Electoral Calculus have run their best estimate of the 2019 election result through the 2018 boundary proposal for 600 parliamentary seats (the case for which reduction may be hard to make in practice now as no Tory will want their own chance of a career sacrificed for the sake of a pointless reduction in numbers).
Approximate equalisation of numbers of voters per seat has this consequence:
Labour, LibDems and PC lose significantly: relatively Tories win.
Something much like this will happen. There is now no way to stop it.
Labour has to realise how hard that road back will be, especially with indiscipline, if it breaks out.
What is required from Labour? A commitment to total electoral reform: nothing less will do.
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Have tried to encourage friends in England to support electoral reform. So far they show no enthusiasm. Is Electoral Reform Society too polite? I suppose I mean ineffective? Do they need higher visibility? on Twitter they cheer at getting 80k signatures for a petition. They need to get millions before stuff happens.
Maybe a grassroots action has to get going. Voters ( and those who don’t bother ) take the initiative and make lots of noise. I am now a pensioner who remembers electoral reform being discussed in modern studies class at high school in 1960s. C’mon guys – something needs to give. And soon.
Join it
I have
Yes, if every one of the 76% of Labour members who prioritise PR since GE19 (according to a yougov poll) persuaded 4 people to sign a ERS petition, there would straight away to about 400,000 additional signatories.
Then, at least, the required discussion would occur – probably on new left media sites like this (well done Richard) rather than on the BBC and MSM platforms.
OOOOps, meant additional 1,600,000 votes…
“Yes, if every one of the 76% of Labour members who prioritise PR since GE19 (according to a yougov poll) persuaded 4 people to sign a ERS petition, there would straight away to about 1,600,000 additional signatories. “
Maths? Who’d do it…? 🙂
Hmm. During the ’14, we were advised by the Labour party in Scotland that we should not vote for Independence as that would leave our socialist brethren in rUK at the mercy of the Tories. Solidarity required a “no” vote. Now that our so-called comrades have stabbed us in the back, it is time to leave. There is no escape from the billionaire-owned Tory monster unless you move up here and vote to end the senescent imperial project. We can live in a harmless little country, with a moral defence and foreign policy. What’s not to like? This is not running away, it is running towards.
how about instead of more pointless petitions, societies, activists, which have proved to do absolutely nothing over decades – the Left actually take some lessons and learn something from their enemies about how to win.
There is an excellent half hour talk on youtube by Dominic Cummings on how leave won (youtube it). In that he talks in clear detail about the strategy, targeted ads, physicians using machine learning and correlating data, and at the end of it, whole heartedly admits when questioned, that the Tories really don’t care about any of these people.
(literally says that).
When will the left realise that none of their current tactics have worked. Signing up to a petition and imagining that there could be electoral reform is, i’m sorry, another ridiculous pipe dream.
The left have to scheme, strategize, find competent leaders and technocrats like Cummings who have the ability to treat our agenda like a series of missions that need completing. Treating the electorate like people who need to be manipulated. Go and find a handful of sympathetic super-rich folk who are willing to fund the cause for the Left (of which i’m Sure there must be…you’d only need one). Set up a think tank.
Where is our Mont Pelerin society?
We have all the theories, all the data, all the empirics, all the complaints. Its the same broken record i see on twitter, over and over, yes the Tories are doing horrible things, what a surprise.
The tories treated the electorate with utter contempt, explicitly. Boris’ dad in one sentence denegrating a large swathe of the population saying they wouldn’t be able to spell pinocchio. This is how the Tory class thinks – and using that as their base assumption, they do whatever they need to to win – and so its proven to be correct.
And we need to do the same.
But the left has to care too
‘The left have to care too’
The important word is ‘too’. Caring is necessary but not sufficient. Cheating, deviancy and contempt for the people is the Tory way. That can’t be fought by decency alone.
In this informal presentation, George Monbiot articulates the wider & greater problem facing all progressive parties, against which the UK’s voting system needs to be viewed and, ofc, urgently addressed : ‘Why Labour Lost: Oligarchs are Gaming Democracy’ – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6I_ZhGHxnHQ.
I don’t know about you, but the effective power of this new oligarchic hegemony scares the shxt out of me. Monbiot’s Schumachian-style grass-roots solution is probably the way to go but it’s long-term, necessitating an unprecedented level of co-operation & communication between local, national & international communities. In the meantime, God only knows what further decimation of the democratic process will be wreaked by these puppets of the oligarchs.
Happy winter solstice! ‘From out of the darkness and cold, light and hope return …..’
I’ve now watched it….that is a long term way to beat a very real current threat
His analysis is quite good at the start
Every cloud has a silver lining: A yougov poll claims that 76% of Labour party members now (after tge19 catastrophe) prioritise electoral reform and proportional representation.
This, togeher with the need for government to confront glabal warming are two “unexpected” benefits of GE19.
Obviously, on PR/electoral reform the Conservatives are pulling in the opposite direction and, therefore, the red top press will not publicise (or admit) the need. Labour must quickly initiate discussion and try to take the discussion away from theoretical issues to a practical place and instead proposes an AMS (additional member system) solution as a starting point.
Electoral reform and a new built parliament without the swords length two benches is the future.
But it all pales into insignificance if there is s possibility of election fraud.
The fact is nearly 11 million real voters did vote for a Labour government- i don’t know how many were postal voters – does anyone?
The fact may well be over 20% of the total votes cast may be by post – 1 in 5 – would that not be worrying?
At which point do we have to smell something fishy?
1 in 4?
1 in 3?
Any system which can not be transparent and audited is open to abuse.
Sad to say, our best chance of electoral reform is probably having the Tories make a catastrophic hash of Brexit leading to a Labour or perhaps coalition government in 5 years. Not great if you need the misery and suffering of a deep recession to get something good to happen to the electoral landscape. I think it’s quite feasible that Johnson will make a complete hash of things but then the Tories made a catastrophic hash of the recovery after 2008 and still got re-elected. I’m expecting the captive media to spin anything that goes wrong as the fault of those dastardly Europeans. The past decade has shown that a big chunk of the electorate will believe any old crap they are fed (or pushed on social media) and it will take quite something to overcome Tory spending power.
The best reason for supporting PR?
“In a book published earlier this year, Professor Jonathan Rodden revealed that since World War II every single developed country with a winner-takes-all voting system has on average had a parliament that is more right wing than its voters. In almost every case, their cabinets have been even further to the right. Two-thirds of all governments formed in these countries have been right wing, despite left-wing parties winning slightly more votes in almost every case.”
https://labourlist.org/2019/12/labour-has-gambled-on-first-past-the-post-for-too-long/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+LabourListLatestPosts+%28LabourList%29 (Joe Souseck is a fine writer, read his LabourList article, it focusses a few disparate reasons for PR).
Thanks
Really valuable
It is quite obvious that the use of electoral colleges in any USA election, which can be substituted by constituencies in the UK , do not reflect the actual vote cast and deny those who vote, even when it is a binary choice, the option they wish.
One easy way to remove 59 seats from the equation, and all but 6 of them are in opposition to The Tousled One. Go on Boris, you know you want to…
🙂
Certainly constituencies should, as far as possible, represent equal numbers of voters. There are some corner cases like the Isle of Wight (too big if one constituency & each too small if split), but that doesn’t negate the general democratic principle. The Boundary Commission for England generated its latest report a year ago so it probably won’t need revising for legislation.
While constituencies having equal numbers of voters sounds – and in one sense is – a good idea, application of the principle leads to constituency and local authority boundaries not matching – so you will have an MP for part of Thistown, part of Thattown, and part of a county that contains neither – a constituency without any local sense of identity. (And how registration and returning officers are going to be grouped is another question…)
True…
We’d be better off with PR and regional lists, of course
The 2011 AV referendum, the first stepping stone to PR, was lost in the same way the brexit referendum was lost due to chicanery and mendacity as the NO campaign (Tory led) “got down dirty and deceitful” while the YES campaign was next to useless. It was characterised as being “bad tempered and ill informed”. Sound familiar?
This was not an advisory referendum it required the government to enact the result by law.
The referendum was held on 05/05/2011 at the same time as UK local elections and the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland parliamentary and assembly elections. The net result was a turnout of 42% which was lost 67% to 33% ( rounded up). It is still being held up as the “democratic will ” of the people and therefore there is no need to revisit it so it is unlikely any referendum on the subject will be granted any time soon. It is also highly unlikely that any petition will have any effect on a government judging by the number ignored by parliament including the Stop Brexit Petition with over 4.5 million signatures.
The upshot of it all seems to be if cant win fairly Cheat. “a lie told once remains a lie. A lie told 1000 times becomes the truth” “Arguments must, therefore, be crude clear and forceful and appeal to the emotions and instinct, not the intellect. Truth is unimportant and subordinate to tactics and psychology”
Dominic Cummings oh sorry Joseph Goebbels
With a growing population and an angry disconnect with politicians and government. I think it is madness to reduce the number of mps. More are needed especially PR not less.
No one is talking about the elephant in the room, inequality and its growth. It is not safe to assume the tories can get away with gerrymandering and manipulating the population so he and is ilk can run the country as they see fit. As for the union I cannot see the left’s dream of scotland being independent. Sturgeon knows she cannot win a second referendum now, this is why she is not calling for one. Also she is walking into a trap with regards to Johnson’s supposed weakness. As recent events have show polls were wrong and relying on them is daft
I know people on here think the ruk will walk over with regards to the above, they say this while on the one hand giving johnson the power do what he wants. He can to a certain extent but he dare no use the power to destroy his supporters to the point they just run off the hinterland of nothing by not voting tory.
Inequality will get worse under the tories and the political weakening of the union will grow even more acute if the former continues to fester. I think it will grow much weaker to the point of civil unrest. Brexit, the rise of the far right, the hard right and the left is a symptom of it. Eventually people will not engaged in the political process and move to the streets. This is what happen with regards to thatcher and the poll tax riots.
Even the establishment which johnson is not part of will baulk at his sledgehammer to the the nation. They will not rise to defend the masses but themselves if they see bojo the clown become bojo the demoguage who wants permanent rule which excludes them. It is no secret bojo and cummins are disaster capitalists who want to destroy the institutions of the nation, then to put hem back in their own image. There is no way the “establishment” will allow this to take place. LIke all revolutionaries and yes bojo is one of them, they tend to get eaten by their own.