Democracy

@wajoma said
UK now has a serious 3rd party. And it happened in a few months.

I think the Liberal Democrats probably have a better claim to that title. For that matter the Green Party are the fourth party. The Brexit Party will lose most of its support once Brexit is resolved, in the same way that UKIP did when they got their result in the referendum.

@deepthought said
The Brexit Party will lose most of its support once Brexit is resolved

If it is resolved on the Oct 31st.

AKA as 'stating the bleed'n obvious' the Brexit party was set up for one thing and one thing only, so once that issue is resolved it's likely they'll just go away.

@wolfgang59 said
I dismissed both Labour's and Brexit's claims of victory.
And said UKIP and Conservatives were losers.

But, as you might have deduced from the thread title, I wanted to
discuss the poor turnout and the apathy that threatens democracy.

Now its surely past your bedtime?

wolfgag: "Brexit are claiming a victory.
(But you lost ... your votes were from disillusioned Conservatives)"

You also posted a link to the biased news site, the BBC, which had stats clearly indicating that those voting for the Brexit Party had come from disillusioned Conservatives and disillusioned Labor (ex supporters).

And of course the opposite of the Brexit Party the essentially one issue CUcK party is already cold in the ground.

Edit: Considering the campaigning done by the Brexit party compared to the campaigning by others, the age of the party, the fact that they're single issue party their result is phenomenal. Suck it up snowflake. Farages comment "pretty bouyed" does not mean "we won".

@wajoma said
If it is resolved on the Oct 31st.

AKA as 'stating the bleed'n obvious' the Brexit party was set up for one thing and one thing only, so once that issue is resolved it's likely they'll just go away.

Well yes. I wasn't especially thinking about the October the 31st date. Frankly this could rumble on for years. I have an agnostic position on Europe, I would say skeptical but that word seems to mean something else these days. I'm more concerned with governance and vulnerabilities within the British political system and how they interact with the personalities of politicians. Gerrymandering behaviour is the simplest example.

@kazetnagorra said
Reforming the voting system is enough, people are more inclined to vote if they have more meaningful choices rather than having to choose between (what they feel are) two bad choices. For example, turnout in the last elections in Sweden was 87% even without obligatory voting.

It would certainly help.

I'm in favour of STV which is often called the "every vote counts system"
and deters extremism.

Proportional Representation is arguably the most logical system but I feel
people think their one vote will not matter. (The bigger the country, the
bigger the problem)

First past the post is an awful antiquated system.

@deepthought said
I am happy with the basic system as it is. There are problems with the House of Lords due to too many politicians having been given seats and it has become overcrowded. The purpose of the Upper Chamber should be to have experts from various fields who have actual influence over the content of legislation, rather than as outsiders complaining to the media. I do not thin ...[text shortened]... d Italy have well documented problems and have the electoral systems of the type you are advocating.

Spain was a military dictatorship in the 1970s and they don't have a strong democratic tradition. Still, the functioning of Spain's democracy appears to be improving, with multiple reasonable choices available to voters.

Italy does seem to be the odd man out, never recovering from a corruption scandal that devastated the Christian Democrats. Still, their system is well-guarded against a renewed fascist takeover, a real risk in the U.K. currently, with the Brexit Party having a realistic shot at taking a majority in the Commons.

@kazetnagorra said
Do you think it's just a massive coincidence that all of the world's most prosperous societies are multi-party democracies with some form of proportional representation?

If you want districts you can use the German implementation of PR, but in practice it makes little difference with respect to the accountability of politicians or how well-represented people feel.

Do you think it's just a massive coincidence that all of the world's most prosperous societies are multi-party democracies with some form of proportional representation?

FALSE. According to this news website, Canada's ranked 1st by quality of life, which does not surprise me (it's a fantastic country in every way). Canada uses FPTP.

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/quality-of-life-rankings

Your use of a deliberately vague word like "prosperous" is also telling. What metric measures "prosperity"? If you mean GDP per capita, then you're also wrong.

@ashiitaka said
Do you think it's just a massive coincidence that all of the world's most prosperous societies are multi-party democracies with some form of proportional representation?

FALSE. According to this news website, Canada's ranked 1st by quality of life, which does not surprise me (it's a fantastic country in every way). Canada uses FPTP.

https://www.usnews.com/news ...[text shortened]... also telling. What metric measures "prosperity"? If you mean GDP per capita, then you're also wrong.

If you perform a meta-analysis of all the various attempted ways to measure quality of life, you will easily find the top spots are dominated by Nordic countries, for very good reason.

As for Canada: Doug Ford.

@kazetnagorra said
If you perform a meta-analysis of all the various attempted ways to measure quality of life, you will easily find the top spots are dominated by Nordic countries, for very good reason.

As for Canada: Doug Ford.

Have you performed such a meta-analysis?

@deepthought said
Have you performed such a meta-analysis?

I have, but I have not published the results.