UK Politics: Post-May Edition

[Pebble thats Stubby]

3 minutes ago, Notone said:

@Pebble

Well, that kinda sucks. If it comforts you, proportional voting gives your more options, but not necessarily satisfaction.

I am somewhat unsure what to vote for. this year. Our election result is a bit of a foregone conclusion, unless something crazy happens, and my usual party of choice has been totally uninspiring. I will probably still vote Green (oh spoiler), but casting a vote for The Party (a joke party) is at least atm something I'd give some serious thought.

 

Well at least with Proportional my vote would mean something solid.   and not   I object but you can safely ignore me   or  I support the safe seat candidate.   

 

But don't give up hope,  when our snap election was called,  May was supposed to get a landslide, or at least increase her majority.  It was considered a forgone conclusion.  

[Philokles]

The joke and minor parties suffered this year with only a few weeks to prepare and no national campaign apparatus. Even if they can get on the ballot, arranging any publicity is hard. I would not have known there was an independent running in my constituency had I relied on leaflets, posters, etc.

[Maltaran]

57 minutes ago, Ordos said:

 

So with DUP influence, what becomes of those boundary changes and reduction of mps? Will they support the reduction of mps and the re-drawing of the lines? Maybe they will demand that the number of mps in Northern Ireland remains at 18 or to gerrymander their constituencies for unionist benefit and at the expense of Sinn Fein.

The boundary commissions are independent, so the most the DUP could do is vote against the changes and keep the current boundaries.

[Jen'ari]

2 hours ago, Pebble said:

My Dad always told me that those people who can't be bothered to vote or spoil their ballot paper, don't have the right to have an opinion let alone complain about the results until the next election.   This is a bit harsh, but in many ways I agree with him.   You can't change the result if you don't vote.   If all the non voters voted things could be very different.  at the very least the politicians won't be able to afford to ignore any groups of people, due to the possibility of being punished at the ballot box.

I didn't vote this time because I had no one to vote for, my views are pretty centre right to be honest, however I couldn't vote Tory with May at the helm, her tenure as Home Secretary wasn't good, I absolutely don't agree with the snoopers charter and think how she was going about Brexit is a shambles, so my only options would be to vote for a left leaning Labour Party with nutjobs like McDonnell in it who want to up taxes on the better off, which would be akin to shooting myself in the foot, or vote for a Tory party with an incompetent,authoritarian school headmistress who wants to pry into every facet of people's lives and comes across as the least personable politician I've seen in charge in my lifetime, she even makes Gordon Brown look both likeable and competent.

If Cameron or Osborne were in charge I'd have voted Tory without a second thought.

[mormont]

4 minutes ago, Lord Sidious said:

I didn't vote this time because I had no one to vote for, my views are pretty centre right to be honest, however I couldn't vote Tory with May at the helm, her tenure as Home Secretary wasn't good, I absolutely don't agree with the snoopers charter and think how she was going about Brexit is a shambles, so my only options would be to vote for a left leaning Labour Party with nutjobs like McDonnell in it who want to up taxes on the better off, which would be akin to shooting myself in the foot, or vote for a Tory party with an incompetent,authoritarian school headmistress who wants to pry into every facet of people's lives and comes across as the least personable politician I've seen in charge in my lifetime, she even makes Gordon Brown look both likeable and competent.

If Cameron or Osborne were in charge I'd have voted Tory without a second thought.

This is a strange argument to make, given that May is only in charge because of the incompetence of Cameron and Osborne.

[Loge]

52 minutes ago, Pebble said:

Well at least with Proportional my vote would mean something solid.   and not   I object but you can safely ignore me   or  I support the safe seat candidate.   

 

But don't give up hope,  when our snap election was called,  May was supposed to get a landslide, or at least increase her majority.  It was considered a forgone conclusion.  

Well, May got an excellent result and actually gained votes, it just didn't translate into seats. You don't get that with the proportional system. The closest thing you can get under the German system is when a lot of votes don't count because the parties didn't win five percent. Merkel's Christian Democrats nearly won a majority of seats last time with the percentage of their votes being in the low 40s. The chance of seeing somebody other than Merkel as chancellor this fall is very slim. The Social Democrats had a peak in the opinion polls for a few months after Schulz took over but recently lost three regional elections and the opinion polls are moving back to where they were before Schulz. That leaves them too weak to be a credible alternative. They'd have to form a very disparate four party coalition. Forming a new coalition could be tough for Merkel, though as her past coalition partners have fared rather poorly at the subsequent election.

[VarysTheSpider]

4 hours ago, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

Oh, and full credit to a certain poster who suggested this result on 19th April:

 

Heh, thanks. Kicking myself I didn't put any money on it though. 

I am rather glad I didn't vote Tory in the end, means I can quite enjoy their present difficulties. That's what happens when you turn your back on your own remain wing, give whole sections of society no reason at all to vote for you, gamble with the country for your own party's gain, and generally treat people like they're idiots. I wish they'd learn from this but I doubt it. 

[The Marquis de Leech]

1 hour ago, Loge said:

Well, May got an excellent result and actually gained votes, it just didn't translate into seats. You don't get that with the proportional system. The closest thing you can get under the German system is when a lot of votes don't count because the parties didn't win five percent.

No, she really didn't. She called the election with a 20+% margin, and ended up with a 2.4% margin - down from the 6.5% David Cameron managed last time. The reason she lost seats wasn't the villainy of FPP, but because Labour's increase in vote share was significantly greater than hers.

(And if we're talking proportional representation, the German/NZ system has rare cases of overhang, where a party wins more electoral districts than its vote share entitles it to). 

[karaddin]

So I was just reading this Twitter thread on Northern Ireland

And that sounds super ominous. Is that actually a reasonable summary of how things stand? After such an effective peace treaty the idea that it might be on the precipice of being flushed away is really upsetting. Get your shit together ffs.

[The guy from the Vale]

I was wondering what was up with the more moderate parties in NI totally collapsing this time around. I guess I got my answer. And it's pretty much what I feared.

Please fasten your seatbelts. We expect to experience some Troubles soon. Chin up! It only took us 30 years to sort things out last time around.

[The Marquis de Leech]

28 minutes ago, karaddin said:

So I was just reading this Twitter thread on Northern Ireland

And that sounds super ominous. Is that actually a reasonable summary of how things stand? After such an effective peace treaty the idea that it might be on the precipice of being flushed away is really upsetting. Get your shit together ffs.

I really doubt the DUP are going to enforce their unique brand of loopiness on the rest of the UK (Ruth Davidson has got an assurance from May on gay rights). What this deal will mean is just lots and lots of pork-barrel spending on Northern Ireland*, and probably not much in the way of social policy being brought to a vote, because even May isn't that stupid. You can start worrying if the Queen's Speech calls the Pope the Antichrist or something.

*There's a joke going round about Protestant Pork for A Protestant People.

[The guy from the Vale]

3 minutes ago, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

I really doubt the DUP are going to enforce their unique brand of loopiness on the rest of the UK (Ruth Davidson has got an assurance from May on gay rights). What this deal will mean is just lots and lots of pork-barrel spending on Northern Ireland*, and probably not much in the way of social policy being brought to a vote, because even May isn't that stupid. You can start worrying if the Queen's Speech calls the Pope the Antichrist or something.

*There's a joke going round about Protestant Pork for A Protestant People.

It's precisely not about importing DUP loopiness to the rest of the UK. Please read the entire twitter feed. The problem is that there is currently no devolved NI government, and that the Tories governing at the mercy of the DUP is a de facto breach of the Good Friday agreement.

[Philokles]

It is striking how overlooked Northern Irish politics is in the mainstream British press. There must be about 10-20 foreign countries whose affairs are examined more closely.

[karaddin]

Yeah, the impression I get from that thread is that they literally don't have to do anything at all for it to be a problem. Their mere presence in an informal coalition government makes Westminster no longer a neutral party for the purposes of arbitrating the sharing of power, and when there is no government in NI that's a big problem.

[mormont]

I'm also somewhat disturbed by the implication that the DUP enforcing stone-age morality on NI voters isn't a big problem in its own right. It is. With the devolved assembly suspended, the safeguards that stop this happening are out of commission.

But yeah, the main problem here is that the devolved NI assembly is suspended precisely because SF have a problem with the conduct of Arlene Foster, who is now Theresa May's 'friend and ally'. A formal coalition, as noted above, should be inconceivable. Never mind Sinn Fein, I can't see the Irish government wearing that, whether it's technically legal or not. Even an informal arrangement is undermining the trust required to get the assembly up and running again.

[Jen'ari]

3 hours ago, mormont said:

This is a strange argument to make, given that May is only in charge because of the incompetence of Cameron and Osborne.

I'd not say Cameron was incompetent, he made a pledge that he shouldn't have made to placate some of his party, got a majority and had to go through with it.

As recent PMs have gone he was better than both his predecessor and his successor.

When you look at the choice of May,Gove or Boris Johnson as Tory leader and Corbyn on the Labour side both Cameron and Osborne would be better choices, May has put people off and if the Tories want a majority at the next election she needs to go, and I hope she does.

[karaddin]

2 minutes ago, mormont said:

I'm also somewhat disturbed by the implication that the DUP enforcing stone-age morality on NI voters isn't a big problem in its own right. It is. With the devolved assembly suspended, the safeguards that stop this happening are out of commission.

Yeah I was really bothered by "don't worry, Ruth's got assurances she'll still be able to get married in Scotland". That's all well and good but I look pretty poorly on a lesbian that's fine with a subset of the population getting screwed just because it's not where she lives. LGBTQI people in NI deserve their rights too.

[mormont]

4 minutes ago, Lord Sidious said:

I'd not say Cameron was incompetent, he made a pledge that he shouldn't have made to placate some of his party, got a majority and had to go through with it.

He made a pledge that he shouldn't have: incompetence, exhibit A. He rushed the timing of the referendum: incompetence, exhibit B. He prepared for the referendum poorly or not at all, asking people to vote on a vague question and not publishing any detail on what leaving the EU might look like or mean for voters: incompetence, exhibit C. He ran a lacklustre campaign and lost: incompetence, exhibit D.

Cameron has a fair claim to be the most incompetent PM in decades simply on the strength of the sheer cock-up that was this referendum, even before we look at any other actions he took as PM. Better than May? Maybe. Better than Brown? Nope. Brown made mistakes, but none on this scale.

3 minutes ago, karaddin said:

Yeah I was really bothered by "don't worry, Ruth's got assurances she'll still be able to get married in Scotland". That's all well and good but I look pretty poorly on a lesbian that's fine with a subset of the population getting screwed just because it's not where she lives. LGBTQI people in NI deserve their rights too.

To be fair to Ms Davidson, I've not seen her personally say she would be fine with that (and given that her partner is an Irish Catholic, one can see why she might not be).

[karaddin]

Fair point, the way I've seen it stated is essentially from her perspective but that doesn't mean it's actually what we thinks.

[Jen'ari]

20 minutes ago, mormont said:

He made a pledge that he shouldn't have: incompetence, exhibit A. He rushed the timing of the referendum: incompetence, exhibit B. He prepared for the referendum poorly or not at all, asking people to vote on a vague question and not publishing any detail on what leaving the EU might look like or mean for voters: incompetence, exhibit C. He ran a lacklustre campaign and lost: incompetence, exhibit D.

Cameron has a fair claim to be the most incompetent PM in decades simply on the strength of the sheer cock-up that was this referendum, even before we look at any other actions he took as PM. Better than May? Maybe. Better than Brown? Nope. Brown made mistakes, but none on this scale.

To be fair to Ms Davidson, I've not seen her personally say she would be fine with that (and given that her partner is an Irish Catholic, one can see why she might not be).

Selling off gold reserves, raiding pensions, and let's not forget no more boom and bust, indeed, Brown was a bastion of competence.

Cameron was forced into going through with the referendum by divisions in his own party, putting him in an impossible position, his hands were tied going through with the referendum, doesn't mean he was an incompetent PM.

As for leaving the EU I'm not convinced that's  a bad thing in itself but the direction May was going to do so certainly was, I'm in favour of both the single market and freedom of movement staying, and hope now that they do.