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That's a very reductionist way of boiling down my position that actually grossly misrepresents it. More accurately: Under a political system that has constituency seats (UK, Australia lower house, etc) I am *not* happy with a candidate winning a seat if they do not have the support of at least...

It really doesn't. Half my post was just providing real-world examples and I could have easily left them out. You can even drop the first paragraph. That leaves this rather short explanation (I've tweaked it a little): "What FPTP does is encourage tactical votes, because a portion of voters...

Conversely: I really don't want a system where the one who becomes an MP only gets 30-something% of the vote. Respect your views on preference voting, but I see it from a very different angle to you. If the person who gets the most first-preference votes only has 35%, and the 65% who voted for...

Rwanda is/was never going to work unless the Tories included restoring legal routes to claim asylum in the UK *and* having a working agreement with France to intercept and return boats to France. You can't try to copy the Australian system if you don't also learn from the mistakes Australia made...

That would actually (given the types of vehicles that are compliant) be more accurately stated as "those who cannot afford vehicles that are roadworthy" and thus are actually unaffected by the ULEZ extension (or should be). The compliant list includes plenty of affordable second hand vehicles...

Aaaaaaannnnddd ... Sunak promptly dashes those hopes. Braverman still able to pull his strings despite being sacked.

Cleverly distancing the government from calls to leave the ECHR - this is good on two counts: 1. Because we clearly shouldn't be leaving it. 2. Because it'll fan the flames of the division in the Tory party.

As much as I don't think the man lives up to his name often enough, I do appreciate Cleverly today clearly separating himself from the Braverman / Patel hard-right approach to Home Office policy / rhetoric. The proof will be in what happens over the coming months, but it does sound like (for...

I haven't seen any reporting of the allegations that suggest he managed that...

For me, the Lib Dems need to learn from the last Aussie GE. Position themselves as the "integrity & pro-green" alternative for the forward-thinking voter on the right and target the seats likely to have that sort of demographic. "Teal Independents" did it so well in Aus, there's a blueprint to...

In theory, both should be easy Tory holds - defending 20k and 25k majorities. Suspect the reality could be very different. One of them, unfortunately, is looking like a tight 3-way fight. Which might just let the Tory squeak in despite an awful lot more people voting to *not* have a Tory than...

Not sure if they've managed to ruin it since I left, but I always like the Australian system. A little complicated (due to being means tested), but essentially provides/provided free health care to those who genuinely can't afford it, subsidised health care to those who can afford to pay a...

This. I mean, after the 2019 GE there was a lot of talk about how impossible it would be for Labour to win the 2024 GE off the back of such a drubbing. And yet, here we are - the most likely scenario is that they do win. And while the Tories have had a massive hand in that, let's not downplay...

Well yes, that goes without saying :P

Sunak talks about the dangers of public sector pay rises a lot more than private sector because: a) the Government has direct involvement in setting public sector pay; b) the Government has been repeatedly pushed in regards to public sector pay (strikes, opposition attacks, polling pressures...

Is there a breakdown of those stats by sector? I suspect a large chunk of the increased profit margins is within the fossil fuel extraction / energy generation sector. I'm more concerned by the late 2021-onwards Import Prices and Labour Costs elements. Would be interested in seeing a UK-specific...

I don't know enough about the person the Tory targeted to comment on that specifically. But I will say that's an amazingly poor choice of tweet to respond too with an attack.

And that's before we even go into the fact that the drivers for our current inflation problems simply don't fit the traditional theories of inflation. A significant portion of the inflation we're seeing is caused (unusually) by persistent supply-side pressures. Supply-side inflation is normally...

Yeah, but that particular tactical voting site is still using the old boundaries and when I put my postcode in gives me a "not sure" result for Wealden (which makes sense, given Wealden's history of being strong Tory with flip-flopping results for Lab / Lib Dem).

Ugh. I'm in Uckfield. Now I need to do my research on how to place my tactical vote at the next GE. Assuming it'll be of any value at all, of course...