This country is doomed

Totally agree - and parties would have to work together if they didn't get an overall majority rather than us having an elected dictatorship for 4-5 years.

It's always like this after a by-election. There was a 47% turnout and the Labour candidate who would have probably won wasn't allowed to stand.

All a storm in a teacup - I'm just glad Reform didn't win.

Fptp does not produce representative govt.

pr is needed, very much so.

Nope.

www.politicshome.com/news/article/legal-row-over-green-party-leadership-rules

A Green Party Spokesperson told PoliticsHome: "The Green Party's internal rules state that if a single leader is elected, there must be two deputy leaders of different genders, noting that gender is self-defined.

So, for them a woman is anyone who says they are a woman. Note the clever use of gender rather than sex hey. The result is still the same - Nigel Farage could claim he’s now female and take the place of a biological woman. You’re also voting for a man of course who said he can increase women’s breast sizes through the power of his mind. Yup, they are the party with a sound grasp on what a woman is for sure…

You're quite right, OP. The country is doomed. But not because of the Greens or Labour.

Parma, there was a vote for AV in 2011 in the UK. The lib Dems pushed for it and people voted to keep it as first past the post. Wasn’t a big turn out for this and I felt that people were after a PR vote really.

That was one hell of a promising acceptance speech from Hannah Spencer.
More of that please.

Scotland's Parliament is not fully PR, and one of the biggest issues with the partial system is that you end up with the likes of Murdo Fraser being a perpetual but wholly pointless presence in your Parliament, in a job for decades despite never once having actually been directly elected, and indeed, having been utterly rejected by the electorate on at least seven separate occasions when he has actually attempted to get himself elected on merit.

PR systems are not free of pitfalls either, especially so when it's left to the whims of the party to nominate who, precisely, will be elected by bloc vote. Conversely, it does make it virtually impossible for bampot single-issue independents to wind up with a seat because they can't muster any sort of widespread enough support to matter when the larger parties also return significant bloc list votes.

There are pros and cons to all systems, and in a lot of ways partial PR isn't really an improvement over and above full FPTP. It does mean though that smaller parties who have a degree of popular support do gain some traction if they can break through a certain threshold, so there is that.

The problem with Labour is that they're not the opposition, they're just the lite version of the Tories. Some might argue not even the lite version recently. Anyway, nothing will fucking change while we have the two main parties owned and controlled by foreign powers, so for now, Greens will have to do (for me).

The other possibility instead of first past the post is optioonal preferential (Australia uses this system).

You use numbers, and you can give a number to all candidates in order of your preference, or only give your vote to one or two or however many of the candidates you want to vote for.

If your first preference candidate doesn't get an outright majority (ie half the votes cast + one) then your vote is rolled over to your 2nd preference candidate. And so on.

It means you could vote 1. for Monster Raving Loony Party, then vote 2. for a serious party, and not "waste" your vote.

It sounds complicated but it's really not - it's just a numbering of your preferences from highest to lowest. And you can choose not to give any of the candidates your vote at all. You can make a protest vote but not "waste" your vote.

That’s such a daily mail claim.

I think they know exactly what a woman is. After all one has just delivered them a resounding victory.

The Greens don't know what a woman is.

And the local by-election campaign was won on their anti-Semitic policies.

Keep fptp for the commons, replace the house of Lords with a pr elected chamber. Potentially the best of both worlds.

Scotland has it, Wales has it, Northern Ireland has it and not only that apart from Belarus were the only country in Europe not to have it. And Belarus is such a wonderful example of why fptp should be kept I suppose.

Except I didn't say any of that but good for you for shoe horning an accusation of
anti-semitism into your reply. The word has been so egregiously abused it's lost it's power to silence people.

We need proportional representation and not first past the post. Obviously that wouldn't make a difference in a by election but for the general elections that's what we need.
A government that has to reach compromises because it's made up of all the political parties people voted for. And more engagement from voters because they're getting what they voted for and not the party that scrapes through

@LoftyPlumLion agree. I would say I’m a very moderate voter occ centre left, occ centre right but I’m 100% for nationalising utilities. I can’t believe we don’t own our own water and power it’s crazy!!!

Sweden’s unemployment rate fell to 8.6% in January 2026 from 10.4% in the same month a year earlier. This is higher than the European average. Higher levels of unemployment are on of the things that tends to fuel political unrest and dissent.

I believe the current government is a coalition of a centre right party and a far right populist party

In recent months there been this scandal
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/nov/10/sweden-online-hate-anti-immigrant-extremism-women

Everything is working out just great.

The Scandinavian countries have excellent public services because everyone works and pays taxes. A strange concept to our army of benefit claimants here

erm....lots of people 'on benefits' are working. Full time. Paying taxes.

The pendulum has swung further and further right, with cronyism and picket lining of politicians getting more and more extreme.

i’m historically centre right but think privatisation of utilities has been an abject disaster we have highest bills and rubbish service. Nationalise I say. Can’t be worse than we have now.

and also the gap between rich and normal has grown so a wealth tax is a way forward. I would welcome ideas for redistribution which weren’t tax based but I don’t have any nor have I heard of any.

I do agree. You’ve written it much better than I could.