Rishi Sunak and his government

Still makes me laugh Williamsons interview with Richard Madeley.

Turned an Alan Partridge into a Brian Waldren

I think Someone in a tree was being kind when he used the word 'resignation'. Just can't shake off the nasty party tag.

Do you think Macron and Trudeau will welcome Sunak into the centrists club whilst he still has Braverman in the cabinet? I think they may wait and see if Sunak cuts the ties with the ERG'ers firstly. Starmer welcomed with open arms, Sunak just a little to do before admittance just yet.

He he

Needs repeating so I did it

Corbynite extremists?

This article got quoted toda in Germany - in def Spiegel

If this is true…is is really ridiculous…

www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/04/food-tsar-blames-shortages-on-uks-weird-supermarket-culture

„
Dimbleby disagreed with the environment secretary, Thérèse Coffey, who denied that the recent shortages of eggs and vegetables was a “market failure”. He said: “This is a problem of market failure in the specifically British food system. It’s going to get worse. The UK food system is, I think, unique – I don’t know another system where the supermarkets have these fixed-price contracts with suppliers. So, basically, you have no effective market. It’s a very difficult one for the government to solve, but it does need to be resolved.”

Dimbleby said that in the UK lettuce prices in supermarkets were kept stable, whether there was a shortage or a glut, meaning farmers could not sell all their crop when they had too much, or get incentives to produce more during a shortage. He added: “If there’s bad weather across Europe, because there’s a scarcity supermarkets put their prices up – but not in the UK. And therefore at the margin, the suppliers will supply to France, Germany, Ukraine.”

This week, the farming minister, Mark Spencer, held a summit with large food chains but did not invite farming groups.

(…)

He said: “In 2004 there was a particularly bad frost and we had the same issue then. And it will continue to get worse due to climate change. These periods of freak events that used to be not very often, because of climate change are going to happen more and more often. These problems won’t be resolved until we look at what I outlined in my food strategy – we need to fix the problems of climate change, and health, and the way the food markets in the UK are structured leave us vulnerable to this, so we’d better sort it out.”

There will never be PR in the UK as any party in Government will never want to dilute their power.

In 2015/2016 a presidential election in Britain would likely have been won by Nigel Farrage.

This is so funny.. with a mask…perfect costume for Masked Singer

http://instagram.com/p/Cr_pNM9vd_V

It's not so fanciful that there would be a vote on PR.  The Lib Dems were able to force one due to the hung parliament and them being in coalition in 2011.  It was the 'alternative vote' system that went to a referendum.  AV was rejected by 67.9% of voters on a national turnout of 42%.  I believe in PR but voted against, as AV can result in the candidate 'most people don't mind'.  The only true PR is one where if you get 30 percent of the votes you get 30% of the seats.  On reflection I should have voted 'Yes' to some form of fair(er) votes, and then hope to get a better one later.

However, if Labour were the largest party in a hung parliament at the next election they may have a stronger hand to play - telling the Lib Dems that their alternative to a Lab/Lib coalition is to put the Tories back in. Or Labour go ahead as a minority government for as long as they can (giving no legislative deal to the Lib Dems) and then another General Election.

I never understand the idea that putting the power in the hands of political parties rather than the voters is a better solution that representative democracy.

I believe very strongly in voting for candidates rather than parties. I believe having locally elected MPs is far preferable to voting for a party and having no say as to who gets to represent my area in parliament.

Party lists put the power right by the hands of party officials and moves it away from voters.

You don't have by-elections. The next person on the party list just takes the vacant seat and so it goes.

As a voter, I like the opportunity to vote for a candidate who best represents my views or to vote for the candidate best placed to remove a poorly performing MP from office.

Under PR, that is a choice no voter could make. A party official would decide who represents an area not the voters.

I appreciate that I am not a typical voter. But I do value representative democracy very highly. FPTP isn't perfect but no voting system is. It is the system that delivers what I look for in a democratic system.

It has to work alongside constituency sizes that are equally sized in terms of voter number as far as possible. +/- 10% feels appropriate. I would also trim the number of MPs down to 500 and make recall elections easier to call.

But I have looked at the alternatives and none of them offer a package that leads to local representation and retains the power of the voter.

I know there are hybrid systems such as for the Scottish Parliament. But that was a system designed by the then government to prevent a single party state. Well that failed fairly spectacularly to deliver what was intended.

FPTP isn't perfect. But it is less imperfect than any of the alternatives yet proposed.

And how many people actually vote for candidates over parties anyway. I would suggest very very few and only very occasionally does an MPs reputation sink so low that they get removed from office outside the normal swing of voting. You may think your local MP is particularly poor as a constituency MP but if you live in a safe seat it is very unlikely to make the slightest difference if you choose to vote against him as a result.

Given that candidates are chosen by the parties right now I don't see the difference.

And the advantage is the average individuals vote counts a lot more than now when a relatively small number of swing seats are all that matters.

Politics is cyclical. Parties rise and parties fall and often rise again.

Trying to rig the system to prevent any one party from gaining power on the future is not democratic and should be resisted whoever is trying it.