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Post by shevii on Jan 14, 2024 11:11:12 GMT
Agreed & shevii makes the same point. The problem is as graham says in the end would a Ref endorse reform after voters so decisively rejected AV. We don't know but just like the PR debate it is only right the voters decide on something like this. I think there are big differences though from the situation of the AV vote. PR gives a small party the chance to get a few seats where it doesn't with AV and we now have at least 30% plus of voters who already are saying they aren't voting for one of the two main parties however much they get squeezed at election time. It's the proportion of people saying they will be voting for one of the two main parties who are actually holding their noses in doing so that would be the key. You may also get differential turnout with people currently voting for smaller parties far more motivated to vote for PR. Plus it's unusual to have a vote where the further right and further left and the notionally absolute centrists (LD) may be in agreement. You can still keep the constituency system but have top up lists if anyone (I think graham was) is worried about losing a personal representative.
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Post by lululemonmustdobetter on Jan 14, 2024 11:11:20 GMT
1. I conceded the 3rd place point. But my question was really about tactical voting in light of lululemonmustdobetter s opposition and the fact it should be big in '24: Hello - I'm not opposed to it, its just not for me. Like same sex marriage. Each to their own.
It, TacV that is, may play a big role in '24, as may stay at home Tories. The electorate at large is nowhere near as engaged/informed as those who post here, and many who want change etc will naturally pick Labour irrespective of whether Labour came 2nd or 3rd last time. In a lot of seats (primarily in England) where Lab came 3rd in '19 but 2nd in 17, they are likely to regain second place even without investing any resources in them. Rising tide and all that Jazz.
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Jan 14, 2024 11:25:47 GMT
The only reason that Ed Davey is the single government minister targeted over horizon. . first thing first, its obvious con have no intention of resolving the horizon scandal. The public enquiry was a means of delaying settlement, and so is their legislation now. Overturning convictions is only one step towards compensation by the normal route and there are plenty more still to delay an actual payout for years, certainly till after the election. What they want to do is look like they are acting without acting. Nothing could be simpler than just make proper compensation payments right now, and they are not doing so. Even interim payments of a few hundred thousand would be immediately possible. No blame can possibly attach to davey which does not attach to his successors in the 12 years since he ceased to be responsible for the post office. Thats TWELVE YEARS of delay in refusing compensation by con. But this began under the major government, continued under blair. There is no way the po did not know what was happening and many people share blame before davey got near a ministry.
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Post by James E on Jan 14, 2024 11:37:55 GMT
So presumably you think people in Northern Ireland who have no trouble voting under STV are much cleverer than people in England then? Possibly true, although the DUP doesn't provide convincing evidence. There was clear evidence of confusion in Northern Ireland when the system was first introduced. Many voters thought that the numbers placed on ballot papers represented the number of votes awarded to each candidate - rather than a preference. Some people emerged from polling stations saying to party representatives 'I gave you most votes - I gave you 8!' I don't see Labour MPs supporting PR without a Referendum - particularly if it had not been a manifesto committment.
What exactly is your 'clear evidence of confusion' in respect of the early Northern Ireland EU elections? The results of the first two EU elections in 1979 and 1984 (links below) do not appear to provide any indication of this: they were very much in line with other NI elections at that time, with the largest votes going to Paisley, Hume and John Taylor each time. I was living in Northern Ireland at the time of the June 1984 election, and can not recall anyone complaining that they did not understand the preference system. cain.ulster.ac.uk/issues/politics/election/re1979.htmcain.ulster.ac.uk/issues/politics/election/re1984.htm[What I do remember is some people claiming that STV was chosen to ensure that SF did not win a seat. A large FPTP seat covering the western side of NI - say Armagh, Tyrone, Fermanagh and L'Derry - would have been fiercely contested between all 4 of the largest NI parties]
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Post by lululemonmustdobetter on Jan 14, 2024 11:52:10 GMT
On a slightly different note, I was driving my youngest son to a football match yesterday, and to get there I was skirting in and out of the Ulez zone. There were protestors where the cameras are. I'm taking this as a further sign that the Tories will have this as the basis of the London Mayoral election and GE campaign. Personally, I think they are being incredibly irresponsible and short sighted. I also doubt it will prove to be a successful electoral strategy. It may help to shore up elements of Tory VI, but for most voters other factors will drive VI.
Longer term, it looks like another area in which the Tories are adopting a position to appeal to certain element of their base, but risk alienating themselves from the broader electorate. Given the clear signs of manmade Global Warming occurring, and the likely increased salience this will have on politics in the future, if they do lurch even further right after the GE, electorally they may find themselves in real dire straights.
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Post by jib on Jan 14, 2024 11:54:41 GMT
Clearly there will be a lag before Lib Dem VI drops into single digits, for most normal people it's a case of Ed who?
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Post by jib on Jan 14, 2024 11:56:31 GMT
With regard PR and voting systems.
My obvious choice for a reformed voting system would be a fully elected Upper House (currently the House of Lords).
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Post by graham on Jan 14, 2024 12:09:24 GMT
There was clear evidence of confusion in Northern Ireland when the system was first introduced. Many voters thought that the numbers placed on ballot papers represented the number of votes awarded to each candidate - rather than a preference. Some people emerged from polling stations saying to party representatives 'I gave you most votes - I gave you 8!' I don't see Labour MPs supporting PR without a Referendum - particularly if it had not been a manifesto committment.
What exactly is your 'clear evidence of confusion' in respect of the early Northern Ireland EU elections? The results of the first two EU elections in 1979 and 1984 (links below) do not appear to provide any indication of this: they were very much in line with other NI elections at that time, with the largest votes going to Paisley, Hume and John Taylor each time. I was living in Northern Ireland at the time of the June 1984 election, and can not recall anyone complaining that they did not understand the preference system. cain.ulster.ac.uk/issues/politics/election/re1979.htmcain.ulster.ac.uk/issues/politics/election/re1984.htmI do recall the example I referred to being quoted by commentators at the time. Of course, I am not in a position to say how widespread it was.
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steve
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Post by steve on Jan 14, 2024 12:09:27 GMT
jibDavey's rating has fallen, he's now just the 16% more popular than Sunakered. A fully elected upper house under fptp is less representative than it is now.
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steve
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Post by steve on Jan 14, 2024 12:23:59 GMT
Margrethe II is the unelected hereditary head of state of Denmark, she's abdicating today, the first time it's happened in 900 years.
Her son gets to be the new unelected head of state.
She's around 7 years older than our newly minted unelected hereditary head of state Charles Windsor, her son is 20 years younger than Mr Windsor so is likely to hang around for a while.
The interbred nature of the various European royal families means that the Danish version are cousins to our lot.
The Danish abdication/ proclamation involved a motorcade and a gathering in a town square. Appointing their unelected cousin here cost us over £100 million and brought out capital city to a stop.
If we have to have these archaic anachronisms can't we learn from the Danes and make the whole farce cheaper.
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Post by crossbat11 on Jan 14, 2024 12:30:43 GMT
LL: "Roy Jenkins' AV+ may be the best compromise, as long as the list component is made up from the losing candidates from each party who polled the highest percentage votes, rather than pre-selected party lists."I heartily agree. For me, retaining the single member constituency is essential if voters are to be able to relate at all to 'their' MP. Hi somerjohn, personally I think single member constituencies have little/negative value. A system based on them is far more prone to Gerrymandering, and in many cases does not produce a representative, even with AV, that all voters can relate to. I've always favoured STV. Part of the the issue with reform, is that while many of us can agree that FPTP is flawed, getting consensus on what to replace it with is incredibly challenging. Challenging, but not impossible. My preference would be to convene as near a cross party commission as possible to thrash out what is believed to be the optimum version of PR. Optimum being defined as a system that suits our particular political culture and has the virtue of simplicity. We should also look at other democracies, and there are many, and learn from their experiences of using PR based voting systems over many, many years This is one of those issues where I trust politicians and experts far more than I do "the people" to get it right. I mean, it's one of the reasons I elect the scoundrels in the first place!! We're a representative democracy, after all That needs to become more representative. Hence my support for electoral reform.
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neilj
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Post by neilj on Jan 14, 2024 15:38:39 GMT
Worth reading the whole thread, but housing is probably the single biggest issue facing people today, especially younger people. It needs radical action and it needs it now
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Post by leftieliberal on Jan 14, 2024 15:55:59 GMT
crossbat11 "What disappoints me a little with Starmer's current position is that he is in a great position to move on this. He's miles ahead and looking on course to win under the existing system.... What a position he's in right now to give Electoral and constitutional reform traction. I'm sad that he's declining to do so." Starmer's strength is that he doesn't make many mistakes - much harder than it looks. To discuss reform now would be a mistake: it would give the Tories an opening they are so desperate to find, as you point out in another post. Besides he doesn't support reform & the Tories would quote the various statements he has made that show that. Polls show that more people are in favour of changing the voting system than retaining the present one: but you can be in favour of something & not consider it a priority. He should say Labour would repeal Voter ID, an obvious piece of gerrymandering -- I quote Mogg -- on the grounds that without the National ID system standard in Euro countries which use this system it's obviously discriminatory. But the polls show that people are broadly in favour. Lower the voting age to 16: it's tinkering, but it might garner cross-party suppport as it benefits most parties but not Tories. You could have vague proposals on reform in a manifesto which would cover the "it wasn't in the manifesto" line. pjw1961 . "the only way we are going to get PR is to have a minority Labour government dependent on the support of smaller, pro-PR parties who demand electoral reform as the price of their support. Unfortunately under FPTP there is no way to vote for that outcome, it can only happen by accident. 2029 perhaps?" Agreed & shevii makes the same point. The problem is as graham says in the end would a Ref endorse reform after voters so decisively rejected AV. There is a benefit for Starmer pushing constitutional changes. Although it takes debating time to go through Parliament its cost implications are negligible. So ending Voter ID and votes at 16 are things that could be done early while Reeves' changes to the economy take time to have an effect. The alternative to ending Voter ID would be to amend it so that a wider range of photographic ID is acceptable; essentially anything issued by a public body. Unfortunately referenda are usually taken by the public as an opportunity to take a free hit at the Government, which is another reason IMO for starting with electoral reform in local government.
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Post by leftieliberal on Jan 14, 2024 16:02:40 GMT
eor The Dolphins lost 26-7 Tua Tagovailoa is still being chipped off the touch line. I don't think it would have mattered if the game had been played in more clement temperatures; the Chiefs were always going to beat the Dolphins at Arrowhead Stadium. More significantly, the Steelers at the Bills has been delayed until Monday afternoon because of a snowstorm sweeping in off the Great Lakes.
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Post by Mark on Jan 14, 2024 17:31:46 GMT
Last nights BBC Question Time programme was, certainly by its recent doleful standards, one of the more interesting ones that I had watched of late. Two reasons for this, I felt; the panel was very well balanced politically and, secondly, the audience was made up entirely of undecided voters rather than comprising party proportionate numbers of past party voters. Some caveats, obviously. Leadsom, batting for the Tories, was a bit unconvincing, but Nandy, Rose and particularly Anand Menon were interesting and reasonably non-partisan in terms of them resisting the temptation to flog party lines. Nandy strayed sometimes but Menon was excellent. He oozed centrist Dad wisdom! The other caveat was audience selection. To what extent the whole audience was truly undecided was debatable but, in fairness, the quality and nature of the questions asked, and comments made, suggested that most were genuinely mulling over how or whether they would vote in the next election. I was particularly struck by the response to one audience member question, though. Most of the programme was blissfully devoid of audience whooping and applause but this question drew the loudest and longest ovation of the night. Just about the only one too! It was about electoral reform and the aching need for a more representative voting system. It obviously struck an audience nerve and the questioner was clearly articulating what most in the room felt. The significance of this response was not lost on me. Here was a group of non-aligned and undecided voters, but that wasn't because they were uninterested in politics. They were and they thought deeply about it, quite obviously. Undecided or disillusioned? I suspect both and there lies the problem with British politics. It blithely sails on down the same old tracks, pulling an increasingly empty train, not noticing how many passengers have alighted. When is a political party going to wake up the real problem with our malfunctioning country? It's our politics, stupid, yet hardly anyone is confronting that enormous elephant in the room. But the public get it. Last night's Question Time shone a small light on how most feel. I actually disagree with this. If anything, I thought the program was a little on the dull side / bit of a damp squib. While I can see what the program was trying to do, I think it was a bit of a missed opportunity....on two points. The first, fixed without too much difficulty being that in a room full of undecideds, the only two politicians were one Labour and one Tory, both trying, to a certain extent, to appear centrist. In other words, it presented a very limited choice to an audience who were both undecided and had given the subject considerable thought. This leads me to the second weakness I thought the program had - and this one much more difficult to rectify. Yes, it was undecided voters, but, very politically engaged undecided voters. In other words, people like myself...I would venture to suggest people like at least some of us here. The problem is that they / I / we are the exception, the outliers, not the majority. Yes, some may be LOC undecideds, some ROC undecideds, maybe some will be influencers/tastemakers among our friends and family, but, the majority of undecideds are surely those that only really think about this stuff at election time, or when there is a really big story in the news.
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Post by hireton on Jan 14, 2024 18:54:05 GMT
A few reasons why fundamental reform of the Westminster Parliament won't happen:
1. In the last century and a quarter the Parliament had only reformed itself in response to external threats and pressure (e.g. the introduction of universal adult suffrage) or internal tension principally between the HoC and HoL. Apart from the drive for Scottish independence there are no such external pressures or internal tensions at the moment.
2. Neither the Labour Party or the Tory Party have anything to gain from reforming a system which gives them the opportunity of virtually untrammeled political and executive power every decade or so.
3. The proponents of reform have no agreed specific reform programme.
4. It is not a salient issue in English political opinion.
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Post by crossbat11 on Jan 14, 2024 20:04:51 GMT
mark
I see the point you're making about that QT audience the other night that I showered with praise, and one of my caveats was the difficulty of being certain how truly representative of the genuinely undecided voter it was. In fairness to the programme's production team, I suppose all they had to go on was the the word of each individual audience member. People aren't obliged to register formally their undecided status or past voting record!
I wonder though whether you're confusing members of the electorate who are apathetic and disinterested with those who are interested in politics but have no party political home.
Surely, if you're making a TV audience participation political programme you have to have the latter and not the former?
The apathetic and disinterested are likely to be the majority of the 18 million or so abstaining or unregistered adults in the UK. There might be a programme to be made about why we have so many people like that but, cutting the BBC some slack in terms of last Thursday's programme, I understand why they opted for the politically engaged undecided voters.
I think too that there might well be many more of these sorts of people than we think.
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Post by mercian on Jan 14, 2024 21:21:54 GMT
shevii"PR gives a small party the chance to get a few seats where it doesn't with AV and we now have at least 30% plus of voters who already are saying they aren't voting for one of the two main parties however much they get squeezed at election time. It's the proportion of people saying they will be voting for one of the two main parties who are actually holding their noses in doing so that would be the key." Apart from the last two GEs, which were heavily influenced by Brexit, the total votes for Lab+Con as a percentage of votes cast has been in decline since at least WWII. Until 1980 it was always in the high 80s or even 90% (high of 97% in 1951). Than until 2001 it was in the 70s. The next 3 up until 2015 were in the 60s. Even though the most recent two were exceptions to this trend, only just over 50% of the electorate voted for either Con or Lab in 2019. There is obviously widespread disillusion with the duopoly. This is also shown by the occasional big vote when a new party comes along - e.g. SDP, SNP and UKIP. I think some form of PR where there was a realistic chance of smaller parties being represented would be the antidote to this apathy. It would also restore the LibDems to the role they occasionally achieve, of holding the balance of power at least at first. I'm not saying whether this is good or bad, just what I think would be most likely to happen.
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Post by mercian on Jan 14, 2024 21:25:43 GMT
... But this began under the major government, continued under blair. There is no way the po did not know what was happening and many people share blame before davey got near a ministry. I read an article that before the system went live Blair was warned that it might be faulty but he was persuaded to go ahead by Mandelson. I can try to locate it if anyone's interested.
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Post by mercian on Jan 14, 2024 21:32:24 GMT
On a slightly different note, I was driving my youngest son to a football match yesterday, and to get there I was skirting in and out of the Ulez zone. There were protestors where the cameras are. I'm taking this as a further sign that the Tories will have this as the basis of the London Mayoral election and GE campaign. Personally, I think they are being incredibly irresponsible and short sighted. I also doubt it will prove to be a successful electoral strategy. It may help to shore up elements of Tory VI, but for most voters other factors will drive VI.
Longer term, it looks like another area in which the Tories are adopting a position to appeal to certain element of their base, but risk alienating themselves from the broader electorate. Given the clear signs of manmade Global Warming occurring, and the likely increased salience this will have on politics in the future, if they do lurch even further right after the GE, electorally they may find themselves in real dire straights. Did you have to pay £12.50 each time you went into the zone? I'm not sure you're right about electoral support for a green agenda. Certainly most thoughtful people will say that it's a concern, but not if it affects their lives too much. Just look at the reaction to the Just Stop Oil protestors. How many people will stop flying abroad for holidays? I'm sure some will, but not many.
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Post by mercian on Jan 14, 2024 21:36:29 GMT
With regard PR and voting systems. My obvious choice for a reformed voting system would be a fully elected Upper House (currently the House of Lords). Same here, and that would be a good way to introduce PR to the UK parliament. I can't see how it will ever happen though because even if there's a big majority of the population who agree, it's not an important issue for most. The two likely possible parties of government wouldn't want to lose the ability to ennoble their cronies. A revolution on the topic would probably only get a few hundred supporters.
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Post by mercian on Jan 14, 2024 21:40:47 GMT
Hi somerjohn , personally I think single member constituencies have little/negative value. A system based on them is far more prone to Gerrymandering, and in many cases does not produce a representative, even with AV, that all voters can relate to. I've always favoured STV. Part of the the issue with reform, is that while many of us can agree that FPTP is flawed, getting consensus on what to replace it with is incredibly challenging. Challenging, but not impossible. My preference would be to convene as near a cross party commission as possible to thrash out what is believed to be the optimum version of PR. Optimum being defined as a system that suits our particular political culture and has the virtue of simplicity. We should also look at other democracies, and there are many, and learn from their experiences of using PR based voting systems over many, many yearsThis is one of those issues where I trust politicians and experts far more than I do "the people" to get it right. I mean, it's one of the reasons I elect the scoundrels in the first place!! We're a representative democracy, after all That needs to become more representative. Hence my support for electoral reform. As Roy Jenkins already did this, why not just implement his recommendations? Or at least use them as a starting point rather than have further delay if it was started from scratch.
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Post by graham on Jan 14, 2024 23:32:30 GMT
shevii "PR gives a small party the chance to get a few seats where it doesn't with AV and we now have at least 30% plus of voters who already are saying they aren't voting for one of the two main parties however much they get squeezed at election time. It's the proportion of people saying they will be voting for one of the two main parties who are actually holding their noses in doing so that would be the key." Apart from the last two GEs, which were heavily influenced by Brexit, the total votes for Lab+Con as a percentage of votes cast has been in decline since at least WWII. Until 1980 it was always in the high 80s or even 90% (high of 97% in 1951). Than until 2001 it was in the 70s. The next 3 up until 2015 were in the 60s. Even though the most recent two were exceptions to this trend, only just over 50% of the electorate voted for either Con or Lab in 2019. There is obviously widespread disillusion with the duopoly. This is also shown by the occasional big vote when a new party comes along - e.g. SDP, SNP and UKIP. I think some form of PR where there was a realistic chance of smaller parties being represented would be the antidote to this apathy. It would also restore the LibDems to the role they occasionally achieve, of holding the balance of power at least at first. I'm not saying whether this is good or bad, just what I think would be most likely to happen. I am afraid you have rather missed the point that the high vote shares given to Lab + Con combined throughout the 1950s - and to a lesser extent the 1960s - was due to the fact that in most seats voters were only presented with a choice of two candidates! In 1951 the Liberals only contested 109 out of 625 constituencies - circa 500 seats only had Labour and Tory candidates. That was repeated in 1955 when the Liberals fought 110 of 630 seats. In 1959 the Liberals did put up over 200 candidates - a figure which increased to 365 in 1964 before falling back to circa 330 in both 1966 and 1970. By the 1960s the SNP and Plaid Cymru were also contesting most seats in their regions. Only from 1974 - particularly the October election - have the Liberals/LDs presented a pretty full list of candidates. Prior to that both major parties benefitted significantly from receiving the second preference votes of Liberal and other voters.
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Post by lens on Jan 15, 2024 0:13:20 GMT
On a slightly different note, I was driving my youngest son to a football match yesterday, and to get there I was skirting in and out of the Ulez zone. There were protestors where the cameras are. I'm taking this as a further sign that the Tories will have this as the basis of the London Mayoral election and GE campaign. Personally, I think they are being incredibly irresponsible and short sighted. ...............
Longer term, it looks like another area in which the Tories are adopting a position to appeal to certain element of their base, but risk alienating themselves from the broader electorate. Given the clear signs of manmade Global Warming occurring, and the likely increased salience this will have on politics in the future, if they do lurch even further right after the GE, electorally they may find themselves in real dire straights. lululemonmustdobetter - In previous posts I've said a lot in support of electric vehicles, and consider myself very pro environment and especially concerned about climate change, so I broadly support your stance. But I was and am strongly against the ULEZ expansion. And if that therefore surprises anyone, then a few reasons why. The whole idea behind ULEZ has little to do with climate change, it's to try to lower the level of pollutants in the air of the city. That had merit initially, with the original zone in the centre of London, but it's far, far less of an issue in the outer suburbs. The benefit to air quality there is forecast to be minimal, and whilst you may say that "every little helps", the financial effects of ULEZ on predominantly those least able to afford it are disproportionate. And it's a problem that's withering on the vine anyway. The cars affected by it are a minority even now, and would be replaced relatively soon anyway as they come to end of life. As far as climate change goes, the imperative is to reduce carbon emissions as much as possible, and the ULEZ expansion is forecast to *raise* them overall. If that surprises you, the reasoning is that scrapping vehicles before their typical end of life is not a good thing for two reasons. Firstly that the carbon load for a car is down to CO2 emissions from the tailpipe during it's life - but also from emissions "baked in" at manufacture. For that reason it's better to make full use of any car - not scrap it prematurely. (Same for many other products as well!) Secondly, the ULEZ expansion is tending to largely make owners replace diesel cars with petrol. The latter may be better than diesel from the point of view of NOx and particulate emissions - but tend to be **worse** as far as CO2 emissions go. (Which is why the government of the day encouraged the sale of diesel 15-20 years ago!) I've made my (positive) views on battery EVs very clear on this site before now, and was intending to keep my current (and old) car for another year or two before going electric. Unfortunately, ULEZ may force me to change much earlier and if I have to do such in the next 6 months, it will probably have to be to a petrol car. And politically the effect has been hugely negative. It almost certainly lost Labour the Uxbridge by-election, and emboldened one wing of the Conservative party to successfully promote a "green is a vote losing strategy" - with results such as the pushback of the BEV only mandate from 2030 to 2035. The negative effect of that alone should be seen as far more significant than any positive environmental benefit to come out of ULEZ expansion. (And ignoring the real financial hardship it's caused to some!) If Sadiq Khan really had been serious about a pro-environment move, then upping the spend on charging points would have been far more positive, or other measures such as making the central zone ZEV only. Drive anything but a zero emission car into the centre of London and you get charged. That would arguably have had more influence on air quality where it matters, without stirring up the anti-green backlash that the expansion has caused - but oh!, it wouldn't have raised as much income as the expansion has....... Which all leaves me in a bit of a quandary. Come the general election my vote will be for Labour, but it's certainly not going to be for Sadiq Khan at the Mayoral election.
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Post by mercian on Jan 15, 2024 0:27:33 GMT
shevii "PR gives a small party the chance to get a few seats where it doesn't with AV and we now have at least 30% plus of voters who already are saying they aren't voting for one of the two main parties however much they get squeezed at election time. It's the proportion of people saying they will be voting for one of the two main parties who are actually holding their noses in doing so that would be the key." Apart from the last two GEs, which were heavily influenced by Brexit, the total votes for Lab+Con as a percentage of votes cast has been in decline since at least WWII. Until 1980 it was always in the high 80s or even 90% (high of 97% in 1951). Than until 2001 it was in the 70s. The next 3 up until 2015 were in the 60s. Even though the most recent two were exceptions to this trend, only just over 50% of the electorate voted for either Con or Lab in 2019. There is obviously widespread disillusion with the duopoly. This is also shown by the occasional big vote when a new party comes along - e.g. SDP, SNP and UKIP. I think some form of PR where there was a realistic chance of smaller parties being represented would be the antidote to this apathy. It would also restore the LibDems to the role they occasionally achieve, of holding the balance of power at least at first. I'm not saying whether this is good or bad, just what I think would be most likely to happen. I am afraid you have rather missed the point that the high vote shares given to Lab + Con combined throughout the 1950s - and to a lesser extent the 1960s - was due to the fact that in most seats voters were only presented with a choice of two candidates! In 1951 the Liberals only contested 109 out of 625 constituencies - circa 500 seats only had Labour and Tory candidates. That was repeated in 1955 when the Liberals fought 110 of 630 seats. In 1959 the Liberals did put up over 200 candidates - a figure which increased to 365 in 1964 before falling back to circa 330 in both 1966 and 1970. By the 1960s the SNP and Plaid Cymru were also contesting most seats in their regions. Only from 1974 - particularly the October election - have the Liberals/LDs presented a pretty full list of candidates. Prior to that both major parties benefitted significantly from receiving the second preference votes of Liberal and other voters. Perhaps, but the fact that the Liberals/LibDems were able to field more candidates and that new parties came along shows that people have increasingly been looking for alternatives to the 'Big two'.
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Post by guymonde on Jan 15, 2024 0:47:03 GMT
On a slightly different note, I was driving my youngest son to a football match yesterday, and to get there I was skirting in and out of the Ulez zone. There were protestors where the cameras are. I'm taking this as a further sign that the Tories will have this as the basis of the London Mayoral election and GE campaign. Personally, I think they are being incredibly irresponsible and short sighted. ...............
Longer term, it looks like another area in which the Tories are adopting a position to appeal to certain element of their base, but risk alienating themselves from the broader electorate. Given the clear signs of manmade Global Warming occurring, and the likely increased salience this will have on politics in the future, if they do lurch even further right after the GE, electorally they may find themselves in real dire straights. lululemonmustdobetter - In previous posts I've said a lot in support of electric vehicles, and consider myself very pro environment and especially concerned about climate change, so I broadly support your stance. But I was and am strongly against the ULEZ expansion. And if that therefore surprises anyone, then a few reasons why. The whole idea behind ULEZ has little to do with climate change, it's to try to lower the level of pollutants in the air of the city. That had merit initially, with the original zone in the centre of London, but it's far, far less of an issue in the outer suburbs. The benefit to air quality there is forecast to be minimal, and whilst you may say that "every little helps", the financial effects of ULEZ on predominantly those least able to afford it are disproportionate. And it's a problem that's withering on the vine anyway. The cars affected by it are a minority even now, and would be replaced relatively soon anyway as they come to end of life. As far as climate change goes, the imperative is to reduce carbon emissions as much as possible, and the ULEZ expansion is forecast to *raise* them overall. If that surprises you, the reasoning is that scrapping vehicles before their typical end of life is not a good thing for two reasons. Firstly that the carbon load for a car is down to CO2 emissions from the tailpipe during it's life - but also from emissions "baked in" at manufacture. For that reason it's better to make full use of any car - not scrap it prematurely. (Same for many other products as well!) Secondly, the ULEZ expansion is tending to largely make owners replace diesel cars with petrol. The latter may be better than diesel from the point of view of NOx and particulate emissions - but tend to be **worse** as far as CO2 emissions go. (Which is why the government of the day encouraged the sale of diesel 15-20 years ago!) I've made my (positive) views on battery EVs very clear on this site before now, and was intending to keep my current (and old) car for another year or two before going electric. Unfortunately, ULEZ may force me to change much earlier and if I have to do such in the next 6 months, it will probably have to be to a petrol car. And politically the effect has been hugely negative. It almost certainly lost Labour the Uxbridge by-election, and emboldened one wing of the Conservative party to successfully promote a "green is a vote losing strategy" - with results such as the pushback of the BEV only mandate from 2030 to 2035. The negative effect of that alone should be seen as far more significant than any positive environmental benefit to come out of ULEZ expansion. (And ignoring the real financial hardship it's caused to some!) If Sadiq Khan really had been serious about a pro-environment move, then upping the spend on charging points would have been far more positive, or other measures such as making the central zone ZEV only. Drive anything but a zero emission car into the centre of London and you get charged. That would arguably have had more influence on air quality where it matters, without stirring up the anti-green backlash that the expansion has caused - but oh!, it wouldn't have raised as much income as the expansion has....... Which all leaves me in a bit of a quandary. Come the general election my vote will be for Labour, but it's certainly not going to be for Sadiq Khan at the Mayoral election. Having canvassed in Uxbridge (for Labour) I didn't hear a single voter mentioning ULEZ, so I thought the spineless Lab candidate coming out against ULEZ expansion being responsible for his own failure (also by spineless Lab senior people saying the same). The biggest grumble on the doorstep was too much canvassing. I was around for the original expansion of ULEZ to the N/S Circular when the story was that shopping areas within the ULEZ zone being destroyed and the communities outside also being destroyed - one because nobody would come and the other because tradesmen living outside would not go in and become redundant. These arguments survived until about a day after the expansion was implemented and have never been heard of since. Of course, the expansion is significant for some people but actually for a small minority and one which is decaying very rapidly www.london.gov.uk/new-report-shows-ulez-expansion-working-95-cent-vehicles-across-inner-and-outer-london-now-compliant#:~:text=96.4%20per%20cent%20of%20cars,44%20per%20cent%20in%202017.
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Post by mercian on Jan 15, 2024 1:54:45 GMT
I think the favourite films thing is over, but I've just rewatched 'A Knight's Tale' starring Heath Ledger and it's quite funny and also brought tears to my eyes in a couple of scenes near the end.
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neilj
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Post by neilj on Jan 15, 2024 5:32:47 GMT
Worth remembering the expansion of the ULEZ Zone was primarily to improve air quality and not about climate change. People, especially young people, were dying due to noxious gasses being pumped out of older polluting cars. Also as stared above the large majority of cars now meet the ULEZ Standard The tories made an error in reading far too much into the Uxbridge result
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neilj
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Post by neilj on Jan 15, 2024 6:08:19 GMT
Ready for the fireworks
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Post by moby on Jan 15, 2024 6:40:18 GMT
www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/01/14/general-election-poll-tories-worst-defeat-1997-labour/The Conservatives are heading for an electoral wipeout on the scale of their 1997 defeat by Labour, the most authoritative opinion poll in five years has predicted.
The YouGov survey of 14,000 people forecasts that the Tories will retain just 169 seats, while Labour will sweep to power with 385 – giving Sir Keir Starmer a 120-seat majority.
Every Red Wall seat won from Labour by Boris Johnson in 2019 will be lost, the poll indicates, and the Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, will be one of 11 Cabinet ministers to lose their seats.
The Tories will win 196 fewer seats than in 2019, more than the 178 Sir John Major lost in 1997.
The poll exposes the huge influence that Reform UK is set to have on the election result. The Right-wing party would not win any seats, but support for it would be the decisive factor in 96 Tory losses – the difference between a Labour majority and a hung Parliament.
There is also bad news for the Scottish National Party, which is predicted to lose almost half of its seats to Labour, retaining only 25.
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