Charlotte Church

[Loz]

PokerTime Wrote:

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> And let's remember that only 23.5% of the electorate voted for this miracle conservative majority. They don't

> represent 76.5% of the electorate at all

AAAAARRRGH. I hate this piece of brain-dead illogic, over and above the fallacious suggestion that this mythical 76.5% want the marchers to represent their views.

Caroline Lucas (whom I normally have a lot of respect for) tried it on with this yesterday on Twitter... until someone pointed out that over 70% of the Brighton Pavilion electorate didn't vote for her as MP, so was Lucas actually saying she didn't have a mandate as MP for the area. She ran away from that question pretty damn quickly.

[Louisa]

Absolutely Loz. The UK parliamentary system is what it is! plurality! Some of these people even claimed to have voted Tory at the election then had a eureka moment and decided to March against austerity. Sorry, but if you are as politically active as you so claim to be, you would have known damn well what the Tory plans were if elected and taken your vote elsewhere!

After the horse has bolted-itis seems to be contagious.

Louisa.

[Blah Blah]

But Loz, that poster does have a point. If you look at the political map, the urban areas are overwhelmingly Labour. The vast majority of the poorest and lowest paid live in urban areas. Coincidence? I think not. Our electoral system on the one hand can provide stable governemnt with the mandate of the people but on this occasion it is the government of the few. It's perfectly ok to say that and people will say that everytime Cameron says he has the mandate of the people.

Louisa, since when did celebrities stop being human beings and have to absolve themselves of having any views? Z list is your sneer, but you seem to think that fame means not having a voice and not being allowed to take interest in causes that you agree with. Yet another 'us and them' view from you?

[numbers]

Blah Blah Wrote:

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> But Loz, that poster does have a point.

Which poster would that be then?

[Louisa]

So Blah Blah, what do you intend to do about it then? Call another election? As I said, after the horse has bolted. Move on? And if you think celebrities do things just out of the 'good of their heart' you're living on another planet. I guess the publicity they receive isn't doing them any harm either is it?

Louisa.

[Loz]

> Our electoral system on the one hand can provide stable governemnt with the mandate of the people but on

> this occasion it is the government of the few. It's perfectly ok to say that and people will say that

> everytime Cameron says he has the mandate of the people.

Actually, that makes EVERY government in living memory the government of the few, but I didn't hear anyone on the left complaining during the Blair/Brown years.

You can fiddle about with voting percentages and spurious assumptions any way you want in order to try and prop up any ropey old argument you want to make. For instance, Tory, Lab, LD and UKIP all had similar forms of austerity in their manifestos, so you could argue that 87.8% of people who voted actually voted for austerity.

The main point I was making is trying to claim that the marchers represented each and every eligible voter that didn't vote Tory (me being one of them) is disingenuous in the extreme.

[Atticus]

So,Lou,Loz, did Lucas get reelected by some form of tired default? Hardly interrogative?

[Blah Blah]

So the campaign against the war and the huge demonstration that followed didn't happen Loz? Wasn't it that attack from the left that led to Blair's downfall? C'mon now. That aside, why would the left criticise a government that pumped money into public services after more than a decade of neglect from the previous Conservative government? That's what the left fights for (amongst other things). Better public services, better wages and equality of wealth for all. The conservatives believe only the free market can provide that but as we all know, the free market has never cared if people get education, healthcare, pension etc. So please forgive me for pointing out that that 23.5% is more remarkable than the usual 35% of a majority government. It's crap and you know it's crap.

And to say the other parties all had Ausrity too when none of the other parties were proposing anything on the scale of the Tories is BS too. EVERY other party wanted to abolish the bedroom tax for example, so lets argue that 87.8% voted for getting rid of that heinous piece of legislation for a start. I can list plenty more examples.....

Meanwhile the disabled are being hit with a mallet, millions need handouts from charity and foodbanks (caused by tory welfare reform and low wages) and the young are facing never being able to buy a home. In my sector, I have less and less resources and more and more patients in need, a good many of them made ill by hardship and welfare reform.

I don't know where you get this idea that the marchers were representing every person who didn't vote tory from. No-one has said that. All that has been said is that the vast majority of the population did not vote for the government we have now got. I didn't go to the March yesterday because I have young children and it would have been too much for them I think, but I absolutely support any voice that criticises the current thinking on who should pay the biggest price to fix the economy. It's all BS anyway. We all take on huge debts to buy houses, to go to university, buy cars or just about anything we want NOW! The Tories were the ones who brought us cheap credit and turned our economy into a consumer retail one. New Labour kept the gravy train going. It's totally hypocritical now to be telling us all that any kind of debt is bad.

[Atticus]

Blah Blah, Blair. Great post but let's not pretend Tony didn't buy in.

[Loz]

Blah Blah Wrote:

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> So the campaign against the war and the huge

> demonstration that followed didn't happen Loz?

> Wasn't it that attack from the left that led to

> Blair's downfall? C'mon now.

You are missing my point - I am talking about the stupid argument attacking the government for being non-representative because "more people didn't vote for it than did", when that applies to every UK government. It's about consistency. It's about not playing fast and loose with stats.

> And to say the other parties all had Ausrity too when none of the other parties were proposing anything on the

> scale of the Tories is BS too. EVERY other party wanted to abolish the bedroom tax for example, so lets argue that

> 87.8% voted for getting rid of that heinous piece of legislation for a start. I can list plenty more examples.....

Yeah, I think you completely missed the point I was making there, too.

[Otta]

Loz Wrote:

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> >

> Actually, that makes EVERY government in living

> memory the government of the few, but I didn't

> hear anyone on the left complaining during the

> Blair/Brown years.

>

To be fair, Blair in 97 (not that I voted for the grinning muppet) was pretty massive. Majority 10 times bigger than the current one.

[Blah Blah]

I accept your point on consistency Loz and don't disgree with it, but any government that gains power by such a low voting share is going to be open to criticism and Cameron did stand up in parliament and say his party had a mandate to govern from the people, to huge laughter from the opposition and me :D

[Louisa]

The system allows for strong majorities and weak ones. That's how it works. In 2005 Blair achieved a pretty large working majority on almost two million fewer votes than muppet man got back in May, and he's working with just a handful sized majority. That's how the system works! We had the opportunity to change it with electoral reform, people didn't want it. So the whole argument of the government wasn't elected by all the people is futile, it achieves nothing. It's not going to change anytime soon. We are where we are. Enough people voted for what we currently have to be elected, and we now have to wait for their majority to slip away so that we can change things in five years.

Louisa.

[Loz]

Government vote shares since Oct 74 election:

[pre]

1974 Labour 39.2

1979 Tory 43.9

1983 Tory 42.5

1987 Tory 42.2

1992 Tory 41.9

1997 Labour 43.2

2001 Labour 40.7

2005 Labour 35.2

2010 Coalition (Tory-36.4, LD-23.0)

2015 Tory 36.8

[/pre]

[Blah Blah]

No, electoral reform only offered us AV which is very different to PR. I voted no to AV but would have voted yes to PR. We don't know if the electorate want PR as they were never asked. And timing plays a role in these things too. You only have to look at the Scottish Independence referendum to understand that. Cameron wants to reduce the number of MPs by around sixty. You can bet that the boundary changes required to deliver that will be shaped entirely to the favour of his party (and yes all parties would do that). I think it's time for a system where every persons vote counts. Just because something has always been that way doesn't mean it should stay that way.

I sense a growing discontent with our politicians and system. The young are particularly impressive in their understanding of the future awaiting them, and they are in no mood to work and pay taxes to keep the over 65s in pensions and benefits while they can't even afford a pension or house etc. There is an antithesis to the free market selfish consumer individuality, developing in them. And you only have to look at how few of the parties offered any policies aimed at them to see why that alienation is developing.

[Blah Blah]

That's the precentage of those who voted Loz, not of the entire electorate.

http://www.ukpolitical.info/Turnout45.htm

Have a look at the chart on that link. Turnout dropped drastically from 2001.

And to be fair the 2005 Labour win has similar stats but lower turnout and yet they had 355 seats.

[Loz]

Blah Blah Wrote:

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> That's the precentage of those who voted Loz, not of the entire electorate.

True, but I couldn't be a**ed doing the calcs!

> Electoral reform only offered us AV which is very different to PR. I voted no to AV but would have voted yes to PR.

Australia use AV for the lower house and PR for the upper house. Works reasonably well. I've always thought PR's inability to deliver stable governments to be potentially problematic. But FPTP is probably the least democratic. AV is a useful compromise.

[Blah Blah]

I think you are right and there's no reason why the same system couldn't be successful here. Part of the problem is that the main parties are so used to having it all their way that it seems the art of compromise has been lost. Who says that one party government is the only way to strong government? If you really think about it, the best government is the mid ground when the voting share is so definitively split. Only where radical change is needed do coalitions become ineffective, but there is so little difference fiscally between our main parties at the moment that we don't need to worry too much about that.

[DaveR]

"That's the precentage of those who voted Loz, not of the entire electorate."

That's only a more valid comparison if you assume that of those who didn't vote, a disproportionate number would have opposed the present government. There's no evidence for that at all.

What we're seeing is London liberal left-wing denial - AKA why the rest of the country got it wrong, or how it can be argued that a government whose politics I disagree with is somehow less legitimate than one that I voted for. It's like calling yourself 'progressive'. It's wank.

[Otta]

London for independence!

[Louisa]

It's not the left who are at fault. It's the Guardian reading champagne socialist brigade who I blame. Sat in a cosy organic cafe in Islington spending a fiver on a coffee whilst moaning about the rest of the country not being intelligent enough to agree with them. These are the crazy nut jobs in my view, NOT the far left of the Labour Party who after all are the very people who created the movement and carried the torch for the working classes. The posh urban socialists are the disingenuous ones.

Louisa.

[Earl Aelfheah]

Louisa Wrote:

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> It's not the left who are at fault. It's the

> Guardian reading champagne socialist brigade who I

> blame. Sat in a cosy organic cafe in Islington

Either that's a very big cafe, or a very small group of people.

[Earl Aelfheah]

The whole 'champagne socialist' label is lazy.

If you're poor, you're accused of the 'politics of envy' and if you have money, you're called a champagne socialist -it's just a way of those who don't agree with other's political views, to shut down debate. It's playing the man instead of the ball.

It's perfectly legitimate to be on the left (or right) of politics, whatever your income.

[Louisa]

I tore up my membership of the Labour Party when Blair went against everything the party stood for to gain power. The greatest leader we never had was John Smith in my opinion, a man of principle and stature. Accepted Labour needed to appeal to the centre but equally never took the party away from it's socialist roots. Everything since him and Kinnock has been 'champagne socialism' in my book. It goes against everything the party has historically stood for.

I don't want to shut down debate, I want the Labour movement to stand up for the working classes, and I believe they no longer do that. Maybe the leadership debate will come up with some surprises. I doubt it.

Louisa.

[Earl Aelfheah]

I have to agree with Loz regarding the 'they don't have a mandate' argument. Clearly the Conservative's won the election (with a majority) and that gives them the only mandate they need.

That said, it's also perfectly legitimate for people to protest as a way of expressing their views / trying to change opinion.... And, celebrities are just as entitled to express a view as anyone else.