Anyone else feel a sense of impending doom that we’ll have a Labour government tomorrow?

Labour

Democracy!

Primarily the opportunity to choose the leadership, and feed into party policy.

Reform does none of those things.

What does voting rights in the Labour or Conservative Party give you if you join them?

Casdon

People who pay a subscription to Reform are supporters, not members of a democratic party. They have no voting rights.

Casdon give Reform time to build a membership and then voting rights will follow. A remarkable 6 weeks all in all and they’re not going away.

People who pay a subscription to Reform are supporters, not members of a democratic party. They have no voting rights.

vegansrock £25 annual membership available online. Of course you can be a member of Reform ….

You can’t be a member of Reform as it’s not a party but a limited company, Will be interesting to read the declaration of interests of Nigel Farage and co when MPs have to come clean about their financial affairs. Will they have to declare the income of Reform?

OldFrill I spoke to a member of Reform recently and REFORM of the Civil Service, House of Lords, voting system and getting political power back to Parliament were listed. From another perspective, this country is currently in a state of anarchy.
It’s perfectly true that Reform are disrupters but how did this country get to a position where it needed to be disrupted? Who are the true patriots?

With our system you get some really whacky people being elected who have loud,strident voices in parliament. Not sure it is that much better,on balance.

MayBee70

So, with all this talk about Labour having a lot of seats without many people actually voting for them the same would have happened in 2019 to the Conservatives if UKIP hadn’t made that agreement? And Labour gained a landslide victory despite having Reform contest every seat. I have to admit, though, that I don’t understand the system at all.

Probably - though LD may have done better and Labour not as well, depending how each were perceived by the voters.
UKIP/Reform are disruptors, some might say anarchists.

Siope

I’m not sure it works to assume that the vote share parties have now would be the same under a PR system - people might well vote very differently, particularly in areas where there was a level of tactical voting.

That doesn’t change the fact that FPTP is not a good system, regardless of whether it delivers results one wants or does not.

I don’t think there is actually a good system anywhere unfortunately, because they all have pros and cons. A coalition of parties to govern through PR always results in the parties who aren’t part of it disaffected, just as it does with our FPTP system, and there is a much less local representation with PR too. I can’t see our system changing.

So, with all this talk about Labour having a lot of seats without many people actually voting for them the same would have happened in 2019 to the Conservatives if UKIP hadn’t made that agreement? And Labour gained a landslide victory despite having Reform contest every seat. I have to admit, though, that I don’t understand the system at all.

It's not only the French that make pacts. In 2019 GE UKIP made a pact with Boris and agreed not to stand in Conservative constituencies provided Boris pushed on with Brexit. Had Boris not agreed tivUKIPs demands we may well have seen UKIP split the vote and LD gains as we've seen this election.
UKIP/Reform operates an obvious pragmatic strategy, and it works. It's next move will be to get some form of PR. (I don't think they've said what form?) Whilst people argue that they had few policies, field unsavoury candidates etc, this is totally irrelevant as their power lies in their strategy and so far it's working.

www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/nov/11/brexit-party-will-not-contest-317-tory-seats-nigel-farage-says

No system is perfect. Look at the French system. There in their 2 stage election two groups, centre and left have made an agreement between themselves, that one o of them will stand down in every seat in an attempt to stop a Far Right government being elected.

Doesn't that disenfranchise all the voters of the party in each constituency that have stood down?

I am gradually and reluctantly becoming a supporter of the first past the post system. It reduces the number of coalition governments, where often a small extremist minority party can wag the governent dog - look at Israel, or constant bickering and arguing between parties can cause uncertain and inconsistent governance. No system is perfect, but I am beginning to thing that our rough and ready system actually works a lot better for the country than the alternatives.

I’m not sure it works to assume that the vote share parties have now would be the same under a PR system - people might well vote very differently, particularly in areas where there was a level of tactical voting.

That doesn’t change the fact that FPTP is not a good system, regardless of whether it delivers results one wants or does not.

MayBee70

Looking at my constituency and the two surrounding ones that both went to Labour imo Labour forensically targeted seat they knew they could win. I don’t recall people ever being so obsessed with the % of votes the winning party got before. All the years that the LibDens were calling for proportional representation and were ignored and now there’s a chance that a change to it will give us the most extreme right wing government in our history and many people are rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect.

I don't see how you come to that conclusion. Labour had 33.7% and Lib Dems had 12.2% which in my book adds up to 45.9% whereas the Tories had 23.7% and Reform 14.3% which totals 38% thus the majority of the population did not vote for the extreme right (or even just the right).

The Greens got 7.3% which combined with Labour and the Lib Dems means that the left and left of centre would have a total of 53.2% - a proper majority.

Reform still have a mountain to climb just to beat the Tories in the number of votes gained.

The first past the post system is very unfair. looking at the figures for the UK there have been 2 actual majorities since 1918. both were Conservative and they were 60.77% in 1931 and 53.3% in 1935.

The percentage changes slightly if the figures for GB are looked at - the Tories had a majority of 50.00% in 1959. The UK figure for that year was 49.4%.

Obviously, in every other year the combination of the votes attributed to the other parties was a majority. This means that a large proportion of the population is disenfranchised. I don't think this fair.

That was a useful graph that Chestnut posted, I just checked the UKIP vote percentage in the 2015 election, which was 12.6% of the total votes cast. Reform won 14.6% this time. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

The Rwanda deal has been declared dead.

https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/202407/medium-287328-election-votes-and-seats-07-05-15.jpg https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/202407/medium-236400-election-votes-per-mp-07-05-15.jpg

From the 2015 General Election this illustrates so clearly why FPTP leaves the smaller parties struggling. Here you can see:
UKIP - 3.8 million voters and just 1 seat.
SNP - 1.4 million voters and 56 seats.
I don't think that could ever be more extreme.

Even Anne Widdecombe is against PR! Thinks our system of FPTP is better.

MayBee hear, hear👏👏👏

Looking at my constituency and the two surrounding ones that both went to Labour imo Labour forensically targeted seat they knew they could win. I don’t recall people ever being so obsessed with the % of votes the winning party got before. All the years that the LibDens were calling for proportional representation and were ignored and now there’s a chance that a change to it will give us the most extreme right wing government in our history and many people are rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect.

AMS is more complicated to count.

www.electoral-reform.org.uk/voting-systems/types-of-voting-system/additional-member-system/

AMS? Do you mean a proportion of seats appointed through PR? I have to say that I’m not personally in favour of PR, for a number of reasons - but there’s no doubt that where results are marginal, as they usually are in UK-wide elections, it would change the nature of politics completely. As it happens, in Wales so far, as it’s predominantly Labour, with PR accounting for 8 Tory and 8 Plaid seats out of the 20 PR seats, it’s given Plaid a voice on coalition governments, but hasn’t benefitted the Tories who are the second biggest party with the 8 regional 8 constituency seats out of 60.

Operate!