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Northern Ireland26225 Posts
On December 15 2019 01:04 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2019 00:32 Wombat_NI wrote:On December 14 2019 23:23 Pandemona wrote:
That is why Conservatives win because the Labour party was full left wing this election and has been under Corbyn. I don’t know if it is the case. In the legitimate ‘I don’t know’ sense of the phrase, not used rhetorically to signify disagreement. As I’ve alluded to before, Brexit has a distorting effect on normal politics, to the degree I’m not sure any claims about the ideological appetite of the nation are accurate. Stemming from Brexit too comes Scotland and Scottish independence as a similar issue that supersedes other considerations. Most exemplified with Northern Ireland routinely returning pretty the most left wing party in the UK and the most right wing (elected anyway) routinely as their biggest parties. As I said I really don’t know. Labour obviously didn’t do well from the left, but the Lib Dem’s who very much are the centrist party got trounced too, and centrist defectors from Labour and the Conservatives also did not do well. One way to bring some light into this would be to look at the policy positions espoused by Labour. Are they popular, are they not? If they aren't popular, it would be a sign that reverting back to the center would be a sound strategy. If they are, then no. If it's a mix, then get in the mix =)
This is notoriously unreliable though, because there’s an informational discrepancy between abstract policies and what party is for or against them, plus the other intangible factors like charisma and likeability, plus the complexities of other things.
It’s why there’s always a big lag period between a policy becoming favoured by (often big) majorities in countries and actually being enacted legislatively. Be it same-sex marriage, marijuana decriminalisation, wars or whatever.
My personal pet theory is the country will swing pretty damn left a few years down the line, but that remains to be seen.
Brexit has, for whatever reason been seen as a panacea for the (real) problems people in traditional Labour heartlands are experiencing. Myself and many others think it’ll make things outright worse for those people, but as it’s been interminably delayed that illusion has yet to be shattered.
Remains to be seen really, I think a lack of left wing reaction is due to the (IMO) mistaken belief that Brexit will accomplish the same things.
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It is definitely not perfect I agree with you. But can you think of a better measure?
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Northern Ireland26225 Posts
On December 15 2019 02:19 Nebuchad wrote:
It is definitely not perfect I agree with you. But can you think of a better measure?
I’m not sure one exists currently to be honest!
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5930 Posts
On December 15 2019 00:21 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On December 14 2019 23:23 Pandemona wrote:
That is why Conservatives win because the Labour party was full left wing this election and has been under Corbyn. Are the lib dems not specifically aimed at filling that centrist party role or is my cursory reading of wiki failing me?
That’s pretty much the Lib Dems. They were the “sensible” Remain option.
I’d agree with Kwark. With the chaos going on after the referendum, the conservatives basically made the election a wedge issue: do you want chaos to continue or do you want to get Brexit over and done with and deal with the issues later? It’s got little to do with any policy, in fact there was literally no policy discussed beyond Brexit.
The problem with Labour’s position is that there’s no real way for them to win after the Conservatives - Remain or Leave - banded together and solely adopted the Leave position. Unlike the Left and “sensible” Centralist groups, the Right are more willing to get out of the way when they want to get something done. Where the Lib Dems drained votes from Labour, the Brexit Party had their candidates stand down so people could only vote for the Conservatives.
That being said, it’s also not particularly fair to blame the Lib Dems either, swings against Labour in a lot of places was significant enough that Labour still would have lost seats even if all Lib Dem votes went straight to Labour (unlikely).
Corbyn also had a huge number of problems related to the fact he’s been around for so damn long that the media defined him. People couldn’t explain why they thought he was untrustworthy, just that he was. Despite how irrational the accusations of anti semitic beliefs - especially when we look at Boris who willingly associated himself with anti semites - the media successfully painted him as one.
Not surprisingly they’re trotting out the same sort of game against Bernie. It doesn’t really matter if people with Nazi collaborator grandparents are writing these articles and opinion pieces, repeating it enough is probably introduce enough doubt in some people.
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On December 15 2019 13:31 Womwomwom wrote:
Corbyn also had a huge number of problems related to the fact he’s been around for so damn long that the media defined him. People couldn’t explain why they thought he was untrustworthy, just that he was. Despite how irrational the accusations of anti semitic beliefs - especially when we look at Boris who willingly associated himself with anti semites - the media successfully painted him as one.
Not surprisingly they’re trotting out the same sort of game against Bernie. It doesn’t really matter if people with Nazi collaborator grandparents are writing these articles and opinion pieces, repeating it enough is probably introduce enough doubt in some people. Same thing also happened successfully with Hillary. Doesn't matter if none of the shit sticks, if you throw enough for long enough everyone starts to smell.
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I will not defend FPTP, because it is indeed a very bad election system, but that comparison isn't really fair either. If you have a FPTP election, people vote differently, and after a few elections the system will stabilize towards a two-party system, as people abandon the smaller parties to choose the one of the two relevant parties that is closer to their position.
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On December 15 2019 21:09 pmh wrote:
So boris won bigtime,which is not that big of a surprise.
Now besides brexit he can start breaking down the NHS and then in a few years halve the voters will be like "wait,this isn't what we signed up for".
There has been so much focus on the whole brexit (which was going to happen anyway) that people forgot about all the other issues.
The English election system looks kinda unfair. A newspaper here (the Netherlands) did calculate what our election results would have been if it was done by the English system.
The party which got 20% of the votes and seats (rightwing liberal conservatives would be a good description,comparable to tory) would have ended up with 72% of the seats in the house.
The system more or less takes away the vote of the group of people who live concentrated in a few areas.
How so? The Scottish are concentrated in a few constituencies and the SNP is massively overrepresented.
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There are a bunch of different bad effects.
If you have a constituency that is geographically concentrated, and which overwhelmingly votes for one party, that party loses out. This is basically accidental gerrymandering. Lets say you have three districts with 50 people each, and the total voters vote 60% A (90 people), 40% B (60 people). If people are distributed equally, A wins all of the seats at 30 : 20. If you have 50 A people in one district, and the remaining 40 A split on the other two, then A wins district 1 with 100% of the votes, while B wins seats 2 and 3 with 30 : 20 voters each. This is a situation where your voters being concentrated is bad for you.
On the other hand, if you have a party that would have 5% of the vote in total, and which is roughly equally distributed across the country, they get nothing. Even worse than that, they actually take away votes from the big party which is closest to them, making that party lose seats. This leads to tactical voting where people don't vote for what they agree with most, but for the one of the two big parties closest to them, and where you can actively hurt your political position by defending it by taking away votes from the closest party that can actually win.
The SNP is overrepresented due to yet another bad FPTP effect, namely that once you have the plurality of the votes, any other votes are worthless. So if you have 51% of the votes everywhere, you get 100% of the seats, which is clearly overrepresentative. So if you are a regional party, who has a plurality of the votes in your region, that ends up being good for you.
The only minority parties who can get people into a FPTP parliament are those who are geographically concentrated, while a national minority has no chance of ever getting any representation. But once you are one of the main parties, being geographically too concentrated becomes bad, because you "waste" votes on seats that you are going to win anyways, while not having enough votes for other seats where you are in a slight minority.
Basically, FPTP is bad in a lot of different ways.
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On December 15 2019 22:04 Simberto wrote:
There are a bunch of different bad effects.
If you have a constituency that is geographically concentrated, and which overwhelmingly votes for one party, that party loses out. This is basically accidental gerrymandering. Lets say you have three districts with 50 people each, and the total voters vote 60% A (90 people), 40% B (60 people). If people are distributed equally, A wins all of the seats at 30 : 20. If you have 50 A people in one district, and the remaining 40 A split on the other two, then A wins district 1 with 100% of the votes, while B wins seats 2 and 3 with 30 : 20 voters each. This is a situation where your voters being concentrated is bad for you.
On the other hand, if you have a party that would have 5% of the vote in total, and which is roughly equally distributed across the country, they get nothing. Even worse than that, they actually take away votes from the big party which is closest to them, making that party lose seats. This leads to tactical voting where people don't vote for what they agree with most, but for the one of the two big parties closest to them, and where you can actively hurt your political position by defending it by taking away votes from the closest party that can actually win.
The SNP is overrepresented due to yet another bad FPTP effect, namely that once you have the plurality of the votes, any other votes are worthless. So if you have 51% of the votes everywhere, you get 100% of the seats, which is clearly overrepresentative. So if you are a regional party, who has a plurality of the votes in your region, that ends up being good for you.
The only minority parties who can get people into a FPTP parliament are those who are geographically concentrated, while a national minority has no chance of ever getting any representation. But once you are one of the main parties, being geographically too concentrated becomes bad, because you "waste" votes on seats that you are going to win anyways, while not having enough votes for other seats where you are in a slight minority.
Basically, FPTP is bad in a lot of different ways.
Thanks for an elaborate explanation. I agree that FPTP is a flawed system in many ways. I find it amazing that there are actually many British people who oppose changing it.
I just wonder whether the effect described by pmh has actual ramifications in any country that uses FPTP. Although it's possible in theory, it requires some special circumstances.
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I oppose changing it because I think its much better to have a majority government of whatever persuasion than a hung parliament every single time. Majority governments have a duty to deliver on their promises and if they don't its plain to see and the electorate can appropriately apportion blame and kick them out.
If there was a proportional vote system there would always be a hung parliament and the parties would stitch things up behind closed doors after every result.
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After years of what amounts to a no consensus government under FPTP, pointing to supposed instability or a lack of mandate as the reason for keep FPTP is not very persuasive.
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On December 15 2019 22:39 Zaros wrote:
I oppose changing it because I think its much better to have a majority government of whatever persuasion than a hung parliament every single time. Majority governments have a duty to deliver on their promises and if they don't its plain to see and the electorate can appropriately apportion blame and kick them out.
If there was a proportional vote system there would always be a hung parliament and the parties would stitch things up behind closed doors after every result.
When was the last time a UK government actually delivered on anything close to majority of their promises (never mind all of them...), or was properly blamed and kicked out (or otherwise punished) for not doing so?
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On December 16 2019 04:40 Salazarz wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2019 22:39 Zaros wrote:
I oppose changing it because I think its much better to have a majority government of whatever persuasion than a hung parliament every single time. Majority governments have a duty to deliver on their promises and if they don't its plain to see and the electorate can appropriately apportion blame and kick them out.
If there was a proportional vote system there would always be a hung parliament and the parties would stitch things up behind closed doors after every result. When was the last time a UK government actually delivered on anything close to majority of their promises (never mind all of them...), or was properly blamed and kicked out (or otherwise punished) for not doing so?
Well, Theresa May's comes to mind.
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On December 15 2019 22:39 Zaros wrote:
I oppose changing it because I think its much better to have a majority government of whatever persuasion than a hung parliament every single time. Majority governments have a duty to deliver on their promises and if they don't its plain to see and the electorate can appropriately apportion blame and kick them out.
If there was a proportional vote system there would always be a hung parliament and the parties would stitch things up behind closed doors after every result.
Majority governments in FPTP have a duty to deliver on their promises (as do coalition governments in PR systems), which the majority of the society typically disagrees with.
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Northern Ireland26225 Posts
FPTP gives you the ability to have a majority and ‘get things done’, which is frequently given as its strength. That you’re potentially having policies that a majority of the country disapproves of being the things getting done seems not to be an important consideration for adherents.
I think a mistake made in the PR referendum was it wasn’t a referendum on FPTP vs PR, but a referendum of FPTP vs a specific form of PR in Alternative Vote. Well, maybe.
Also it’s hard to punch through conservatism in the generic, non-party sense. People are used to it being this way so why change it?
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People voted to retain the FPTP system as both Labour and Conservatives, who benefit from it the most being the two major parties persuaded their voters to vote to retain it. It's not unimaginable that both Conservative and Labour voters would want to retain the very same advantages to a voting system that entrenches their power at the expense of other poltical parties and views. It was only ever put to the vote as part of a Lib Dem agreement to enter coalition with the Conservative party at the time, and in any case the vote got barely any newstime or debate.
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Northern Ireland26225 Posts
On December 16 2019 08:43 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
People voted to retain the FPTP system as both Labour and Conservatives, who benefit from it the most being the two major parties persuaded their voters to vote to retain it. It's not unimaginable that both Conservative and Labour voters would want to retain the very same advantages to a voting system that entrenches their power at the expense of other poltical parties and views. It was only ever put to the vote as part of a Lib Dem agreement to enter coalition with the Conservative party at the time, and in any case the vote got barely any newstime or debate.
Which isn’t looking a particularly smart move at least on Labour’s side in 2019.
I mean you are right though with that analysis.
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Dunno. They lost an election, but without FPTP they would really have to share their voters with the libdems.Here in Germany, our center left party which used to be one of the two big parties, is very quickly moving towards obscurity, with a lot of the voters going to parties that would never be relevant in FPTP.
If you are one of the two big parties, even if you are losing, FPTP is good for you. It is bad for society, and it is bad for all of the other parties. But i am pretty sure that labour would lose a lot more seats and especially votes without FPTP. And now they just have to wait for Brexit to look bad, (and avoid being in power once that becomes obvious), and suddenly they will win again.
Labour and tories have a lot more to lose by getting rid of FPTP than they could ever win by doing so.
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Northern Ireland26225 Posts
On December 16 2019 14:25 Simberto wrote:
Dunno. They lost an election, but without FPTP they would really have to share their voters with the libdems.Here in Germany, our center left party which used to be one of the two big parties, is very quickly moving towards obscurity, with a lot of the voters going to parties that would never be relevant in FPTP.
If you are one of the two big parties, even if you are losing, FPTP is good for you. It is bad for society, and it is bad for all of the other parties. But i am pretty sure that labour would lose a lot more seats and especially votes without FPTP. And now they just have to wait for Brexit to look bad, (and avoid being in power once that becomes obvious), and suddenly they will win again.
Labour and tories have a lot more to lose by getting rid of FPTP than they could ever win by doing so.
Yeah good points well made.
How is policy continuity in Germany incidentally?
If I have one big bugbear with FPTP locking us into a de facto 2 party system, it’s a lack of continuity here.
You see this in education policy especially. Rather than keep the previous party’s reforms, the next lot just roll back and change things to fit their ideological framework. Then those are flipped around the next time.
You don’t pursue good policy, you have to simultaneously make it seem like you’re undoing the ‘disaster’ of the previous people in power.
Have quite a lot of family members in education and they were extremely frustrated. Not just at bad changes as they saw it but that things were constantly being changed and it was disruptive.
Not saying other systems mitigate these kind of issues, I actually don’t really know so was curious as to your perspective.
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EPT
