Pay to vote

[Paytovote]

‘Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result’

Yet again we have voted for a democratically elected leader and potentially ending up with someone no one wants (well a few from the Labour Party).

Are we now at the stage where after every general election; any one who wants a say in our governance has no choice but to sign up to the winning party to enable them to vote.

That includes payment.

Is this not completely undemocratic.

Is anyone else considering this. I have thought it multiple times in previous years and now I am getting to the point where I am the idiot for not just signing up and lining their party pockets. Because who’s losing out here. Me and my vote.

Most people understand that the government is bigger than just the PM and so vote for the party they want in power. Which you get to do by voting for your MP.

We vote for to choose a MP for the constituency we live in. Not for the prime minister. America and other countries have a different voting system and I think that’s where it gets confusing, on a personal level and in the media

All party leaders are voted internally. I don't think having reformers voting for the leader of the greens would be a good idea.
You vote for a party, not just a person because that can change.
People need to understand that more.

No I understand it.

I understand that I am a centre floating voter and parties place their ‘most centrist’ leader up for GE. I don’t assign to any parties belief system. I am a mucky mess in the middle. So not only am I looking at policies, I also look at leadership, and whether I believe they will deliver it.

They then drift off into more extremes. Like a PP says ‘wonky trolley’. If other people are controlling the trolley why not me.

This is who I think the YABU voters are.

They just dont want their parties voting being brigaded.

Well I dont appreciate the countries voting being brigaded.

So fairs fair.

You cannot be Prime Minister unless you are elected into government, so people did vote for the candidates and did not pay to. What you are describing is akin to a presidential election where you vote for the leader specifically

So what system would you like to see? I am unclear. A system where the leader is separate to the government and voted on separately?

Nope. It’s looking like the Labour Party membership are just about to vote for leadership of this country.

And the Tory party did also.

You CAN vote. You just need to pay.

No theres already a system.

You have to sign up and pay… 6 months in advance to be eligible to vote.

Exactly this. People often get this wrong. If you want to influence individual party policy and leadership choices then become a member of a political party. They must surely have a mechanism whereby you cannot be a member of more than one party.

We accept in a democracy that sometimes the democratic process produces results we don't like or want. The biggest issue imho is that so many people are disengaged and choose not to vote when they have the opportunity.

No there's already a system.
Yes but you are not happy with it so what do you want to see instead? or is this thread just about moaning without offering any alternatives?

YANBU in that you shouldn't have to join a political party in order to influence the choice of PM.

This chopping and changing of leaders has been out of control these last 10 years, and needs to be stamped on.

There may be a case for it in some circumstances, but I do think that where a new leader is planning to take the government in a different direction, and wants to introduce a whole lot of new policies that weren't in the party's original election manifesto, then they should be forced to call a general election and put their very different plans directly to the electorate.

This seems to be what is happening now. Labour won the last election on the basis of Reeves and Starmer promising left of centre policies, to boost the economy, reduce the deficit, smash the gangs etc. It's possible that Labour might have still won with a more left wing leader and a socialist agenda, such as is being widely talked about by Burnham, Rayner, Haigh and Co, but it's unlikely, and certainly with nothing like the huge majority they have now.

Of course I am not happy about having to pay to vote.

So yes this is primarily a thread where I am moaning about the injustice of this.

And to declare that I am now kicking myself for being a flipping idiot and not signing up! YET AGAIN!

The alternative is that it’s either free. With no wait period.

Or that said party don’t try to oust their leader which I am sure is a mechanism designed for extreme circumstances. Not because they got a bit power hungry.

They are not voting for leadership of the country. You've got everything skewed to support your faulty argument. They vote for leadership of their party. Due to the Labour Party having a majority of parliamentary seats, they are the party in government.

This!

But if we can’t stamp on it. How am I going to do that. Then I am the idiot for not begrudgingly paying.

I don’t make the rules I can only play the game presented to me and HOW MANY TIMES DOES THIS HAVE TO HAPPEN BEFORE I ACTUALLY PAY!

I am such a fool 😭

I agree with this too. I think alot of it is the media trying to keep things “exciting” to sell news.

It’s more dramatic if leaders keep changing, even more dramatic if the likes of Reform get into power, so let’s big them up to try to make that happen. I can’t see any downsides of that at all 🙄

If we do get a Reform govt (god help us) the media will have played an enormous, probably the decisive, part.

But that’s what I am saying.

Join the party after GE and you will then be eligible to vote.

It’s not faulty. It’s objective measurable reality.

Except you only want to join a party's membership in order to influence the choice of party leader if I've understood correctly. In which case you've only yourself to blame. You'll have to live with it.

@Mayblossom56 has it right for what the parliamentary system is

Your general election vote goes to the individual that you are choosing to represent you & your constituency in parliament

If a party has crossed the threshold for a majority of seats then the monarch invites the parties leader to form a government

Generally people are likely to vote on party terms
Quite a few vote on a single topic, and don’t necessarily consider how their personal vote contributes to that topic (a clear case in point is Reforms national narrative to sway council elections into the ability to claim that is the national view for government - successfully resulting in both Labour and Conservative Party panic & uproar, but the day to day consequence will be felt locally depending on the ability of councilors to do council business )

What you should do, especially as a floating voter is to look at your constituency history for the party trend and also look at each parties manifesto
Weigh them up on how they reflect upon your life and your preferred society, and then based on your constituency opt to either vote towards your preferred outcome, or tactically against your least preferred outcome

If your constituency MP is a member of the resulting governing party then in parliamentary votes they should vote in line with the party manifesto they stood under where applicable, but in non-manifesto topics have a choice between party policy and feedback from constituents (irrespective of the constituents political flavour - as a floating voter you have an opportunity to follow up through their term as you can be “unbiased” by party and also hang the carrot of your vote in the next round)

I have never considered this but it's actually a good idea. 😱

Yabu because your op makes no fecking sense at all. I had to read several followup posts befoe it fibally became clear that what you are complaining about, and yes you are still being unreasonable.

We have a representational democracy. Each constituency elects a representative who is then empowered to take decisions on the best interests of their constituency according to their personal judgement.

The Prime Minister is whoever can inspire the allegiance of a majority of those representatives. The fact that some politial parties have internal mechanisms to allow their paid membership to give guidance to those MP representatives as to which of them would be the most popular within the Party does not actually cede that power to paid party members - each MP still has the freedom to give his or her allegiance wherever they choose.

There is no paying for a vote. That's not what you pay for. If your personal political opinions align closely enough with one particular party that you wish to be a member you can so so and then you have numerous ways to influence the policies and manifesto of that party and can express your opinion as to who you want to lead that party. The Prime Minister doesn't have nearly as much power as somd directly-elected presidents do. They are Prime Minister only for as long as they can be confident of the allegiance of the majority of MPs and their programme of government is set out in the manifesto developed by the Party as a whole, not their personal wishes, so frankly we don't need a country-wide referendum to determine who should be PM - we elected our MPs in the last general election and actually it's only the opinions of those MPs that really matter now until next General Election - the guidance they ask for from party members for who best deserves their allegiance is not binding or legally enshrined.

This form of democracry isn't perfect but every version has flaws. Quite frankly I don't want the big questions in politics to ve decided by referendum - not because I wouldn't like more influence myself but because I know that if I get to vote on something, there will be millions of people less well-informed, less altruistic and less intelligent than me who will also get the same power, so it's unlikely that my influence would count for much - politics would decend to populist crowd-pleasing tactics and the tough decisions where a government has to balance what the loudest shouters want with what is actually in the best interests of the country becomes impossible. At least with a representative democracy the small number of representatives that hold the real power have the capacity, resources and time and the civil-service support to become properly well-informed about the difficult background information behind each decision rather than reducing it to populist sloganeering.

Spare a thought for us Scots, where our votes make zero difference to the outcome of the general election.

But you’re right, the electoral system is utterly broken. The recent elections only exposed what was already known two years ago. Keir Starmer was rejected by the voters but got in due to Reform splitting the vote. He got less votes than Corbyn.

Some people clearly don’t get it.

And it’s hilarious because they say I don’t get it!

I think after the next GE I will start a brigade thread and your welcome to join 😊

We can say hello, sign up and then go silent until we emerge from our slumber to strike. 😂

If anyone else wants to join sign up and I will send you a tag. I will try to make the Op of that thread more clear 😅

That's really not true. (About Scotland not making a difference. No comment on part 2 of your post)

Didn't make a huge difference in the last general election - but only because the the rest of the UK reached the same level of pissed-off-with-the-Tories as is entirely normal for Scottish voters. However there have been numerous General Elections in my lifetime where Scottish votes made the difference between Tories having a majority or not, and I remember during various referrenda about Scottish independence, feeling a significant concern about how such a scism would swing westminster politics to the right without the beneficial influence of Scotland.

Nobody pays to vote - your post makes no sense.

If you believe that the PM has executive powers in the way that Trump in the US believes he has, then you don't understand how British governance works.

The party that wins the majority of seats has overall control of Parliament, but the ministers in the Cabinet operate under collective responsibility. There may be strong individuals who influence the general theme of the government's policies - e.g. Thatcher or Wilson in times past - but Starmer as an individual does not set policy any more than Johnson, May, Truss or Sunak did. If the party's MPs do not agree with the PM or the Cabinet they are able to act, either by voting against proposed legislation or by moving against the PM and encouraging or forcing him or her to resign.

A far bigger issue is that Parliament is unrepresentative of the electorate's votes. Because of the FPTP system that the UK follows, the last Conservative government had the support of less than 30% of the electorate - 70% voted for someone else or didn't vote at all - and the current Labour government has even less support. At some point a government is in danger of being in power but actually losing any legitimacy that it claims to have. Regardless of the party concerned, "The Will of The People" is an empty phrase when the vast majority of the electorate did not for for the party concerned and does not support that party's policies.