General British politics discussion thread

I love that at least 2 people he leaked the info of actually sent nude pics back to the scammers.

How stupid are these people.

As for Wragg he should be in a lot more trouble than just losing a seat.

As does NI, and Wales is about to introduce it, albeit in a ridiculous move, optionally - councils can pick.

Honestly, STV in single-seat constituencies wouldn't do much to remedy the deficiencies of the present system.

Australia has that system for elections to the House of Representatives. They still have exactly the same entrenched two-party duopoly that the UK has, with preferences — even first preferences — cast for third parties being essentially an irrelevance. The headline voting that the media, and even the Electoral Commission, focus on is the "two-party preferred" vote — meaning, of the only two parties that matter, which one did you give the higher preference to? This preserves the worst features of the FPTP system — entrenching the two dominant parties; reducing their accountability to voters; mimising the value of the vote in order to maximise the power of the parties.

The bottom line is that you can't have proportional representation in a a constituency that only elects one member. All of the represention will go to the supporters of one party/candidate; the supporters of all other parties/candidates will get zero representation. There is nothing remotely proportional about that.

It's not inevitable that this will produce incompetent, dysfunctional or unstable government. It does create conditions which tend to favour this, but this can be offset by other apsects of the political culture/system.

But in recent years those other aspects don't seem to have been functioning very well. Both Australia and the UK have seen dramatic bouts of instability, chaotic government, party in-fighting, rapid and repeated replacements of Prime Minister without any recourse to voters, etc.

Yes. They had them til 1950, and still do for councils. Spin it as a history thing and you can even get the far right on side with the idea

Their multi seat University Constituencies even used STV for their final decades

Proper AV is not limited to a 2nd preference. You might be thinking of that bastardised variant called Supplementary Vote where people only get 1st and 2nd preferences, and everyone except the top two candidates are eliminated in one go.

On top of disastrous Tory policy of privatisation of trains coming back to bite them another terrible Thatcher policy of privatising water is now about to hit.

Thames Water is defaulting and could go bust. Mogg ironically calling for state control (much like some train lines had to revert to)

“It would continue to be run by an administrator, the shareholders would lose their equity but they took too much cash out so deserve no sympathy and the bond holders would face a partial loss. This is capitalism, it won’t affect the water supply.”

Indeed he's positioned in some way to profit, it is the only reason he does or says anything.

In the wake of many Tories reconsidering support for Israel after the horrific targeting of a charity mid week Boris Johnson is setting himself up firmly in the pro-Israel camp:

He'll have to crawl over the likes of Suella Braverman first if he thinks he can worm his way back in by setting himself on the far-right of the party.

Ex Prime Ministers.

By export I meant stuff that stays overseas 😝

More seriously students coming into a country is classed as an "export" but the gov't will likley strangle that one as well. What left..

(moving over to After Hours..)

The painting of him as a victim by Westminster has been shocking. He wasn't hacked or anything like that. He handed over other peoples info to a known blackmailer to save his own skin.