As I have offered a rare post on the official Opposition I am offering a couple of posts on the Lib Dems and Reform. In the last General election the Lib Dems got 12% of the vote and 72 seats. Reform got 14% of the vote and 5 seats. In recent polling Reform has surged to 30% and Lib Dems are around 11%.
Both these parties support a big change to our electoral system, favouring some variant of Proportional representation. The Lib Dems made a referendum on the alternative vote system a prime demand before entering Coalition in 2010. The public decisively rejected it. The Lib Dems now argue there are better systems.
I would urge both parties to drop this key demand. The Lib Dems disproved one of their own arguments about themselves for PR in 2024 . They say letting the person with most votes win results in unfair representation for smaller parties.Yet Lib Dems with 12% of the votes won nearly 12% of the seats. It is true the Reform vote was widely spread so they got nothing like their vote share. Conservatives also got fewer seats than vote share, but as the Lib Dems showed this is not always the outcome. Challenger parties under our system can target and win more seats.
The big reason to drop the policy is PR in a 4-5 party system will usually result in no party having a majority. Any party wanting a share in government has to abandon their Manifesto and promise to hammer out a compromise government programme with others. Voters are ignored as pledges are dumped in the scramble for power.That is less democratic,as the continent shows.
Campaigning for PR by parties that lost the last election can make them look like a bad loser. If by any chance the two parties pro PR did win a combined majority of seats they would be able to vote through a PR measure given party discipline in the early days. Some of their MPs might be concerned that PR would lose them their seats at the next election. If they declined they then appear as more politicians who do not truly believe in the big ideas they propose.
If a party that believed in PR won a majority under our current system they might be tempted to break their promise to introduce PR.
July 25, 2025
Wether we have PR or not, there is something seriously wrong with today’s situation. Starmergeddon is using a wrecking ball to destroy the country without a mandate to do si.
He is giving away assets, rejoining the EU and facilitating mass immigration
Milibrains is busy destroying our energy system.
Perhaps we do need total destruction to rebthe country and banish socialism for good.
July 25, 2025
It is hard to figure out 2TK’s plan; does he really think he’s making improvements to our nation, surely even he can see his actions are making us poorer and weaker? And yet with each new agreement or law, wealth leaves the country and/or productive capacity or natural advantage is diminished. Even Labour MP’s should be able to see this by now. Who is he working for?
July 25, 2025
He’s a Globalist, working for the UN and WEF. He’s not interested in this nation.
July 25, 2025
Seems so – rather like Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Boris, Sunak then but even worse!
July 25, 2025
If one accepts the ‘globalist’ motivation, rather than old fashioned pots of gold and a Swiss resident permit, then what position does he think he’ll be promoted to after he loses the next election? The EU is in even greater difficulties than we are, surely not the IMF or any finance position, the UN? Someone who defines the epithet ‘couldn’t run a p…-up in a brewery’ surely not!
July 25, 2025
He’s another Far Left Civil Servant like Gus O’Donnell, a previous cabinet secretary, who supports a liberal immigration policy, saying in 2011 : “When I was at the Treasury I argued for the most open door possible to immigration … I think it’s my job to maximise global welfare not national welfare.”
July 25, 2025
Not just today’s situation but all my life, one of the first things I remember is Ted Heath joining the Common Market with no authority from Voters in 1972. We need far more power to voters with direct democracy. Voting for an MP candidate (more often than not a liar who says X to get elected then often delivers the complete reverse once elected). This under first past the post a further distortion in the process.
Then we have the blob, the justice system, International bodies, quangos… to call the UK a democracy is absurd it is about 10% democratic at best. Plus not we have Labour Gerrymandering the voting system with votes for children net votes for non citizens perhaps?
We need far more direct democracy with modern IT we could easily vote directly on issues several time a week!
See David Starkey UK no longer a democracy and Blair’s changes were designed to put democracy in chains.
July 25, 2025
Heath and the ‘Common Market’ is a bad example because it was a Treaty which usually can easily be reversed. There was a massive fraud in that whole action, including misleading Parliament, and the Public during the subsequent referendum. So that is an outlier and should not be considered when reviewing the voting system.
The referendum after all, gave the Government authority to ‘enter a trading treaty’.
I contend that in any election if less than 50% of the electorate VOTE then there is a ‘holding’ situation, a caretaker government with no mandate to enact ANY legislation.
July 25, 2025
A worse situation was Johnny Major taking us into the EU without proper authority.
July 25, 2025
Heath took us in. He signed the Treaty of Rome which is unchanged. They are simply implementing it incrementally.
The name changes are irrelevant. The Treaty of Rome stands. Thank God we have actually escaped and just need to bull6 our own political class to implement our will embodied in law.
July 26, 2025
Reply to Lynn below.
No, Heath took us in the Common Market, Major signed us up to the EU which was much bigger and tighter.
July 26, 2025
Graham you are wrong. Heath signed the Treaty of Rome – that is the core of the Common Market, EEC EC. It has not changed. They scuppered the changes in the name of the Organization are irrelevant. It will soon be the Federation of Europe. So what, it’s ‘constitution’ remains the unchanged Treaty of Rome.
July 25, 2025
@Lynn Atkinson – as the current set up and basically corrupting party control of elections, it does mean we are getting a greater majority of the electorate maliciously disenfranchised. Just 20% of those who had the vote found their way into voting Labour. The last election saw more people than ever disenfranchised, from that you could deduce Labour and even Parliament hasn’t a mandate to act on our behalf. I would have pushed your 50% closer to 66% anything less requiring a full on plebiscite.
We must never forget it is the ‘gang’ bosses with gang money that selects the candidates not the electorate they wish to represent. It is technically possible for others to stand but they get crucified by the weight of money the gangs and their sponsors bring to the table. So rationally it is candidate funding that has to be rebalanced, if that only came from with in a constituency it would balance the rigging.
July 25, 2025
We need to return to freely selecting our own candidates as we always did (not from a list).
That is how Bridgen entered Parliament – he was freely selected and NOT from the party list.
Worse are PR lists where candidates have a place. One that in UKIP under Farage, they bought.
It’s a simple solution, return to what worked, done break everything and start from scratch with nothing – not even wisdom.
July 25, 2025
There’s just one point to note regarding the notion of 50%+ vote share in order for a party’s mandate to be recognised: in just over a century of General Elections in the UK as we know it (since 1922 when Southern Ireland had left the union), there has been just one election in which any party achieved that percentage – 1931, when the Conservatives won 55% of the vote and 470 seats. And, ironically, they did not go into government alone, having campaigned as a coalition (the “National Government”) with factions of Labour and the Liberals, each of which had split. If PR were implemented, no party could ever win a majority without securing more than 51% of the vote. With First Past the Post, the argument can be made that even though a winning party has a relatively modest slice of the vote (for example Labour in 2024 on 33.7%) it is the largest individual slice, thereby giving them the mandate to govern. The complaint made by many, that the party has claimed victory on an even more modest number of the electorate given a relatively low turn-out, is understandable but ultimately for the birds – those who didn’t vote cannot be counted, nor can anything be inferred as to what their vote might have been, had they voted.
July 25, 2025
“Any party wanting a share in government has to abandon their Manifesto and promise to hammer out a compromise government programme with others. Voters are ignored as pledges are dumped in the scramble for power.”
True, but as we saw with the last 14 years of Con-Socialism this “abandoning” is usually done anyway – Cameron, May, Boris, Sunak, Two Tier, free gear & never here, Kier… they had little intention of actually delivering even as they wrote the manifestos! These were just to win power to be discarded the day after the election!
July 25, 2025
This strikes me as the big advantage of PR. The last election would have given a hung parliament and a coalition government. Starmer would have been able to do less damage. Such Governments need to compromise on their policies and tend to be less extreme.
In addition a weak Government can do less – I’m all for Governments changing the laws as little as possible as a general rule.
July 25, 2025
Or Starmer would have had the Lib Dems as partners – far to the left of the labour Party and done MORE damage.
What if Starmer has the Mozlem Party as a partner in a future government?
What if any party, Reform for instance which already has a Mozlem in high office, needs an extra 4% and accepts the Mozlem Party as a coalition partner?
You think that would be a big advantage for the country?
July 25, 2025
Hear Hear. The supporters of FPTP can hardly claim it has given us stellar government over the last 30 years. They support it as a religion and hope despite the evidence that it will produce good government. Einstein had a thought about that kind of thing.
July 25, 2025
FPTP worked very nicely for the Establishment for decades. Only two Parties could win and both would deliver effectively the same policies.
Under PR, they can’t guarantee the outcome …. or the consequences of the outcome.
July 25, 2025
Neither can you – you don’t even know what you are voting for.
Why vote blind?
July 25, 2025
Look at the ‘stellar’ governments PR has produced across continental Europe.
None of them have EVER returned a Thatcher!
July 25, 2025
No. Thatcher spent the UK’s North Sea oil money while the PR-elected government in Norway put theirs into a sovereign wealth fund which all their citizens continue to benefit from.
July 25, 2025
FPTP is excellent in delivering government ……Its the PMs, Cabinet & MPs that let us down
July 26, 2025
So we have lost control of the Selection process.
We must recover it and return those we wish to represent us.
July 25, 2025
@PeteB – do you get to vote on the mandate ‘after’ the coalition is created or is that another ‘we rule fudge’ and the voter is misslead
July 25, 2025
Ian B :
A good point. PR is only acceptable if it is accompanied by multiple referendums on major issues.
July 25, 2025
+1
None of the party leaders are representing the emotion of our country
Nigel Farage is the closest but may not have answers
The Tories need to demonstrate that they have broken away from the past
Their betrayal was long & deep
Labour is a Disaster
July 25, 2025
I so agree – but how would a coalition of any of these unacceptable parties, with an excuse to ditch their mandate, help?
July 25, 2025
Yes your first sentence is precisely the core issue.
Whatever we think of Corbyn’s new party, slicing a clearly left wing vote twice, three times or more shouldn’t dilute seats disproportionately. Same with Reform, Conservatives, Lowe’s party etc.
We need a system where start-up parties can succeed more easily and quickly into government. To do that, they simultaneously need to attract MPs such as our good host, and to attract voters who agree with their ideas rather than those of some larger behemoth which has a longer CV but is signally failing the country.
There’s a case for primaries, where voters place one cross according to party manifesto be it for Corbyn Lowe Reform or whatever, and Parliament is comprised by % of votes. MPs then opt to stand in their constituencies for one of those parties, and those with highest % of vote in constituencies fill the slots created by the primaries. Effectively PR but MPs with clear majorities go to parliament. Government then voted into place by sitting MPs.
July 25, 2025
We tried the ‘primaries’ in the Tory Party on Carswell’s insistence. It produced many safe seats for Lib Dems under false flags.
July 25, 2025
There should be no such thing as a safe seat in a democracy. Safe seats mean parties can safely ignore voters.
That’s one reason (of many) why FPTP is such a bad voting system.
July 25, 2025
Nobody is safer than the top 5 candidates on a PR Party list 🤣
July 25, 2025
That partly depends on how many candidates a party is likely to get elected. However, it is also why I don’t advocate for Closed List PR, but for STV (where there is no party list).
July 25, 2025
Peter
If the people in a constituency want to continually vote in a particular party they are content with, you think they should be stopped.
Is this your idea of democracy?
July 25, 2025
You could have any candidate on his A list. If they didn’t win the first primary they stood in they carpet bagged to the next. A charade.
July 25, 2025
Ian
Couldn’t agree more!
July 25, 2025
I’m pretty much in favour of our first past the post system, but see the real issue is the number of MPs, the size of constituencies, and the changing of boundary lines …and the non elected nor constituency Lords
July 25, 2025
Mr Farage has gone rather quiet on this issue.
July 25, 2025
As events are unfolding in this country, going rapidly from bad to worse, perhaps it’s a case of priorities.
PR seems not so important next to the spectre of those of 16 & 17 years being able to vote, and with the rebellious teenagers favourite Grandpa now having his own party !!
July 25, 2025
I agree. This is dangerous, more than we know right now.
July 25, 2025
Richard. As he is doing remarkable well according to the polls I too would be quiet. He needs to do whatever necessary to get into Downing Street.
July 25, 2025
+ 1
July 25, 2025
Ah! So he did not really believe in ‘a fairer voting system’. It was just expedient for the immediate short term purpose of gaining power.
You are going to find that is the pattern of Farage’s thinking. He had no political beliefs. He will do whatever is required to achieve today’s objective and the devil take tomorrow.
Britains will crumble under Farage. He is the electorate’s last hope. After him the flood!
July 25, 2025
He certainly appears to become more of a weathervane than a signpost. There are pro’s and con’s to both.
Where he does well is listening to, identifying with many voters concerns, helped by voters having lost faith in both the traditional major parties. If he could actually deliver in government (and with a decent majority) is entirely unknown. Will voters care? We will see
July 25, 2025
He is a narcissist. He specialises in reading the room and saying what is popular.
The problem is that when in Government the people in the room are the blob, so he reads the room and does what is popular.
We had a definitive demonstration from Johnson-the-Destroyer.
July 25, 2025
Indeed. Funny how politicians like the FPTP system when it suggests they will win power.
Personally, the approach of regional PR that was in place for the EU parliamentary elections seemed a good balance in reflecting voter desires and national voting trends whilst giving local MPs.
July 25, 2025
The downside of the form of PR used for MEPs was that it was based on a list system where the party decided the list order.
Much better to use the STV system that Northern Ireland uses for everything except Westminster and Scotland uses for local government. STV gives each area a number of local MPs elected by the voters in that area and proportional to the preferences of the voters in that area.
However, the party machineries aren’t keen on giving up their power of patronage and handing it over to us voters.
July 26, 2025
We gave our power of patronage to the Party machines. We must reclaim it.
July 25, 2025
@Richard1 – in that respect it is a good thing for him. He would be wise to consider that was 2TK’s position in the run up to the election, keep quite, say nothing – then wreak havoc.
If he keeps quiet he will then storm through simply by being ‘none of the others’
July 25, 2025
Good. Frankly with his experience of Europarl I never understood why he supported PR, other than its role in providing a platform for minority parties. He did understand that in Europe the real power was in the Berlaymont and the Council of Ministers, and I’m sure he understands now that in the UK power is held by the judiciary, quangocracy and civil service, with Brussels and other foreign bodies creeping back in as dictators, with Parliament having a subsidiary rubber stamping role for the most part.
Power within political parties is controlled by very narrow cliques – including in Reform itself of course. He sees himself as a benevolent dictator there, which makes it difficult for him to attack the cliques that control other parties. He needs to find a way out of that straightjacket, as well as devising effective plans for countering “the blob”.
July 25, 2025
The advantage of the first-past-the-post electoral system is that there is a close one-MP/constituency relationship. The electors vote for the candidate that represents the party and the PM that they wish to run the country. The FPTP system is easily understood and familiar to the electorate
Usually one party wins the election, which means they get five years to put their manifesto plans into action. FPTP does encourage tactical voting (or people not bothering to vote) as they think their vote will have little chance of helping elect their candidate. Or that they do not wish to vote for the incumbent MP but cannot brook voting against them.
Despite the endless, stupid soundbites from the dreadful Nigel Farage and his 3-MP Reform flunkeys, because of the FPTP electoral system there is very little chance of them winning the next election. Farage, who has taken to attending functions surrounded by a phalanx of burly minders, clearly cannot manage his own MPs, let alone the country.
The Lib Dems, on the other hand, have long mastered the technique of targeting specific constituencies and so their minor national vote percentage of 11% translates into 72 seats.
July 25, 2025
Good summary.
However Farage will win the next election.
July 25, 2025
In order for Nigel Farage to win the next election, he will need the right-wing to unify behind him and his party. Reform UK will have to do nothing less than absorb the complete voter base of the Conservative Party, while the left-wing vote is split into smaller splinters between opposing parties, now including Jeremy Corbyn’s new party. As we have been seeing in local elections and even opinion polls, the Conservatives are in no danger of losing their voter base, so Reform is unlikely to win a majority. Furthermore, while Reform is having some success at courting former Conservatives and welcoming them into its fold, there are others, dyed-in-the-wool Tories such as Jacob Rees-Mogg, that will never leave the Conservative Party.
Reform will also have to defend a track record of being in local government by the time of the next General Election. Thus far, that track record isn’t looking like it will be a distinguished one. In my neck of the woods, the Reform council leader has quit after less time than Liz Truss was in office; there is news of by-elections in other councils as a result of Reform councillors stepping down after similarly short tenures, and of their seats being regained by other parties (most notably the Conservatives) as people are not best pleased about having to go to the polls again so soon, and are turning back to hard-working tried-and-tested councillors whom they know will get on and work hard for them. I have seen Reform councillors go to pieces when asked penetrating questions about serious issues (for that matter I have seen Farage himself respond to similar questions with “I don’t know”) because these issues are a world apart from the usual Reform rhetoric about stopping boats, leaving the ECHR (etc.) and I have seen the new leader of a Reform-led council seeking to spend £200k on a political advisor because at the tender age of 19 he has no answers (so much for cutting wasteful spending). Reform is going to have to do a lot better than that, frankly.
July 26, 2025
You are not me. Can I ask, as a long time poster, that you add an identifier to mark us as distinct people? Mark B did this and now has a distinct and recognisable contribution. Equally, those who are familiar with my contributions here over the years can easily identify them (including Sir John himself), and can react (or ignore!) as they see fit.
July 25, 2025
I wouldn’t go quite as far as saying Nigel Farage is dreadful. His objectives are a lot better than the alternatives.
My misgivings about Reform is that they will turn out to be inadequate and just continue the same trend of poor government, even if they don’t fall apart with internal disagreements in the meantime.
I’d like to see someone of inspiration, integrity and intelligence running this country. Unfortunately in our world sweet gentlemen don’t get far in politics.
July 25, 2025
I think the issue for Reform is that they are very diverse bunch of people who want to disrupt the system but have many different thoughts on how to actually do that. They take in members and support from right across the political spectrum. It could be very hard for them to find enough ground to consistently agree on and not have significant internal squabbles
July 25, 2025
@Dave Andrews – his advantage he is ‘not the others’
July 25, 2025
‘They vote for the party and PM they wish to run the country’
As often as not they vote against the party they don’t want rather than for one they do want. We end up in the mire regardless.
July 25, 2025
The latest poll as evaluated by Electoral Calculus shows Reform would have 436 MPs and a majority of 222. If Corbyn’s party starts splitting the Labour vote that would only increase.
July 25, 2025
Opinion polls must always be taken with a hefty dose of salt. They do not reflect a large swathe of the population, nor do they allow for local variations of which there are always plenty to be found in every election – for instance, they didn’t see Putney swinging from Conservative to Labour in 2019, and they had Warwick returning to the Conservatives in that same election, when in fact Labour held the seat. A Reform majority of 222, if not impossible, is massively unlikely.
July 26, 2025
That’s confusing, as you are not me: please choose a way to make yourself distinct. However I would suggest that it is vanishingly unlikely that the government would be able to secure a second term (other than by making themselves dictators that cancel democracy), and the Conservatives are likewise destined to remain in opposition for at least another term. The next election is Reform’s to lose.
Examples of forecasts of individual constituencies, like any forecast based on subsamples come with huge error margins: only a specific constituency poll is going to provide a more accurate answer. National polls work by trying to replicate national population proportions in their samples and adjusting for variations in the actual sample. The statistical margin of error at a given probability for vote shares is proportional to the inverse square root of the sample size if the sample is properly constructed, usually quoted at 3% for a sample of 1,000 and 2.1% for 2,000. Multiple polls, especially conducted by different organisations, help to narrow the uncertainties and identify sampling methodology problems.
Voting models like Electoral Calculus benefit from the fact that local variations that might swing a particular constituency tend to cancel out when taken across all constituencies. Unless specifically modelled, they will fail to capture particular local dynamics like the IKKH that held Wyre Forest. They rely on estimating how previous voting may change given national trends. They have two sources of uncertainty: the uncertainty in the polling input, and the uncertainty of the model of demographic vote change. They try to keep up to date by assessing local elections and other factors, and models get a major overhaul after each election.
When it comes to a general election the projections based on an exit polling sample of about 10,000 (still with an error margin of 1%) are usually not very far out in terms of seats. The models will be less accurate if there are large numbers of 3 and 4 way marginals. We already have the recent Labour landslide (and 2001) to show that a huge majority can be earned on a low vote share when votes for other parties are split.
Reply No poll today can tell us the likely result of a general election in 2028/9. We do not even know yet which parties will contest it. Advance? Your party? Greens in every seat? Pro Palestine party? Who will leading each of the parties?
August 3, 2025
Replying with a secondary initial that I hope will differentiate between us Marks… These arguments hold much water, though I reckon that Reform are likely to find themselves quite a way short of a majority at the next election – or perhaps they might be kingmakers, though on ideological grounds the only kind of government they are likely to help into power would be a Conservative one. Not that they would make easy bedfellows, as Reform are positioning themselves as the ‘real’ Conservatives and hold the previous Conservative government in contempt for its perceived failings on Brexit and immigration.
July 25, 2025
Switzerland introduced PR in a gradual process, starting because of nearly 50 years of sporadic post-election unrest following many deeply unfair election results of the type we have just experienced here. It was first adopted (by referendum) by the cantons for local elections (1891 onwards) and finally (after 3 national referendums) was used in national elections from 1919.
With more Parties, are we heading for more unfair election results through FPP? It smarts for us now, could we withstand 50 years of the same?
The Swiss have used referendums since the middle ages. Nowadays national ones are triggered under the constitution for various issues (e.g. mandatory if the government wants to join a supranational institution), there are also local ones, and “initiatives” (triggered by 100 000 signatures) that can introduce or change legislation. The result of all this is that legislation can’t be decided in a Zurich “Westminster bubble”; politicians know that they need widespread support in the country for what they want to do.
This is what is needed in the UK: an injection of direct democracy via mandatory and popular referendums which cannot be prevented or ignored by local and national politicians. Our electoral system doesn’t matter too much (only 45% of Swiss bother to vote in federal elections) if we the people have referendums to remind our elected “representatives” about who is in charge.
July 25, 2025
We’ve had 3 general elections in the last 20 years where the “majority” party secured little more than 1/3 of the votes cast – 2005 (35.2%), 2015 (36.9%) and 2024 (33.7%).
July 25, 2025
It’s a sign of the state of flux of the existing parties. FPTP has a history of brutally eliminating failed parties – see e.g. the Liberals in the inter war years, or Conservatives in Canada in the 1990s.
Where things get really difficult is where you have sharp ethnic/tribal/religious social divides. See for example Northern Ireland, India immediately post War, Ukraine, Nigeria. That is unfortunately a future we may face in GB.
July 25, 2025
Northern Ireland uses STV for all their elections except Westminster.
July 25, 2025
Those are good results. Thatchers landslides were in the region of 42% of the vote.
July 25, 2025
42% is still a comfortable minority.
July 25, 2025
Wanderer : “This is what is needed in the UK: an injection of direct democracy via mandatory and popular referendums which cannot be prevented or ignored by local and national politicians.”
I completely agree.
July 25, 2025
I agree.
Furthermore if a government wishes to change the voting system to some version of Proportional Representation there should be another Referendum first and I suspect the result would be the same as last time (because PR is more complicated and because British people don’t like working out which of the parties they didn’t vote for they think is least bad).
July 25, 2025
Also see “Conservatives must recapture Thatcher’s courage” David Starkey’s recent excellent keynote lecture at The Margaret Thatcher Centre.
July 25, 2025
The Not-a-Conservative-Party used their majorities to ignore the wishes of their own electorate and the “promises” they made to them.
Labour is now using its huge majority to work in the interests of Global Quangos, foreign countries and criminal migrants. They are effectively overturning the largest truly democratic vote the country ever had – the EU Referendum.
Between them they’ve completely wrecked the economy, our social cohesion and pretty much everything else – including our children’s future.
FPTP only works when you have Political Parties which work in the interests of the British people (not the UN, WEF, EU) and which at least TRY to keep their Manifesto promises, not do the exact opposite as soon as the ink is dry on the ballot papers.
Isn’t that a novel idea.
July 25, 2025
All parties will tell you they work in the interests of the British people. They are no more right or wrong or one eyed as you are. It’s called politics.
July 25, 2025
How does PR work when you have the same parties with the same attitude and a few more even more malevolent?
The problem is that the party machines choose the MPs. In PR those who pay the most are highest on the party list – that’s how Farage ran UKIP.
How does PR improve the completely different problem?
July 25, 2025
That’s why you want a system like STV where there are no party lists and the voters get to choose.
July 25, 2025
Voters don’t know the candidates.
I do not vote for mayors etc because I have no idea who they are.
Selection committees work for weeks to assess candidates.
July 25, 2025
Under STV, typically, between 3 and 5 people are elected from each constituency, so that is how many each party typically puts on the ballot paper. Not much different from many council wards where there are all-out elections. Have a look at a GE in the Republic of Ireland. STV is the system they use.
If you have an idea of which party (or parties) policies you prefer, then all you have to do is decide which of their candidates you most want to support and rank them highest. It’s up to each candidate to try and win your support and preference.
July 25, 2025
Donna : “The Not-a-Conservative-Party used their majorities to ignore the wishes of their own electorate and the “promises” they made to them.”
Correct, which is why we need to move to referendums on major issues the results of which our political parties, civil service and judiciary are unable to ignore.
July 25, 2025
The prime function of a general election is to enable us to vote out an unpopular government. First past the post achieved this very efficiently in dismissing the previous Conservative one.
July 25, 2025
Bang on!
Imagine May for instance, remaining in government no matter how we voted?
July 25, 2025
She effectively did.
July 25, 2025
She’s gone! Did not like the back benches.
July 25, 2025
@Lyn Atkinson. But imagine May carried, but unable to sell us out because we had the power to call on more referendums to stop her from doing what she did.
July 25, 2025
She was stopped! Did you not notice?
5 times she prepared to bring her treasonous Bill to the House.
Twice she withdraw because she knew she would lose.
Three time JR and company defeated her.
There could be no better outcome.
July 25, 2025
“The big reason to drop the policy is PR in a 4-5 party system will usually result in no party having a majority.” Much truth in this but on the other hand with “first past the post” you often cannot even vote for the party you want without wasting your vote. Usually only two or perhaps three candidate have any chance.
So votes are distorted even before the counting of them which then distorts them even more. Parties that have regional support such as the Libdims, SNP or Muslim parties get huge over representation.
More Direct democracy is the only real democracy (and with a serious recall system) this gives some real power to voters rather than promise one thing do the reverse as we have had for as long as I have lived. Read the last few years of Manifestos and look at the appalling policies that were actually delivered.
July 25, 2025
Why have a ‘recall system’ or MPs at all if you are going to have direct democracy.
Look at the first Roman Republic, which had a Senate but the whole population was ‘the commons’. That is direct democracy. They lost it to the dictator Sulla – who had an army!
Are we all going to pay ourselves to research and vote every night?
July 25, 2025
@LL +1. More direct democracy means the politicians can’t enact truly unpopular laws, or if they do, the demos can via referendum undo the legislation.
July 25, 2025
PR is the least urgent matter for any incoming party in the UK. An indication that it would be examined is sufficient for a manifesto. The most jmportant task for any incoming government is to return power and decision making to Parliamsnt from the unelected quangocracy and the civil service. Hire and fire power plus fhe freedom to introduce expertise from outside are essential reforms. The removal of the seedbed of emasculating legislation from Blair and the EU are a parallel priority. These castles of undemocratic control must be removed with pre prepared legislation in the first 50 days. So fast that the wet hand of unelected socialism does not know what has hit it. It is a plague of negativity that has infected all arms of government so democratic politics must reverse it, a la Trump. Other than Reform, no party of the current MPs in Parliament would support it, so the only way forward for UK recovery is an overall Reform majority in 2029 or earlier should the present excuse for a government implode.
July 25, 2025
Well said. Another priority must be to dismantle the corrupted Postal Voting system and make the Muslim Block Vote extremely difficult to maintain.
July 25, 2025
The Muslims will still block vote.
The question is when will the English block vote?
July 25, 2025
agricola :
Agreed. All the HR legislation which is essentially anti-democratic because it gives power to the minorities over the majority, needs to be repealed.
July 25, 2025
PR does not work for the benefit of voters. If you want a clear cut government you have to have one party come out on top. I wish there was another system which was fairer but there is not. We do not want compromise with parties teaming up to run the country as happens in Germany. Look at The Netherlands where they have worked the system to suit themselves, not what was voted for. The corrupt one there has landed up with the NATO job after being thrown out but the voters have not got what they voted for.
July 25, 2025
More direct democracy is needed and then voters can actually steer the bus themselves. This rather than electing a committee of largely dishonest liars once every five years – who will usually do the complete reverse of what they promised to do to get elected.
Once elected the voters are largely ignored or even kicked in the teeth for years until the next election. Instead we get government by crooks, vested interests, payers of MP “consultants” and thus suffer mad policies like net zero, rip off energy, open door low skilled legal and illegal immigration, HS2, over taxation & over regulation of everything, the Chagos scam…The vested interests buy these policies.
July 25, 2025
Do we want the voters to drive the bus or politicians guided by vested interests, “consultancy” fees, vested interests, party donations and indirect or even direct bribes to have power!
How is the sick joke £multi-million Covid Inquiry coming on? Any criminal actions or investigations against the evil “expert” pushers of the highly damaging Covid Vaccines yet? Now that the evidence of this damage is totally overwhelming?
July 25, 2025
You think those who pose the questions will be more benign than those who coalesce to give no alternative to the electorate on Net Zero etc.?
Who will count? £50million or so a vote. How much will Governing cost?
July 25, 2025
Online voting with modern IT could be virtually free to run. We vote every day in the commercial sector when we choose what and what we do not buy at the shops or on line. Alas with state other monopolies or rigged markets we get virtually no votes or control and hence the NHS, state schools, the BBC… are all rather dire!
July 25, 2025
Yes that is certainly the easiest way to gerrymandering the count.
Touching how much faith people have in ‘computers’.
Know that computers do what the programmer commands, something like
Goto Every second conservative vote add to ‘Labour’.
The nice thing is that once the count is over you can remotely remove that line of coding.
Yes that is the fastest way to enslavement, and the slaves screaming for their own chains.
July 26, 2025
The flaw in your argument is that since at least the 1980s all coding whether it appears in the final code or not is kept in the parallel history file. That was introduced as a tool to help multiple developers working on the same piece of code.
But maybe your coding history dates back to before the more modern languages … pre-80s ? Even before? CDC?
July 25, 2025
@Linda Brown. Nor does FPP work in the interest of a majority of voters, as we found out. But if we had the power to have popular referendums, the system that put our representatives in place wouldn’t really matter. We the people would have the final say at any point during a parliament.
July 25, 2025
“Any party wanting a share in government has to abandon their Manifesto”. As the Conservatives and Labour have amply demonstrated over the past several elections that happens under the current FPTP voting system too.
The LibDems are foolish to want PR because would be the biggest losers. They are under the delusion the vote split would remain the same. It wouldn’t. The LibDems get a lot of tactical votes in seats where one of the two big parties have no chance of winning – for example they get Labour switchers in solid Conservative seats. Under PR tactical voting disappears, you just vote for which ever party you prefer. The LibDem vote would collapse. Small extremist parties like the Greens and Corbyn’s new party would do well, as would a new radical Muslim party which would surely be formed and get 5-10% of the seats.
July 25, 2025
We sacked the Tories for their betrayal and we look minded to destroy the Labour Party for the same manifesto betrayal.
You suggest embracing manifesto betrayal as an integral part of the voting contract?
The Lib Dem’s were coalition partners. Didn’t they do well?
Imagine the Mozlem Party, Corbyn’s Party, Queers for Gaza Party all in coalition. All very concerned about the British😂
August 3, 2025
Please forgive me for what may seem a stupid question, but what exactly is the ‘Mozlem’ Party?
I can readily understand why you have issues with the Conservatives, Labour, the Liberal Democrats, Greens, Corbyn etc. – everyone except Reform, it seems, and that’s fair enough. However, can you be sure, especially in light of their number including several of the very Conservatives that were rejected at the 2024 ballot boxes, that they won’t renege on their Contract with the People if circumstances force that? And do you expect that it would be Reform UK once and for all to govern the country, or are you willing to accept that the older parties are bound to mount a more serious come-back effort if they lose to Reform? I would note Boris Johnson’s recent assertions via GB News interview, that the best response to Nigel Farage is to ignore him and the Conservative Party is by no means finished. The Conservatives have gone down to some serious defeats before – 1997, 1906 – ditto Labour in 1983 and 2019 – but they have always had a subsequent rebuilding and electoral victory. Usually it has been at each other’s expense, but I imagine they will each fight all the harder if they have to wrestle power back from Reform.
July 25, 2025
It’s not entirely true that there is no tactical voting under PR. All voting systems have incentives for an element of tactical voting, particularly when multiple issues are at stake. The game under PR becomes guessing the compromises that diffrent coalitions might make or refuse in power.
July 25, 2025
I don’t think the PR lobby s that strong in the Reform support camp. From my personal involvement the mood on the Reform street is, ‘you have to win the match by the rules that are in play’.
With that in mind and with a solid 30% polling return Reform are more than likely to win an outright majority at the next election.
Well I say that but must bear in mind Labour may introduce voting rights for nursery age children by proxy legitimately carried out by a parent as the two year olds can’t yet reach the pen to vote…..
July 25, 2025
It was very inclusive of Farage to give Fiona Lali, National Coordinator for the Revolutionary Communist Party, an opportunity to explain their policies yesterday, which include theft of personal property.
Ms Lali who, in the tradition of all rabid left-wingers refused to answer questions and simply ranted her nonsense, has now joined Corbyn and Sultana’s new Party and that is going to have a detrimental effect on Two-Tier’s Labour Party.
July 25, 2025
All the children will vote for Reform whatever their age.
July 25, 2025
I have only seen messy outcomes from PR.
First past the post would work if the winning government remembered that the majority wins and the minority loses.
Since the 1990’s, governments have been trying to please various minorities at the expense of the majority which defeats the whole point of democracy.
July 25, 2025
Every single party UK government in my lifetime has been put there by a minority af the expense of the majority. That’s what FPTP does.
July 25, 2025
The current system doesn’t work. The system offered by the coalition, wouldn’t work. Clearly a better system needs to be devised. It won’t be of course, because the Uniparty like the current system of swapping between each other every few years. Though currently that is looking less likely. However four years is a long time in politics.
As for manifesto’s. If the current governments is anything to go buy, they’re worthless too.
July 25, 2025
OA :
The Uniparty has come about because Parliament is not longer in charge. Our laws and policies are now decided by unelected, unchanging civil servants, quangos, institutions, regulators and of course lawyers and judges. So for a long time it hasn’t really mattered for whom you vote the result is the Far Left which bcomes more emboldened when the red side of the Uniparty has a majority.
July 25, 2025
I agree, we don’t need a change to our voting system, and if we did, I would not trust politicians to do it. We need changes in parliamentary behaviour including abandoning that ridiculous spectacle of Prime Ministers question time which is not productive but makes us an international laughing stock.
July 25, 2025
‘Proportional representation’ means coalitions. Coalitions mean the minority gets to rule the majority, that’s not democracy.
The flaw is to perceive representation can only come from ‘Gangs’ the so-called religious freaks that call them selves Political Parties. Which Political religion has all the answers? None of them. Rule should not be a top down arrangement but a bottom up, the best candidate to represent you and yours, and its community doesn’t come from a gang leader parachuting in someone loyal to them the gang boss, but someone who is selected and represents, then supports a constituency and then the country.
We see no representation, of those that we empower and pay because the system fights against it, proportional representation doesn’t achieve what is envisaged by those that promote it, it just compounds the situation.
July 25, 2025
Could anyone say that, Starmer, Davey, Badenoch, Denyer & Ramsay (Who?) or Farage, reflects you, your constituency or what the Country needs? How would a coalition of any of them work, when it would be the smallest party controlling the largest through a coalition?
Democracy is not the minority in charge but by consensus of the majority, just because our parliament fights that doesn’t mean it is not the right direction
July 25, 2025
FPTP means the minority get to rule the majority. The current government were supported by just 33.7% of those who voted.
The only time in my lifetime that the government secured more than 50% of the votes was actually the 2010 coalition.
PR does not necessarily mean coalitions. That is only the case if none of the parties are capable of coming up with a set of policies which can appeal to a majority of those who vote. Under FPTP, they know they don’t have to try.
July 25, 2025
“PR does not necessarily mean coalitions”
Oh come off it Peter.
Just look at elections where countries have PR systems.
July 25, 2025
The SNP won a single party majority in the 2011 Holyrood election, so it is possible if a party appeals to enough of the voters.
July 25, 2025
So one then.
July 25, 2025
Can you give some examples to prove the point that FPTP is always the best voting system. Thanks in advance for not telling me to do my own research. For once, work a bit 😉
And possibly (I am asking much) consider that with FPTP both the Labour and Conservative Parties have within their ranks MPs who cannot see each other in the same room, eg why has the best Chancellor we have never had been outside any shadow or real government since 02/2000?
July 25, 2025
I see our resident lefty headmaster is back demanding we all do our homework and post long Harvard reference essays.
PS
I didn’t say FPTP was the best voting system.
You made that up hefner.
I just gave an example of the weakness of PR
July 26, 2025
I can give you the proof you require Hefner.
FPTP producers winners with a chance to prove their manifesto is best.
If they fail, we sack them.
PR – any version you choose, does not achieve either of those two critical objectives.
July 25, 2025
@Martin in Bristol – yes look at them Scotland & Wales
July 25, 2025
Only a fool thinks that the divided opposition are a ‘majority’.
The person with the most votes is the winner. You want the other 7 candidates to assume the seat – alternating on each day of the week?😂
RP is designed for coalitions of losers to thwart the majority of voters. It is a system guaranteed to give nobody what they wanted. It produces nothing but losers.
In fact RP can be defined as being government for losers, by losers.
July 25, 2025
Representative democracy is dead anyway no matter what the electoral system: A hotel right in the centre of Leamington Spa is to be used for channel migrants. Gutless politicians are destroying even our nicest towns and there’s absolutely nothing voters can do about it.
July 25, 2025
Until the next General Election. Then they can.
July 25, 2025
Time the nicest towns and nicest ladies understood the problem.
Cheer up!
July 25, 2025
This seems less a piece on opposition parties and more one on PR Sir John.
I like first past the post but I do think that the winning candidate should have more than 50% of the vote. So I would tweak the system slightly by making voting compulsory (but open to fewer people than Labour would allow), introducing a “none of the above” option and introducing the single transferable vote so that a second preference is voted for by each voter.
This increases the chances of minority parties getting a reasonable vote share in the first round and voters can then vote for a mainstream party as their second preference.
If after second preferences are counted no one has 50% of the vote, we go again.
July 25, 2025
We carry on ‘engineering’ and gerrymandering votes until someone has 50%?
Do you not understand that if I am a Conservative I don’t want my vote at any time to support a Liberal Democrat?
I have 1 ‘preference’. If I don’t get that because the majority don’t share m6 preference, I’m on the losing side.
July 25, 2025
Under FPTP, there’s no connection between being in the majority and being on the winning side. In 2015, the SDLP won Belfast South with 24.5% of the votes.
July 25, 2025
You will only get over 50% if there are only 2 parties standing.
The more parties there are…
July 25, 2025
That’s a pretty simplistic view Sam. In Russia (and elsewhere) there had been elections with more than two candidates and the winner had more than 50%+1 votes. Eg, Putin in March 2024 got 87.24%, Kharitonov, Davankov and Slutsky were between 4.31 and 3.20%.
QED
July 25, 2025
Well everything is “simplistic” to you hefner because you are the most incredible academic on here.
PS
So Russia is your very best contrary example.
Rather poor I reckon
July 26, 2025
Sam, What is rather poor is that you write comments without thinking first. And I find utterly funny your use of academic as an insult …
July 26, 2025
What is poor hefner, is the sneering superior tone in your posts.
Just shouting prove it everyime people post is ridiculous.
If Peter wants governments with more than 50% for the winning party then his choice of PR makes that much less likely.
It is a simple concept as you said yourself.
ps
I didn’t use the word academic as an insult.
Again you are not reading what I said.
July 25, 2025
In Belfast South 24.5% represented the majority in that case. No other party got more.
July 25, 2025
No. 24.5% was the largest minority, not a majority.
July 26, 2025
You are indeed on the losing side.
July 25, 2025
NS :
You’re essentially describing AV, the system for which we should have voted when we had the chance. AV maintains the good FPTP idea that there is a single elected representative for the constituency but ensures that the winning candidate obtains 50% or more of the vote. This means AV prevents a constituency electing a candidate who does not represent their views through a split vote, an outcome which can never be described as democratic.
July 26, 2025
AV only gives a majority to the votes still being counted. Where candidates get knocked out and their voters offer no lower ranked alternative they are ignored in the rest of the count. Some voters may also not get their opinion entirely reflected – e.g. had I known that the final runoff would be between A and B, rather than between B and C, I would have voted for B although I prefer C in order to try to block A.
July 25, 2025
Off Topic.
A record number of farms were forced to close for good this year after Rachel Reeves’s tax raid made the future of thousands of rural businesses unviable. A total of 6,365 agriculture, forestry and fishing businesses have closed over the past year, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the highest since quarterly data was first published in 2017.
The majority of these closures took place during the first six months of the year after Ms Reeves, the Chancellor, announced in October that she would cut the amount of inheritance tax relief available to family farms.
July 25, 2025
The law is not exclusive to agriculture. They had an ‘opt-out’ form the disaster that is inflicted on all business owners.
July 25, 2025
Where else is business asset value so high compared to profit generated (as in family owned farms)?
In fact some farms merely make enough to pay ‘staff/owners’ minimum wage, profit is rare.
July 26, 2025
Exactly, because the assets are artificially inflated by tax exemptions. Therefore it’s nearly impossible to wrest a return from each inflated acre.
The tax exemptions must be removed so city types don’t buy up farmland. Then farme4s 2ill be able to afford it and return a profit.
July 25, 2025
Just a thought that will certainly go against the grain .
Perhaps the answer is in who we allow to vote, rather than the system itself.
If only income tax payers were allowed to vote, perhaps, just perhaps, we may not get Political Parties offering to increase tax free Benefits to all and sundry in exchange for a vote.
We may then just get people voting for Parties who put forward far more sensible financial ideas and policies.
Yes sounds a bit drastic disenfranchising many in the Country, but is it worthy of consideration ??????
July 25, 2025
For those who think this is grossly unfair, Tax all Benefits, then fewer would be disenfranchised !
July 25, 2025
I’m all for a Qualified Franchise. You should be a contributor. He who pays the Piper should call the tune.
No foreign family should get a vote for 5 consecutive generations of net contributors.
July 26, 2025
What about True British families for at least five generations who might subsequently have left the narrow path of righteousness and gone astray to foreign countries, eg South Africa, or even worse have married a non-Brit? In your Qualified Franchise how long will those deviants be deprived of voting rights?
July 26, 2025
They still have their heritage – that cannot be taken away.
July 26, 2025
Graham is correct Hefner. Remember South Africa was a dominion – a part of Britain. In fact we called it ‘County Natal’.
Funnily enough (you can look it up) there was almost no intermarriage between the ‘English’ and ‘Afrikaaners’ of continental heritage, we like keeping our distance – you might have noticed!
God makes Englishmen Hefner, not aeroplanes and government certificates.
July 27, 2025
Do you believe that Joseph of Arimathea brought the Holy Grail to England, to Glastonbury, much before the Saxon invasion? And what about King Arthur?
July 25, 2025
As spot gold and silver flirt with fresh all time highs, their price drivers right now is the astronomical US government debt – and the Trump administration’s truly bizarre claim that the American debt is “big and beautiful”
Central banks and sovereign wealth funds are horrified. They are racing to diversify into gold (and now silver) to hedge against the debt madness. Numerous central banks are buying gold bullion as soon as it is refined from the mines. Central banks worldwide are on track to buy 1,000 metric tons of gold in 2025, which would be their fourth year of massive purchases as they diversify reserves from dollar-denominated assets into bullion (source: World Gold Council)
These purchases have coincided with a blistering gold rally during the past two years, which saw prices nearly doubling from around $1,800/oz. to the current $3,400 level. This year alone, gold has gained more than 26% and set multiple records, including a new all-time high of $3,500 in mid-April.
What is obviously driving the gold price is the systemic collapse in the value of the dollar, when measured against a basket of other developed world currencies. Paying the interest on the world’s insane national debts is causing central banks to print money. This is not going to end well. Fortunately, governments cannot print gold.
July 25, 2025
Donald Trump has been stockpiling gold and intending to return to the gold standard. This is a far better system and America would still be in the driving seat. About 2% per annum maximum feasable increase in gold production – more stability and a proper check on fiat money.
July 25, 2025
Unfortunately the global stock of gold ceased to be adequate to support a monetary system by the time of the Smithsonian Agreement in 1971 when the dollar link to gold (at $38/oz) was abandoned. It is even less able to do so now with a much larger global population.
July 26, 2025
@Mark
Collateralising the world’s debt against a new gold standard would mean an ounce of gold would be re-valued at, say $50,000/oz. Or more. It’s precisely because gold cannot be printed by governments, like fiat currencies, that makes it the asset of last resort.
July 26, 2025
Maybe the old adage that when you owe the bank a little, they own you, when you owe enough to bust the bank…………………..
July 26, 2025
Gold has industrial uses. You would create serious problems in industry if you tried to do that. Besides, such an inflation in value would greatly skew wealth to existing holders and miners. It would not be acceptable,and would cause a huge upsurge in burglary for jewellery and even computer circuit boards. You have to get an element of global agreement. That would not happen. Gold will continue to have a role as a store of wealth, like a Picasso but that is all.
July 25, 2025
I like the FPTP system. Like most people in this country, I’m not a member of any political party and use my vote for the best candidate. I don’t care what colour rosette the candidate is wearing, just his/her character.
July 25, 2025
Dave
That is why I always voted for JR, only changed to another Candidate last year, when JR decided to stand down, otherwise he would have got my vote again.
July 26, 2025
several thousand of us thought the same.
July 25, 2025
@Dave Andrews – the other reflection, does any one see in single party demonstrating the best political religion for us all. There used to be good and bad in all philosophies, now there is just unified bad
July 25, 2025
Any change to the voting system must be approved by a supermajority in a referendum. It cannot be part of a manifesto to be accepted as part of a whole.
July 25, 2025
I like the Swiss method, where important decisions are put to the people via a referendum. So things like the Chagos deal and the EU reset could be stopped by the people. This would prevent the corruption we now see being carried out by our Government.
July 25, 2025
Who decides what’s important?
July 26, 2025
Come on, who decides what’s important in the present Westminster system? Even a petition to Parliament receiving 100k+ signatures is hardly addressed (see petition.parliament.uk).
July 26, 2025
So you agree that the Blob would decide.
No good enough.
July 26, 2025
Agree – strange that our politicians are afriad of referendum and democracy
July 25, 2025
No changes to the voting system should be allowed without a referendum. We should have voted for AV when we had the chance. AV maintains the good FPTP idea that there is a single elected representative for the constituency but ensures that the winning candidate obtains 50% or more of the vote. This means AV prevents a constituency electing a candidate who does not represent their views through a split vote, an outcome which can never be described as democratic.
We also definitely need more referendums as Brexit showed. Certainly on the ECHR, immigration and Net Zero.
July 25, 2025
You can’t ’ensure The winning candidate gets 50%’.
That’s called gerrymandering.
They British people said so, in a referendum – it was direct democracy speaking loudly and clearly with a supermajority’.
ACCEPT THAT DECISION.
July 25, 2025
Definition of a supermajority is 60 or 66.6% of the expressed votes. I am surprised you don’t know that Lynn.
Eg in the USA a supermajority of two-thirds in both Houses of Congress is required for proposing a constitutional change.
July 26, 2025
Look up the result of the Referendum on PR Hefner.
You can apologise later.
July 30, 2025
Ref on PR yes, Brexit Ref no.
Should supermajority not have applied to any ref?
July 30, 2025
Hefner we signed the Treaty of Rome under illegal circumstances. There was not a supermajority to go in, why should there be a higher bar to get out than go in?
Anyway we were discussing the voting system, not the surrender of the nation to an alien fascist unelected unsackable entity.
Obviously I was speaking of the PR Referendum.
Are you above apology?
July 25, 2025
LA :
Of course I accept the referendum decision to keep FPTP and not move to AV. But freedom of thought allows me to believe that it was the wrong decsion. I do not understand your point that that “you cannot ensure the the winning candidate gets 50% of the vote”. The very definition of the AV system is that the candidate who gets 50% or more of the vote wins! So you cannot, get, for instance a winning candidate, who supports, say EU membership winning on 30% of the vote when 2 other candidates who support Brexit get 29% each. If AV is the system then one of these two candidates is very likely to get more than 50% when the AV transferable vote is counted. Surely anyway a candidate getting 50% or more of the vote when adding up the 1st and 2nd preferences is surely far more democratic than a pure FPTP system?
July 26, 2025
NO
July 25, 2025
Fears have been raised the government could cut the funding a council receives by more than £50m over the next three years. The Liberal Democrat administration at Wokingham Borough Council predicts it could lose £16m each year based on a new formula being proposed.
The Labour government is set to introduce a multi-year funding settlement for councils as part of the Fair Funding Review 2.0 consultation, external. The government was contacted for a comment, and previously said it would make £69bn of funding available to councils across England.
Wokingham Council leader Stephen Conway, said £50m over three years would be “a significant gap to plug”.
He said he had written to local government minister Jim McMahon asking for a guarantee that no councils would be left unable to deliver services.
So, the spend on services is all the Labour Government fault, eh?
July 25, 2025
I agree with your, Sir John.
Reform need to drop the daft idea of PR and go all out to win enough seats to form a government.
I hate coalitions because you end up with the worst of all worlds. The Conservative/LibDem government of 2010 was not a high water mark and I blame it for infesting the subsequent party with faux conservatives, leading to the collapse in support we see now.
Governments in Europe are generally weak, which suits the EU of course.
July 25, 2025
Dear Sir John,
The 2 1/2 party system has broken down because they had more in common with each other on some issues than with the electorate.
Now that we have more significant parties (which has been the case outside England for some time), there is a strong case for adopting the system used in France. In the most important elections there, any number of parties compete for the most votes but, unless one candidate has an unassailable lead, the top two slug it out in a run-off election a week later.
This has several advantages: challenger parties have a much fairer chance, tactical voting is unnecessary, extremists are unlikely to win, the principle of each MP representing one geographical community is preserved and each elected MP can justifiably claim the support of a majority of local electors.
In the debate ahead of the alternative vote referendum, the Electoral Reform Society suggested nearly a dozen different voting systems, some being weird and wonderful and at least one untried anywhere. But the list did not include the system regularly and quite successfully used by our near neighbour. When I queried this, the Society said that there was “no demand”.
The reason there was “no demand” was of course because all the alternatives are designed to favour the interests of the parties promoting them whereas the run-off vote gives more power to electors.
July 26, 2025
If you look at the political outcome in France I would suggest it is hardly a great success.
July 25, 2025
At the very least “None of the Above” should be on the ballot paper on all systems
July 25, 2025
Doing away with parties would a good start with the voters doing more work to elect their MP in their area.
I have never agreed with votting for a party and they can use your vote for what ?.
2 what ever his name is is working for the neo-cons for war with other at the moment who have out lawed farmers and other things the people do not like.
Thats what happens when you vote for party.
July 25, 2025
We DON’T vote for parties.we vote for people.ask who your Reform Candidate is – Farage does not know many of them.
July 26, 2025
endless weak criticism you must be terrified of political change! And I have nothing to do with Reform, but everything to do with overthrow of the other Parties.
July 25, 2025
225 criminals were illicitly shipped, into the UK yesterday on the 24th July from France……
July 25, 2025
fiddling whilst Rome burns:
encompassing the major part of my life.
1966:Uk population just under 55million.
Present population slightly short of 70million
’66 national and local government employees(excluding military)
just over 1.350 million.Come 2025 2.533+million
Population increase 39% National and local Gov. employees up 88%.
Where and with whom does the buck stop
July 25, 2025
+1
July 25, 2025
I agree that the last thing we should do is end up with politicians doing deals. It is corrupt when you change the system to help yourself and that includes lowering the voting age and importing your voters.
July 25, 2025
Trump lands in Scotland and calls the immigration problem out for what it is immediately…
Boy do we need someone like him in British public life…
I hope he is merciless with Starmer
July 25, 2025
and of course the bbc is censoring what trump actually said
and the new Internet laws are being used to try and silence news of the anti immigration protests on twitter…
we are living in a dystopian nightmare
July 26, 2025
Not just dystopian, more a classic path to full on dictatorship, youth indoctrination, rewriting history, media controlled information, presentation of leadership as heroes…..and of course suppression of truth!
July 26, 2025
yes indeed
July 26, 2025
+1
July 26, 2025
thanks
July 30, 2025
The current system is not democratic either, to quote you John.
Any party wanting a share in government has to abandon their Manifesto and promise to hammer out a compromise government programme with others. Voters are ignored as pledges are dumped.
The pledge of Brexit has not been delivered fully, and Labour has broken every promise made and the Conservatives’ did also, look at immigration, not as David Cameron promised down from the hundreds of thousands to the tens of thousands