and come out with a compromise they don't represent those that voted for them, they represent themselves. It works, it may be necessary but it is not true to say it has democratic legitimacy.
Doesn't really matter what each of us personally feels - and we've all had our own opinions tinted by growing up in an adversarial FPTP system (although I do find it ironic when advocates of the system bemoan how adversarial it is). The public in such systems tend to prefer it.
It is completely democratically legitimate, what it may not be is ideal or desirable, or indeed as democratic as something else. But it is not democratically illegitimate for democratic representatives to act in such a manner.