The Politics Thread

That is an absolute mess caused by our crazy winner takes all electoral system. I refuse to call it 'first past the post' because there isn't a winning post.

 

Looks like there was no 'alliance' considered here. Until ( or if ever) PR is adopted for Parliamentary elections in the UK, that will be the only chance of evicting these corrupt ****esters from office.

 

From the real Leader of the Opposition...

 

They won by 46 votes. Not a lot in that.

The Abba system.

 

46 too many, I would suggest...
Tories would have been cremated had there been an alliance between Greens & Labour.

 

South Tyneside councillors are almost exclusively Labour anyway, so I doubt the Greens would go for it:
https://www.southtyneside.gov.uk/ar...e715&fsn=335d2a70-5c0b-46cf-a6c7-a752d7474f85

There's a couple of Tories, Greens and Independents and a whole lot of Labour.

 

Exactly the situation where Labour needs to be brave and not field a candidate to get rid of the Tory. Then the Greens can stand down elsewhere later as a quid pro quo

 

How would that situation have arisen before the vote, though?
The Greens only got 11% last time.

 

Tricky I agree but something of the sort needs to happen.

 

It won't. There's no appetite for it and it doesn't suit the smaller parties.
The Lib Dems are more closely aligned with the Tories, who they'd prefer to see in power.
The Greens are there to try and shift opinions.

 

Historically the Lib Dems always go with the electoral maths. If they beat enough Tories they won't have any choice but to support Labour. No harm in Labour giving the Greens a free run in a few seats.

 

The Lib Dems said that they wouldn't work with Labour. I believe them.
They're basically the pro-Europe Tory Party now, if they stand for anything.

Why would Labour give the Greens a freebie for nothing?
What would they have to gain from that, other than both sides risking getting tainted by the other?

 

Fine. Let's just let the fascists win on 35% of the vote then.
Every Tory seat lost helps Labour whoever wins it. That's the big picture. Every seat the Tories won with Labour third or worse is non risk for Labour to give another party a free run.

 

The Lib Dems have a track record in local government of siding with the Tories instead of Labour regardless of the maths

The fact that, a couple of years ago, they conspired with both the Tories and UKIP to overthrow Labour on Bolton council sums that up

 

It only helps if the other parties actually do win those seats and there's no backlash to the alliance from the electorate.
The media will call it a wide variety of things to stir up support for the Tories, including an affront to democracy.
They don't care about the truth.

 

...of course they were silent about The Nigel Farage Ego Project standing aside in Tory marginals two years ago

As opposed to the Lib Dems, who went all-out in both Tory and Labour marginals, yet had the gall to expect Plaid Cymru to stand aside in their Welsh marginals

 

Not in my part of the world they don't.
I am very pragmatic about this sort of stuff. Anything is better than a majority Conservative government. Labour has never cared about that and if it can't win on its own seems perfectly happy to concede power to the Tories. As a democrat I want Parliament to reflect the views of the people proportionally. If it did life would be better because it would be very difficult to get a majority for the sort of crap we are seeing now.

 

The problem is the Lib Dems are content to give power to the Tories, and that’s where any strategic alliance is going to fail

The Greens boom in support might turn things in a different direction, after all they did go into an alliance with Labour in marginal seats two years ago so there is potential for something workable - but the obvious question is whether that also counts north of the border, given they got into bed with the SNP

 

I am not talking about a strategic political alliance. What I want is for Labour, Lib Dem and Green to agree that PR is the way forward AND THEN to act tactically at the next election to get as close as possible to the result that PR would give.
So if the polling in England is say 35% Labour, 35% Conservative, 10% Green, 10% LibDem then Labour stands in about 340 English seats and the Greens and Lib Dems about 95 each. No party needs to agree who they will support in government.
I know this is unrealistic but have not seen anything better put forward.