Nesrine Malik on the Q of whether we live in an 'essentially conservative' country:
'The only perennial truth about England is that it is an unequal country & the Conservative party has leveraged that inequality to its benefit: the English ruling class it represents has constructed its own majority'!
Also don't forget dealing with Britain's feral Right-wing press. The reason why we have Starmer in charge of Labour instead of Long-Bailey or someone who might mobilise depoliticised people, is because Starmer is Right-wing enough and Establishment enough to be acceptable to the Daily Mail - and Starmer isn't going to want to upset that. He's seen what the papers did to Corbyn and to Johnson. He's going to stay carefully within the boundaries prescribed for him.
@RolloTreadway@ChrisMayLA6 The bald electoral truth under FPTP is that Labour has to get former Conservative voters outside the major conurbations to vote Labour. Sadly they will not vote for someone they perceive as “left wing”, hence Starmers caution.
@ChrisMayLA6@RolloTreadway how long is some time? I'm unconvinced by the view that because something failed we shouldn't try again.
The spider and the Bruce and all that....☺️
@RolloTreadway@ChrisMayLA6 I like the idea of a constitutional convention, though I worry about who selects those on/in it.
I must admit the concept of a weighted representation appeals to me, i.e. the votes cast by an elected member is weighted according to the number of votes they obtain.
Not sure how we deal with uncontested elections as is common in LAs. I also think we should have the same system for all elections. The various systems and electorates we currently have is silly.
@RolloTreadway@ChrisMayLA6 just looked up the composition of Ireland's convention. I like the sordition element, not sure I want party reps from any source. My experience of environmental recovery community panels gives me great faith in the common man and woman. So such a panel under a good chair, with suitable civil service support, would be ideal.
@RolloTreadway@epistatacadam@ChrisMayLA6 I agree that we should stop worrying about the AV referendum. That asked the wrong question, it’s not surprising it got the wrong answer, and it is now a different time.
That's demonstrably untrue as we've had election results of all kinds in the past 20 years. It isn't the voting system, or voters.
But go ahead and design a voting system that provides for a locally represented parliament across four countries and equitably across Metropolitan, town, country and rural areas. Oh and without giving political parties lists of unelected members to fudge a spurious proportionality.
A Transferable Vote system is Distributive, not Proportional. A directly elected assembly which isn't strictly one vote by one voter for one candidate is a fraud on the electorate.
Choosing counting systems that individual voters don't understand is a different kind of fraud remember we have no qualifications of literacy or numeracy to vote and nor should there be.
The only segment that benefits is Political Parties, the only one they fear is FPTP.
You can disagree, you can say there's just one vote with multiple preferences, but as the opportunities for preferences is limited it really amounts to multiple votes, even if the first vote is treated as a Mulligan.
That may appear fine to you but finding it obnoxious isn't silly.