General Election Pre-Thread (4 of 6)

[viivvaa66]

6 minutes ago, bickster said:

It's not

Prove that it couldn’t happen.

[Jon]

2 hours ago, limpid said:

A party led by a solicitor has "ruled it out". Let's take a look at that wording....

They aren't going to say anything before the election that might spook the people conned by Brexit. I'll be happy when they go back on this.

Which is entirely possible as Stamer has gone back on almost every promise/ pledge he made to become Labour leader. So I'm hoping he continues in that vein on many issues, as so far there's very little in the way of social progress on offer  

[bickster]

Just now, viivvaa66 said:

Prove that it couldn’t happen.

you'd need at least 5 parties on roughly equal share of the vote, a situation that has never happened and is highly unlikely to ever happen under FPTP in this country and even then they would need to be very specifically regionalised and in separate regions so as to create that situation.

It's bollocks

[Jon]

1 minute ago, viivvaa66 said:

Prove that it couldn’t happen.

You're right. We have a very undemocratic electoral system and 25% of the popular vote could indeed get you enough seats in Westminster to govern. 

It's highly unlikely, but theoretically possible.  Which again guess to show how shit FPTP is. 

[Jon]

Just now, bickster said:

you'd need at least 5 parties on roughly equal share of the vote, a situation that has never happened and is highly unlikely to ever happen under FPTP in this country and even then they would need to be very specifically regionalised and in separate regions so as to create that situation.

It's bollocks

But it is theoretically possible 

[viivvaa66]

5 minutes ago, bickster said:

you'd need at least 5 parties on roughly equal share of the vote, a situation that has never happened and is highly unlikely to ever happen under FPTP in this country and even then they would need to be very specifically regionalised and in separate regions so as to create that situation.

It's bollocks

Do you even know how the UK parliament election works?

In your scenario a party could win every seat with 25% of the votes, but that isn’t required to form a government, only a majority of seats is required, in other words 326 of 650 seats.

[bickster]

5 minutes ago, Jon said:

But it is theoretically possible 

Well no, not on any meaningful level, because if those conditions existed, we'd no longer be operating under FPTP, it would have to have been abandoned just on a practical level and you'd be running government with a three party (minimum) coalition

[The Fun Factory]

2 minutes ago, viivvaa66 said:

Do you even know how the UK parliament election works?

In your scenario a party could win every seat with 25% of the votes, but that isn’t required to form a government, only a majority of seats is required, in other words 326 of 650 seats.

Hasn't some of the northern ireland get won on a similar % of the vote due to the national/union split of the four main parties, plus the alliance?

[bickster]

2 minutes ago, The Fun Factory said:

Hasn't some of the northern ireland get won on a similar % of the vote due to the national/union split of the four main parties, plus the alliance?

Very much doubt it, most seats in NI are divided on sectarian lines. Belfast North, (I think) has the closest to equity and that is only recently (which is why it went to SF in 2019 for the first time - and because the Greens SDLP and Workers Party stood no candidate)

[ml1dch]

3 hours ago, ml1dch said:

The "aligning with the Tories" error is that the Tories are a single-minded homogenous blob.

PR would likely mean that the factions in the Tory party wouldn't have stuck it out as long as they have. It's one thing Damien Green and Caroline Noakes voting with Boris Johnson to give the Tories a victory over Jeremy Corbyn, it's a whole other world them voting to put a mish-mash of Faragists into power just to keep Keir Starmer out.

So it's probably a lot less than a third. 

To add further evidence to this:

 

[viivvaa66]

34 minutes ago, The Fun Factory said:

Hasn't some of the northern ireland get won on a similar % of the vote due to the national/union split of the four main parties, plus the alliance?

Spot on, Belfast South was won in 2015 with 24.5% of the vote.

[The Fun Factory]

If the Tories end up in a marriage with Farage that would consign them into opposition for a generation and give up the title of the party of government.

So I am all for it.

[Davkaus]

44 minutes ago, bickster said:

Well no, not on any meaningful level, because if those conditions existed, we'd no longer be operating under FPTP, it would have to have been abandoned just on a practical level and you'd be running government with a three party (minimum) coalition

You're just being stubborn here.

"It would never practically happen" is not a rebuttal to something being theoretically possible  

[bickster]

1 minute ago, Davkaus said:

You're just being stubborn here.

"It would never practically happen" is not a rebuttal to something being theoretically possible  

theortical is a nonsense in the context of this conversation.

But lets treat it as such

There have to be five parties in any seat for the winner to be the winner on 25%.

At least four of those parties must be of fairly equal standing otherwise the winner will rise above the 25% threshold almost by default

OK I'll concede its theoretically possible but it is still practically impossible. It's not an argument that should be put forward which was the point I was making in the first place.

[Davkaus]

2 minutes ago, bickster said:

 

There have to be five parties in any seat for the winner to be the winner on 25%.

At least four of those parties must be of fairly equal standing otherwise the winner will rise above the 25% threshold almost by default

 

This isn't actually true - if a party manages to win half of the seats, what happens in the others is basically irrelevant, as is the vote percentage. It could be 2 other parties that split the other seats between them (and those 2 other seats could also get half the remaining vote in our winner's seats), in this way you could have a GE winner on 25% with two losing parties that got 37.5% each.

I will leave it there before I get told off and told to make a "let's illustrate just how **** up FPTP is (theoretically and practically)" thread

[viivvaa66]

4 minutes ago, bickster said:

theortical is a nonsense in the context of this conversation.

But lets treat it as such

There have to be five parties in any seat for the winner to be the winner on 25%.

At least four of those parties must be of fairly equal standing otherwise the winner will rise above the 25% threshold almost by default

OK I'll concede its theoretically possible but it is still practically impossible. It's not an argument that should be put forward which was the point I was making in the first place.

Why do you continue on the idea that you need to win all 650 seats with 25%, it is totally different from winning a majority of 326 seats with 25%.

You already know that Labour won a majority with 35% in 2005. Did that mean that there three parties with equal standing in that election?

And how is 35% any better than 25% in a democracy? Are you really fine with 65% of the voters being ignored? Is Putin your last name?

[delboy54]

5 hours ago, cyrusr said:

Yeah he was the political advisor to Theresa May in the period when she called the 2017 general election (and subsequentially lost the majority). 

He is also a member of the Centre of Policy Studies (https://cps.org.uk/our-team/nick-timothy/) and Policy Exchange  (https://policyexchange.org.uk/author/nicktimothy/) which are two of the right wing "think tanks" on Tufton Street. These "think tanks" were in essence behind the "logic" of the Liz Truss' budget which pretty much broke the economy. 

So, yeah @bickster says, some Villa fans are words removed and he is very much one of them. He also looks really weird without a beard. 

 

Oh and I see that Matt Hancock was your former MP, that is rather unfortunate for you! Labour appear to be the choice on tactical voting on both Best for Britain and Stop the Tories should you wish for a non-Tory representation. 

But here is thing, what I don't understand is that Nick Timothy and Fiona Hall were blamed by the Tories as effectively causing the Tory government to lose an overall majority in the 2017 election with a very poor sound bite message to the electorate ("strong and stable government" - I think it was). So he has form of being out of his depth.

Wind the clock 7 years forward to 2024 and the tories seem to think he is now the ideal candidate in my constituency!

So he was sh*te in 2017 and was forced by the tories to resign in the debacle that followed, and now he is the ideal replacement to Matt Hancock.

I also found out that he has a regular column in the Daily Telegraph 

Whatever your political views this seems yet another example of rewarding failure.

[Wainy316]

Can the 25% debate please end with this thread at 5pm? 

[bickster]

1 hour ago, delboy54 said:

ut here is thing, what I don't understand is that Nick Timothy and Fiona Hall were blamed by the Tories as effectively causing the Tory government to lose an overall majority in the 2017 election with a very poor sound bite message to the electorate ("strong and stable government" - I think it was). So he has form of being out of his depth.

Wind the clock 7 years forward to 2024 and the tories seem to think he is now the ideal candidate in my constituency!

The local party selected Timothy, he was on a shortlist of a sitting MP (who only found a seat in the end of days mad scramble this month), an FT journalist and him

The local party selected him, I'm not sure thats the way the National Party would have wanted it to go 

[bickster]

There is one trend from the MRP polling across all companies and that is that the Tories seat numbers are significantly higher than in the normal polling

I think the second YouGov MRP of the election period is due out in a few minutes, the changes between their two will be interesting