Tories lose Chesham and Amersham

[Albumen]

I keep saying this.

Anywhere with a majority of educated people are going to turn on this Government. Educated Brexiteers have acknowledged the win and moved on. Your church wardens, your WI leaders, the pillars of leafy suburban and rural England are sick of Johnson & co. They are smart enough to see how astonishingly incompetent this lot are. They are not drunk on the nationalism, the bias levelling-up, the anti-immigration or anti-identity politics spouted by this awful cabinet.

The Tories have lost the Times, Daily Mail & Telegraph readers but Sun readers will remain loyal.

The next election is ON! I can now see a Lib-Dem-Labour coalition which I believe would be the best outcome for the Country.

The Blue wall in the south will be demolished!

Fantastic result!

I don’t know what you’re on but I’m having some (and I know it was an HS2 protest vote).
BRING IT ON.

 

[Monkey Man]

I'm not sure what form PR should take but all I know is that in almost every election I've voted in, I've voted tactically, because otherwise I felt my vote would be wasted. I know millions of others do the same and possibly always have. That can't be a viable way to organise a democracy, any more than allowing a party to secure a landslide majority in the Commons with a minority share of the vote.

I completely get why people are wary of coalition government, but maybe we just have to get to grips with the fact that we live in a pluralist, multi-layered society where the problems we face do need more discussion and consensus than we've been used to seeing under FPTP.

I read recently that in 19 of the past 20 elections, more people have voted for parties to the left of the Tories than they have done for the Tories themselves. And yet the Tories almost always win.

 

[Audax]

One thing I will see about the UK democracy: FPTP + un-elected Lords second chamber is one of flimsiest nods towards democracy I've ever seen. How anyone can, in their right mind, think that declaring the winner to be the candidate from the "left" with 37.7% when there's a solid 54.7% split evenly between 2 "right" candidates is democracy escapes me. Only in those seats where the winner gets 50%+1 votes does FPTP clearly represent democracy. And to then have the "checks and balances" chamber be the un-elected Lords, who are largely irrelevant in UK politics and always gets stacked by whoever has power when the time to add new Lords comes around, is a travesty.

Pure PR is probably the most democratic solution, but I'm not convinced it's the most desirable solution. I'm biased due to my background, but I do like the Australian system of Preferential Voting for the main house and a variant of PR for the upper chamber. It normally gives a clear winner in the lower house, meaning there's rarely problems forming a new government post-election, and then the upper house a) has enough power to block any stupidity coming from the lower house and b) rarely ever has a single party in majority, which means the government from the lower house needs to play things smart. It also means that if a party like the Greens uses their upper house power intelligently, they can in future elections leverage that to make inroads to gaining seats in the lower. To some extent, this has prevented Australia's Lib/Nat coalition lurching *too far* right, "protest voting" is generally done in the upper chamber, not the lower (which curtails the ability of nutters like Pauline Hansen to affect how the parties plan towards winning the lower house), and it's meant fringe parties like the Greens have been able to establish a foothold in Australian politics without destabilising the whole system because every election results in wrangling to form a coalition to form government.

The more I learn of the Scottish system the more I like that as well (I believe New Zealand do something similar?). Just needs to be PV instead of FPTP. Create X constituencies, and elect candidates using preference votes to represent those constituencies. Then have additional "seats" that are filled using weighted PR that recognises where a party may have won a lot of vote share but lost the main seats (the age-old Lib Dem problem of having enough vote share to justify a lot more seats, but having it spread out so much that they don't actually win many).

 

[Is it PotG?]

Democracy at work.

Bring it on.

 

[Sid in the Sharknado]

Only in those seats where the winner gets 50%+1 votes does FPTP clearly represent democracy.

I'd argue that even in that, quite unusual situation, effectively ignoring just under half the votes cast isn't particularly democratic.

The more I learn of the Scottish system the more I like that as well (I believe New Zealand do something similar?). Just needs to be PV instead of FPTP. Create X constituencies, and elect candidates using preference votes to represent those constituencies. Then have additional "seats" that are filled using weighted PR that recognises where a party may have won a lot of vote share but lost the main seats (the age-old Lib Dem problem of having enough vote share to justify a lot more seats, but having it spread out so much that they don't actually win many).

I can't emphasise enough how much I hate systems where you vote for a party rather than a candidate, and they decide themselves who gets to go to parliament.

 

[Machiavelli]

The Tories have held that seat since 1974. Many Labour voters lent the LD their vote to get the Tory out.
This was a solid safe seat which had a swing of 25%. There are quite a few of the remaining 79 seats which are a lot more marginal.

I agree with all of this, so I'd imagine where you and I would differ is in the inference we draw from your final sentence.

 

[Machiavelli]

Going to PR would have a revolutionary effect on politics. We'd certainly see the end of the current party system. The Labour party would absolutely split between the Corbynistas and the Centrists (there may even be a third split with the far-left forming their own group). The Conservatives would split too, between the UKIP Light faction and the more traditional Tories. I imagine the likes of Stewart, Soubry and Grieve would be prominent here - they may well merge with the more right-wing LDs. I suspect the LDs would be a smaller group as some of their more radical members would join the Lab Centrists or even the Greens.

The election would therefore see

Conservatives, New Conservatives, Labour, Labour Left, LDs, Greens fighting for your votes with various right and left wing groups (and SNP/PC in Scotland/Wales). It would bring a bit of real excitement to elections

Cannot see the Tories splintering as you predict (and that's despite what Johnson's did in de-selecting) -- and that's assuming we get PR; I think we're more likely to get secession before PR. The Tories have been around for 300+ years, and are interested in power -- their members, top politicians, press barons, donors, etc are well aware of that, and are well aware that splitting and forming multiple parties won't help with that.

 

[Thunder Bolt]

I'd argue that even in that, quite unusual situation, effectively ignoring just under half the votes cast isn't particularly democratic.



I can't emphasise enough how much I hate systems where you vote for a party rather than a candidate, and they decide themselves who gets to go to parliament.

There are downsides to every system, and I know PR would've denied us the laughter so seeing the dolphin beat Farage.

 

[Machiavelli]

I'm not sure what form PR should take but all I know is that in almost every election I've voted in, I've voted tactically, because otherwise I felt my vote would be wasted. I know millions of others do the same and possibly always have. That can't be a viable way to organise a democracy, any more than allowing a party to secure a landslide majority in the Commons with a minority share of the vote.

I completely get why people are wary of coalition government, but maybe we just have to get to grips with the fact that we live in a pluralist, multi-layered society where the problems we face do need more discussion and consensus than we've been used to seeing under FPTP.

I read recently that in 19 of the past 20 elections, more people have voted for parties to the left of the Tories than they have done for the Tories themselves. And yet the Tories almost always win.

That captures current UK politics perfectly. And note that, because the Tories almost always win, they (falsely) claim that they're in tune with the 'average voter', 'bod on the street', and represent 'the voice of the British people'.

 

[cuthbert]

Let's all remember that Ed Davey served in Conservative cabinet.

 

[Sid in the Sharknado]

There are downsides to every system, and I know PR would've denied us the laughter so seeing the dolphin beat Farage.

Well that would have been a loss

I swear there's a conspiracy to deliberately only publicise the crap versions of PR with party lists and weird hybrid systems, over more reasonable alternatives, so that people look at them and go "well that's shit".

I remember when I was at school, the Soc Ed lesson on this basically consisted of:
"We have FPTP. It's a bit unfair but normally leads to big majorities [an easy claim to make in 2005, harder to justify when considering results over a longer period of time]. Some other countries use PR, which is fairer but often leads to coalitions. An example is Weimar Germany [because of course, all coalitions naturally lead to the Nazis]."

 

[RexCathedra]

....the Tories... represent 'the voice of the British people'.

Well, it's true, once you accept the underlying premise -- the only truly British people are Tory voters.

After all, we just got shot of -- and may well get right back -- a government over here dedicated to the proposition that there are Americans, and there are Democrats, and there is no tertium quid.

 

[Sid in the Sharknado]

Well, it's true, once you accept the underlying premise -- the only truly British people are Tory voters.

After all, we just got shot of -- and may well get right back -- a government over here dedicated to the proposition that there are Americans, and there are Democrats, and there is no tertium quid.

This is an extremely apt day to dicuss the No True Scotsman fallacy.

 

[Gwylan]

Cannot see the Tories splintering as you predict (and that's despite what Johnson's did in de-selecting) -- and that's assuming we get PR; I think we're more likely to get secession before PR. The Tories have been around for 300+ years, and are interested in power -- their members, top politicians, press barons, donors, etc are well aware of that, and are well aware that splitting and forming multiple parties won't help with that.

They won't split if we don't get PR but I can certainly see them splitting if we do. They don't hold a majority in this country (even after last election's landslide) and PR will mean the far right parties will get more votes (I also think that 'moderate' Tories will be more likely to vote centrally).

The introduction of PR could well mean that the Tories would be permanent opposition unless they can recapture some of the centre ground they've lost by moving to the right.

Of course, for PR to happen, Labour has to win the election and implement it - I can't see that happening without some form of alliance.

 

[RexCathedra]

We've got to dodge the return of Ein Volk. Ein Reich. Ein Donald before we can address our own massively unprepresentative system -- cf. the Senate.

I've been pressing Roy Jenkins' Mr. Balfour's Poodle on people here... we're having our own home-grown version of the 1911 Lords crisis these days.

 

[midnight_rendezvous]

Have GB News declared both full of “woke” snowflake lefties yet?

 

[ozzygull]

apparantly tactical voting. labour, lib dem, greens etc ganged up.

Hoping this catches on !!

Yep it was the same in our local election, I suspect the other candidates didn't bother campaining. I only saw Lib dems and Conservative leaflets in this safe Tory seat. It cut the Tory margin from thousand to below a hundred.

 

[jackcgull]

This is my seat. I stood in locals for greens. No tactical by the parties. But the electorate sniffed a chance of beating Tories and it worked. Lib Dem’s campaigned like nothing I’ve seen before. Greens tried hard but most of their voters turned to liberals anyway. Labour made a token effort at best. There was no formal alliance but hs2 is the massive issue here.

They are about to tunnel into our chalk stream aquifer - one only a few dozen in the world. No one really knows what will happen but likelihood is it will dry out the rivers and poison the drinking water. But hey Ho. Can’t stand in the way of progress (and Tory payoffs).

It looks like liberals have finally been forgiven for jumping into bed with the tories without securing PR. Maybe. Who knows? It’s only a by election after all

 

[Machiavelli]

They won't split if we don't get PR but I can certainly see them splitting if we do. They don't hold a majority in this country (even after last election's landslide) and PR will mean the far right parties will get more votes (I also think that 'moderate' Tories will be more likely to vote centrally).

The introduction of PR could well mean that the Tories would be permanent opposition unless they can recapture some of the centre ground they've lost by moving to the right.

Of course, for PR to happen, Labour has to win the election and implement it - I can't see that happening without some form of alliance.

As with Kallimantan's (sp) earlier post, I disagree with pretty much all of this:
-- PR will be a while off here and, again, secession is a more likely first constitutional change
-- Labour show little sign of backing PR or forming alliances
-- even if Labour do show interest in PR, there's every chance that they'll ditch it like Blair did back in 1997
-- the electorate won't like formal alliances, and will vote accordingly
-- the SNP won't be remotely interested in PR, nor will Plaid Cymru or any of the NI parties
-- if PR happens, the Tories will hold together and find a way to ensure they get as much political power as possible -- it's what they've done for the past 300+ years, and they're very good at it.

In short, you're too optimistic about the prospects for PR, and too optimistic about what would happen if PR emerges

 

[Westdene Seagull]

It could be if Labour, the LibDems and the Greens got their act together and thrashed out a proper progressive alliance. But they won’t, meaning the electoral maths still easily stack up for the Tories.

I'm not a supporter of any particular party but the idea of reducing British politics to a two party state is dangerous and wrong - as a floating voter I'd be utterly opposed to any alliance between parties unless it was AFTER the vote and a coalition government was needed - such as in 2010.

If I vote for say Peter Kyle in Hove and Portslade I want to know the vote is for him and not the Green Party and Lib Dems hiding under his skirt tails.

The policies of the Green Party, Lib Dems and Labour do differ - so they should have the guts to stand by them rather the create come pathetic "We hate the Tories" alliance.

If a GE was held tomorrow I'd vote Peter Kyle - if Labour did the alliance deal I'd purposely vote for the Tory candidate.