British Politics
Been on holiday for a few weeks, surprised to find no general discussion of British politics so though I'd kick one off.
Zarah Sultana has said she will call off legal action after a public row with Jeremy Corbyn over the fledgling party they were to co-lead.
The Coventry South MP acknowledged people felt “demoralised” after the quarrel over her push for members to sign up to Your Party, the political outfit she established with the former Labour leader.
Sultana, who had claimed she faced a “sexist boys’ club”, said she was “determined to reconcile” and was in talks with Corbyn.
“For the sake of the party, and as an act of good faith, I will not be pursuing legal proceedings despite the baseless and unsubstantiated allegations against me,” she wrote in a statement posted on X on Sunday.
“I know many people are feeling demoralised – I share that feeling. We find ourselves in a regrettable situation, but my motivation has always been to ensure the collective strength of our movement, put members first and build the genuinely democratic conference and socialist party we so urgently need.
“I am determined to reconcile and move forward. I am engaged in ongoing discussions with Jeremy, for whom, like all socialists of my generation, I have nothing but respect.”
So the leader of the party currently leading in polls... agrees with me that foreign born nationals don't deserve to be treated like if they were actual citizens in full and would be excluded from all welfare.
Incredibly good for the UK it that happens, but you guys are so far from any election that anything can happen in between
still insane that a party polling around 30% would have a chance, if the vote was tomorrow, to have an actual majority in parliament.
Your country desperately needs changes in electoral law, first past the post can work in a 2 party system but is absolutely atrocious in a multi party system
Yes, even the current government has a majority it shouldn't have from its 33% share of the vote. This system was designed for confrontational HU style politics between two large parties and is clearly broken in the new era of social media led politics.
I’m glad Liew has had his remit expanded: he’s too good a writer to be restricted to football.
still insane that a party polling around 30% would have a chance, if the vote was tomorrow, to have an actual majority in parliament.
Your country desperately needs changes in electoral law, first past the post can work in a 2 party system but is absolutely atrocious in a multi party system
No, the whole point of FPTP is to set a very high bar of national support before a party can achieve power, and also to make parliamentarians individually responsible to their local constituents. Whereas the whole point of PR is to dissolve personal accountability (thus ensuring 'jobs for life'), create a permanent hung parliament and inevitably put extremists in a position to hold the balance of power -- so that the nation becomes institutionally insane and a permanent hostage to its most extreme elements, as Israel has.
https://x.com/BGatesIsaPyscho/status/197...
so in the UK if you are "quite openly Jew" in the vicinity of a large group of violent antisemites doing a pro palestine march, who would feel antagonized by visible jewishness, you can be arrested ?
No, the whole point of FPTP is to set a very high bar of national support before a party can achieve power, and also to make parliamentarians individually responsible to their local constituents. Whereas the whole point of PR is to dissolve personal accountability (thus ensuring 'jobs for life'), create a permanent hung parliament and inevitably put extremists in a position to
Proportional representation with preferences removes the "job guarantee" of party apparatchik and makes the elected person personally accountable to those who literally wrote in his name, if that's something you are concerned about.
Parliament doesn't need to be perma-hung nor extremists to hold the balance of power. If anything it's centrists who tend to be a little too overpowered compared to their weight among the population in proportional systems.
2 of the most politically reasonable, and decently governed countries in the world have full proportional representation : the netherlands and switzerland.
Israel has the same system Germany has (proportional representation with qualifying threshold), the qualifying threshold is usually considered the way to keep fringe extremists out of power. The netherlands has no threshold.
Anyway the problem is that the system has to fit the country. And as a cultural conservative for institutions i understand the unease at the idea of changing a system that accompanied your countr y through the centuries till now.
Problem is the conditions that made your system fairly reasonable for your country aren't there anymore. Currently your country is split in 5 basically. 2 parties on the right, 2 on the left, one on the center (very broadly speaking comparing to other european parties).
Some regional parties exist and are added to that as well, + eventual newcomer parties on the extreme left or right.
In such conditions FPTP is particularly bad. There is a decent chance of a party representing only 30% of people getting a majority. That's really bad. And some parties might represent 10, 12, 16% of the people while having only a few seats in parliament as well.
That politically representation in that case becomes so strictly linked to geographical concentration of voters is pretty bad as well. As it is the option to have shenanigans by which parties decide not to run in specific areas with "contracts" to get the same treatment reversed elsewhere. That makes you, the voter, hostage of the party contract, you can end up literally voting for a party you do not prefer and electing a representative that isn't yours (only vaguely resembling your preferences) .
Yes that's true even if only 2 parties are running (and you end up voting for the lesser evil option), but at least it's the option you clearly prefer over the alternative.
Anyway right now we are here with a party which got 1 / 3 of the votes controlling parliament completly and ****ing up everything anyway. Maybe a hung parliament would be less damaging to the country than this
Just discovered that ex-BBC Newsnight journo Lewis Goodall is married to one of the luminaries of the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change.
They really are all in on it.
mind the gap (in wages)
Just discovered that ex-BBC Newsnight journo Lewis Goodall is married to one of the luminaries of the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change.
They really are all in on it.
I looked her up and she is a policy advisor on climate and energy and a net zero advocate. What are "they" in on exactly? Reduction of dependence on fossil fuels? As a leftist don't you support that?
They are in on spreading as much meaningless Blairite neo-liberalism to as much of the world as they can, all while enriching themselves.
Last time I looked Tony Blair, ex long-standing public servant, was worth in excess of £50M. I wonder how that happened.
So the whole idea of national ID e-cards becomes clear - far from preventing undocumented immigrants from working (Starmer's claim) because all documented immigrants already have e-Visas, it's the latest news from the Bank that it intends to release a digital Pound held on smart phones alongside the ID e-cards, giving them access to everyone's transactions.
Depressing how Andy Burnham is trying to position himself to take over labour. No one voted for him. They voted for Keir Starmer and we are entering a treacherous period. Just like Gordon Brown, Liz Truss or Rishi the odds would be even more tilted for the next election.
I really fear for the UK should reform takeover. The man who gave us brexshit. Echo’s of hitlers Germany which is already in full effect in the US. That swan eating immigrants bollox he’s been bollocking on about recently really is for the dumbos.
No-one is doing more to help reform than starmer. Another relaunch, another lurch to the nasty right, and yet more appeasing reform in a way that only helps reform.
I suppose as someone who cares what people voted for so much, you're delighted that the manifesto commitment to id cards is now being enacted.
I’ve never liked the ID scheme when Blair first proposed it. However I think once we’ve voted in Starmer and we have the likes of Farage at our gates it’s best to stick with Starmer. He’s been panicking for awhile in the way he responds to Reform. Especially with the island of strangers speech which really lost the faith for me. Just looking at this from a larger perspective it’s suicide to change leader.
Starmer is at least thinking and imo acting in the UKs best interest - Burnham though successful regionally has no experience operating at the national or international level, which on most metrics Starmer is doing ok. Whether that’s true or not - yeah it’s strategically important for Starmer to stay in position imo. The far right wing press is gagging for Starmer to get fired for good reason.
At best you buy a few years and that may well happen. But the far right and extremists aren't going anywhere unless we begin to tackle the systemic problems and starmer isn't going to do that.
Farage is awful, far worse are rising fast. starmer becoming more and more farage like is only aiding them all even if we get to pretend we won something for a few more years.
Seems cat impersonator George Galloway was detained after returning from Moscow by the anti Terrorist police
and a massive funder of blairs institute. Coincidence that blair is so pro id cards (and nhs privatisation) and guess what policy starmer mysteriously adopted.
and a massive funder of blairs institute. Coincidence that blair is so pro id cards (and nhs privatisation) and guess what policy starmer mysteriously adopted.
I thought you were pro-EU. The whole of the EU (plus Switzerland, which is EEA) has national ID-card systems. Denmark and Ireland kind of pretend not to, but actually they do. Surely you should be all in favour of national ID cards.
The UK's lack of a national ID card system is probably a major reason why certain people, who are the clients of organised crime (it's organised crime that supplies the 'small boats' and sells places on those boats at stupendous cost), are so remarkably keen to escape from France, which is hardly a war zone or a totalitarian state, and get to England.
And of course Tony Blair argued, unsuccessfully, for a national ID card when he was prime minister, so it doesn't have anything to do with any donor to his institute. It's a classic Tony Blair technocratic solution. Sometimes he's wrong about these things, but not always.
If you think this is to do with anything other than bringing the sinister Palantir closer to everyone's personal data by forcing people to have the app or lose access to health services, pensions etc, I really don't know what to say.
Don't be surprised to see your private healthcare insurance (which you'll be forced to have after the NHS has been torn apart) rise as a result, or if you start getting phone calls from companies trying to sell you goods or services related to things you thought were private.
Don't install the app? You must be a terrorist or "illegal immigrant", mate. Please accompany us to the police station to answer some questions.
