Can Labour Win The Next General Election?

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David Cameron's new proposals make very interesting reading... definitly changed my opinion about him anyway.

[Saracen]

I'm really not sure. We can only wait and see...

Edit: The results are on 4th June right? Sorry I'm a bit thick when it comes to politics...

Not of a General Election, no. The 4th June elections are local and European parliament, and it's too late to add a UK General Election to that now. The last date for the proclamation of dissolution has been and gone.

But there MUST be a GE without no more than jut over a year. The last legal date is 3rd June 2010, so it'll be then at the latest, and I doubt Brown will wait quite that long. More likely Spring, and possibly, depending on events, even Autumn, though I doubt that he'll want to do that.

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Saracen, have you read Cameron's proposals that were in the news today?

I'd be interested to hear what you think.

[TheAnimus]

Don't you get more turnout in may?

May 2010 perhaps then?

[Andeh13]

+1 For parliament to be replaced by Hexus' Admins & Mods, with Saracen at the reigns!

[schmunk]

our tax payers money going to support people who just come over here don't work and feed off the state.

This happens far, far less than you or the Daily Mail might imagine. Most immigrants aren't entitled to any state assistance; the vast majority of 'dole' money goes to can't work / won't work British people.

[watercooled]

Not of a General Election, no. The 4th June elections are local and European parliament, and it's too late to add a UK General Election to that now. The last date for the proclamation of dissolution has been and gone.

But there MUST be a GE without no more than jut over a year. The last legal date is 3rd June 2010, so it'll be then at the latest, and I doubt Brown will wait quite that long. More likely Spring, and possibly, depending on events, even Autumn, though I doubt that he'll want to do that.

Shows you how much attention I pay to the news/politics

[Saracen]

Saracen, have you read Cameron's proposals that were in the news today?

I'd be interested to hear what you think.

I've read a couple of reports, and seen the news clips.

My first reaction is that what he's suggesting is certainly a move in the right direction. My second thought is that a speech by a party leader in opposition doesn't always translate into action when he gets elected. As a case in point, Blair and his "whiter than white, end to Tory sleaze" speech.

So I'll be a bit more impressed when the skeleton he laid out gets given some more flesh in the form of solid proposals, in detail. I'll be a bit more impressed still if and when it makes it into a manifesto, again the form of detailed pledges of specific action, on a specific timetable, otherwise they'll find a way of wiggling out of it. For instance, Labour promised a manifesto on the Constitution, but managed to avoid giving us one, firstly by delaying, then by claiming it's dead, then by pretending the Lisbon treaty doesn't amount to much the same ting in most critical areas.

And we all know why Brown won't give us a referendum on that, don't we? For the same reason he thinks a General Election should be put off as long as possible .... he thinks he'd lose it.

So, what I think is ....

• Cameron is saying what he thinks we want to hear. He's making the "statesman" bid, trying (and pretty much succeeding) to look like someone with what it takes to lead. And he'd doing it because he wants to get elected.
  
  
• Clegg is beating a similar drum, though of course PR is an essential part of what he sees as critical form, and we're expected to believe that the LibDems being the biggest beneficiary of such a change from first-post-the-post to PR is a complete coincidence, and not at all vested self-interest.
  
  
• We also have prospective Labour leaders setting out their stall again, also by trying to look Prime Ministerial, reforming, modernising, while all the time trying to pretend they wouldn't stick a knife in Brown's back if he ever moves away from the way .... and off the fence.

Oh, and of course, I think that they think that if they talk fast enough about giving us more power, we'll accept a few MPs careers ending, though for almost all it seems they'll hang on 'til the next election and not do the decent thing and fall on their swords now, and with Michael Martin's sacrificial head on a stick, and that we'll be distracted from remembering what about a third of their number were up to. Well, in my opinion .....

a) It won't work, and
b) We haven't seen nearly enough rascals booted out yet
c) It definitely won't work.

So, in total, I think what he's saying makes a certain amount of sense, but much of it, well, I'll believe it when it's actually been done and is in place, and not before. Because talk, as an opposition, is easy, but action, as a government, is harder, especially if it's not in your interest and you think the public has forgotten about it and dozed off again. So I'll wait and see ..... but I'll not holding my breath.

[Salazaar]

[*]Clegg is beating a similar drum, though of course PR is an essential part of what he sees as critical form, and we're expected to believe that the LibDems being the biggest beneficiary of such a change from first-post-the-post to PR is a complete coincidence, and not at all vested self-interest.

To be fair on them they've been promoting PR for donkey's years, even when it wouldn't have benefited then. I don't blame them for pushing it even harder when it would help them but you've got to give them credit for sticking to their guns.

[Saracen]

To be fair on them they've been promoting PR for donkey's years, even when it wouldn't have benefited then. I don't blame them for pushing it even harder when it would help them but you've got to give them credit for sticking to their guns.

I can't think of a time since their inception when it wouldn't have benefited them. The first-past-the-post system has always left smaller parties under-represented. It's been quite a while since I did the election numbers, but I looked at the proportion of the vote each party got and compared it to the number of seats they ended up with. And I can reach no other conclusion that that the system is badly loaded against the minorities. IIRC, it's also currently loaded against the Tories. I'm dragging up vague memories here and haven't researched it to verify it, but I seem to remember that with the current boundary layouts, the conservatives need to be about 6% ahead of the vote in overall terms, to break even with Labour in terms of seats they win. And they need to do much better than that to get an overall majority.

That's why we're on the horns of a dilemma. On the surface of it, PR is a much better system, since the seats in the house go in direct proportion to the number of people voting for them ... at least, in simple PR it does.



Seats in 2001 Election

Lab 413
Con 166
LibDem 52

From a total of 659 seats.

So Labour got 62.7%, Conservatives 25.2% and LibDem 7.9%.

Now look at votes.

Labour 10,724,953
Tory 8,357,615
LibDem 4,814,321

That's Labour 40.7%, Tory 31.7% and LibDem 18.3% of the vote.

Now the insight into that.

Labour get 40.7% of the vote, compared to Tory 31.7%, yet get 62.7% of seats compared to 25.2% for the Tories. Labour had a HUGE majority in Parliament, but nowhere near such a huge margin of the vote.

And LibDems? 18.3% of the vote, and 7.9% of the seats.

Had that been a straight PR vote, the seats would have been

Labour 268
Tory 209
LibDem 123


Several conclusions are clear. First, the LibDems would be the huge gainers, though Tories would too. Second, a huge Labour majority becomes a hung Parliament, with the balance of power resting with LibDem. Third, despite winning a lot more votes than any other, Labour could have had law put through by a combined wish of Tory and LibDem (if that ever happened, which might be pushing it a bit) and the Government the majority voted for could have done nothing to stop it. That, of course, is the big problem with PR .... you tend to end up with powerless governments and government by committee, and by back-room horse trading.

You end up with a largely toothless government, unable to act without some form of consensus from another party, and that consensus inevitably carries a quid pro quo at some point.


Oh, and that 40.7% of the vote that gave Labour such a huge majority in Parliament was of the vote, by the way, not the electorate. If you look at actual vote, as a percentage of the electorate rather than the turnout, Labour got that whopping majority in Parliament from about 22% of the vote. Hardly a stunning mandate from the people, is it, and a major reason why voter apathy is such an issue.

The trouble (IMHO) though, is that a lot of people don't really feel it makes much difference who they vote for, since whoever gets in barely pays more than lip service to us once they've got their bums on the government seats. And, of course, even that much actual democracy is loaded and deceptive, since so many seats are "safe" for one party or another, and the person that gets that (when they come up) is determined by a couple of hundred local party activists. If it is, for example, a safe Tory seat, you only need the backing of a couple of hundred local Tory party members and, to all intents, you're elected before the electorate go anywhere near a polling booth. We get NO say in who that is, and can do little or nothing about them once they're in, without becoming a party activist ourselves and that implies a rigidity in political viewpoint.

What it comes down to is that a handful of people select our representatives in most seats, and we get to choose the government, from a pre-determined choice of two, and even then, our opinion only matters a damn if you live in a marginal and are a floating voter.

And for those bored and persistent souls out there that bothered to work through all that, perhaps you get a hint of why I'm a political cynic. We don't live in a democracy. We live in a carefully engineered and rigged system that looks, at casual glance, like a democracy. Small wonder then, that so many of our "honourable" representatives treat us with such contempt as their shenanigans with expenses make clear they do.

Come back, Oliver Cromwell. Where are you when we need you. All we've done is swap one out of touch arrogant elite (nobility) for an another out of touch arrogant elite (politicians). A pox on all their houses.

[Brucelles]

One thing to remember is that it is traditional for the incumbent party to gerrymander. my guess is that Labour had a disadvantage vs the Tories the year that Tony won it first.

The best thing about the two party system is that the public take, traditionally, two - three terms to get pee-ed off with the government and replace them with a bunch who haven't had enough time in government to get fat and greedy.

That's why I expect the Tories to take it this time. Every time a government is voted out the crap is forced out of the system to an extent, the crooks tend to lose the vote, the lazy fat pigs take a few directorships and the party, desperate to get back in, deselect the people they hate most.

This creates an opposition with a little more moral standing, and pinker cheeks, who aren't so cocky and smug. They serve to keep the newly cocky and smug government from turning bad too quickly.

It's not as fair a system as PR, but it has checks and balances, they are just very slow.


And thank God we are not America. Where a 51% majority is a landslide, and your vote really doesn't count much at all if you live in Florida.

[badass]

Come back, Oliver Cromwell. Where are you when we need you. All we've done is swap one out of touch arrogant elite (nobility) for an another out of touch arrogant elite (politicians). A pox on all their houses.

Oliver Cromwell was a puritan prick and I wish he had never got to power.

[Blitzen]

+1 For parliament to be replaced by Hexus' Admins & Mods, with Saracen at the reigns!

If that happens i will spend my life in jail.