The UK Politics & Brexit Thread

[Druk]

5. And last, clawing-back Scottish voters from Nicola Sturgeon is another uphill struggle in itself, but nevertheless an essential one if Labour are to ever get back into government.

Almost vertical I would suggest and hamstrung by that political genius Dugdale.
My feeling is that the Scottish Tories are on the ascendency, winning back support from middle ground voters sickened by the incessant "doing what's best for Scotland" SNP rhetoric.

 

[markjay]

Almost vertical I would suggest and hamstrung by that political genius Dugdale.
My feeling is that the Scottish Tories are on the ascendency, winning back support from middle ground voters sickened by the incessant "doing what's best for Scotland" SNP rhetoric.

My guess is that unless Sturgeon drops the Scotland independence agenda, Scottish voters will move away from the SNP come next elections. Whether they will move left or right is another question....

 

[Druk]

To the right I think. This lady is the rising star of the Tories, and not only in Scotland.

https://www.theguardian.com/comment...tland-independence-referendum-nicola-sturgeon

Quote..."Davidson, on the other hand, has gained her political success in the most inhospitable terrain that a Tory can ever encounter: working-class Glasgow".





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[grober]

Interesting that the leaders of all three of the main political parties in Scotland are now women- two of them self professed as gay. The UK government has also elected a woman as prime minister, the USA may soon have their first woman president . Arguably the most powerful woman in Europe is Angela Merkel, one main contender in the forthcoming French election will be Marine Le Pen. Emmeline Pankhurst would be pleased. My feeling is their success, at least within their own party, may be down to their inherent pragmatism a characteristic sadly lacking in their male counterparts. I didn't mention Margaret Thatcher simply because her success was primarily down to acting to all intents and purposes as a man who just happened to be in a woman's body as dictated by the gender politics current at the time.

ps in terms of the Scottish Parliament the SNP no longer hold an overall parliamentary majority thanks to the superior electoral system we have in Scotland which goes part way to prevent the tweedle dum or tweedle dee 2 party situation extant in the UK.

pps
indeed it was this departure from the first past the post electoral system which permitted said Ruth Davidson's voice to be heard in the first place.

In the 2011 Scottish Parliament election, Davidson stood for election in the Glasgow Kelvin constituency and on the Glasgow regional list. She finished in 4th place in the former, but was successful in the latter, and following party leader Annabel Goldie's resignation in May 2011, Davidson stood in the subsequent leadership election. She won the contest and was declared party leader on 4 November 2011.

 

[Stratman]

Her seat could be looked at as "Rejected by the electorate, parachuted in by the party machine".

I am in favour of some sort of PR for Westminster elections, just not one where the party mandarins have so much say. The current FPTP is indefensible when the SNP's 1.4M votes gave them 56 seats but UKIP's 3.8M gave them just one.

 

[grober]

Her seat could be looked at as "Rejected by the electorate, parachuted in by the party machine".

I am in favour of some sort of PR for Westminster elections, just not one where the party mandarins have so much say. The current FPTP is indefensible when the SNP's 1.4M votes gave them 56 seats but UKIP's 3.8M gave them just one.

I would agree that the present system is unrepresentative and leads to a situation where many are effectively disenfranchised. No PR system is perfect however and since with many list systems you are effectively voting for policies rather than for individuals its difficult to separate this from the party machine. In its favour is its degree of simplicity. Ignoring the fringe individuals the raving loony party etc the voter is usually faced with a manageable set of two choices. One FPTP vote for an individual with a choice of perhaps 4 fairly well known candidates and two a LIST vote for the fairly well defined policies from 4 or 5 political manifestos. The deficiencies of the system offset by keeping it manageable/informed for most voters. In the list system you may not know who you are voting for but at least you know their policies? The result hopefully a legislature more representative of the majority rather than a minority of the voters.

 

[Red C220]

I am in favour of some sort of PR for Westminster elections, just not one where the party mandarins have so much say. The current FPTP is indefensible when the SNP's 1.4M votes gave them 56 seats but UKIP's 3.8M gave them just one.

Taken as a stand alone statistic the above is dificult to defend. However this anomaly will only really occur with fringe parties that realistically have no chance of winning an election outright.

When taken as a whole and the two major party votes are counted then the FPTP system seems reasonable.

That doesn't make the UKIP/SNP situation any less unpalatable.

 

[mattc]

Taken as a stand alone statistic the above is dificult to defend. However this anomaly will only really occur with fringe parties that realistically have no chance of winning an election outright.

When taken as a whole and the two major party votes are counted then the FPTP system seems reasonable.

That doesn't make the UKIP/SNP situation any less unpalatable.

Realistically no one party SHOULD get a majority. All other parties together poll more votes. The older I get I have come to think our FPTP system is holding the country back. Instead of see saw politics we would have political parties compromising and actually having to talk with each other like adults. Might stop some of the frequent changes to health and education policy.

 

[Scott_F]

I am in favour of some sort of PR for Westminster elections, just not one where the party mandarins have so much say. The current FPTP is indefensible when the SNP's 1.4M votes gave them 56 seats but UKIP's 3.8M gave them just one.

Despite its anomalies, the majority of the electorate in this country feels that the current FPTP system is perfectly defensible.

In 2011, they were offered the opportunity to change it and chose overwhelmingly not to do so.

And as we know, the result of a referendum can't be ignored......

 

[grober]

According to the Gallagher index I'm afraid you're wrong on the SNP/UKIP thing.

I"ll explain
First a definition.
The Gallagher Index (or least squares index) is used to measure the disproportionality of an electoral outcome; that is, the difference between the percentage of votes received, and the percentage of seats a party gets in the resulting legislature. This is especially useful for comparing proportionality across electoral systems. The index involves taking the square root of half the sum of the squares of the difference between percent of vote and percent of seats for each of the political parties.
The disproportionality index in the last general election was 15.04
mainly accounted for differences between UKIP and Conservative parties.

I'll put it another way. The SNP didn't "steal" parliamentary seats from UKIP due to the electoral system because basically nobody in Scotland voted for them! A large body of people in England voted for UKIP in considerable numbers in the various parliamentary constituencies but because of the FPTP system very few of their votes resulted in representation in the form of parliamentary seats. They went to the Conservative party. So if you are looking for someone to blame ????

 

[Dryce]

My guess is that unless Sturgeon drops the Scotland independence agenda, Scottish voters will move away from the SNP come next elections. Whether they will move left or right is another question....

There's still a lot of venom against the Tories in Scotland that means votes that might shift between Labour and the SNP but not away from them.

Ms Davison comes across as an improvement over her predecessor and is able to take a much clearer path in opposition against the SNP at Holyrood.

Ms Dugdale has more problems with her party and is hampered by sharing a position on the left with the SNP that makes it much more difficult to make arguments about policy in opposition.

So I suspect Ms Davison is actually in a much more comfortable position politically and publicly than either Ms Dugdale or Ms Sturgeon - but that doesn't necessarily mean she can exploit that position given the nature of the electorate.

 

[Dryce]

Despite its anomalies, the majority of the electorate in this country feels that the current FPTP system is perfectly defensible.

In 2011, they were offered the opportunity to change it and chose overwhelmingly not to do so.

I think that the referendum on changing the voting system was one of the biggest lost opportunities to improve the UK that has occured during my lifetime.

And yet so many have forgotten it as if it never happened.

The public just didn't seem to care that much.

 

[Dryce]

I am in favour of some sort of PR for Westminster elections, just not one where the party mandarins have so much say. The current FPTP is indefensible when the SNP's 1.4M votes gave them 56 seats but UKIP's 3.8M gave them just one.

The SNP's position with regard to UK parliamentary seats is a demonstration of the travesty of the electoral system as it leaves those voters in Scotland unrepresented.

And to be fair - in the past it has left the SNP badly underrepresented in the past. So they may be winners of the system this time but they have badly suffered its shortcomings in the past.

The Scottish situation in Westminster shows the effect of first past the post.

As compared with the Holyrood setup which is IMO a lot fairer to *everyone*.

 

[mattc]

Edit

 

[trapperjohn]

And there was me looking forward to what me old mate Mattc had to say. Come on Matt spit it out lad.

 

[mattc]

Too much red wine therefore erased it John,

 

[grober]

Despite its anomalies, the majority of the electorate in this country feels that the current FPTP system is perfectly defensible.

In 2011, they were offered the opportunity to change it and chose overwhelmingly not to do so.

And as we know, the result of a referendum can't be ignored......

Perhaps I have to clarify a few facts.
The referendum in 2011 was for an AV system NOT Proportional Representation
definition:-
Instant-runoff voting (IRV), also known as the alternative vote (AV), transferable vote, (single-seat) ranked-choice voting (RCV), or preferential voting, is a voting system used in single-seat elections when there are more than two candidates.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting


Its really a sort of modified FPTP system where votes for all candidates are taken into consideration but gradually discarded/discounted by a process of elimination till a single candidate eventually emerges. The result again is that the votes expressed by a considerable number of voters get no effective expression in the form of legislative representation.

https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/polit/damy/articles/irv.htm

The result- when the UK electorate were offered a system that offered very little advantage of the FPTP system for electing their legislature they overwhelmingly rejected it. Which suited the status quo-- tweedle dum or tweedle dee parties very nicely thanks.

 

[fabes]

If we think these 2 (3 with SNP) political parties are getting it wrong, what about the Liberals......tumble weed......

They were in government only last year
They evaporated.....

I know they were in the right place at the right time in 2010 tomake up the numbers, but still it's a mighty fall from what they might have won (in best Bully and dart board voice)

 

[brucemillar]

I think we should have annual referendums until we get the result we want.

Oh hang on, we already do that.

 

[grober]

The referendum in 2011 was partially a result of the conditions negotiated by the liberal democratic party as a precondition to forming coalition government with the conservative party. If the lib dems made a mistake it was to assume that one of the two main tweedle-dum or tweedle-dee parties having agreed to go to the country on the issue of a referendum to a change in the voting system would then act in good faith and legislate with the best interests of the country in mind rather than themselves. This of course they didn't do by
1. Offering a very watered down version of PR.
2. Going to the country when people were totally disillusioned with politics- illegal war in Iraq voted for by both main parties on falsified evidence , financial meltdown in the city and subsequent economic recession
and a recent election where the FPTP system had lead to political stalemate
Result a disengaged electorate faced with a proposed change voted for no change- because the predominant feeling at the time was it didn't really matter. One was as bad as the other!

Pity because a few years later that disillusionment with government that had been left simmering under the surface was re-emerge with a convenient new target to blame --- the EU.