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General Election 2024

Depends if they were in politics to "serve the wonderful voters" or to get their faces in the trough.
It doesn't though, does it. If you can see yourself about to lose your job, do you "resign" or "leave" or "retire" or do you wait to be sacked, in this case by the electorate.
It's nothing to do with troughs, it's to do with intelligent career planning!
 
Please tell me J R-M isn't quitting.
I would not bet on that....are there actually any existing Tory MPs who have said they will stand? Only heard about the (very long) list of those that won't. I can't really blame them. Why spend 6 weeks knocking on doors when you know you're not going to win, when you can put your feet up somewhere nice and warm?
 
I'm afraid your second point is questionable too. As far as I can see, several million more people voted Conservative than voted Labour. Regardless of the obvious (to me) drawbacks of our first past the post system, a PR system would still have produced more Tory MPs than Labour MPs. I share your obvious disappointment at the way in which our present system skewed subsequent parliamentary power , but the fact is that more people voted Conservative than voted Labour. Do you not accept that, whatever voting system we, er, enjoy, we would have a Tory majority in parliament because more of the voting population wanted this?

I don’t think you understand how PR works. In the UK there are (I’m pretty sure) always more progressive/central votes cast than right-wing votes, as such even if the Conservatives ended up as largest party they would still have less seats than Labour, LD, SNP, PC, Green. As such a coalition could be formed. PR tends to balance out somewhere around the centre, it does not tend to return the batshit extremism and conspiracy theory we have witnessed over the past 14 years. There are exceptions (e.g. Israel, though that is arguably a religious apartheid state rather than a democracy), but it has to be better than the rigged system we have now.
 
I don’t think you understand how PR works. In the UK there are (I’m pretty sure) always more progressive/central votes cast than right-wing votes, as such even if the Conservatives ended up as largest party they would still have less seats than Labour, LD, SNP, PC, Green. As such a coalition could be formed. PR tends to balance out somewhere around the centre, it does not tend to return the batshit extremism and conspiracy theory we have witnessed over the past 14 years. There are exceptions (e.g. Israel, though that is arguably a religious apartheid state rather than a democracy), but it has to be better than the rugged system we have now.
I presume you mean rigged rather than rugged. Damned autocucumber...

Colour me pro-PR. All I'm saying is that under either the current exaggerating system or under one of the forms of PR, there would be more Tory MPs than Labour ones.

That's not the Conservatives' fault! Labour have conspicuously NOT proposed a change to PR when in power.
 
That's not the Conservatives' fault! Labour have conspicuously NOT proposed a change to PR when in power.

This being why I have never been a Labour voter. I grew up in a very safe Tory middle class area and figured out before even being old enough to vote it was a total waste of my time/insult to intelligence as a non-Tory vote would never result in political representation. I’ve only voted for PR-supporting parties (other than a couple of Labour votes decades ago I inevitably regretted later).

To my mind this is the most important issue in UK politics. Without a functioning representative and accountable democracy we stand no chance in hell of removing minority elite establishment rule. The whole system needs wiping and reformatting. Only then can we move forward.

PS I type everything on an iPad and seem less accurate at the right of the “keyboard”. Many errors around the u, i, o area. I guess that side is less well supported as I’m holding it with my left hand.
 
Please tell me J R-M isn't quitting.
He's not.

The seat has been embiggened in Boundary Change for the coming bunfight to involve a ... considerably-more diverse electorate; and so, J R-M is going to be contested by WECA Mayor incumbent, Dan Norris. A man held generally, quite -widely (i.e. non-partisan) in Good Regard as a prospect - simply for his 30+yrs long, local involvement & level of engagement.

#local_Portillo_Moment, to watch.
 
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It's beginning to smell like a historic, Blair-level wipeout could be on the cards.

"Robert Peston@Peston
Senior Tories expect a significant number of further MP resignations over the weekend, in the wake of Gove’s and Leadsom’s decisions not to fight the election. Quite a number who have been re-approved as candidates have been in two minds, and thought they had till the autumn to decide. The party has more than 150 seats and rising with no candidate. That is a lot of candidates for CCHQ to find before 7 June and a lot of wasted campaigning days. It does rather indicate Sunak called the election before his party was ready"
 
I saw a poll of polls yesterday that suggested one realistic outcome was tories with <100 seats and Labour with >400 seats.
 
It's beginning to smell like a historic, Blair-level wipeout could be on the cards.

"Robert Peston@Peston
Senior Tories expect a significant number of further MP resignations over the weekend, in the wake of Gove’s and Leadsom’s decisions not to fight the election. Quite a number who have been re-approved as candidates have been in two minds, and thought they had till the autumn to decide. The party has more than 150 seats and rising with no candidate. That is a lot of candidates for CCHQ to find before 7 June and a lot of wasted campaigning days. It does rather indicate Sunak called the election before his party was ready"
The shits deserting the sinking rat?

Some tories are allegedly trying to find a way to un-call the GE

 
Yes, but how many MPs can you name who quit Parliament when they got to state pension age?

You’re trying to spin this as people making a principled decision, whereas the reality is they are just trying to avoid public humiliation. That’s entirely understandable, if disappointing. Public humiliation is the very least many of them deserve.

Well, many do this in the corporate world too. That’s life, events happen, sometimes against you. Are you suggesting incumbent MP’s (of all parties) be forced to stand regardless of age or personal circumstances? Or only when they face almost certain defeat to make haters happy? Look, I’m not at all keen on the current tory party, and very accepting of the next likely PM even if I don’t vote for him, but people are free to make their own personal decisions, be that voters or those standing for office.
 
It's beginning to smell like a historic, Blair-level wipeout could be on the cards.

"Robert Peston@Peston
Senior Tories expect a significant number of further MP resignations over the weekend, in the wake of Gove’s and Leadsom’s decisions not to fight the election. Quite a number who have been re-approved as candidates have been in two minds, and thought they had till the autumn to decide. The party has more than 150 seats and rising with no candidate. That is a lot of candidates for CCHQ to find before 7 June and a lot of wasted campaigning days. It does rather indicate Sunak called the election before his party was ready"
The man who doesn't check the weather forecast before going out to make his speech also doesn't check that his party is ready for an election before he calls one. As they say, you couldn't make it up.
 
It's beginning to smell like a historic, Blair-level wipeout could be on the cards.

"Robert Peston@Peston
Senior Tories expect a significant number of further MP resignations over the weekend, in the wake of Gove’s and Leadsom’s decisions not to fight the election. Quite a number who have been re-approved as candidates have been in two minds, and thought they had till the autumn to decide. The party has more than 150 seats and rising with no candidate. That is a lot of candidates for CCHQ to find before 7 June and a lot of wasted campaigning days. It does rather indicate Sunak called the election before his party was ready"

A chain-reaction of idiocy. With most of their recognisable MPs running away they become ever smaller, weaker and even more likely to be wiped-out. A recursive loop of fail. And this is before any of the absolute shit at the bottom of the barrel they’ll be forced to field get publicly exposed. 150+ vacancies to fill in a week or two? Not a hope in hell. They’ll be fielding UKIP rejects, sex offenders, Twitter trolls etc. Look at the state of Susan Hall, the London Mayoral candidate; a racist Trump cheerleading batshit crazy conspiracy theorist and climate science denier. I bet they’ll end up digging well below even that low bar! This is pure comedy gold. They are just so screwed!
 
As I understand it, the tories have never had a majority of votes cast, and would not have enjoyed a majority if FPTP was the system.
But it's 1.30 and I've just come in so not going to check this just now, so if I'm wrong feel free to set me straight.
 


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