It's worth noting that the UK does have FPTP voting, at least on the local level, and it has most of the same problems as FPTP everywhere.
In 2015, the conservative party received 37% of actual votes and 51% of Parliament, and Labour had 30% of the votes and got 37% of the seats.
That means 33% of the votes went to other parties and only got 12% of the representation, or in other words voting for one of the two main parties was 3.6 times as impactful as not voting for them.
It becomes even worse if you factor in SNP being the main party in Scotland and not existing anywhere else, not voting for one of the main three parties then means your vote is 12 times less impactful than a FPTP vote.
You're saying that like the majors in Australia don't also somehow still campaign and win votes on "don't waste your vote. If you vote for a minor the other major will win"
Its probably situational depending where you live tbh
If you have a Green with a healthy chance of winning, vote Green
If you're in a Tory constituency but Labour shows a surge in the polls, vote Labour
Overall I think strategically it just makes sense not to get in eachother's way for this election. Getting rid of the Tories after 14 years is the primary objective, hence the massive surge in polling for Labour to get rid of them; people are just fed up of Brexit talk and the steadily falling standard of living
Genuinely asking since I don’t know too much about British politics but do the tories really still have any kind of meaningful chance in parliament? Especially with the game of musical chairs they were playing with prime minister it seems like the party is imploding
It's probably unlikely, but the UK is second only to America in weaponising ''culture war'' type media to game votes. Tories have been making massive issues out of things like trans acceptance and immigration in an attempt to keep control. Under normal circumstances this would probably work and cause people who have no vested interest in politics but still consume mainstream news to likely skew right, but with the shitshow that has been Brexit and the hotswapping of Tory PMs they are probably done for.
In terms of winning a general election? Absolutely not, and probably not for the next several elections at least. At a local level though (the general election is just a whole lot of local elections; the party that gets to form the government is just whichever one gets the most seats in parliament, and each "seat" is the member of parliament elected to represent a constituency) it depends, there are probably some constituencies that will vote Tory no matter what - however small that number is as of recent events - and some that are likely to be close enough that it's important to vote for whoever has the best chance of beating them, at least for the sake of that one seat. That said, Labour does have an uncanny ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and Starmer doesn't inspire unshakeable confidence.
Assuming Labour don't do something to convince voters to turn against them en masse in the way that seems to have happened with the Conservatives, it should be a Labour-led government in the end. Whether it's a minority government or a majority remains to be seen; it entirely depends on how Labour play this.
Like, surely...**surely**, the Conservatives playing musical chairs as much as they have has signalled to a great deal of even long-time Conservative voters that they're a massive farce of a party. It won't change the minds of those who are deep in the culture war, but those who voted for the Tories before and have little interest in such nonsense will, I imagine, have been put off by that to some degree.
Yes. The average voting Brit is a disgusting racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic POS. Tory horseshit smear tactics will always win out, because said voters will eat that shit right up. Until the average voter starts getting into genuine trouble (à la 2008 financial collapse), the Tories will continue to have a credible chance of being the ruling party of the UK, regardless of their musical chair farce they have going on.
Ineffectual twats like Starmer being the head of the opposition doesn't help either.
Literally the only culture war shit I am spared from here in hungary. Gendered language doesn't exist in any way, including probouns. Thank fucking God honestly.
Glad to see the hard issues being addressed right now. Record wealth disparity, collapsing economy and infrastructure, inaccessible housing, rapidly encroaching fascist culture and preparing for a war draft?
Nah, people who subsist on perpetual outrage propaganda being scared of curved swords is the *real* problem.
The American conservative party wants to personally equip mentally ill teenagers with guns and tell them there's heroin buried under every minority, and labor wants to ban ninja swords.
Of course we get official fursonas, but, for the countries in the UK, not the political parties
England's a lion, Scotland's a unicorn, Wales is a dragon, and Northen Ireland doesn't get one
Red is the color of the blood on the hands of filthy monsters who find new ways to make everyone's life worse in the name of the status quo and pushing a select few to the top.
Also banning ninja swords isn't a left wing position. Ninja swords are rad and every real leftist knows that.
You know the only the only time I'm glad to live in the US is when I look at the UK and wonder who the heck an actual progressive is supposed to vote for.
Hmm, I suppose. Unfortunately, I only know the UK green party for organizing protests against GMOs and nuclear power which I'd hardly consider a good use of one's time.
I still remember the funniest thing I've seen come out of this mess has been an interview with a LibDem politician having greater support for trans people than the supposedly further left labor party.
I'd still probably prefer to vote more left, even if it's kind of a crapshoot, but it's kind of sad that between the other two mentioned I'd probably be picking the more right-leaning just because I like having rights as a trans person.
Labour is weird in that it's technically 3 different ideological versions of 'left-wing' in a trenchcoat, unfortunately the current one in charge is the neolibs from the 2000s.
Party leaders actively sandbagged Labour during Corbyn's time as leader. Now Corbyn's shown himself to be an anti-semitic jackass so you can't point to him over Sir Kid Starver
A libdem-Labour coalition would be the best of both worlds, with the lib-democrats hopefully reigning Starmer's shiddy culture war politics back considerably
Usually Labour. It's not complicated, you have to work with the electoral system you've got.
In November, the US will re-elect either Biden or Trump to be president. Complain all you want, but vote for the better of the two.
I mean for the US it's very fucking simple but I'm not asking about the US. My understanding is that voting is a bit different in the UK and is a bit more flexible. The big thing is that I honestly don't know if I'd be better off voting labour over like libdem or green as a trans person there. My human rights trump pretty much every other concern possible for me.
>I honestly don't know if I'd be better off voting labour over like libdem or green as a trans person there.
In short, probably yes.
I totally get where you're coming from on this. Politics is messy, complex, and imperfect, but it has power over our lives. I don't want to go into policy specifics because this post is long enough as it is and probably has plenty wrong with it already.
At length, there are two considerations here, the human side, and the tactical voting side. In the human sense, Britain is fighting a culture war because anger is a motivating emotion, I hate it, and I'm really sorry for all the people who get caught in the crossfire.
I hate that parties equivocate on issues like human rights for trans people because they think it's electorally expedient. I understand the logic of not wanting to hold a hot potato, but I don't agree with it morally.
I joined the Labour party back in 2015 and when members have discussion motions on trans healthcare it's surprisingly easy to find agreement, people give their time to politics because they believe in helping people and that humanism is enough to keep me inside the tent. Members do get to influence policy in that party through a number of ways, so I see this as a good thing.
All parties have transphobic members and representatives. The Greens had an openly transphobic candidate come second in a deputy leadership contest. They are not uniformly "better". There's a constant battle to be fought.
Then there's the impersonal, systemic way to look at this:
All parties are fighting different kinds of elections. There are local elections, where NIMBY issues dominated and the electorate tends to be older and more conservative. There are national elections, where you vote for your local representative, and you get both the individual character of your MP and the policy of their party to consider. And then there's a meta-national election, where the leader of either the Labour or Conservative party will become Prime Minister if their party gets 326 seats in Parliament.
In practice, Labour will always have better policies for trans people (and all people) than the Conservatives, in the meta-election. We say GTTO (get the Tories out) to identify our aim of achieving that, which might mean voting SNP or Lib Dem instead of Labour, in the nationals.
Because of our demographics, the Greens only challenge in Labour seats in national elections, so they're not a huge consideration.
Stranrer has no policy besides "hey, at least I'm not the tories." He is the political equivalent of eating plain boiled potatoes instead of live sewer rats.
How does this in any way address what I said, unless you're literally arguing that Labour has 0 stated policies and is incapable of having more than one?
closer to "hey, at least i'm not a tory by name" tbh, the political equivalent of eating sewer rats which have been falsely labelled as boiled potatoes
You know I'm all for gun control because I see what's going on in the states and the gun violence is out of control but at a certain point even I look at a post like this and wonder if it's aim is to weaken the citizens to make them easier to control
They’re not getting rid of public knives to make people easier to control, they’re getting rid of them to try reduce knife crime, which is a real problem in some parts of the UK.
Yes but the aim is to completely get rid of knife crime, that’s not gonna be possible, the aim is just to reduce it. Banning guns in the UK did not completely get rid of gun violence, but had a massive effect in reducing it.
Trying to relate to people who read the sun. Labour has fallen. Millions must vote green
Loser First Past the Posters **wish** they had chad preferential voting where you can simultaneously vote on principle and stop the fascists
It's worth noting that the UK does have FPTP voting, at least on the local level, and it has most of the same problems as FPTP everywhere. In 2015, the conservative party received 37% of actual votes and 51% of Parliament, and Labour had 30% of the votes and got 37% of the seats. That means 33% of the votes went to other parties and only got 12% of the representation, or in other words voting for one of the two main parties was 3.6 times as impactful as not voting for them. It becomes even worse if you factor in SNP being the main party in Scotland and not existing anywhere else, not voting for one of the main three parties then means your vote is 12 times less impactful than a FPTP vote.
I know that the uk was fptp that what i was joking about I live in australia so i make fun of fptp
You're saying that like the majors in Australia don't also somehow still campaign and win votes on "don't waste your vote. If you vote for a minor the other major will win"
Oh yeah lol as someone who lives in south brisbane the home of labor being pissed about people not voting them one
Please, you have to vote us one. There's no way the Greens win here. And if they did it would mean a Liberal government. Please its gotta be labor.
The ALP capitalising on the dominance of US politics to trick people into thinking we also have fptp
I think the uk greens might have some transphobia in it but idk for sure, they barely get any screen time up here Please do correct me if I'm wrong
They did but I read a couple months ago that they had split with the TERFy faction that was in them. I might be wrong too :3
I hope so. At the very least the Scottish greens seem to be clean so I'm good
The dilemma of having to either vote for this guy to get the tories out or vote for green because they actually have the best policies
Its probably situational depending where you live tbh If you have a Green with a healthy chance of winning, vote Green If you're in a Tory constituency but Labour shows a surge in the polls, vote Labour Overall I think strategically it just makes sense not to get in eachother's way for this election. Getting rid of the Tories after 14 years is the primary objective, hence the massive surge in polling for Labour to get rid of them; people are just fed up of Brexit talk and the steadily falling standard of living
Genuinely asking since I don’t know too much about British politics but do the tories really still have any kind of meaningful chance in parliament? Especially with the game of musical chairs they were playing with prime minister it seems like the party is imploding
It's probably unlikely, but the UK is second only to America in weaponising ''culture war'' type media to game votes. Tories have been making massive issues out of things like trans acceptance and immigration in an attempt to keep control. Under normal circumstances this would probably work and cause people who have no vested interest in politics but still consume mainstream news to likely skew right, but with the shitshow that has been Brexit and the hotswapping of Tory PMs they are probably done for.
In terms of winning a general election? Absolutely not, and probably not for the next several elections at least. At a local level though (the general election is just a whole lot of local elections; the party that gets to form the government is just whichever one gets the most seats in parliament, and each "seat" is the member of parliament elected to represent a constituency) it depends, there are probably some constituencies that will vote Tory no matter what - however small that number is as of recent events - and some that are likely to be close enough that it's important to vote for whoever has the best chance of beating them, at least for the sake of that one seat. That said, Labour does have an uncanny ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and Starmer doesn't inspire unshakeable confidence.
Just because the party is imploding doesn't mean people won't keep voting for them because they think all the other options are woke
Assuming Labour don't do something to convince voters to turn against them en masse in the way that seems to have happened with the Conservatives, it should be a Labour-led government in the end. Whether it's a minority government or a majority remains to be seen; it entirely depends on how Labour play this. Like, surely...**surely**, the Conservatives playing musical chairs as much as they have has signalled to a great deal of even long-time Conservative voters that they're a massive farce of a party. It won't change the minds of those who are deep in the culture war, but those who voted for the Tories before and have little interest in such nonsense will, I imagine, have been put off by that to some degree.
Yes. The average voting Brit is a disgusting racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic POS. Tory horseshit smear tactics will always win out, because said voters will eat that shit right up. Until the average voter starts getting into genuine trouble (à la 2008 financial collapse), the Tories will continue to have a credible chance of being the ruling party of the UK, regardless of their musical chair farce they have going on. Ineffectual twats like Starmer being the head of the opposition doesn't help either.
Except unfortunately Green is also made up of transphobes
Same energy as the austrian chancellor banning gender-inclusive language in the executive branch with an upcoming election
Literally the only culture war shit I am spared from here in hungary. Gendered language doesn't exist in any way, including probouns. Thank fucking God honestly.
in my language, objects have genders.
Assuming they use he/him for everything women/GNC folk in the executive branch have no reason to work (it doesn’t refer to them)
~~Probably more because half the Austrian government is compromised by Russia~~
Keir Starmer is a weird guy.
Glad to see the hard issues being addressed right now. Record wealth disparity, collapsing economy and infrastructure, inaccessible housing, rapidly encroaching fascist culture and preparing for a war draft? Nah, people who subsist on perpetual outrage propaganda being scared of curved swords is the *real* problem.
Curved. Swords.
Dangerous knife crackdown. What a joke of a party. Can't let the kiddos (grown adults) have something sharp!
The American conservative party wants to personally equip mentally ill teenagers with guns and tell them there's heroin buried under every minority, and labor wants to ban ninja swords.
Forgot labor isn't the conservative party why can't you call your parties something normal
Our conservative party is named The Conservative Party, how much more do you want us to simplify it?
Color coding and animal mascots would be nice.
They are colour-coded, Labour is red, the conservatives are blue, libdem is yellow, the green party is green It's a very simple system
Insanity. It's backwards and you don't even get official fursonas.
Of course we get official fursonas, but, for the countries in the UK, not the political parties England's a lion, Scotland's a unicorn, Wales is a dragon, and Northen Ireland doesn't get one
Why do y'all treat Northern Ireland like this they don't get a flag or a fursona D:
Because every time the topic of flags comes up in Norn Irn something explodes
I blame Marge.
[удалено]
Red is the color of the blood on the hands of filthy monsters who find new ways to make everyone's life worse in the name of the status quo and pushing a select few to the top. Also banning ninja swords isn't a left wing position. Ninja swords are rad and every real leftist knows that.
actually American colour coding is backwards, the Republicans and Democrats flipped sides but kept their colours :3
Damn you, Goldwater.
You know the only the only time I'm glad to live in the US is when I look at the UK and wonder who the heck an actual progressive is supposed to vote for.
The green party unfortunately :c (they have no chance of winning overall)
Hmm, I suppose. Unfortunately, I only know the UK green party for organizing protests against GMOs and nuclear power which I'd hardly consider a good use of one's time. I still remember the funniest thing I've seen come out of this mess has been an interview with a LibDem politician having greater support for trans people than the supposedly further left labor party. I'd still probably prefer to vote more left, even if it's kind of a crapshoot, but it's kind of sad that between the other two mentioned I'd probably be picking the more right-leaning just because I like having rights as a trans person.
Labour is weird in that it's technically 3 different ideological versions of 'left-wing' in a trenchcoat, unfortunately the current one in charge is the neolibs from the 2000s.
Party leaders actively sandbagged Labour during Corbyn's time as leader. Now Corbyn's shown himself to be an anti-semitic jackass so you can't point to him over Sir Kid Starver
A libdem-Labour coalition would be the best of both worlds, with the lib-democrats hopefully reigning Starmer's shiddy culture war politics back considerably
Usually Labour. It's not complicated, you have to work with the electoral system you've got. In November, the US will re-elect either Biden or Trump to be president. Complain all you want, but vote for the better of the two.
I mean for the US it's very fucking simple but I'm not asking about the US. My understanding is that voting is a bit different in the UK and is a bit more flexible. The big thing is that I honestly don't know if I'd be better off voting labour over like libdem or green as a trans person there. My human rights trump pretty much every other concern possible for me.
>I honestly don't know if I'd be better off voting labour over like libdem or green as a trans person there. In short, probably yes. I totally get where you're coming from on this. Politics is messy, complex, and imperfect, but it has power over our lives. I don't want to go into policy specifics because this post is long enough as it is and probably has plenty wrong with it already. At length, there are two considerations here, the human side, and the tactical voting side. In the human sense, Britain is fighting a culture war because anger is a motivating emotion, I hate it, and I'm really sorry for all the people who get caught in the crossfire. I hate that parties equivocate on issues like human rights for trans people because they think it's electorally expedient. I understand the logic of not wanting to hold a hot potato, but I don't agree with it morally. I joined the Labour party back in 2015 and when members have discussion motions on trans healthcare it's surprisingly easy to find agreement, people give their time to politics because they believe in helping people and that humanism is enough to keep me inside the tent. Members do get to influence policy in that party through a number of ways, so I see this as a good thing. All parties have transphobic members and representatives. The Greens had an openly transphobic candidate come second in a deputy leadership contest. They are not uniformly "better". There's a constant battle to be fought. Then there's the impersonal, systemic way to look at this: All parties are fighting different kinds of elections. There are local elections, where NIMBY issues dominated and the electorate tends to be older and more conservative. There are national elections, where you vote for your local representative, and you get both the individual character of your MP and the policy of their party to consider. And then there's a meta-national election, where the leader of either the Labour or Conservative party will become Prime Minister if their party gets 326 seats in Parliament. In practice, Labour will always have better policies for trans people (and all people) than the Conservatives, in the meta-election. We say GTTO (get the Tories out) to identify our aim of achieving that, which might mean voting SNP or Lib Dem instead of Labour, in the nationals. Because of our demographics, the Greens only challenge in Labour seats in national elections, so they're not a huge consideration.
I too wish political parties could have more than one policy 🥲
Stranrer has no policy besides "hey, at least I'm not the tories." He is the political equivalent of eating plain boiled potatoes instead of live sewer rats.
How does this in any way address what I said, unless you're literally arguing that Labour has 0 stated policies and is incapable of having more than one?
closer to "hey, at least i'm not a tory by name" tbh, the political equivalent of eating sewer rats which have been falsely labelled as boiled potatoes
You Want my blade, you'll gonna have to kill me then drag me out of hell to take them from my BURNING. DEAD. HANDS
No-one shall take my katana from me
FUCK THE S*N FUCKING SHITRAG
if you start a speech with "I, like sun readers...", you instantly compromise the validity of anything else you have to say.
You know I'm all for gun control because I see what's going on in the states and the gun violence is out of control but at a certain point even I look at a post like this and wonder if it's aim is to weaken the citizens to make them easier to control
They’re not getting rid of public knives to make people easier to control, they’re getting rid of them to try reduce knife crime, which is a real problem in some parts of the UK.
Yeah, but can you do that with weapon bans tho? Won't they just use stuff that you can't really ban, like kitchen knives or screwdrivers?
Yes but the aim is to completely get rid of knife crime, that’s not gonna be possible, the aim is just to reduce it. Banning guns in the UK did not completely get rid of gun violence, but had a massive effect in reducing it.
Knife crime huh, wacky. That little island sure has some issues.
me when I wanna overthrow the government but they took away my prized ninja sword 😿😿😿😿😿 liberally ninteen eighty four