I think PR may be coming closer. Cameron is destroying his own party with his control freakery and abysmal mismanagement of the EU referendum. Whatever the outcome, his leadership and his faction within the Conservative party is doomed. The opposition is in disarray, smaller parties are growing. Whether it will happen or not and whether it would work if it did will depend on whether parties are capable of positivity. While it remains normal business to be motivated more by tribal loathing of a particular opponent or of a particular strand of political thought and energy is wasted in trying to frustrate that enemy instead of engaging positively with the electorate, disillusionment will grow and little will be achieved. I see no evidence that this toxicity is in retreat particularly (not wishing to be tribal...) on the Left.
Whether we have PR or not is immaterial if, when our elected representative gets to parliament, they show more loyalty to the party, the whip's office and their careers than the electorate. I have said it before but what we need is open primaries and the power of recall. But as @Pete1950 has also pointed out there are strengths and weakness to whatever system we end up with. My own conclusion, after many years of observation, is that narrow self interest generally wins the day, and that is true whether it is the Conservative party looking out for big business or the Labour party looking out for the public sector unions.
this is the crazy thing about labour and devolution. they gave us it. then do every thing to scupper it with the bain principle. they dont deserve the steam of my pish. Ken Bell: Labour needs to scrap the Bain Principle as part of its rebuilding strategy
Labour gave you devolution because they thought, wrongly, that it was in their best, or at least short term, interests, not yours. Similarly with the Conservatives and the EU referendum. The Bain Principle highlights the win at any cost mentality over good governance.
What I have pointed out is that in order to achieve anything (legislation, a budget, or executive actions) you have to put together a majority in parliament, and ultimately in the country, to support it. That is very difficult to do, since there exist a wide range of views and interests on every topic. Assembling a majority involves negotiation, compromise, persuasion, and mutuality - and that is what political parties do. It seems that you are keen to make it even more difficult than before to find a majority, thus making it effectively impossible to take decisive action about anything. Incidentally, it is quite funny the way that those who fail to gain majority support for their own views always proceed to denounce the system as "undemocratic" - without noticing the irony.
it seems to work fine up here. when the SNP where a minority government they had to seek partnerships with other partys to get things done. it just requires a grown up opposition. hence why labour are history up here.
You forgot one other thing that political parties do and that is hold on to power at all costs, in fact it seems to trump everything else and precipitated both devolution in Scotland the the EU referendum, both of which didn't turn out quite as expected. I don't see a vision from any of our political parties at the moment, it seems they are all too busy fighting tactical battles with each other and internally to step back and look at the bigger picture. The Conservatives, after less than 1 1/2 parliaments, are beginning to look like they have run out of ideas, if they had any at all, and Labour is a complete shambles. I don't know what the answer is but tinkering with how we elect our politicians without overhauling the way politics is conducted seems a bit pointless. Our elected politicians should be more fearful of their constituents than their parties IMHO. Incidentally one outcome of the more direct democracy practiced in Carmel California is that local property taxes are fixed at the point of sale and not subject to annual review. Therefore long term residents pay a pittance and new house buyers pay a fortune. Which just goes to show, you can't please all the people all the time.
All I do is cast a single vote in a constituency with one of the safest Conservative seats in the country.
Re property taxes, I have always been attracted to the Taiwan concept, that the owner can assess his property valuation at whatever level he chooses. If he sets it too low, the property is compulsorily purchased and the compensation paid is limited to the owner's own valuation; but if he sets it too high, he has to pay high annual property taxes based on his own valuation. The result is realistic valuations and no appeals.
Probably. Either way the choice comes down to a service run for the benefit of it's providers, that is private companies or public sector workers.
We, chattering over politics on a Ducati forum, are in a minority. I know reasonably intelligent people who have no knowledge of. or interest in, politics. The one good thing to have come out of the Scottish independence vote was a revival of interest in politics amongst the young people, and that is great.
Political parties which hold on to power at all costs do so by having their opponents imprisoned, prosecuted on trumped up charges, disqualified from office, driven into exile, or simply killed, and by having opposition parties abolished, deprived of funds, or denied access to the media. That has been a central part of politics throughout history, and there are plenty of current examples from around the world. In the UK and Europe politics is rather gentler and more civilised, at least in recent years. Don't make the mistake of taking this for granted, please. Actually what political parties try to do, and give a high priority to, is keep together. For a party to split is a major catastrophe; for important members to defect is a minor catastrophe. So party leaders can never do just what they like - they have to do what is necessary to keep their mavericks on board. Both David Cameron and John Major had to spend most of their time and effort on this, to the detriment of other issues.
Really. So just how do you think a majority in favour of PR - or rather of some particular variety of PR - in parliament could be brought about? The main parties are either against it or lukewarm about it, and there has never been anything remotely approaching a majority in favour of it. No politicians are campaigning for it currently. So far it has never been possible to achieve a majority in favour of even introducing a more democratic system to the House of Lords, and PR for the Commons is very much further away than that. Wishful thinking is one thing, political reality is another.
deffo.jv they dont get away with much these days. denied access to the media? media denying the access im afraid. sure every party at one time or another has offered electoral reform. why wont the electorate demand it?. strange indeed.
Caught up with a podcast on R4 yesterday about Lords reform. I didn't know that there were now over 700 of them. I didn't know that Cameron has appointed over 200 - more than any other person ever. I didn't know that the chamber is only designed to accommodate 400. So it appears that the place is less democratic than ever and is being shamefully manipulated by the Tories. I could be wrong, but I had the impression that before this the Tories were in the minority in the Lords. I naively thought that the whole point of the Lords was to have a wise upper chamber which wasn't split into political factions. Ha! Joke!
