Scared about a poll I read where Reform wins outright in First Past the Post????

[fixingmylife]

I guess we are years away from a General Election, but I am scared about the rise in populism and the seemingly popular Reform. I think it would be unthinkable to have Farage as our Prime Minister. I don't want a small state, private NHS, racist far right populist, Trumpist in charge of the country.

I know MN is generally fairly anti Reform, Brexit etc, but where are all these Reform voters. I don't know anyone personally who has admitted they would vote for them? Is it the all the disenfranchised young men?

I've seen people say that we should withdraw from all human rights laws and change our legal system to keep out foreign men.

People seem to think that they won't be affected by the removal of their rights. It's magical thinking.

How strange to be so feverish in your belief that Reform will win the next GE but not even know what policies you think will win that for them, the policies that you claim you aren't a fan of?

Voting to reduce or weaken your own human rights is an act of self harm, it's so foolish.

Turkey voting for Christmas.

This is why I really worry about people who advocate coming out of the ECHR - there are only two groups of people who think it's a good idea - those who want to have more control over the ordinary people, and those who don't understand the protection they have. There is no ordinary person who would be benefited by having fewer/weaker rights.

Countries do exist outside it and do well on rights and freedoms. Scoring top ten or twenty for example.

It's not policies that will win it for them, Reform have very few coherent policies.

For example - they intend to get rid of EDI Officers in Lincolnshire. There are no EDI Officers in Lincolnshire. This is not a policy, it's just nonsense.

I think a lot of people would like to remove rights for other people, while assuming that their own rights will remain intact.

I'm reminded of the old Pastor Niemöller poem.

Which countries?

Yeah, but think of all of the hypothetical savings that they're going to make!

👏👏👏

I’m afraid we’ve reached the end of your reading comprehension.

I don’t know what you call ‘feverish’, but if you think this description fits my posting, then you don’t know it either.

I’m surprised people ask this but there are countries outside the ECHR that score highly.

NZ, Canada, Aus, Japan, Taiwan. This is a good link https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/freedom-index-by-country

Why am I thinking of the fable about the wolf in sheep's clothing.

Sorry but you are not going to vote for Reform but can't think why? Eh? Totally confused about your absolute conviction, feverish conviction that they will in 3+ years time but you can't possibly say why you think they aren't any good on a Politics thread!!

I live in a ward that still has a very strong Labour vote for various reasons.

"I did as there are no SDP candidates in my area ( they are my preferred party)"

Coincidentally, I would also much prefer to vote for the SDP but, again, no candidate in my area. My vote was essentially a "none of the above" protest vote.

The SDP seem to have a lot of policies that I support but are definitely not as vocal or well funded as Reform.

Feel free to think.

I wish you all the luck in this endeavour.

Do these countries have written constitutions with enshrined human rights?

"...tend towards boring centrism"

It sounds as though you've been lucky in Ireland.

A PR system (like they have in Scotland and Germany, as well as other places) could certainly work here in the UK.

But it may not always work out how you would like. For example, take the 2015 election (that was David Cameron and Ed Miliband). Using the same PR system as used in Scotland and Germany would have ended up with no party having an absolute majority so there would need to be a coalition.

The coalition would have been the Conservatives and UKIP (supported by the DUP and the Ulster Unionists).

Can you imagine what a Conservative / UKIP coalition government would have been like in 2015? Nigel Farage as Deputy Prime Minister? Just before the Brexit vote?
.

The 2019 election result would also have been very different. Instead of the Conservatives having an outright majority there would be a real rainbow alliance of a coalition with Labour, the SNP, Lib Dems and Greens all sharing power.

Jeremy Corbyn would have been PM supported by the SNP, Lib Dems and the Greens. I really hate to imagine what would have come out of that sort of mess.
.

Then moving onto the 2024, Labour wouldn't have had a majority and would have to be in coalition with the Lib Dems and the SNP (although they could leave the Greens out this time).

You may not think that Labour are great but just imagine if they also had to take into account the ideas of the SNP and Lib Dems as well.

It's not the rich or the pampered who vote reform. They are the Labour voters. Labour being a luxury belief

You missed out champagne socialists.

Yes, some rich people vote Labour, just like any other party. Some vote Tory or Lib Dem or Reform.

The rich and pampered lead Reform. Any working class person who thinks Farage gives a shit about them will be in for a shock.

If you don't like Reform presumably you wouldn't want them to win the next GE, why is that what do you think Is bad about a Reform government?

Yes, and those from Islington...

Oh sorry I'm thinking of 1997, that's how old those clichés are.

No not all. The second on that list for example is based on the Westminster system, which relies on unwritten conventions and practices, along with written laws

"... my representative isn't beholden to my area."

How the system works in Scotland and Germany is that you get two votes.

You get one vote for the MP for your constituency, just like at the moment (although the constituencies would be bigger). So you will always have a constituency MP.

The second vote is for which party you want to govern.

In Scotland, whoever wins on a FPTP basis in each constituency becomes the MSP for that constituency. In Scotland there are 73 constituencies and so 73 constituency MSPs.

The second vote is then to decide which particular party you want to vote for and it is this vote that decides who the extra MSPs are going to be.

What happens is that they work out how many MSPs of each party there should be according to the party vote (it's called the Regional Vote in Scotland) and then award places to candidates from each party in addition to their constituency MSPs to make up the numbers to the percentage they got in the Regional Vote.

It's probably easiest to explain with an example.

The Conservatives won, I believe, five constituency seats (which is 6.8% of the constituency seats) but in the Regional Vote they got 23.5% of the votes and so ended up being given another 26 seats to give them 24% of the total number of seats.

The Green Party didn't win a single constituency seat at all, but in the Regional Vote they got 8.1% of the votes and so ended up being given 8 seats or 6.2% of the total seats without winning a single constituency vote.

So, for example, the well known Green MSP, Maggie Chapman, (who said that the Supreme Court justices were bigots for saying that women are women) was never personally elected in any constituency. She got her place because the Greens were awarded 8 seats in the Regional Vote and she got one on them.

From the link upthread ( newspaper article):

“Reform is surging because the lanyard class refuses to listen to voters when the reality they describe conflicts with its liberal shibboleths. Voters are told crime is down, but they know shoplifting or vandalism goes unreported because police never act. They see the effects of unprecedented mass migration in rapid change to their high streets and NHS surgeries. With up to 1,000 small boat arrivals a week being dispersed, many more communities have a local hotel turned over to bored, undocumented, non-English-speaking young men.
When voters learn that hotel accommodation will cost three times what was predicted, while pensioners’ winter fuel allowance is cut, or that Labour plans to scoop up swathes of rented housing for migrants on five-year contracts when their kids can’t find a home, of course they’re angry. The idea the government will deport those without good English is laughable when convicted foreign criminals are allowed to stay. They did not vote for this, they can’t even speak of it. (They risk being accused of “dog whistling” by Lucy Powell.)
Like a national HR department, the government cares only about “compliance”. So people are turning to a party, as makeshift as a flat-pack bookshelf, simply because it doesn’t shut them down. It is not Reform voters who are stupid.”

I see this has been quoted already but worth repeating

I’m a pensioner and I haven’t been fucked over.