The Left Party

Maybe they hope to give people like me who are left of centre someone to vote for. As there isn’t a genuine mainstream option at the moment.

I don’t think there will be much vote splitting. I think it will gain most of it’s traction from people who are currently politically homeless.

 

You could vote for the Green Party.

The bigger problem (as I've said before) is that under our electoral system, people don't actually vote FOR what they believe in. In 2024, if I had voted for the Green party (if they had put up a candidate) that would have seriously risked letting the incumbent Tory back in. In the event I had no option but to vote Labour in order to keep the Tory out. This is no sensible way to run a democracy. The only reason that it has worked remotely well is because it has almost always been a 2-horse race (Tory vs Whig, then Tory vs Liberal and then Tory vs Labour).

Thatcher at best only ever got 42% of the vote despite which she was able to destroy our country's infrastructure and gift a massive portion of our national wealth to foreign investors. (Water, Rail, Energy, Telecoms etc). A proportional system would have meant that she would have been in coalition (probably with the Liberals) and would not have been able to vandalise the country.

 

I keep mulling over the idea of keeping the current system for electing MPs, as i believe its vital people can elect someone specific to represent their area. I do however strongly feel that we should abolish the unelected House of Lords and replace it with a proportional appointed second house that has the ability to approve, veto and amend bills passed in parliament. If executed correctly it could provide the best of both worlds while stopping this nonsense of PMs packing lords with their partisan mates.

 

Pretty well all PR systems have MPs elected locally and representing geographic areas. They generally use the Single Transferable Vote system where instead of 1 cross on the ballot paper, you rank them (1 for your favourite, 2 for second favourite etc). At the count, the one with the least 1st choice votes is eliminated and their 2nd choice votes are then applied to the other candidates and so-on until there is a candidate with a majority (ie more than 50% - currently an MP could be elected with as little as 25% where the vote is equally split between 4 or 5 candidates). This keeps the MP/Constituency link but gives you an MP who more closely reflects the views of their electorate.

 

He was booted from the Labour party, she doesn't agree with the vision of the Labour party now, (who does) say what you like about Corbyn he draws people into politics. I now feel I have a party I can vote for as I could never vote for any right wing party, especially in Barnsley. Said it before, vote Reform, vote Tory. Never forget.

 

I'm left handed and left footed, so do I qualify for this so called Lefty party ?.
And if not, do I at least win a tenner for actually saying that!.

 

I quite like AV, but it was comprehensively rejected in the 2011 Referendum 68-32%. It won the vote in only 10 of the 440 voting areas of the UK...it seems unlikely anyone would try and revive it.

 

What is politically homeless? Seems it means believing in the unachievable and not accepting there are constraints and consequences to the actions government take.

Corbyn is and has been roundly rejected by the country in favour of Boris Johnson if that doesn't start alarm bells ringing I don't know what will...

 

Presumably, it would require another coalition government, with the minor party demanding it as a result of their participation? Corbyn could gain massively if it were brought in, based upon the initial response to his new offering.

 

I'd tend to agree with most of that. Corbyn is a good bloke and, for me, embodies real socialist values. However, his leadership skills have got to be questioned. If he becomes leader of this new party he will alienate lots of people and become an even easier target for a hostile media.

 

I think he's done the right thing (with Mrs Sultana) setting out to form a party which more closely represents his views - and those of >500,000 others by the looks of it. Worth noting though that he'll be 80 years old by the time of the next election. I wonder if that will affect whether he wishes to lead the new party?

 

Annoyingly Reform is a good name. Reformers were often left wing,, 'woke' if you like. thinking about prison reformers for eg. The Left Party is very weak, sounds like something the teams in The Apprentice would come up with!

 

Clearly the People's Party is what they should go with.

Or the Worker's Party.

Something full-on communist dictatorship.

 

With such a large margin against when it was proposed last time it's difficult to see anyone promoting it in the foreseeable future.
I like AV as I said, to a degree it's the best of both worlds, but it seems dead in the water...I think PR would go the same way if it were put to referendum.

 

Yes it was rejected because there was no real effort to explain how it worked in a way that the average person would understand. The Tories didn't want to change the system because it had served them (unfairly) well for 200 years. The referendum was merely to satisfy the terms of the coalition with the LibDems. The referendum should have been a simple question of "Should we reform our electoral system" with a simple yes/no answer - rather like it was in 2016 for the Brexit referendum. In the event of a "Yes" vote, the details of the actual system to be adopted could then have been worked out by people with some experience in the field. Had that happened, the last 9 years of Brexit turmoil would have been avoided and we'd all be substantially better off.

 

"Yes it was rejected because there was no real effort to explain how it worked in a way that the average person would understand."

It's a fairly simple system that any average person could understand I would have thought... I'm surprised you think that it was too difficult. It had been used in my area before the 2011 referendum and as far as I'm aware there were no issues.
Although I do agree on your ' should we reform our electoral system yes/no idea being the first step....although if 'yes' fails to win it removes the possibility of any other system replacing FPTP.

 

It is a fairly simple system but I have clear memories of various politicians on the TV making it sound very complicated and very few explaining it clearly. I also remember members of the public being interviewed who had zero understanding, in fact they had pretty much zero understanding of our existing system. In the years since then, our national curriculum has included politics so a campaign run today which set out clearly the benefits of changing the system would surely give a very different result, particularly in light of the General Election of 2024 being the most undemocratic one in our history.

 

Boris was very popular. I had mates who have never voted before or since who were hoodwinked by the loveable rogue act.

 

After the Teresa May election, when Corbyn almost won a spectacular victory, the media & his own party went into turbo undermining mode, add Brexit, Johnson & Farage's lot in a pact & he was on a hiding to nothing.

 

Don't get me wrong I like Corbyn but I still think his campaigning for Remain at the 2016 referendum was half-arsed and contributed to losing. For that alone he doesn't deserve much support.