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Priti Patel may just have changed the Tory leadership rules and this has major betting implications
Priti Patel may just have changed the Tory leadership rules and this has major betting implications – politicalbetting.com
Voting systems matter when it comes to betting
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But I also think that local authorities with... say... 48 Labour and 1 Conservative and no-one else, despite the Labour Party getting less than 50% of the votes are...
...not great for democracy and accountability.
So, I'm not sure I agree with Ms Patel here.
We really have learned nothing about extrapolating from basic referendum questions it seems, let alone a basic question 10 years old.
Anything but FPTP would have had a Labour-SNP-LibDem government with Jeremy Corbyn as PM on 50.4% of the vote. That stat alone kills PR for the next 30 years....
With the greatest of respect to Mr Eagles, his piece is based on the supposition that the present Conservative leadership would wish to avoid accusations of illogicality and hypocrisy.
I see no reason why they should wish anything of the sort. They simply wouldn't care.
And while the Inverness etc result might be an excellent example of the excesses of FPTP, Ynys Mon runs it fairly close.
I suspect that opposition to AV has shifted. Not everyone is a fan of perpetual hegemony of an authoritarian Tory party on a minority of the vote.
The once-a-decade snapshot of the country has included a voluntary question about religion since 2001. In 2011, returns across England and Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland showed 59.3% ticking Christianity, a fall from 71.6% a decade earlier.
Abby Day, professor of race, faith and culture at Goldsmiths, University of London, expects this year’s census to show a further erosion in Christian identity, mainly because postwar generations regard the church as irrelevant and immoral.
Day predicted the proportion of people ticking Christianity “could drop below 50%”. Peter Brierley, an expert on religion statistics, said he predicted 48% or 49% identifying as Christian, but David Voas, head of the social sciences department at University College London, said he would be surprised if the figure fell below 50%
But it is bad for democracy - particularly local democracy - where there is one party that gets 40-45% across a district, but gets 85-90% of the seats.
It's also profoundly dishonest to say that the electorate voted against something more proportional in all elections, when they voted against AV.
AV is not a proportional system.
The electorate - including me - said AV is worse than FPTP. For General Elections.
But I must admit that I think local democracy would probably be served by less partisanship and more forced practicality.
(Granted they probably wouldn't want to, and voters would penalise them for it.)
When Brits look at places like Italy and Belgium they will never vote for any form of AV, STV, STD etc.
Our system works. It's not perfect but it works. The only people complaining are those who don't like the current Conservative majority: Polly Toynbee for instance who is now suddenly campaigning for voting reform. I don't remember Labour pushing hard for electoral reform all the years they were in power. Why now? Hmmm ... let me see.
Best thing Labour can do is focus on the task in hand. Try and beat the Conservatives by having winning policies and a winning leader.
It is more logical for the party to adapt than changing the voting system.
The party of the "messy middle"...
Nick Clegg had the Holy Grail of PR within his grasp. And yet -
"He chose......poorly."
National government in the UK is never 99-1 (albeit Scotland has gone rather that way in recent years). Plus, of course, we always had the House of Lords as a stabilizer.
Local authorities in the UK with records of one party rule have not performed well. Pretty much every scandal has happened in places where one party was essentially unchallenged.
Maybe the problem is that local elections are too politicized.
But there is a problem there. Too many people are elected, irrespective of their competence or honesty, because of the colour of their rosette.
Different elections require different electoral systems. It's why the Conservative Party doesn't use FPTP to elect their leaders.
Local elections are ill served by FPTP. And it's time to find an alternative.
Time for something else.
https://twitter.com/JonTonge/status/1373421162563264512
After all the Conservative party exists to make sure it's leaders and their friends stay on the gravy train, and any other system might threaten that. Of course they'll lose at FPTP election now and then, but generally speaking ........
But imagine that the majority of people in Scotland vote, election after election, for people who want to preserve the Union.
And yet 95% of MPs oppose the Union.
That's not really my point, though.
National politics should be about distinctive positions and genuine choices.
Local government should be about holding unelected officials to account. The Chief Executive of a local council has a lot more day to day power than the Cabinet Secretary.
And I don't think systems where a single party dominates despite only having a minority of votes encourages proper oversight of local officials.
But ultimately, it comes down to the voters. The behaviour of voters in Scotland is a function of Scotland having the safety net of the Union. I can absolutely guarantee that the SNP would not dominate an independent Scotland in quite the same way. Why? MONEY
Perhaps what would be better is to have fewer councils. Does London really need 33 boroughs? I don't think so.
Mr. Jonathan, perhaps. Perhaps the slightly strange approach of a pro-coalition party not being abled to handle coalition was the problem.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Gosport_Borough_Council_election
Let's wait and see what's in the report on Liverpool when it's published shortly.
But a result where 4700 votes beats 10700 votes is a silly result.
Votes:
Con: 35.7%
Lab: 35.5%
LD: 22.9%
Seats:
Con: 36.7%
Lab: 54.1%
LD: 8.9%
Of course, voters do tend to change their votes in GEs. I think @rcs1000 's argument for PR in local elections is stronger in that there are some places where the same party wins every time.
So yes, I suppose that there's no ideal system, hence the fact that so many alternatives are in use somewhere in the world.
May's is rushed through and not-considered green legislation. And the worst electoral campaign in history.
... the Ministry of Defence has taken a curious line against the census, urging defence personnel and contractors to give incomplete answers to four questions –- and to ignore one altogether.
An Industry Security Notice issued on 15 March and aimed at defence contractors urges them not to give full and complete answers to questions 41-42, 44, and 50. When filling in 41 ("What is (was) the name of the organisation or business you work (worked) for?") contractors should not "give details about the place where you work", according to the MoD.
Job titles* should simply become "MoD contractor", while question 43, which asks what you do in your main job, "should not be answered" at all in the ministry's view. Even the location of one's workplace shouldn't be revealed in the census, with the MoD urging people to give only the postcode.
https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/19/ministry_defence_tells_staff_dont_answer_census/
Let's hope those pesky Russian tourists don't know the postcodes of Britain's cathedrals and naval bases.
Of course, you could argue that it's embarrassing because the Government could be accused of over-riding the will of the Liverpudlian electorate, but OTOH you could just as easily argue that Northamptonshire was embarrassing because it had to send in the commissioners to clear up a mess presided over by its own politicians. Whatever.
As that party is invariably the Tory Party any proportional system will do.
But AV+ is very stable and generally produces 5 parties including two big parties, leading to two- or sometimes three-party coalitions. By party of PM they're extremely stable.
There are exceptions, like Scotland with its single dominant party (not that that's causing problems)
For instance the UK is usually ruled by a coalition of practical centre-right, tax and regulation hawks, and nationalists called the Tories. (E.g. Ken Clarke, Peter Lilley and Boris respectively) And sometimes by a coalition of socialists and social democrats called the Labour party.
Sometimes it's stable and effectively governed, like Germany under AV+. And sometimes it's not, like the last 5 years.
Sedgefield being lost to the Tories and Finchley to Labour (both inside 25 years) shows there are no such things as safe seats and the electoral landscape can, and does, radically change. Everyone starts on zero at each and every election.
I'm unconvinced by alternative voting systems because no-one's ever demonstrated to me that countries that have them are any more satisfied with their politics than we are.
Next.
"this has been the advice to contractors since the last census in 2011"
So both parties brought in the big guns with their MPs and councillors lining up to oppose the Commission proposal - which was thereby doomed - in favour of their own respective proposals, the Tory one creating a bridging seat bringing in some Tory wards from Chingford, that the Tories would have won along with the rest of Chingford and Ilford North, whereas Labour's proposal dispersed these Tory wards between various seats, leaving them with three safe seats, Ilford South, Walthamstow, and Leyton & Wanstead. Given the flood of representations from both sides, the Commission had to choose between the two alternatives, and chose the Labour one - which was objectively the more sensible of the two, if not as neat as the Commission's own opening proposal.
At the time this represented a net gain for Labour of one seat. Of course times have moved on, and Ilford North is now also safe for Labour, and Chingford is becoming marginal. Indeed a by-product of the Labour proposal is that IDS acquired a couple of safe Tory wards to shore up his at that time already big majority; had the Tory proposal been adopted IDS would by now have been toast (or more likely chicken-ran to the Home Counties, as did another local Tory MP at the time).
Leaving the EU... That's an interesting one. Dave's plan was to cement the UK on the fringe of the EU- just, but decisively, inside. We all know how that ended up. Maybe, like picking at a hole in a jumper, once started, the thing was always going to keep unravelling.
AFAIA, under any voting system currently in use, a person could be a unanimous second choice but never get near election.
Good morning, everybody.
In West Sussex overall the libdems get about 30% of the vote and have never won an MP. Only Crawley occasionally stops it being a constant clean sweep for Tories, who get about 40%.
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You only have to see the money being driven up the A1 and M1 now to see this in effect.
Of course, that nuclear option could've been avoided had Brown and Labour not reneged upon the promised referendum on Lisbon, but there we are.
Also, Cameron and Osborne, and Clegg and Alexander, did great work clearing up the economy. It's unfortunate that it's just been whacked again.
This is the third cycle (I think) since I have been watching politics.
Once stayed in a B&B with a parrot that was just the same, but less tiring.
STV is the work of the devil. I can't stand it.
FPTP is best at doing that one thing at UK level. All the alternatives involve a greater chance of whoever the rascals are retaining a degree of power by negotiating a different coalition, and places greater power in the hands of horse traders and less in the hands of voters.
The idea that FPTP is best at everything else is of course nonsense.
encourages big tents with a range of views inside a party.
Much more likely to generate decisive governments.
Downsides
Safe seats that are barely democratic
Silencing of minority views
limits meaningful choice
For me, in local government, the downsides exceed the benefits. For regional government such as Holyrood it is pretty evenly matched, you can make a case either way. For central government FPTP wins. Patel's one size fits all approach is just stupid.
My conversations with people inside government suggest that many ministers appreciate that [vaccination] gloating is unedifying and self-defeating. At the same time, a Brexiter cabinet finds it hard to resist the temptation to exploit the EU’s distress for partisan advantage. The NHS-delivered distribution of the vaccine is the only aspect of the handling of the crisis in which this government can claim to have a record that is impressive. Brexiters want to claim that success, however bogusly, as a justification for their experiment. There are also Tories who believe that a steady drumbeat of cross-Channel conflict serves their electoral interests by keeping the Brexit vote aroused and distracted from the punishing damage the rupture is inflicting on the economy.
A government with an enlightened perspective on the long-term interests of Britain would see value in offering expressions of sympathy and gestures of solidarity with the EU at its time of severe trial. That could generate a lot of goodwill among European voters and leaders. It might be the more effective in winning friends for Britain for being so unexpected from a Brexiter government. Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, instead prefers to play tit for tat.
There is a problem with this attempt by ministers to seize the title deeds to the moral high ground. Their behaviour has robbed them of any claims on it. No one is worse qualified to lecture others about contract-breaking than a member of Mr Johnson’s government.
The chances of avoiding a mutually destructive struggle with the EU over vaccine supplies would be much better had Britain a prime minister who was regarded as a trustworthy international partner by his peer group. An escalation into a full-blown “vaccine war” between Britain and the EU would be a disaster for both on many levels.
Vaccine nationalism is already a dimension of this crisis. It would set a terrible example to the world if countries that advertise themselves as mature, sophisticated and internationalist democracies were to unleash a vaccine war in Europe. Britain and her near neighbours are going to have to live and work with each other long after Covid-19 has become history. The UK’s security and prosperity still depend in great part on what happens within the EU. It cannot be in the EU’s interests to have permanently toxified relations with such a substantial country on its border. A vaccine war would be a conflict without a winner, only many losers.