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.

Imo your ire should be directed at all those people who don't vote. I have always felt, particularly as a woman, that I should use my vote. The one time I didn't feel I could vote, I spoiled my ballot paper. It still had to be counted.

Sorry but it is true. Scotland has made almost zero difference as this pic shows. And it’s been the same for the last few elections only making this statistic worse.

The UK general election is broken beyond belief.

It’s Rayner and she didn’t do anything wrong. It’s pretty clear to see what actually happened when you look at the details. She paid the extra stamp duty as soon as she realised. She didn’t think it classed as a second home because she had sold her part of her former family home to her disabled son.

I think with Rayner people dislike her because she’s working class and has a strong regional accent, plus she was a teenage mum. It’s just sheer snobbery tbh. I like her.

1945 Labour govt (Attlee)
————————————
Labour majority: 146
Labour majority without any Scottish MPs in Parliament: 143
NO CHANGE WITHOUT SCOTTISH MPS

1950 Labour govt (Attlee)
————————————
Labour majority: 5
Without Scottish MPs: 2
NO CHANGE

1951 Conservative govt (Churchill/Eden)
——————————————————–
Conservative majority: 17
Without Scottish MPs: 16
NO CHANGE

1955 Conservative govt (Eden/Macmillan)
——————————————————–
Conservative majority: 60
Without Scottish MPs: 61
NO CHANGE

1959 Conservative govt (Macmillan/Douglas-Home)
————————————————————————
Conservative majority: 100
Without Scottish MPs: 109
NO CHANGE

1964 Labour govt (Wilson)
————————————
Labour majority: 4
Without Scottish MPs: -11
CHANGE: LABOUR MAJORITY TO CONSERVATIVE MAJORITY OF 1
(Con 280, Lab 274, Lib 5)

1966 Labour govt (Wilson)
————————————
Labour majority: 98
Without Scottish MPs: 77
NO CHANGE

1970 Conservative govt (Heath)
——————————————–
Conservative majority: 30
Without Scottish MPs: 55
NO CHANGE

1974 Minority Labour govt (Wilson)
————————————————
Labour majority: -33
Without Scottish MPs: -42
POSSIBLE CHANGE – LABOUR MINORITY TO CONSERVATIVE MINORITY
(Without Scots: Con 276, Lab 261, Lib 11, Others 16)

1974b Labour govt (Wilson/Callaghan)
—————————————————–
Labour majority: 3
Without Scottish MPs: -8
CHANGE: LABOUR MAJORITY TO LABOUR MINORITY
(Lab 278 Con 261 Lib 10 others 15)

1979 Conservative govt (Thatcher)
————————————————
Conservative majority: 43
Without Scottish MPs: 70
NO CHANGE

1983 Conservative govt (Thatcher)
————————————————
Conservative majority: 144
Without Scottish MPs: 174
NO CHANGE

1987 Conservative govt (Thatcher/Major)
——————————————————
Conservative majority: 102
Without Scottish MPs: 154
NO CHANGE

1992 Conservative govt (Major)
———————————————
Conservative majority: 21
Without Scottish MPs: 71
NO CHANGE

1997 Labour govt (Blair)
———————————–
Labour majority: 179
Without Scottish MPs: 139
NO CHANGE

2001 Labour govt (Blair)
———————————–
Labour majority: 167
Without Scottish MPs: 129
NO CHANGE

2005 Labour govt (Blair/Brown)
——————————————–
Labour majority: 66
Without Scottish MPs: 43
NO CHANGE

2010 Coalition govt (Cameron)
——————————————
Conservative majority: -38
Without Scottish MPs: 19
CHANGE: CON-LIB COALITION TO CONSERVATIVE MAJORITY

Same outcome for every GE since. Scotland makes zero difference and it’ll make no difference in stopping a potential Reform government.

Also, no you shouldn’t have to pay to vote for very very obvious reasons. Absolute batshittery to suggest this tbh.

Since 1900 it is more common than not, to have a prime minister in place who didn’t get the job after a general election. According to Full Fact, between 1900 and 2019, 11 prime minsters were “elected” and 16 were not. Since then we can add Truss and Sunak to the list. It’s a feature of the system, we don’t elect our leaders, and that’s a good think. After all, Trump was elected and look how well that has worked out for the world.

With Starmer’s landslide, and the instability of the previous 5 years, it was always going to be the goal of right wing media and supporters to try and take Starmer down one way or the other. Looks like they’ve succeeded, but as always, none of it is ever about the good of the country.

In the UK, the voters do not directly elect a Prime Minister. Votes are for a party, and most parties (Lab, Con, LibDem) have a leader who is elected by the members of that party. If a party can muster a majority of seats in Parliament, the leader of that party becomes PM.

The obvious exception to a party with an elected party leader is Reform, where the leader is appointed. Currently it is Farage, who was appointed by his buddy and fellow multi-millionaire Tice. Reform, and particularly Farage, is largely financed by one man, Christopher Harborne, who as well as bunging Farage £5 million has donated another £20 million or more to Reform.

So even if you are daft enough to pay to join Reform, you get no say in who becomes leader because the leader is appointed by Tice and does whatever the donors tell him to do.

Thank you for the diagram! This demonstrates entirely what I am saying.

Why do you think it’s not a good thing that we don’t choose our leader?

The country would never have voted truss in. The country would never vote rayNER in - thankyou Satre 😂

And you to PP going on about Rayner saying it’s misogyny, classism, whatever. No it’s simply she represents a big problem in Britain. A lack of moral standing and a take take take mentality which ruins it for people who actually need it.

So no it’s not just about this recent tax issue. It’s also about the multiple council houses on right to buy because she didn’t live her partner/husband. Of course she didn’t. How very convenient. Dodging of capital gains, a potentially undeclared rental. I could go on. She always falls on the correct side of ‘oh that’s lucky’. The odds of that are very slim so my conclusion is that these are all well informed choices and if you are well adept at knowing and making ‘well informed choices’ then your not accidentally dodging 40k tax as deputy prime minister.

So no. It’s not because she’s a woman or ‘working class’. It’s because she’s a grifting scrounger.

Tell us what you really think, eh?

No I do not like Rayner at all!

The gall of all that is outrageous.

@darksideofthetoon you have a very different understanding of "not making a difference"

Comparing the actual election results with what "would have happened" if Scotland was not part of the United Kingdom and sent no MPs to Westminster:

In both 2010 and 2017 Scotland's votes pulled what would otherwise have been a functional Tory majority into them having under 50% of seats, forcing them to seek coalition in 2010 and a confidence-and-supply deal in 2015. Whilst the resulting governments were obviously deeply flawed anyway, forcing the Tories to talk to other parties and stopping them from forging ahead with their manifesto programme without fear of the strength of the opposition made a HUGE difference.

In 2019 and 2015 the effect wasn't quite so dramatic but in both cases, Scotland MPs reduced what would have been much stronger Tory majorities to much closer to the knife-edge, forcing the front bench to be more cautious with their legislation as they couldn't rely on a comfortable margin. Yes the governments in those parliaments weren't great, but they could have been worse and they weren't thanks to Scotland.

in 2001, 2005 and 2024 Scotland returned a majority of Labour MPs and got a Labour westminster government - I see nothing to complain about there. In each case IF Scotland had chosen to return mostly SNP MPs instead of Labour (as they did for most of the GEs that the Tories won), they would have seriously destablilised the comfortable Labour majorities in a similar way to the effect on the Tory governments of 2019 and 2015, so the Scottish support for Labour in these years was really significant. Labour are learning that when they have a policy programme that keeps the people of Scotland happy, that makes a crititcal difference in whether or not they can hang on to power. That is a significant influence.

A bit weird to go back to 1945 in your stats, I only went back to the beginning of this century as I was mostly concerned with icecream and lego for those elections last century that I was actually alive for, and I did specifically say "in my lifetime"!.

@darksideofthetoon sorry failed to add the stats table illustrating this:

Clearly we have different opinions on what making a difference means. Not sure many people in other countries would be happy with very occasionally having a tiny little impact on the outcome of a supposedly democratic election. It’s scraping the barrel to say that Scotland’s vote mattered just because it occasionally resulted in a slightly less strong majority for a government that would have still taken power without Scotland. That’s pathetic and not a situation people should be comfortable with. And it was the same with the EU, Scotland pulled out despite voting in favour of remaining. The irony of course that Scotland told it would be out of the EU if it voted for independence.

Entirely reasonable to include previous decades as it only illustrates just how long Scotland has been in this situation. I’m sorry if it doesn’t chime with your thinking or lifetime.

How much influence and impact do you think a region with 8% of the UK population ought to have? How much influence do you think Yorkshire has? or the Greater Manchester Region? - both of which with a similar population to Scotland. Scotland has an influence and impact on UK politics which is larger than is proportionate for its size and I am not complaining about that, but what level of swing would make you feel that Scotland "makes a difference"? What would stats like this show if you were satisfied?

Democracy in this country, is via the ballot box. No need to pay. Everyone has an opinion - nothing is right or wrong. Just opinion.🤷‍♀️

100% hence why self determination and Independence is the only way to permit this. And it then gets rid of people like us arguing tit for tat as Scotland can finally stop moaning and blaming WM. It would have to fully take responsibility for itself and finally grow up. No arguments about Barnet formula and Scotland mooching etc. 100% fully responsible for itself like most countries the world.

And the added bonus would be that it would remove the SNPs raison d’etre and force them out of power.

Someone above kindly produced the facts!

50% of the time you did need to pay!

But yes I agree with you about everyone having an opinion and nothing being right or wrong.

Rayner lovers are of course welcome in my yet-to-be-formed band of brigaders 😂

That's not what I asked. Obvioisly yes in the event of an actual schism that landscape would be very different - not necessarily better given how much less self-determination a country less than a tenth the size of the UK could wield on the global stage. But I was asking how much influence within the United Kingdom would seem reasonable and proportionate with 8% of the population (well I rounded up it's 7.8% though has 8.8% of Westminster seats). Given that in the years when Scottish voters didn't make much impact this is usually because the Will of the People of Scotland was shown at the polls to be in keeping with the Will of the People of the rest of the UK, it seems odd to regard this as a bad thing. If everyone is rowing the boat in the same direction, there's no need for a separate cox for a few of the rowers.

Your question is silly and facetious. It doesn’t make sense. But then again, you are so historically ignorant as to refer to Scotland as a region.

Tbh id rather see laws around what can actually consitute a PM standing down - I'm not the biggest fan of starmer (or any of them really) but someone needs to just stay at some point, it's getting stupid how much changing we've had

Wouldn’t complain about that either! Or if standing down then a general election is automatically triggered regardless of reason.

MPs should only be allowed to resign and step down mid term in extremis, otherwise they should serve a full term and then withdraw.

If they wish to step down mid term for any other reason, they should meet the cost to the tax payer of the ensuing by-election. This should also apply to elected Mayors. Tax payers should not be expected to fund the massaging of someone's ego and vanity.

No, I’ve never paid. Despite living in a ‘true blue’ area, I’ve always voted Labour or LD.

I knew I wouldn’t get the candidate I wanted, but that’s democracy. I vote because I think you should. Paying whatever wouldn't have got me who I wanted.

But, I’d sooner have our system than American - that really is a shitstorm at the moment. My son lives there and always says it had made him appreciate the British way of democracy and government . 🤷‍♀️

Far be it for me to discourage Labour party membership, but is one vote on who becomes PM, weighed against thousands of other votes from genuine party members who may have different priorities to you, really worth handing over money each month that will be used to further a party you don't align with?
I can't imagine ever wanting my money to further the Tories just on the off chance Hunt would have been the least worst option of him and Johnson, for example.

Woah. Strong words. I love that! Can we vote you in please 😂