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UK politics general discussion

Labour should announce converting the Lords to PR. Is a no brainier in terms of an election campaign hook.
 
BigT said:
It won’t change, the only MP’s that would vote for it work for minority parties.
Labour and the Tories would never vote for any form of PR as it would reduce their seats in parliament and neither would be likely to be able to govern on their own ever again.
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Although if, for example, Labour form a minority government at the next election then PR might be a condition of any supply and confidence agreement with the Lib Dems.
 
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A PR “vote” might be a condition as it was for Clegg but they lost the vote and will again as Labour and the Tories will predominantly vote against.
 
BigT said:
It won’t change, the only MP’s that would vote for it work for minority parties.
Labour and the Tories would never vote for any form of PR as it would reduce their seats in parliament and neither would be likely to be able to govern on their own ever again.
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You think Labour would prefer having a majority government roughly 1/3 of the time or ensuring the Tories (in their present form, at least) were never able to govern again?
 
WillPS said:
You think Labour would prefer having a majority government roughly 1/3 of the time or ensuring the Tories (in their present form, at least) were never able to govern again?
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Yes I do, Labour wouldn’t be able to govern on their own ever either under a PR system, why would they wish to share power?
Don’t be so quick on thinking the Tories wouldn’t be able to govern either, under PR right wing parties like UKIP also come into play, I know everyone has forgotten about them but the people who voted for them haven’t gone away, I could see a big resurgence of a UKIP style party under PR.
Like it or not the majority of England at least is right wing.
 
Yup, Thatchers "greed is good" mantra suited the working working classes, Blair didn't recover it's traditional ground through remaining on the centre, and the Labour party has suffered ever since.
Would love to see PR, but it just won't happen.
UKIP (do they still exist?) would have no chance under constituency PR anyway, only tories would shift their vote.
 
rob666 said:
Yup, Thatchers "greed is good" mantra suited the working working classes, Blair didn't recover it's traditional ground through remaining on the centre, and the Labour party has suffered ever since.
Would love to see PR, but it just won't happen.
UKIP (do they still exist?) would have no chance under constituency PR anyway, only tories would shift their vote.
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It was red wall UKIP voters that gave Johnson his huge win at the last election, they were normally Labour voters.
It’s a silly discussion because PR won’t happen but say it did there would quite quickly become a centre right wing party that would sweep up the protest vote from labour and Tory.
 
I'm not surprised. I was at work earlier wondering how her and her sidekick Kwarteng were possibly going to survive. It's suicide for her party and the country. Firstly not subjecting the energy companies to a windfall tax and borrowing hundreds of billions instead and then for their next trick introducing these idiotic tax cuts. It's not a good look.
 
If Truss gets ousted so soon after becoming PM, then I do wonder whether calling a general election would be a good idea rather than calling another Tory leadership contest.

We’ve had 4 Conservative PMs in 6 years, and the last mandate was given to the Conservatives in 2019… a lot has changed since then.

That’s if Liz Truss gets ousted, though… we don’t know how much traction the VONC crowd will gain within the Conservative Party. Admittedly, however, she has fairly limited support among Tory MPs compared to past leaders (only around 1/3 of Tory MPs publicly backed her, and it was actually Sunak who won the MPs’ vote), and she also had the lowest majority in the members’ vote of any Tory leader since Tory members first received the opportunity to vote in leadership contests in 1997, so she is starting in quite a precarious position compared to her predecessors if something does go wrong for her.

If she did get ousted in a VONC any time soon, she must surely be in contention for our shortest lived PM ever…
 
There are petitions calling for a GE. I am surprised so few have signed them given how universally unimpressed we all are. Might not do anything but it would certainly make some noise.
 
BigT said:
Why should there be a GE? It’s not like governments haven’t been unpopular before.
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It’s true that governments have been unpopular before, but I’d argue that it’s more about how the government’s goals have changed with the new leader. Truss’ policies are, in many ways, radically different to those of the Johnson manifesto that the public voted for in 2019 (or are seeming to be that way so far).

On economic policy, for instance, Johnson actually had quite a left wing agenda (as Tory leaders go, anyway). His manifesto in 2019 had quite a substantial amount of public spending promised within it, and “levelling up” was a core part of his agenda. Him and Rishi Sunak actually offered quite a bit of financial intervention from the state in response to COVID, and when combined with his pre-promised public spending and many building projects that followed COVID, this resulted in higher levels of taxation and an overall fairly centrist (possibly even left wing) stance on fiscal policy compared to the Tory leaders of old.

Liz Truss, on the other hand, has unveiled extremely radical economic policy that is possibly about as right wing as it goes. From what I’ve read, low taxes, a focus on economic growth and the whole principle of “trickle down economics” come straight out of the far right playbook, and she is not pursuing this policy by halves; last week’s mini budget from Kwasi Kwarteng unveiled the most significant package of tax cuts in 50 years, with the Chancellor teasing more to come in the coming months. Yes, even Margaret Thatcher, who was probably one of the most radical and consequential leaders of recent history and arguably a paragon of everything the far right stands for, did not cut taxes as much as Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng are now. Truss and Kwarteng are certainly pursuing a pretty right wing economic agenda, which could not be more different from many elements of Johnson and Sunak’s.

There are also other substantial differences in policy between Truss and Johnson (and even some of his recent Tory predecessors). Johnson introduced many anti-obesity laws including levies on things like junk food… which Truss is apparently preparing to scrap every single one of, even including the sugar tax which was introduced a good few years ago. Johnson was quite a vocal eco warrior and championed anything that helped the environment… while Truss has lifted the ban on fracking, scrapped the green energy levy on energy bills and may even be getting rid of the law that says that no petrol and diesel cars can be manufactured past 2030 (I think… don’t quote me on that). I could probably think of more with some research, but those are just some I could think of off the top of my head.

My point is; Truss is pretty radically different from Johnson in enough ways that I’d argue the current government and its agenda is a pretty different proposition to the one the public voted for in 2019.
 
Brown was also different to Blair that’s how it goes, you vote for a local MP in this country not a certain PM.
The tax cuts announced last week might have been the largest ever but they also came from the highest tax take by any government ever so you can’t compare them to previous tax cuts.
The tax intake is still far higher than under Thatcher.
I’m not saying I agree with them, it was a bit silly to axe the 45p tax rate the same way as it’s just party politics to bring it back, in the scheme of things it brings in very little, in fact when it was reduced from 50p the tax take actually went up but it looks bad as it appears a tax cut for the rich when in reality the rich can quite easily just avoid it anyway.
Personally I think Truss is out of her depth and I’d have rather of stayed with Johnson but we are where we are, sometimes the grass isn’t greener.
 
BigT said:
Brown was also different to Blair that’s how it goes, you vote for a local MP in this country not a certain PM.
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Although this seems to be a change from what was in the Conservative manifesto, the basis of their mandate, specifically regarding their levelling up agenda and their promise not to resume fracking.
 
Are they the first party to break a manifesto promise? I’m not sticking up for them I just think now is a silly time for a GE and if it was any other party in charge you wouldn’t get one either.
 
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