Politics Thread!

[(o)(o)]

Then why did we decisively vote against a more proportional system only a few years ago? The vote was over 67% against so more than a 2:1 majority against it.

PR wasn't on the table was it.

[Cloudane]

PR is a scary idea when you look at populist parties like UKIP. Just takes a nutter shouting the right things and twiddling the right knobs with the population and they could end up in power. I quite like the system we have which keeps things fairly stable and shields us from waves of extremism. It has its flaws, but more positives for my liking.

[rowan]

Got a postal vote so already voted. UKIP present & avoided on both forms, hope they get nowhere..

[pogo]

A more proportional system was voted on, one favoured by the Lib Dems. A more radically proportional one would have been rejected more convincingly I’m sure, as apart from the other flaws (see Israel, Belgium) it would have stripped voters of constituency MPs and handed control of MP selection to central parties. We are rightly suspicious of our MPs, after the expenses scandal or even before it. We want to be able to vote them out at the next election, as happened to Neil Hamilton in 1997 for example.

[(o)(o)]

I've told you once already Pogo. PR wasn't an option on the referendum.

Just takes a nutter shouting the right things and twiddling the right knobs with the population and they could end up in power.

That's true now!

The Conservative Party is extremely dangerous.

I'm not so convinced a fairer system is a bad thing.

[Cloudane]

That's true now!

The Conservative Party is extremely dangerous.

I disagree, but perhaps just with your definition of danger. They are "dangerous" in terms of taking from the poor to feed the rich etc, but I don't think they're about to start a new holocaust against Muslims or something like that (Labour was more dangerous that way at one point with Blair and his war crimes), which is what danger really is. Lots of people being killed. I don't think UKIP are either (as xenophobic as they are), but they are a demonstration of how waves of hate and anger can change a political scene.

[Ollie]

This hasn't been a two party system since it was the Whigs versus whoever (Liberals? or were Whigs liberal and their opponents the Tories?). It changed from Liberal versus Tory with Labour a distant third to Labour versus Tory with Liberals a distant third between the First World War and the Second, but it's been three main parties since Victorian times.

It was Whigs vs Tories for the best part of 200 years, then the Whigs sort of morphed into the Liberals in the mid-19th century. The Parliamentary Labour party didn't enter the picture until 1900. So yes, they were around in Victorian times, but only just. And with only 2 MPs it's arguable they were one of the main parties at that time.

[zip accident]

This hasn't been a two party system since it was the Whigs versus whoever (Liberals? or were Whigs liberal and their opponents the Tories?). It changed from Liberal versus Tory with Labour a distant third to Labour versus Tory with Liberals a distant third between the First World War and the Second, but it's been three main parties since Victorian times.

It was Whigs vs Tories for the best part of 200 years, then the Whigs sort of morphed into the Liberals in the mid-19th century. The Parliamentary Labour party didn't enter the picture until 1900. So yes, they were around in Victorian times, but only just. And with only 2 MPs it's arguable they were one of the main parties at that time.

Change happens slowly sometimes. I wasn't sure who the Whigs were, and when Labour came in, Victorian times ended about when WW1 started stewing, by the time it kicked off, which is a century ago now, surely Labour were well established in third place? I was mainly saying that the Electoral Reform Society were talking out of their ear saying the current system is a two party system, there used to be independent MPs too, but they got squeezed out in the 1970s I think.

[pogo]

Here’s the turnout for the last general election, by age and constituency. Constituencies are all over the place but there’s a very clear pattern on age. It’s not so much that old people vote more as young people vote less – a lot less. No wonder students find themselves at the wrong end of so many political decisions. If they voted at similar rates to pensioners, instead of little over half as much, then they might find their priorities ranked as highly as pensions.

http://www.ukpolitical.info/Turnout10.htm

And although it’s a bit early to know for sure the weather looks likely to be more of the same on Thursday: windy, cool, showery.

Edit: and on “two party system” here’s a graph of the share of the vote back to 1830. I think the point is it was Tory/Whig until WWI, then Labour replaced the Whigs who as Liberals became almost irrelevant, so it was a two-party system again. The re-emergence of the Liberals and the growth of other parties (grey in the graph) have made it less and less a two-party system, but it’s a matter of degrees rather than a clear transition point. Still if Labour or the Tories get 40% of the vote they win an overall majority.

[VNVObit]

A more proportional system was voted on, one favoured by the Lib Dems. A more radically proportional one would have been rejected more convincingly I’m sure, as apart from the other flaws (see Israel, Belgium) it would have stripped voters of constituency MPs and handed control of MP selection to central parties. We are rightly suspicious of our MPs, after the expenses scandal or even before it. We want to be able to vote them out at the next election, as happened to Neil Hamilton in 1997 for example.

That's not really radical. Prefer the Irish system where there is proportional representation and individual candidates are voted for and must get sufficient votes to make the quota (ironically a real past the post system as opposed to the most votes which is what passes for first past the post system). TDs (Irish MPs) have to be very effective constituency workers and can provide some unusual preferences (as people don't necessarily stick with a single party for 1,2,3...)

[gravy]

Good article on the internal pressures that a hung parliament will present some of the parties.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/201 ... l-election

[Dio]

Edit: and on “two party system” here’s a graph of the share of the vote back to 1830. I think the point is it was Tory/Whig until WWI, then Labour replaced the Whigs who as Liberals became almost irrelevant, so it was a two-party system again. The re-emergence of the Liberals and the growth of other parties (grey in the graph) have made it less and less a two-party system, but it’s a matter of degrees rather than a clear transition point. Still if Labour or the Tories get 40% of the vote they win an overall majority.

The situation's much more complicated than that in the Victorian era. Although there were the two nominal large voting blocs (initially Tory / Whig - if you want to oversimplify, the two rich classes of 'old money' and 'made money' respectively - and later Tory / Liberal as Gladstone, Chamberlain and the Reform Acts made the Liberal party the first "people's party") there were a lot of sub-blocs (such as the Peelites, or those following a specific figurehead such as Derby or Chamberlain or Gladstone, or the rising of the Liberals under the Whigs, or the remaining rump of the Whigs under the Liberals later on).

MPs were also much more independently minded back then - especially in the early part of the century where many of them were elected on a nod and a wink between a handful of electors and the MP.

These two features made "two party" politics a very nominal term in the main. The best example is probably Gladstone's (and, arguably, the country's) greatest parliamentary disaster on Irish Home Rule, where he couldn't get enough of his own party to vote for it because the Whig landowning rump entirely deserted him.

[gravy]

Here’s the turnout for the last general election, by age and constituency. Constituencies are all over the place but there’s a very clear pattern on age. It’s not so much that old people vote more as young people vote less – a lot less. No wonder students find themselves at the wrong end of so many political decisions. If they voted at similar rates to pensioners, instead of little over half as much, then they might find their priorities ranked as highly as pensions.

http://www.ukpolitical.info/Turnout10.htm

And although it’s a bit early to know for sure the weather looks likely to be more of the same on Thursday: windy, cool, showery.

Edit: and on “two party system” here’s a graph of the share of the vote back to 1830. I think the point is it was Tory/Whig until WWI, then Labour replaced the Whigs who as Liberals became almost irrelevant, so it was a two-party system again. The re-emergence of the Liberals and the growth of other parties (grey in the graph) have made it less and less a two-party system, but it’s a matter of degrees rather than a clear transition point. Still if Labour or the Tories get 40% of the vote they win an overall majority.

There's your the UK is mostly centrist / left in voting habits:



Next election will likely see a labour increase, less conservatives, less libdems and more others

[pogo]

Depends how you classify the Lib Dems. If they are centrist then there are far more votes for a right+centre coalition than a left+centre one. I would still say the electorate is more right of centre than left of centre. In the 1997 Labour only became electable after moving decisively to the right. If they had stuck with the policies of the 1980s (e.g. the 1983 manifesto described as the “longest suicide note in history”) they would probably have still been unelectable in 1997. That’s why Ed Miliband’s radicalism is so surprising; he’s not only to the left of Cameron/Osbourne but to the left of Blair/Brown. I suspect if he governs like that he will do more damage to Labour’s electability than he realises.

Don’t forget the largest of the “others”, in terms of vote share, is UKIP. They are on 14% of the vote, with the Tories on 34%, so that’s 48% of the vote for clearly right-wing parties. That hasn’t helped either party this election but if UKIP have as much support in subsequent elections we may see more tactical voting, where UKIP or the Conservatives are in second place behind Labour, to ensure they are better represented.

[gravy]

They're squarely social liberalists which is generally thought of as left - centrist.

You can chuck in your own interpretation obivously but you'd be flying of a fuck tonne of opinion including vast swathes of the liberal democrat membership.

And as I said before the UKIP % will decrease in my opinion, much in the same way the actual lib dem vote % in the 2010 was quite a bit less than the polls had been predicting.