If Musk is allowed to donate a runoured US$100m to Reform it could significantly change the political scene forever. SKS should be prioritising legislation to make sure it can't happen. It's scary.
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[Politics] The Labour Government
- Thread starter Super Steve Earle
- Start date
fly high
Well-known member
The rule should 100% be no political donations from foreign nationals even ones who live in this country.
They dont explicitly and directly believe in anything Hitler did, and/or despise Muslims although you can crtainly argue their policies tend this way. Policies like their opposition to the new passport law, immigration etc certainly tend to a more "German" Germany. This said, their EU policy is, or was, to remain but less integration - I find this strange. Maybe they see it was a way to finally run Europe? This said, occassionally, a councillor or MP will have an exmbarassing past speech or social media post exposed.
I do not have an issue with them being present in the Bundestag. I'd rather them be out in the open than lurking quietly in other parties. Support has grown but I'm not sure if this is significant or 'growth' is due to the right being better organised. I imagine it's somewhere between the two. If you look back over the past 20 years there has been far-right parties, with a fair amount of support, but little organisation...AfD have siezed on this.
Papa Lazarou
Living in a De Zerbi wonderland
Thread by @timecaptales on Thread Reader App
@timecaptales: The Nazis didn't just seize power - they were voted in It's hard to imagine, but there was a time when Hitler was a name on a ballot in a democratic election He was openly...
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Changing times. A reaction to public sentiment from the governing parties, wary of the rise of the far right.
https://www.politico.eu/article/ger...licies-deportation-crime-islam-syriia-afghan/
https://www.dw.com/en/german-immigr...cedure are also set to receive fewer benefits.
nicko31
Well-known member
Add no foreigners / non doms owning our media to the list
Brian Munich
teH lulZ
- Jul 7, 2008
- 334
It is, and with the digital influence and misinformation that he could produce, you wouldn’t bet against Reform significantly increasing their vote.
I’d be far happier if we had a PR voting system so you could be much more confident that parties such as these could never get into government.
I desperately want PR so everyone's vote counts and we break the two party cycle. However, the one danger is that it does give a parliamentary platform for extreme minority parties - the BNP would have got MPs back in the day for example. Most historians argue that Hitler would never have achieved power without PR in Germany and then we would not have had WW2.
Or unions or billionaires or big business. All are trying to buy political influence for their own interest and purposes and of course it works. Not sure what the alternative is though.
Machiavelli
Well-known member
The big difference there is that unions are bodies representing millions of workers and therefore have 'skin in the game', whereas billionaires and big business are far more indifferent to what really happens in British society.
The alternative is public funding of political parties. You'd have to do a hell of a lot of work to persuade the public that this is a better alternative (which I think it is).
I agree with the second point but I don't think you can argue that some self interest bodies are OK to buy influence but not others. I respect your general political leaning but given that millions of people depend on businesses for their livelihoods, as does the whole economy of the country, I cant agree that there is a difference in the way you suggest.
Brian Munich
teH lulZ
- Jul 7, 2008
- 334
Parties need >50% of the vote to win power, or, more likely, a coalition of like-minded parties need >50%. It doesn’t matter if a few extreme parties get a seat or 2, they’ll have zero influence overall. That’s a far safer than our current system where a party can win total power with a vote share in the low 30s.
My inter-war history is rusty. How could Hitler have won power without 50% in a PR system? It was more to do with the enabling act, wasn’t it?
Access to dual-nationality has been significantly updated by legislation as well. Both access to German work in certain sectors and the past to citizenship have been made easier and accessible to more.....asylum is becoming harder.
Machiavelli
Well-known member
He was facilitated by other parties of the right and centre, who feared parties of the left and, as a consequence, did a deal with Hitler.
Franz von Papen was chancellor and had a confidence and supply arrangement with the Nazi party. He relied on them to rule. Papen then tried to be too clever and position himself to take over as president when Hindenburg died by getting Hindenburg to fire him and appoint Hitler as chancellor.
Then a couple of days later the Reichstag conveniently caught fire and Hitler was given dispensation to rule by decree, hence Enabling Act and subsequently replacing Hindenburg with himself.
At least that’s a very abridged version of it.
- Jul 10, 2003
- 27,957
I do believe that if it wasn't for FPTP, the two current parties wouldn't exist. John McDonnell and Keir Starmer in the same party ? Kemi Badenoch and Rory Stewart ?
Sadly, it's only the promise of absolute power on the basis of 30 odd percent of the vote that keeps these two huge parties of so many disparate and conflicting views together. Get rid of FPTP and there would be a number of parties covering that political ground. Just imagine having to look at differences in the various positions and policies rather than just the colour of the rosettes
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I cannot say I am an expert in this BUT I cannot say this is something I have picked up on. This flies in the face of the idea, at least amongst those that I have spoken to, that there reason Germany likes PR is that they're not keen on one party having power. As I say, I am not an expert and this is not something I have looked into any great detail.
Machiavelli
Well-known member
I'm not surprised by your response, and would add that in the post I responded to you were talking about billionaires and big business, and now you're talking about businesses. I've no problem with SMEs also contributing. I have a problem with billionaires full stop contributing. And most big businesses are doing their damnedest to avoid paying towards the public coffers -- so that ought to be a criteria, ie it's valid for Sainsbury's and Tesco, but not Amazon and Meta.
