UK election announced for July 4

When your entire platform is basically an attack on British governance in pursuit of your interests why not go with the 4th?

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The UK needs to overhaul its constitution.

The House of Lords currently is merely used by the ruling prime minister to offer rewards to his supporters, for example, Boris Johnson ennobling Charlotte Owen for her role as an assistant at No.10 for a few months. Its legislative role is little more than theoretical, since the Tories have adopted the principle of ignoring the amendments it makes to bills.

I’d be in favour of a House of Lords with real clout, if it was elected on a proportional basis, as a counterbalance to the Commons elected by FPTP.

However a unicameral system can work perfectly well. The House of Commons could be proportionally elected simply by changing to Single Transferable Vote, which we used to have for elections of Police and Crime Commissioners until the Conservatives noticed that it resulted in them losing a lot.

STV elections to the Commons also preserve the principle that an MP should represent their constituents, rather than their party.

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Doesn’t really work that way here in Ireland as we have the British parliamentary system of whips and all that. It does mean that there is a more heterogenous set of views in the parliament though. There’s also a bit less of the public school debating society guffaws and jeers that the UK parliament has.

Which just sounds like childish shit when I hear it. Fucksake, they’re grown up people, they should act like it.

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What position would Labour government have on military support for Ukraine?

The same. No change.

They might not siphon off said aid to large political donors though.

Which the Conservative party’s track record makes pretty much a certainty as happening now.

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Lately = ever since he was elected leader of the Labour Party. I’m not voting for my Starmerite TERF Labour MP, not that it will stop her winning again.

I think that’s true for most people, you would have to be at least 109 to have voted in the last non-Thursday general election.

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No surprises here, just confirmation that all the money has been utterly wasted.

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what’s weirder is having a day named after a film!

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House of lords should be like Jury duty… we can all be a Lord for a month,

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V for Vendetta Day?

We’re not quite that bad yet.

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I was reading about the Australian version of the Rwanda plan, which they tried about 10 years ago. They wanted to send their refugees to Cambodia. They spent a few 100M AUD and managed eventually to get one guy over there.

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Right wing governments will spend any amount of money to discourage the wrong kinds of immigrants. What they won’t do is spend money on building houses which would mean that there wouldn’t be a problem with people coming.

Because they live to jack up house prices.

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That’s very good news. I don’t know much about UK politics, but Jeremy Corbyn’s calls for western countries to stop arming Ukraine were worrying.

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I don’t think he’ll even be running this election.

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… the voters of Portland, Oregon, have adopted STV for city council elections, surprising everyone who thought it was too complicated

It takes a long time to explain, and involves math, but it is very “fair” :thinking:

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Voters in the UK are familiar with it from European Parliament elections.

Also elections in Northern Ireland use it (I think Scotland and Wales too).

Anyway, it turns out that people are sophisticated political beings and can work it out. I think it’s only patrician, privately educated types who think hoi polloi are too dumb to understand it.

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… Portlanders had rejected many previous attempts to reform the city charter, leaving us with a distinctly 19th-century system despite everyone blaming all the problems on it :confused:

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STV wasn’t used in the European elections by the UK, except for northern Ireland. The UK initially carried on using FPTP, until the European parliament passed a resolution forcing all countries to use proportional representation of some sort. The UK then grudgingly complied by using closed lists and the d’Hondt method- favouring the large parties as much as it could while still technically being PR.

Nowadays STV is used in elections to Scottish Local councils, and Wales might be introducing it for local council elections next cycle.

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Did you perhaps mean Sir Keir? Keir Starmer is the head of the Labor Party.

Or are they going to knight Keith Richards?

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So instead we’ve continued with our horrible “Nauru Plan” of sticking them somewhere over the horizon so the voters can pretend they’re not there :sob:

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