The Greens want an electoral alliance.
Jeremy Corbyn’s office has indicated it could be open to talks about a cross-party electoral alliance to counter the Conservatives, according to Caroline Lucas, the Green party MP who is promoting the idea.
While this may sound innocuous, what it means in reality is that these people will use any methods available to thwart the will of the electorate. They cannot bear the fact that England will consistently reject their left-wing policies – and the further Labour lurches to the left, the more they will be rejected. Given this, they want to cheat the system to undermine the will of the voters by reducing the options available to them at the ballot box.
If I can see this, I suspect others will too. And, they will probably treat this contemptible behaviour with the contempt it deserves.
I don’t like the Tories. They are one of the big three. But if it comes to it, I will see them in power before I willingly see Caroline Lucas’ and Jeremy Corbyn’s demonic alliance of the progressive left. These people are evil. They make the Tories look paragons of virtue in comparison. By God, that has to be bad…
The problem is that First Past the Post already denies you full democratic voting.
If a seat is 35% Labour, 40% Conservative and %20 UKIP but the swing is right then the non-democractic advantage is held by the Tories, since anyone thinking of going Kipper risks spreading the vote and handing over the seat to Labour. For this reason UKIP finds it hard to convert support into votes in general elections. People stick to the two main parties and no-one else gets a look in.
At its worst you end up with the situation in the US of complete partisan split.
If you don’t want domination by the main parties, then logically you should support Proportional Representation. That actually would change things, unlike whinging that the Greens and Labour are doing the best for themselves with a stupid system.
What the Tories and UKIP need to do is enter a similar alliance. But the Tories are so used to the dictatorial powers of FPP that they can’t abide the thought of sharing any power at all.
There was a time when I was in favour of PR. I changed my mind. With FPP, we have the constituency link. It is local, direct democracy in action. We can remove our MP if we so wish. Under PR, we get foisted with whoever is on the party list. This is not democracy.
Secondly, the inevitable coalitions will involve horse trading of policies as we saw in 2010. Therefore, whatever policies we vote for get cast aside in the grubby scrabble for power. No thanks.
FPP may be flawed, but it is less flawed than the alternative.
As for whinging about the Greens and Labour doing the best for themselves, I don’t care about what is good for them, I care about them attempting to subvert the process for their own political advantage to the detriment of the people whom they serve.
Utter shite. 4 million votes = 1 MP and 3 million votes = 56 MPs in Jockland
And you think that’s right? Really? Are you quite sure?
Get a fucking grip Longrider. You are well out of order on this one.
No, I’m not. It’s perfectly correct.
The constituency link is too valuable to sacrifice. In 2010, we managed to remove our Labour MP. We couldn’t have done that under PR as we would have some flunkie we didn’t choose foisted upon us from a party list – we’ve already seen this with the EU elections. No fucking thanks!
What you mention here is an anomaly in the size of constituencies, not an argument against FPP. So Scotland is less densely populated than England’s inner cities, so fewer votes needed to elect an MP. The solution to any anomaly is boundary changes to even up the size of electorate each MP represents, not to give us a selection of people we never voted for and who will horse-trade everything we voted for in order to get their hands on the levers of power.
PR is an ongoing compromise whereby whatever polices we vote for get sacrificed. Ask LibDem voters about tuition fees for example. That’s the reality that we will see with PR.
FPP is, as I said, flawed, but nothing like as dreadful as the alternatives. I stand by everything I have said and won’t be budging on it. I’ve thought about it long and hard over the years. I will never, ever, support PR.
I’m not quite sure why you are saying that the Greens and Labour working together and forming some kind of coalition is somehow underhand. Isn’t it just part of the normal cut and thrust of party politics? Anyway, the greens are even less popular than a totally Stalinist Labour party would be, so I’m not sure what they think that they have to offer.
What they are planning is similar to what the establishment parties did in France recently – to not put up candidates to give a clear run in some constituencies, for example. This is a deliberate attempt to undermine the electorate by denying them a choice. England naturally is conservative. These people hate conservatives (large and small “c”). This little scam is an attempt to deny electors the opportunity to put a conservative government into power.
The only democracy that the left want to afford us is the freedom to agree with them. Dissent is ruthlessly crushed.
And that is what they are trying.
It would be nice to see a conservative government, let me know when one threatens to make an appearance will you.
Don;t worry won’t be holding me breath so an otherwise guaranteed widow won’t be suing.
Well, yeah, Tory Lite and all that. Still better than the alternative…
While this may sound innocuous, what it means in reality is that these people will use any methods available to thwart the will of the electorate.
In one. But what else did we expect from that lot?
Caroline Lucas – the silly tart who got elected because she was head of the Green Party and then immediately resigned as soon as she got into parliament, leaving us with that stupid Aussie bint in charge. Who actually gives a flying what the Green Party think unless you live in Brighton?
I’m not as in favour of FPTP as you, but neither do I have any illusions about the other options. However, “Proportional Representation” exists in a multitude of forms.
As usual, the Swiss seem to have a good handle on it: http://www.democracy-building.info/particularities-switzerlands-proportional-election-system.html
It’s basically a mix of both PR and Majority Election approaches, cherry-picking the best of both. I see no reason why the UK couldn’t adopt something similar — especially as the UK’s political landscape hasn’t been driven by ideological factors since Labour’s experiments with socialism in the 1970s.
Nobody who remembers that period will want to go back, which is why so many think Corbyn is unelectable. But there are people today in their early 40s who are too young to remember the Winter of Discontent. The Internet proves humans are terrible at history and suckers for personality cults.