Regardless of the ethnicity of the leadership
they represent the interests of the membership who are, in the most part, very white, very old and very rich.
(, Wed 20 Jul 2022, 21:13, Reply)
Is that actually true, though?
They did get a whopping majority in the last election, that can't all have been rich old white people.
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Tusk knows where you live, Wed 20 Jul 2022, 21:24,
Reply)
I'm talking about the membership not the voters
www.thelondoneconomic.com/politics/tory-party-demographics-revealed-ahead-of-leadership-election-and-they-make-for-pretty-grim-reading-329194/
97% white
(, Wed 20 Jul 2022, 21:40, Reply)
Yes it's true.
But we don't get a bar subsidised by the tax payers.
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jonbob loves you, Thu 21 Jul 2022, 2:41,
Reply)
Not many tory voters (~13.9 million) are party members (~200,000).
They got a whopping majority because of FPTP, but it doesn't reflect their share of the vote (43.6%).
If we had a system of proportional representation with 2nd preference ballots, etc, we would have more sensible electoral outcomes.
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brb man-child cuck corporate supplicant fuck, Wed 20 Jul 2022, 21:43,
Reply)
Ah, no, I have to take issue with that.
I live in a country with PR. As a result, my vote never goes to an actual person, but to a party. There is no local representation in parliament, no MP holding local surgeries, no one single parliamentarian to hold acountable as they all hide behind the gray collective party responsibility. This lead to a huge chasm between voter and representative. Not only that, but no party will ever realistically have a majority and any goverment will be a coalition - meaning no party can ever be held acountable for actually delivering on their manifesto. Combine this with a system where the actual government ministers aren't members of parliament means voters can't even get rid of party leaders by voting them out. FPTP may not be an ideal situation, but you have much more influence on actual government policies than an RP voter will ever have.
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Tusk knows where you live, Wed 20 Jul 2022, 22:29,
Reply)
That's just the way your country has decided to impliment PR.
No reason why you couldn't have a list of individuals and a Nth preference column. No reason why your constituency rules couldn't have recall/retrigger clauses that apply to individual representatives. These are choices that have been made, they're not intrinsic to the concept of proportional representation.
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brb man-child cuck corporate supplicant fuck, Wed 20 Jul 2022, 22:37,
Reply)
Few people vote for a particular candidate in the UK, just the colour of their tie.
So our situation isn't all that different to yours. There's no reason why the MP for a given constituency shouldn't hold surgeries, though I suspect that you overestimate how much impact they actually have anyway.
Coalition government is a double-edged sword but I say that one of them is blunted: you do lose some accountability but voters absolutely remember what parties do while in a coalition (just look at the Lib Dems) and having a government that can only realistically pass the legislation that a real majority of the public voted for sounds like a Good Thing to me. A fringe benefit of coalition government is that there's a larger pool of MPs to choose from when it comes to government posts. Where do you live? It seems bizarre to have heads of government departments that aren't MPs (or whatever you call them).
FPTP is definitely not an ideal solution; it allows a minority to get away with things that the majority oppose, just because of the way boundaries have been drawn. The cherry on the cake is that the direction of the UK government is about to be set by a person elected by less than 1% of the populace. Fuck that.
A presidential style of government à la USA* is patently wrong, but I'm open to the idea of a hybrid system (it's worth a try) wherein we have a reformed upper house (sorry Lord Winston, you were one of the good ones) elected by PR and a lower house elected by FPTP, but without the latter having power to overrule the former. If that works then perhaps we could continue on to PR all round. Who knows, we could even add a third chamber of old-style peers to give advice to the other two, appointed entirely by dint of wisdom rather than political backhanders.
*The filibuster rule** is just so fucking stupid. I'm all for consensus in government but expecting a supermajority in a two-party system basically means that nothing will ever get done.
**Which isn't actually a real rule. I mean come on, having people stand up and talk and talk until the clock runs out is a popular Radio 4 programme***, not a system of government.
***Insofar as any Radio 4 programme could be considered popular.
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jonbob loves you, Thu 21 Jul 2022, 3:41,
Reply)
I'm in the Netherlands
Ministers are usually (but not exclusivly) selected from elected parliamentarians, but when they become ministers, they are no longer part of the parliament and their seat goes to whatever candidate was on their party's election list but didn't get in. On the plus side, it means the government itself can't vote on their own legislation - although their parliamentary parties obviously can.
As for getting 'legislation that a real majority of the public voted for' yeah, no, that doesn't happen as all legislation will be a compromise between the ruling parties and therefore exactly what nobody voted for. Perhaps I am overestimating the importance of having a single person responisble for representation, but I do like the idea of having just the one target to pelt with various rotten fruits rather than a mass of politicians who don't have to care about losing a few hundred votes as their seat will be safe either way. The good thing is that we have litterally dozens of parties, to cater to your specific flavour, rather than just a few. I suppose the grass is always greener on the other side.
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Tusk knows where you live, Thu 21 Jul 2022, 15:06,
Reply)