Originally posted by normbenignThere are many ways to implement proportional representation, and it does not necessarily involve "lords," voting for a Prime Minister or political parties.
Banning bribery is already the law in most supposedly democratic countries. There are of course methods of making bribes not bribes.
One of the troubling things is that bribery and extortion are so closely related. When a businessman contributes to a campaign, is it bribery or is there an implied extortion which makes a greedy capitalist donate money t ...[text shortened]... ce. You'll notice that the 10th amendment makes a distinction between the States and the people.
Labour failed to win that election because they spent their effort promising to change the House of Lords into a Senate, which no one really wants, instead of renationalizing the railways which everyone wants. If they stopped trying to change our system into the American one [1] and went for substance instead they'd win. But they don't so 35% of people (including me this time - they was no one to vote for, I wasn't registered and I'm in a seat with such a clear Tory majority I was confident it would not make a difference) who could vote for them don't vote.
[1] I've nothing against Americans and their system of government, but if I wanted to be an American and have their system of government I'd emigrate.
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Originally posted by DeepThoughtThat is one reason they didn't win.
Labour failed to win that election because they spent their effort promising to change the House of Lords into a Senate, which no one really wants, instead of renationalizing the railways which everyone wants. If they stopped trying to change our system into the American one [1] and went for substance instead they'd win. But they don't so 35% of people ...[text shortened]... government, but if I wanted to be an American and have their system of government I'd emigrate.
Another is that they are still the same party that were so incompetent last time,
they are so similar economically to the Conservatives,
And they are still the same party that lied to take us into the disastrous and illegal Iraq
war and tried to introduce ID cards and kicked off the database state and mass surveillance.
What I don't understand is how much people hated on the Lib Dems.
I feel sorry for Nick Clegg who I feel did the right thing for the country instead of the party, which is
what I want politicians to do.
However the thing that really annoys me is that EVERYTHING is made to be about the economy and
'left vs right'.
There are other issues than the economy that were at stake and were important.
There were/are important decisions about the British constitution, European referendum,
defence policy, environment/energy policy, ect ect ect.
And yet the moment you mention voting for a particular party, everyone judges you and your vote purely
on the economic consequences.
Did nobody read ANY of the other manifesto promises/policy areas???
To summarize, the Conservatives got an absolute majority in the House of Commons with 36.9% of the vote, while Labour gained 1.5 percentage point of the votes and lost 26 seats. Meanwhile, the third biggest party, the UKIP, got 12.6% of the vote and a single seat in the 650-seat House of Commons, while the SNP who got less than half the votes the UKIP did got 56 seats. The DUP got 21 times fewer votes than the UKIP and get 8 times more seats in the House of Commons.
Yep, makes a lot of sense.
Originally posted by googlefudgeWhat's really puzzling is how the Tories manage to spin it so that they are somehow "better" for the economy, despite a terrible record and a woefully incompetent series of governments in the 1980s.
That is one reason they didn't win.
Another is that they are still the same party that were so incompetent last time,
they are so similar economically to the Conservatives,
And they are still the same party that lied to take us into the disastrous and illegal Iraq
war and tried to introduce ID cards and kicked off the database state and mass surv ...[text shortened]... he economic consequences.
Did nobody read ANY of the other manifesto promises/policy areas???
The Lib Dems squandered their opportunity to effect meaningful change while in government so their losses are understandable.
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Originally posted by KazetNagorraThat's first past the post for you.
To summarize, the Conservatives got an absolute majority in the House of Commons with 36.9% of the vote, while Labour gained 1.5 percentage point of the votes and lost 26 seats. Meanwhile, the third biggest party, the UKIP, got 12.6% of the vote and a single seat in the 650-seat House of Commons, while the SNP who got less than half the votes the UKIP d ...[text shortened]... than the UKIP and get 8 times more seats in the House of Commons.
Yep, makes a lot of sense.
I advocate for the Wright STV system which gets very close to proportional representation.
The trouble is, our parliamentary system is really optimally geared for only two parties.
We have all kinds of problems if you have several parties, none of which have a majority.
I don't like messy, post election coalition deals. I like to vote on a manifesto, and coalition
deals alter the manifesto after the election. [it also leads to minor parties having a much
stronger negotiating position and power than their proportion of votes would indicate]
So I would argue that we should also change the way parliament works so that it's actually
designed to elegantly handle multiple parties so that after the election there is not a mad
scramble to do a 'behind closed doors' deal to decide who gets to govern. ....
I will get back to you when I have worked out quite what that system looks like... 😕
I think it would help if we could vote on different areas of policy independently, by having different
elected bodies deal with different policy areas [and/or different regional areas].
That way you don't have to pick between voting for the party you agree with on foreign policy/defence or
the party you agree with on national/economic policy [for example].
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Originally posted by KazetNagorra
What's really puzzling is how the Tories manage to spin it so that they are somehow "better" for the economy, despite a terrible record and a woefully incompetent series of governments in the 1980s.
The Lib Dems squandered their opportunity to effect meaningful change while in government so their losses are understandable.
What's really puzzling is how the Tories manage to spin it so that they are somehow "better" for the economy,
despite a terrible record and a woefully incompetent series of governments in the 1980s.
Incompetent by who's standards? And what 'terrible record'?
They are hated by trades unionists who's actions prior and during that time had to be stopped.
And yes they certainly made blunders, but blunders are made equally by all UK governments independent
of party, so that's not really a differentiating factor.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Blunders-Governments-Anthony-King/dp/1780742665
Also, I don't know that they HAVE managed to spin it so that people believe that to be true.
Again, why does everyone assume that people only vote on economic issues and not on any other issue?
The Lib Dems squandered their opportunity to effect meaningful change while in government so their losses are
understandable
Meaningful change compared to what??
The test to see what changes they caused would be to compare the coalition vs what the Tories would have done solo.
On that scale I think they actually come off quite well.
That said they have a number of policies that I think are nonsensical.
Whatever your position, I think we can all agree that half a nuclear deterrent is a total and pointless waste of money.
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Originally posted by KazetNagorraYeah, I did an analysis to check on that. There is no big difference in GDP growth between Conservative and Labour governments from 1948 (you have to exclude the first couple of years after the war as the economic results were due to the war) until 1979. In fact, depending on what assumptions one makes, the government under Wilson was economically the strongest. The Thatcher and Major governments were slightly worse. Labour under Blair/Brown had pretty decent growth (around 3%.) until the calamitous final year. The current government has the weakest average growth of any government since 1948.
What's really puzzling is how the Tories manage to spin it so that they are somehow "better" for the economy, despite a terrible record and a woefully incompetent series of governments in the 1980s.
The Lib Dems squandered their opportunity to effect meaningful change while in government so their losses are understandable.
They've been repeating this line since the 1960's and get away with it because no one calls them on it.
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Originally posted by googlefudgeA nation votes on it's stomach - to butcher a phrase from the Duke of Wellington. I think they are right to. Almost always everything else is secondary. Milliband failed to give people something to vote for.
That is one reason they didn't win.
Another is that they are still the same party that were so incompetent last time,
they are so similar economically to the Conservatives,
And they are still the same party that lied to take us into the disastrous and illegal Iraq
war and tried to introduce ID cards and kicked off the database state and mass surv ...[text shortened]... he economic consequences.
Did nobody read ANY of the other manifesto promises/policy areas???
The SNP took a lot of seats off Labour in Scotland, partly because they were a more effective parliamentary opposition, and partly because, having lost the independence referendum they are safe to vote for in the sense that a vote for the SNP won't actually lead to Scottish independence for a decade or so.
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Originally posted by DeepThoughtI heartily disagree [in terms of what should be, as opposed necessarily to what is].
A nation votes on it's stomach - to butcher a phrase from the Duke of Wellington. I think they are right to. Almost always everything else is secondary. Milliband failed to give people something to vote for.
The SNP took a lot of seats off Labour in Scotland, partly because they were a more effective parliamentary opposition, and partly because, ha ...[text shortened]... e sense that a vote for the SNP won't actually lead to Scottish independence for a decade or so.
We have issues to do with privacy, security, defence, questions about who makes our laws and
how we choose them, the values we share and those we don't, questions of regulation, education,
science and technology...
All these things matter, and all these things [and more] are decided or effected by our government.
It's extraordinarily short-sighted to focus on ONLY economic issues.
That is how you get people voting for Tony Blair 3 times in a row.
It's how you get people sleepwalking into ID cards, and giving up freedoms to fight a mostly imaginary
terrorist threat.
Economic issues are important.
They are not important to the exclusion of all else.
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Originally posted by DeepThoughtI don't think that is a great way to measure political economic competence but, even if it were, it is not why Labour are mistrusted.
Yeah, I did an analysis to check on that. There is no big difference in GDP growth between Conservative and Labour governments from 1948 (you have to exclude the first couple of years after the war as the economic results were due to the war) until 1979. In fact, depending on what assumptions one makes, the government under Wilson was economically the ...[text shortened]... been repeating this line since the 1960's and get away with it because no one calls them on it.
It was the fact that they did have good growth, but then abandoned 'prudence' and the Golden Rule that hit them hard. In the boom years up to 2008, they added £200bn to government debt. Miliband lost the election when he said they did not borrow too much in the last government. And the fact that he was always trying to shift the discussion to the financial crisis, when voters in the debates were complaining about the period before this.
It is not just adding to the debt in the boom times that is so much the issue. It was the fact that they made such a solemn commitment, which people bought into, and then simply abandoned it, that caused the mistrust.
Googlefudge asked why the Lib Dems were punished so harshly when they actually didn't do too bad a job. It was because Clegg promised that they would be different, people bought it, and made the solemn promise on tuition fees, which didn't last 24 hours once he got into power.
This election was, in many ways, the election where voters showed how angry they are for being played so cynically. Politicians are having to wake up to this, though how they are responding is at times almost too bizarre for words.
It is why we had the ridiculous sight of Milimoses carving promises into stone, but making them so vague no-one could have ever known if they have been kept to. Or the equally ridiculous idea of the Tories passing a law to stop themselves raising VAT, NI or income tax, when everyone knows that law could be repealed at any time.
But it is also why we will now have an EU referendum (though that is an easy one for Cameron to keep, as his backbenchers would crucify him long before the electorate got a chance if he tried to renege on it like all parties have in the past).
And it is why Farage resigned having promised to do so, even though he may stand for re-election. He has played the 'we are different' card for all it's worth, and he knows that reneging on this might not be tolerated by all those who flocked to UKIP because they were fed up with other parties making commitments they then do not keep.
Originally posted by Rank outsiderThe Liberal Democrats sealed their fate 5 years ago when they entered into the coalition in the first place.
I don't think that is a great way to measure political economic competence but, even if it were, it is not why Labour are mistrusted.
It was the fact that they did have good growth, but then abandoned 'prudence' and the Golden Rule that hit them hard. In the boom years up to 2008, they added £200bn to government debt. Miliband lost the election wh ...[text shortened]... ed to UKIP because they were fed up with other parties making commitments they then do not keep.
With the debt under Blair and Brown it's more subtle than you suggest. They were paying off debt at a huge rate in their first term, clearly confident in a second term. They could then afford tax cuts etc. in the hope of buying a third term, having created some space. The reason the debt started to increase was the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, particularly the Iraq War.
But the notion that the Conservatives are better economically than Labour is older than the Blair/Brown government and what happened in 2008. It goes back at least to the post war government. Really Brown did amazingly well in 2010 - GDP dropped 5% and there was a hung parliament. It should have been a complete rout like happened to the Tories in '97 in the wake of the pound dropping out of the exchange rate mechanism. So I think your analysis is faulty.
But none of this is to do with why Labour lost the election. Where you are right is with them carving nothing on a stone. They didn't promise anything relevant and that is what cost them. If they gave the 35% of people who didn't vote a reason to then they'd have won a landslide. Things like nationalizing the railways would have done that.
