Divided Britain

[BillyStubbsTears]

This is astonishing. Maps based on recent polls showing the result of a General Election if only certain age groups voted.

https://mobile.twitter.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1037273833462542336

The political divide is no longer rich Vs poor or North Vs South.

It's Young Vs Old.

[tommy toes]

As was the Brexit vote.

[Donnywolf]

As was the Brexit vote.

.... its those who were too young to Vote I feel sorriest for particularly the 16 to 18 group (have to draw the line somewhere). They will be saddled* with the outcome of our EU departure without ever having a chance to vote

* Saddled is assuming the outcome is negative to them and I accept the outcome may be favourable.

[wilts rover]

Yes amazing - and a challenge for all the political parties.

[keith79]

Because they vote in large numbers Oaps have never had it so good.

[Bentley Bullet]

It's been said that if you're not a socialist by the time you're 20 there must be something wrong with you. If you're still a socialist at 50 there's definitely something wrong with you.

I wonder if those stats prove that might be the case?

[BillyStubbsTears]

The phrase was if you're not a socialist at 20 you have no heart. If you're not a conservative at 50 you have no head.

That worked if you bought the idea that the Tories were economically competent, if heartless. Competent bas**rds as one Tory put it.

Trouble is, they are now looking like incompetent bas**rds.

And there's another thing. One reason why people tended to get more right wing the older they got was that they felt they had worked hard for mortgage/career/pension and they felt less inclined to see higher taxes eating away at that. Thing is though, the current older generation has pulled the rope ladder up behind them. The younger generation haven't the same career certainty. They haven't got mortgages. They haven't got pensions. So there's a big argument to say that the very left-leaning youth of today will not go to the right as they get older.

[Bentley Bullet]

Maybe they are now Billy, but what about before the Brexit vote when the UK was the top leading economy of the G7? Didn't you think the Tories were incompetent bas**rds then also?

[BillyStubbsTears]

Yes. Because they had engineered, through Austerity, the worst recovery from a recession for over 200 years. That is the root cause of all of our current ills. That was a decision of quite mind-numbing stupidity. It massively delayed our recovery in 2010-13 and that has left us permanently poorer by amounts that make my knackers retreat up to somewhere near my kidneys every time I think of it.

Osborne, being the canny politician that he was, changed tack on Austerity in 2013-15, whilst insisting that he hadn't. It's all there in the records if you want to go and look for it. f**k knows I've posted links to the data often enough.

The result of this was that by 2015 (just in time for an election - good, eh?) the UK economy was finally gathering pace. By 2016 our growth was the highest in the Western world. As you'd expect, because the f**king stupidity of Austerity had depressed potential activity for 3-4 years, (losing us something between £200-300bn of wealth in the meantime) with investment delayed until better times were in sight.

When you finally produce, half a decade too late, the environment for those better times, the economy naturally springs back and tries to make up the lost ground.

Put it another way. If you stop punching yourself in the gonads, you eventually start to feel better. But if you're the one who started the self abuse, it doesn't make you some sort of genius when you realise you should stop it.

But anyway. By 2015/16, we were finally having the recovery we should have had in 2010/11. 5 years and a quarter of a trillion quid too late but there you go.

And then we voted to drop a big iron weight on our gonads...

[godlike1]

Whilst the Tories are useless, I just don't get why people would want to vote for the even more incompetent facist racist pig that is Corbyn.

We really are up the creek without a paddle

[Donnywolf]

.... AND that illustrates the need for PR very nicely https://www.makevotesmatter.org.uk/home

The groundswell of opinion is for a fairer Voting system that SHOULD lead to more inclusiveness and less extremism either way

True it does produce 5 or 6 Governments in a relatively short period in some Countries and in some cases but maybe worth it to keep us largely in the middle of the road most of the time. After all of current EU Countries only UK and France do not use it

I am no expert by any means but I have been following  https://www.makevotesmatter.org.uk/path-to-pr/  which expains in great detail every aspect - including of course the big 2 Parties benefit hugely by running under the current First past the Post system so guess what.....

.... RIGHT,  though the Majority of people probably now favour PR they dont get their wish because the Tories and Labour overrule the Democratic wishes of the people ! It wont happen in my day but I wish and hope it comes sooner rather than later



Heres one I prepared earlier on August 14

 Quote from: wing commander on August 14, 2018, 01:09:15 PM

  I for one am getting pretty much fed up with the lot of them..Maybe if BOTH party's spent more time in concentrating on doing whats best for this country rather than constantly trying to score cheap pointless political digs at each other..Then maybe just maybe this country could move forward...

Im with you

I have banged on (too long) about PR but flwed as it may be it should avoid extremism either way - and off the top of my head stop the DUP getting 10 Seats with 295,000* (and of course the balance of Power) where the Green Party gets 1 Seat for 550,000 votes *

Just cant be fair. Give us PR and then things might get better

* I excuse myself for guessing at the number of Votes / Seats but I cant be bothered to look it up as it just winds me up !    « Last Edit: August 14, 2018, 02:20:12 PM by Donnywolf » 

[Bentley Bullet]

PR would probably be a fairer system. For instance, the 4 million votes UKIP gained in 2015 would have given them dozens of seats in the Commons as opposed to the ONE seat they ended up with!

[Glyn_Wigley]

PR is all very well, but would you want Momentum to decide who all the Labour MPs are or ERG to decide who all the Tory MPs are instead of the electorate? Would that be democratically reflecting what the people want?

[BillyStubbsTears]

PR would probably be a fairer system. For instance, the 4 million votes UKIP gained in 2015 would have given them dozens of seats in the Commons as opposed to the ONE seat they ended up with!

Agreed.

But if we had PR, it would be a very different country.

Specifically, Thatcher would never have crossed the portal of No10. There's no question of that.

And in 2010, it's very likely that we'd have had a Lab/LD coalition which would not have implemented Austerity. Since UKIP's rise in 2012-15 was mainly a lashing out at the continuing depressed state of the economy, the likelihood is that the issue you raise would never have occurred.

[big fat yorkshire pudding]

I guess it's always cyclical though isn't it? Labour should probably be back in power now or soon but actually they're doing pretty poorly not to be.  When they do they'll make mistakes, fall back and lose it again. It's impossible not to.

[idler]

What we need though are politicians wise enough and brave enough to employ policies introduced by their opposite numbers rather than decry and dismantle something that works.
Not long after I moved to Bradford it was a hung council with Eric Pickles having the casting vote. He voted along party lines on every single vote, he was rewarded by Thatcher of course.

[turnbull for england]

Eric Pickles, a man who really earned his knighthood. I used to have meetings  with Homes and Communities Agency when he was Minister,  and apparently amongst the many genius ideas he had was removing every other bulb from offices to save money. Never too worried about the large scale issues , but liked the show of power 

[BillyStubbsTears]

It does go in cycles but they to be pretty long ones.

The Tories were in power for 13 straight years up to 1964.

Then Labour were in power for 11 of the next 14.5 years.

Then the Tories were in power for 18 years from 79-97.

Then Labour for 13 years.

Judging by that record, you wouldn't expect it to be an obvious change if Govt any time soon.

[BillyStubbsTears]

AHH Eric Pickles.

First thing he did in Govt in 2010 was to massively reduce Govt funding to Labour controlled councils and to shield Tory councils from those magnitudes of cuts.

So Donny's budget was cut by 8.9% while Dorset's was increased.

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/politics/2010/dec/13/eric-pickles-council-budget-cuts

An out and out class warrior, that man.

[RedJ]

He's an out and out something and it also begins with a c...

[bpoolrover]

Would pr voting not just benefit the smaller parties ie the lib dems the Green Party and ukip?

[BillyStubbsTears]

PR would lead to
a) a much fairer representation of people's views in Parliament. If 10% of the electorate vote UKIP, UKIP should have 10% of the MPs. Any other distribution is immoral.
b) Much more sensible structures of political parties. To win in our current system you cannot split the vote on your side. That was what happened when the SDP left Labour in the early 80s. At the 83 Election , SDP/Liberals and Labour together won over 50% of the vote while the Tories won 43%. But Thatcher won a 144 seat majority and was totally free to push her policies through despite a large majority of the country having voted against them.

So in order to have a chance of winning, the Tories and Labour have to be big, all-encompasding parties appealling to a wide range of voters. So you get the ridiculous situation where Ken Clarke and Jacob Rees-Mogg are in the same party and so are Chukka Umunna and Dennis Skinner. Even though on many issues, Umunna and Clarke are in more agreement with each other than they are with the ones at the other side of their parties.

Under PR, the two main parties would split. We'd have:
A UKIP-like far right party
A moderate one-nation Tory party
A Liberal party
A Blair-like centre-left party
A Corbyn-like far left party.

The parties would then be able to campaign for what they REALLY believe. Corbyn could openly be anti EU and anti-NATO because he wouldn't have to pretend not to be to keep the centre-left happy.

And then there would have to be compromised and deals after an election when every party had won about 20% of the vote.

It's worked perfectly well in Germany for decades. There is no logical argument for us not having that system.

[bpoolrover]

Thank you for your reply bst

[bpoolrover]

In the interest of fairness thou would you agree the boundaries need changing as they favour the Labour Party at the minute?

[Ldr]

True PR would have no constituencies as seats would be apportioned to the national vote

[bpoolrover]

That would solve the problem then, would there aleays be a hung parliament or not?

[RedJ]

Almost certainly.

[Glyn_Wigley]

True PR would have no constituencies as seats would be apportioned to the national vote

And the electorate would not be able to get rid of a politician they didn't like as the parties would decide. Not being able to vote someone out goes against democracy, as Tony Benn repeatedly said.

[Campsall rover]

PR would lead to
a) a much fairer representation of people's views in Parliament. If 10% of the electorate vote UKIP, UKIP should have 10% of the MPs. Any other distribution is immoral.
b) Much more sensible structures of political parties. To win in our current system you cannot split the vote on your side. That was what happened when the SDP left Labour in the early 80s. At the 83 Election , SDP/Liberals and Labour together won over 50% of the vote while the Tories won 43%. But Thatcher won a 144 seat majority and was totally free to push her policies through despite a large majority of the country having voted against them.

So in order to have a chance of winning, the Tories and Labour have to be big, all-encompasding parties appealling to a wide range of voters. So you get the ridiculous situation where Ken Clarke and Jacob Rees-Mogg are in the same party and so are Chukka Umunna and Dennis Skinner. Even though on many issues, Umunna and Clarke are in more agreement with each other than they are with the ones at the other side of their parties.

Under PR, the two main parties would split. We'd have:
A UKIP-like far right party
A moderate one-nation Tory party
A Liberal party
A Blair-like centre-left party
A Corbyn-like far left party.

The parties would then be able to campaign for what they REALLY believe. Corbyn could openly be anti EU and anti-NATO because he wouldn't have to pretend not to be to keep the centre-left happy.

And then there would have to be compromised and deals after an election when every party had won about 20% of the vote.

It's worked perfectly well in Germany for decades. There is no logical argument for us not having that system.

What about the National Front. They are Nazi’s and look what happened in Germany in the 1930’s
PR would give them more power and that would be a disaster.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Nice in theory Glyn.

In practice, very few MPs lose their seats because of personal issues. Most do so because of their  party's popularity. An MP's chances of being voted out depend mainly on whether they are unlucky enough to be in a marginal.

May and Gove and Abbott and Harman all have majorities above 20k. They could shoot a constituent and still not be voted out. (EDIT: Just realised I was looking at majorities from the 2015 election but the principle still holds.)

I get your point in principle but it is a pin prick compared to the huge injustice of our FPTP system.