A wobbly outcome: when voting systems attack – politicalbetting.com
A wobbly outcome: when voting systems attack – politicalbetting.com
(For the purposes of this article, I’m only looking at constituencies in Great Britain. Sorry, Northern Ireland, but your politics are a rule unto themselves. Plus – we’re primarily concerned about who can win control of the UK-wide Government).
1
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
Of course, there is one other point to make - constituencies being much more vulnerable and therefore forcing MPs to pay attention to their voters could be considered a good thing.
One of the big weaknesses of FPTP is it would endlessly return complete numpties like Fabricant or Lavery no matter what they did or didn't do because they wore the right rosette. If that's no longer the case - and it clearly isn't - the issue of fairness (somewhat amplified!) remains but one argument for voting reform is gone.
Edit, err, or even third like, um...
If it is good enough for the Tories then it is good enough for the country.
Of course Starmer was elected by pure AV and he's proven to win landslides.
Your point being?
This seems to me to be a good thing, on the whole. The preponderance of safe seats was unhealthy and made too many of our politicians indifferent to what we actually thought.
I guess he went to them for advice?
https://x.com/Jas_Athwal/status/1050364793415192576
This election despite the larger than ever range of parties amplifies that the system is broken.
I think this feeds directly into the @Casino_Royale 'Weren't the Tories Great' musings at the end of the last thread. When you are political of course you see your side as good. At least in public... But there does have to be awareness when that is purely spin, and in truth you aren't good.
The SNP conference is delivering us comedy with ex MPs bemoaning how "independence" wasn't accepted by punters as the obvious and immediate solution to their need to see a GP or pay the bills. We will see the same from Tory leadership hopefuls like Jenrick (stop sniggering at the back) - prefaced here by CR - that the Tory way is right and the electorate are wrong.
Politics is story-telling and selling that narrative. You need to sound authentic and convincing - but the offer has to be compelling. And here's the thing. If you want to be pure and true to your "convictions" then you have to accept that sometimes you will lose. What you think, what you want are not always the same as what other people think and want, regardless of how right and virtuous you personally believe you are.
Successful parties adapt their pitch to the electorate's needs and mood. The Tories more than anyone. With such a perilous position after the election, and so many of their remaining seats teetering as the OP demonstrates, a period of listening and reflecting - and not telling - would be beneficial to the blue team...
Where Starmer critics are right (and had you heard me in the pub the weekend before last with Labour councillor friends you would include me as a Starmer critic) is that Labour have run with "change" with no real ambition for what that means or how to go about it.
Starmer has the Big Picture. Offer hope. Identify big themes and box them off into 5 ills to be cured. Their problem is how that translates into strategies and policies. With a majority of 704 he really could do whatever he wanted to radically shift the overton window and with it the political landscape. And yet there he is off having weaselly bilaterals with France and Germany saying "nothing has changed" with regards to relations with EU/EEA/CU. He's not trying to bypass the huge cost of short-termism by investing now in training and staffing so that we get the public services people need and a significant cost saving.
No, instead he's planning to kill the hospitality industry and maintain the grindcore poverty brake on the economy which costs more than the solution in both emergency measures and crime.
I don't get the Starmer programme at all. Which is why I am not "one of us" as my mate drunkenly insisted last week.
https://apnews.com/article/nebraska-abortion-november-election-ballot-measure-513d8bde38f15dee16e9cd216070d704
Could that possibly get more bizarre?
The Governor has said he expects the 'enshrine current position' amendment to win, although polling suggests he's being foolish in saying that. But if they both win, just watch the chaos unfold.
Also surely guarantees that bonus seat for the Dems given the boost it will give to turnout in their target demographics.
You also wonder what that might do to the Senate races (note plural) although I'll be very surprised if Ricketts doesn't win the special.
Which leads to the simple conclusion that (GWB style) that if you aren’t with us, you are against us - and therefore evil.
Come up with answers that are both different and *moral*? But that would be to go against the True Way.
If we shout a bit louder, it will all be fine.
Meanwhile on a similar cough the Conservatives also have 40 or so seats with less than 35%, making up a third of its 121 total.
Wish me luck, I am getting ready to attempt to buy tickets for Oasis.
I haven't drunk Red Bull since Verstappen started driving for them.
To be fair I have only ever drunk Red Bull once in my life and that was in 2002.
I paid £350 a seat to see The Rolling Stones in 2006.
Labour have certainly got off to a faltering start (they need some of that joy that Harris/Walz has generated), and it is unclear where they will shed voters to. My impression it is the Greens (wanting more tax and spend, and support for Palestine) and the LDs (wanting less top down heavy handedness) that will benefit, but we will see.
It's a long time to the next election, and while individual seats may be precarious (though outnumbered 5 to one by seats that are not precarious) Labour's majority is not even slightly precarious and they will get a full term. Expect a May 2029 GE.
The Tories though do look vulnerable, particularly if they fail to understand why the country so enthusiastically voted them out by carefully choosing a tactical vote to maximise Tory losses.
The concept of 35%+ as the threshold where winning a seat becomes probable is a good one, and one reason that I think Reform cannot really break through on a national stage. They have a low ceiling and Farage is an ageing agitator rather than an organiser.
There is though a whiff of Weimar about such an unstable political system, with multiple competing fissile blocks focused on mutal antagonism.
To stop it, and check the government, the only solution is to vote Conservative. Ideally back to a hung parliament.
Then they can't lay down their bullshit easily.
Know what I mean?
Almost 50 of those already are "fake seats" and only delivered to them by centre-right voters splitting and going awol.
All Labour has to do is royally piss them off and they'll unite to defeat the Labour candidate. And boy oh boy are they pissing them off, and that's before the end of their second month in office.
Liam Gallagher is the Nigel Farage of music.
He’s used his meagre talents to create chaos at every turn and his narcissism surprises even those in his own industry. Which is well known for creating and enabling narcissists.
UK PLC would hopefully appoint a visionary new CEO, reaffirm the vision thing, and ruthlessly go after the waste, incompetence and inefficiencies to get the thing buzzing again. Instead we have Starmer, who barely dares to speak of vision, and dare not go after the inefficiencies because the gaslit might be cross. So instead of transforming UK PLC we're going to repaint it, change the logo and invest in motivational statement wall art.
And both are coughing and wheezing.
And yes, people knew him. Do you know that they used to substitute a 'u' for that 'a' in his surname?
“Don’t go back to Tory chaos” or “Don’t risk giving the keys to those that created the mess” is likely to be a big theme of the next election.
The Tories have a long way back even if Labour cough.
He would never have fallen into this trap of confusion in 2016.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy547v72nd4o
So now he's managed to piss off pro and anti abortion activists. All in one go.
A substantial proportion of the Reform vote is anti both main parties. They will not vote Tory just as they will not vote Labour.
It took 14 years from 1983 to 1997 before the Alliance/LibDem and Labour votes became efficient. But now they are highly efficient: there are virtually no Labour-LibDem marginals.
By contrast, in addition to the Conservative-Reform marginals, there is the much bigger list of seats where the combined Conservative-Reform total would win the seat from the incumbent. If the right wing vote were to become efficient, then you could see a big gains.
But how quickly will that happen? After the shellecking of 1983, it didn't happen in 1987, and while it improved in 1992, it was only in 1997 (remember GROT and "Labour tactically voting LibDem" posters?) that the left wing vote became really efficient.
He was definitely well known. And we was certainly an MP.
I suspect that Starmers plan is to get the pain over early and to deliver real improvements across government services by the mid term.
The next Labour election will be very much be "We've turned the corner, don't let the Tories ruin things again".
These singles. With 4 songs per disk and the "B-sides" are as good as the headline single. Like Pokemon Go, you have to collect them all.
Autumn 1995. Sheffield University. Tapton Halls of Residence. Friday and Saturday nights. Someone has "Don't Look Back In Anger" playing. Loud. With people coming over to drunkenly bellow it en masse.
Oasis were *phenomenal*. And then just as quickly as it started, it stopped. Be Here Now. Meh. The other post Bonehead albums. Meh at best.
Imagine the set list next year being packed with tracks from Be Here Now onwards. OK, if they went out and redid the Maine Road 1996 setlist it would be phenomenal. Or is it just that that set was phenomenal back in 1996?
I missed seeing Oasis first time out, just as I missed Pink Floyd and Genesis. I've seen Waters and Gilmour multiple times over. I skipped the 2007 Genesis reunion as they sounded dull. And don't talk to me about their recent abomintion. I just can't help thinking that this Oasis reunion will be heavy on the nostalgia and light on quality...
Voters like to tie politicians hands, bind their feet, and them demand they run sub 10 second 100 meters.
As the excellent header shows.
The recent election was about chucking the Tories out. There was no 1997 style tidal wave* to chuck *Labour* in.
We could very easily go into the next election with 3-4 parties on around 20% each
Yes, Labour has a large majority in the House of Commons. But under FPTP, it can evaporate. As did the Tory majority - just weeks ago.
The old tribal loyalties to one of the Big Two and A Half are fraying. Increasingly people are prepared to say - if they are not the answer, next.
*1997 was exaggerated in media, but anyway…
Feck, I just checked and they're 50 somethings!
Swinney warns SNP: Win back middle class or face disaster
Secret recording from private session reveals stark message from the first minister to party activists at Edinburgh conference
John Swinney has warned SNP activists they must win back Scotland’s middle class or face another election drubbing, according to a leaked recording which lays bare the crisis facing the party.
In a secret recording from a private session of the SNP conference, members pored over the disastrous general election in which the party lost 39 MPs.
They were presented with internal polling analysis that showed swathes of voters switch to Labour once they begin earning an annual salary of more than “the low £20,000s”.
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/scotland/article/swinney-warns-snp-win-back-middle-class-or-face-another-drubbing-rzjsxwzhw
We need a much better way of running a country than this.
Police investigate senior civil servant over Alex Salmond inquiry
James Hynd accused of making false statement, court told
Detectives are investigating claims that a senior civil servant gave a false statement under oath to an inquiry into sexual misconduct allegations involving Alex Salmond.
The Court of Session was told on Friday that Police Scotland was looking at the conduct of James Hynd, who was the Scottish government’s head of cabinet, parliament and governance during the inquiry.
Salmond, 69, has brought legal action against the Scottish government seeking “significant damages” and compensation for loss of earnings that may total millions of pounds.
The former first minister alleges “malfeasance” by civil servants past and present, arguing that they “conducted themselves improperly, in bad faith and beyond their powers” with the intention of damaging him. This allegedly happened during a botched investigation by civil servants over claims that Salmond had acted inappropriately towards a number of women during his time in office.
Gordon Dangerfield, representing Salmond, told the judge, Lord Fairley, that the police investigation was called Operation Broadcroft and was headed by a Detective Superintendent Graham Lannigan.
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/scotland/article/police-investigate-civil-servant-over-alex-salmond-inquiry-jwzszkx88
*as per the header, we need a better name than this for our electoral system.
Reform on 19 % (+1) but @HYUFD will respond by saying conservative and reform are on 45% !!!
But, the more that the circumstances of his ousting are probed, the more it appears that Very Bad Things were concocted to get him out of the way. With SNP friends like that, who needs enemies?
(note yes I am being sarcastic in case anyone didn't work it out)
Got to pop out on a dog walk, but a quick comment on some perceptive comments earlier: Indeed to both. But... it's still unstable.
Duverger's Law comes in because of that and it then tends towards quasi-stability. Possibly in the same pattern as before, but possibly in a new pattern.
I think (and this is me assuming as merrily as anyone else) that it's in a transient state. Whilst a hundred or so constituencies are unstable, so's the overall pattern. Wobbling means it's going to fall over again. Returning to the state with so many seats being donkey-votes and out of play.
Just that the seats in question will be different from before, the MPs being so safe will be different, and possibly even the parties reaping the benefit being different.
This assumption could well be wrong as well, of course.
In addition, I wouldn't assume a simple right-left dynamic will crystallise, either. That's just a simplifying categorisation we like to use - partly because it worked so well in the Fifties and Sixties at least. And then had a prolonged hangover through the Seventies and Eighties, since when we've had to start hammering things to fit.
Voters don't fall into happy simple categories. From Independent to Green to Labour to Lib Dem to Tory to Reform. Jumping all over the spectrum from one choice to the next, picking up on elements - or missing entirely - that we "in the know" sophistimacated geeks see as ideological and inherent to our preferred view of political theory.
I don't know what's going to happen next. Just that voters won't herd merrily in the way we extrapolate, and that it'll probably be different in Exeter & Exmouth to Earley &Woodley, from Ashford to Ashfield, from Bethnal Green & Stepney to Beverley & Holdeness to Brecon, and so on.
(A great film by the way, and a rare example of a remake as good as the original, but very different).
Unless primary legislation is used to override the system of enquires and process, serious changes will take decades.
Good luck getting ground broken on a new town before the next election.
Starmer has lived his entire career in the Process State. Will he overthrow it?
Doing so is risky - look for The Bad Law Project to raise Caine. Angry articles in the Guardian. MPs defecting….
They have yet to mention the post modern Marxist ultra cool production of Mozart's Figaro set in a basement full of washing machines I saw at the Edinburgh festival a fornight ago. (I am not making this up). Probably more of the R4 Today audience would find this interesting.
BTW, who or what is Oasis?
Labour's landslide was all about getting enough votes in lots and lots of places- losing votes where they were crazy-strong, gaining them proportionally where they were in second place, abandoning Nice Britain to the Lib Dems.
Here's a graph from Dylan Difford that I've been looking for an excuse to post for a while. It's swings on individual seats election-by-election. The narrower the spike, the more uniform the swing;
https://x.com/Dylan_Difford/status/1817522059955577211
It really don't mean a thing, if it's uniform swing.
1) The Tories lost sight of capitalism because they became enfatuated with (donations from) Cronyism. Why bother investing in business and doing the hard things long term when you can sell it off today and take your cut now? More so when oligarchs and investment funds are such nice generous people.So yeah, Fuck Business
2) Labour never really understood or trusted business. A strong regulatory framework enacted in the late 90s could have reigned in the excesses of the likes of Thames Water. But Labour missed the boat and presided over the years where the rot really set in.
We need to invest heavily in infrastructure. Roads, Railways, Water, Power, Internet. A bonanza of jobs which can be created quickly, creating skilled workers with money in their pockets they can spend in the economy and create more jobs. And infrastructure which drives positive ROI and long term growth in our stagnant economy.
Its win win. Except that "who will pay for it" and "we can't afford it" Tory mantras still ring out loudly. And so we will continue to pay stupid amounts as what we have crumbles further, whilst France, Spain, Germany et al pull ahead.
Sigh.
And partly this is down to groupthink - whilst making the loony left unwelcome was desirable, he has pushed it too far - running the party in an authoritarian fashion and making no attempt to reconcile with the traditional liberal left, think the Clive Lewis’s of this world, who imho have much to offer. In this era of retail politics that has cost him 5% of the vote and as someone with liberal left leanings, I was delighted that I didn’t feel I had to vote for them.