Reform UK - A symptom of all that is wrong?

[Kermit power]

crankedup5 said:

You’ve been busy
For a remedy to the problem you need to do what I will be doing, vote Reform U.K. who will, if they secure enough seats to form a Government (:laugh) they will introduce P. R. Alternately, as I have said many times, keep voting for the same old ste.

I'll vote LibDem for the same reason. There's just no way I could bring myself to vote for xenophobes.

[Kermit power]

crankedup5 said:

You have the wrong interpretation and perception I’m afraid, what you deem xenophobes is in reality a political,party recognising the damage inflicted onto the Country by an unsustainable immigration policy. Have a look at=Paddington Station any night of the week to see migrants bedding down in there. We already have a public infrastructure which is virtually broken and yet still welcome tens of thousands of migrants into the Country every year. It’s not xenophobic to advise that this is not sustainable.

Without large proportions of the immigration we've seen ever since Windrush, you could replace that with "completely, utterly and irretrievably".

Edited by Kermit power on Wednesday 6th March 05:53

[Kermit power]

crankedup5 said:

smn159 said:

crankedup5 said:

You have the wrong interpretation and perception I’m afraid, what you deem xenophobes is in reality a political,party recognising the damage inflicted onto the Country by an unsustainable immigration policy. Have a look at=Paddington Station any night of the week to see migrants bedding down in there. We already have a public infrastructure which is virtually broken and yet still welcome tens of thousands of migrants into the Country every year. It’s not xenophobic to advise that this is not sustainable.

Sorry to have to tell you this as you clearly want easy answers to complex problems, but poor public services are fk all to do with immigration and everything to do with the political choices of the current government.

HTH

It doesn’t address or recognise the fundamental issue that the Country has not the housing available to be able to offer migrants the housing required. I suggest that poor decision. making by Governments over many decades(not only just this Government) has contributed to this problem.
It’s not a complex question and the answer is simple enough, build more houses within the public sector/ housing associations. All that needs to be addressed then is who pays the rent. The other issue is who actually pays for the house builds?

HTH

According to Shelter, whom I suspect we can agree are probably likely to pitch at the higher end of estimates, there were 309,000 homeless people in the UK at the end of 2023.

According to the 2021 Census there were 1.5M unoccupied dwellings in England alone in 2021, of which 89.7% were estimated to be truly vacant rather than second homes.

It feels like there's quite a case for saying nobody needs to pay for the house builds. We just need to do something to prevent people leaving houses vacant.

[Kermit power]

crankedup5 said:

Kermit power said:

crankedup5 said:

smn159 said:

crankedup5 said:

You have the wrong interpretation and perception I’m afraid, what you deem xenophobes is in reality a political,party recognising the damage inflicted onto the Country by an unsustainable immigration policy. Have a look at=Paddington Station any night of the week to see migrants bedding down in there. We already have a public infrastructure which is virtually broken and yet still welcome tens of thousands of migrants into the Country every year. It’s not xenophobic to advise that this is not sustainable.

Sorry to have to tell you this as you clearly want easy answers to complex problems, but poor public services are fk all to do with immigration and everything to do with the political choices of the current government.

HTH

It doesn’t address or recognise the fundamental issue that the Country has not the housing available to be able to offer migrants the housing required. I suggest that poor decision. making by Governments over many decades(not only just this Government) has contributed to this problem.
It’s not a complex question and the answer is simple enough, build more houses within the public sector/ housing associations. All that needs to be addressed then is who pays the rent. The other issue is who actually pays for the house builds?

HTH

According to Shelter, whom I suspect we can agree are probably likely to pitch at the higher end of estimates, there were 309,000 homeless people in the UK at the end of 2023.

According to the 2021 Census there were 1.5M unoccupied dwellings in England alone in 2021, of which 89.7% were estimated to be truly vacant rather than second homes.

It feels like there's quite a case for saying nobody needs to pay for the house builds. We just need to do something to prevent people leaving houses vacant.

Owners of properties can leave their properties empty if they so wish, I feel you may agree thus far.
Many properties are purchased off plan by investors - en bloc. If house builders choose to sell to foreign investors, although obviously Russian investors are no longer in the game, I cannot see how you would provide a solution to the issue that you point out.
Also the Country has thousands of properties owned but are in a state that renders them uninhabitable.
It sounds to me as though you would favour a compulsory purchase scheme of empty properties ?
Bit of a stench of communism for me as you seem to be suggesting take the empty houses and put homeless into them.
Never going to happen as it’s totally unrealistic and unworkable.

There's nothing communist about it, nor particularly difficult as far as I can see.

I'd say that people are perfectly entitled to keep their properties unoccupied, but starting from the '25/'26 tax year I'd tax them £10k per bedroom per annum once they had been vacant for more than 12 months and ring-fence that money for building social housing.

The average number of bedrooms per UK property is 2.95, so if 1m of those homes listed as vacant in England were vacant for 12+ months, the owners could either return them to the property market via sale or rental (a good thing, one assumes?) or they could pay the tax.

Of course they wouldn't all choose to pay the tax to keep their properties unoccupied, but if they did that would bring in revenue of £29.5Bn.

If you did get that £29.5Bn, what would you do with it? According to this study published last week we need 90,000 new social housing units per annum for the next 10 years and the cost to deliver the first year's worth of these would be £35.4Bn. Okay, so we'd need to top that up to the tune of an additional £6Bn in the first year, but they also reckon this would generate an additional £32.6Bn for the economy through increased job opportunities, reduced benefits payments, lower healthcare costs and a host of other things, so the seed money from taxation on vacant homes potentially makes the whole thing self-sustaining.

Of course not everyone will pay the tax, but if they put their property back on the market and get it occupied again that reduces the demand for new housing, and if they choose to do neither then fk 'em. Confiscate the property and turn it directly into social housing.

That is of course a gross oversimplification of the situation, but then we're just talking about something on an Internet forum that neither of us is expert in, let alone expected to actually deliver on, but one way or another, I think it's pretty clear that the amount of currently vacant property not available for use has a much bigger impact on housing shortages than immigration, especially when we need the immigration anyway.

[Kermit power]

Killboy said:

crankedup5 said:

If any political party come forward with any policies regarding resolving the homelessness catastrophe in this Country I will be surprised. Of course Labour want to bulldoze through planning and consultation requirements in the belief that that will somehow create the pathway to building hundreds of thousands of homes each year. Pie in the sky nonsense of course, the first Labour MP that discovers that his constituents are being ignored when complaining about the new 900 house build estate on their doorstep will create merry hell.
None of which even begins to answer the problem which I mentioned earlier, migrants sleeping rough after being given their application for asylum papers. After that who gives a st about them, it seems increasingly obvious nobody, except a few volunteer charity organisations.

Ah yes - that's why you're voting reform, because you care about Asylum seekers rough sleeping.

I could easily imagine Reform fining foreign-born homeless people for sleeping on public land then using the money raised for a big advertising campaign telling other foreigners not to come here!

[Kermit power]

Jinx said:

Kermit power said:

There's nothing communist about it, nor particularly difficult as far as I can see.

I'd say that people are perfectly entitled to keep their properties unoccupied, but starting from the '25/'26 tax year I'd tax them £10k per bedroom per annum once they had been vacant for more than 12 months and ring-fence that money for building social housing.

The average number of bedrooms per UK property is 2.95, so if 1m of those homes listed as vacant in England were vacant for 12+ months, the owners could either return them to the property market via sale or rental (a good thing, one assumes?) or they could pay the tax.

Of course they wouldn't all choose to pay the tax to keep their properties unoccupied, but if they did that would bring in revenue of £29.5Bn.

If you did get that £29.5Bn, what would you do with it? According to this study published last week we need 90,000 new social housing units per annum for the next 10 years and the cost to deliver the first year's worth of these would be £35.4Bn. Okay, so we'd need to top that up to the tune of an additional £6Bn in the first year, but they also reckon this would generate an additional £32.6Bn for the economy through increased job opportunities, reduced benefits payments, lower healthcare costs and a host of other things, so the seed money from taxation on vacant homes potentially makes the whole thing self-sustaining.

Of course not everyone will pay the tax, but if they put their property back on the market and get it occupied again that reduces the demand for new housing, and if they choose to do neither then fk 'em. Confiscate the property and turn it directly into social housing.

That is of course a gross oversimplification of the situation, but then we're just talking about something on an Internet forum that neither of us is expert in, let alone expected to actually deliver on, but one way or another, I think it's pretty clear that the amount of currently vacant property not available for use has a much bigger impact on housing shortages than immigration, especially when we need the immigration anyway.

So they'll just put a "for sale" sign on the property with an unrealistic price and keep it vacant as long as they like.

That's fine. They'll still be paying the £10k per bedroom though.

[Kermit power]

Jinx said:

Kermit power said:

That's fine. They'll still be paying the £10k per bedroom though.

All will become 0 bedroom houses - with reception rooms, office spaces and rather large walk in wardrobes. Look at what happened with windows when the window tax was introduced.

Fair enough. We'll make it per m² of floor space, or 25x council tax or some other harder to avoid metric.

[Kermit power]

crankedup5 said:

Kermit power said:

Jinx said:

Kermit power said:

That's fine. They'll still be paying the £10k per bedroom though.

All will become 0 bedroom houses - with reception rooms, office spaces and rather large walk in wardrobes. Look at what happened with windows when the window tax was introduced.

Fair enough. We'll make it per m² of floor space, or 25x council tax or some other harder to avoid metric.

Thatcher tried to pull a stunt of high taxation during her Premiership,(poll tax) people rioting on the streets soon had her withdrawing that lunacy policy. Introducing daft and spiteful taxes only works to a certain level of tolerance of the electorate before it blows up.

Two very different things! The poll tax was not high tax firstly. I seem to recall that the total tax take was supposed to remain the same as it was under rates, just with a "fairer" distribution. Of course, whether you considered it fairer depended totally on how many people per m² lived in your house!

The key thing about the poll tax is that it impacted basically everyone and was opposed by anyone whose bill was increasing along with a significant minority of progressives amongst those whose bills were decreasing.

This issue of homes standing vacant though... who actually owns them? Your average man on the street certainly doesn't have any spare homes kicking around, do they? Bring the new tax in and people will think "it doesn't affect me", then look around and say "it doesn't affect my family, friends or anyone I know either", so where is the resistance going to come from?

[Kermit power]

smn159 said:

crankedup5 said:

smn159 said:

crankedup5 said:

smn159 said:

Reform seem to pitching at those who like the Tories culture wars style but wish that they'd dumb it down a bit more for them, and ramp the scapegoating of foreigners

The do have some fresh new and interesting ideas within their pledge book. But of course we will still continue to play pass the parcel revealing keys to number 10 with only two players, Tory & Labour.
Either one who will continue to drive the Country to the bottom with their same stale out of touch policies drawn from the past forty years.

You'd think that Farage would be a good judge of right wing populism and even he's not keen to nail his colours to their mast.

I fear therefore that disappointment awaits you, although on the plus side they will likely drive up Labours majority significantly.

None of which can possibly be any worse than Mr Flip Flop in number 10.

er... what?

I wondered about that!

Maybe it's an allusion to Boris coming back? There are certain similarities...

[Kermit power]

crankedup5 said:

chrispmartha said:

crankedup5 said:

Nope, Boris has had his time and he spent it well delivering brexit. What is required now is Reform UK taking the project to its next level.

What in your opinion would Reform do to take ‘Brexit to the next level’?

Take a look at their ‘pledges pages’ plan for the future, links have been provided many times recently in these pages. Apparently my politics have been coloured and guided by such information,

The Reform pledges are a big part of the problem!

They're the equivalent of me starting up a dieting club promising you that you can eat all the pies you want for free and still lose weight.

[Kermit power]

W12GT said:

Taxes need to go up and then the pot needs to be stringently administered to ensure it is managed properly- possibly by cross party forensic accountants. The UK is pretty broken across the board and it’s going to take some serious money, time, ideas and effort to get it back to anything that resembles a decent state.

For clarity I’m a top rate tax payer but I still believe that more people need to pay more and it needs to be spent wisely.

I’d also like to see a breakdown of all spending locally to see where local money is going. Independent boards then hold the local authorities to account on a regular basis through transparency and by competently applying corporate governance. This would help to crack down on the wastage across all spending. This still wouldn’t resolve the issues we see now and it’s a 5, 10, 15 year plan.

I just don't understand hyperbole like this. What metrics are you using to measure the UK by? Who are you comparing us to?

[Kermit power]

Rufus Stone said:

Kermit power said:

I just don't understand hyperbole like this. What metrics are you using to measure the UK by? Who are you comparing us to?

Why does there need to be a comparison to other countries? Just look at the state of our public services and roads for example.

In fact, even big business is pretty crap now too. Call any of them and you get 'We are experiencing high call volumes at the moment' regardless of the time of day. British Gas has just taken three efforts, involving two hour long phone calls from me, just to issue a correct bill following a house move. I flatly refuse to call a bank, I would have gone into a branch but they are few and far between now.

The roads, I'll give you, but I've not had any problems with any other public services I've had to deal with personally.

Someone on here yesterday was saying that our health service is rubbish compared to other countries, but it's just not actually true, for example. You need something to benchmark yourself against.

[Kermit power]

W12GT said:

Kermit power said:

W12GT said:

Taxes need to go up and then the pot needs to be stringently administered to ensure it is managed properly- possibly by cross party forensic accountants. The UK is pretty broken across the board and it’s going to take some serious money, time, ideas and effort to get it back to anything that resembles a decent state.

For clarity I’m a top rate tax payer but I still believe that more people need to pay more and it needs to be spent wisely.

I’d also like to see a breakdown of all spending locally to see where local money is going. Independent boards then hold the local authorities to account on a regular basis through transparency and by competently applying corporate governance. This would help to crack down on the wastage across all spending. This still wouldn’t resolve the issues we see now and it’s a 5, 10, 15 year plan.

I just don't understand hyperbole like this. What metrics are you using to measure the UK by? Who are you comparing us to?

I’m comparing the UK’s position from where we are now to where we were 10 - 15years ago; both internally where we are in a failing state and on the international stage where we used to be a player but are now ignored by most - in fact the only country to really be acknowledging us is Russia because they are using us as the instigator/provocateur for supporting Ukraine. The UK have always been respected for our financial sector but since Brexit that too is slipping away - and unfortunately gathering pace too.

Just because you don’t agree with it, doesn’t make it hyperbole. To me, making such a statement highlights you suffer from some or all of the following:- naivety, ignorance, immaturity, or just plain stupidity.

Whereas to me your hyperbole shows that you've clearly never been to a country which actually is "pretty broken across the board".

The remainder of your comment - including accusing me of immaturity - is a surefire contender for ironic comment of the decade.

[Kermit power]

W12GT said:

Kermit power said:

W12GT said:

Kermit power said:

W12GT said:

Taxes need to go up and then the pot needs to be stringently administered to ensure it is managed properly- possibly by cross party forensic accountants. The UK is pretty broken across the board and it’s going to take some serious money, time, ideas and effort to get it back to anything that resembles a decent state.

For clarity I’m a top rate tax payer but I still believe that more people need to pay more and it needs to be spent wisely.

I’d also like to see a breakdown of all spending locally to see where local money is going. Independent boards then hold the local authorities to account on a regular basis through transparency and by competently applying corporate governance. This would help to crack down on the wastage across all spending. This still wouldn’t resolve the issues we see now and it’s a 5, 10, 15 year plan.

I just don't understand hyperbole like this. What metrics are you using to measure the UK by? Who are you comparing us to?

I’m comparing the UK’s position from where we are now to where we were 10 - 15years ago; both internally where we are in a failing state and on the international stage where we used to be a player but are now ignored by most - in fact the only country to really be acknowledging us is Russia because they are using us as the instigator/provocateur for supporting Ukraine. The UK have always been respected for our financial sector but since Brexit that too is slipping away - and unfortunately gathering pace too.

Just because you don’t agree with it, doesn’t make it hyperbole. To me, making such a statement highlights you suffer from some or all of the following:- naivety, ignorance, immaturity, or just plain stupidity.

Whereas to me your hyperbole shows that you've clearly never been to a country which actually is "pretty broken across the board".

The remainder of your comment - including accusing me of immaturity - is a surefire contender for ironic comment of the decade.

Oh dear. Wrong on every level; even down to your use of the word ironic.

Interesting you refer to ‘us’ yet your profile says Yugoslavia???

Please continue to display your ignorance if it makes you feel clever. It certainly gives me a chuckle.

Gosh, you are quite desperate to "win" on the Internet, aren't you?

Never mind... you be you and I'll leave you to it. Have fun!

[Kermit power]

Pan Pan Pan said:

valiant said:

It’s all pie in the sky and no doubt lapped up without question by the same people who demand fully costed plans for other parties.

Still, they are taking votes away from the Tories without much chance of winning a single seat which can only be a good thing.

Membership mechanism is a bit odd. You can become a member but you don’t seem to have any party voting rights? Is that correct? I’ve only quickly peeked at their website and can’t see what ‘rights’ you have by becoming a member.

At the moment there are two types of fool around.
1: The fool who thinks the tories have got a snowflake in hells chance ofogetting in at the next election.
2: The fool who thinks that when labour get in, everything will be better. It will not.
The Liberals have done badly in the last few by elections. Quite why any one who uses the word `democrats' in their title, who then shows, that they don't believe in democracy, when a democratic vote does not go the way they wanted it to, cannot be trusted at all.
Reform wont get in, but if those who live in areas where their party candidate never gets in, decide to ignore the two main parties, and vote for Reform, it wake up the two main parties. Interesting times lay ahead.

It's ironic when people talk about democracy in a country in which to all intents and purposes we don't have any. FPTP is a sick joke.

[Kermit power]

Pan Pan Pan said:

Don't know who you are referring to, but like `I' have no faith in labour, or tory governments, I have no faith in Farage, Tice or or Anderson to run the country. Parties like the liberals, and greens, have the potential to inflict even greater damage to the UK, than even labour, and the tories have been capable of. Especially the liberals, who because they don't believe in democracy when democracy does not give them the results `they' want. must be avoided at all costs.
What is truly naive (in a grasping at straws way) is believing that labour, will do better than the disastrous tories.

That would be one of the funniest things ever written on this forum if it wasn't so utterly terrifying!

At the last General Election (and figures are similar for decades beforehand) it took about 38,000 Conservative voters for each Tory MP elected vs about 336,000 LibDem voters to get one of their MPs in.

Nobody who thinks it is even remotely acceptable to have an electoral system which values the votes of one national party almost nine times as highly as those of another can possibly claim to have even the slightest belief in democracy!!!

The true irony of this is that you hold up LibDem opposition to Brexit on the back of a narrow 52/48 result in a non-binding referendum as some sort of proof that they "do not believe in democracy", yet that referendum itself only happened because David Cameron's Conservative party won a 10 seat majority in parliament despite only winning 36.8% of the vote!!! How in heavens name does that give any credibility at all to anything carried out by his government???

[Kermit power]

DeejRC said:

2xChevrons said:

DeejRC said:

Because the UKs FPTP system has withstood the test of time and democratic experiment better than anything else so far. And has slowly constantly evolved to keep itself so. As such every govt it has and does elect is instantly valid.
And yes democracy is an experiment and one that we should strive to keeping going. So far, as a general concept, it’s the least worst option mankind has tried and the British version has been the most successful. As with all such experiments things can be improved with iterations. I like slow evolution over Revolution.

These bits genuinely made me snort-laugh at my desk. What has the British version of democracy been 'the most successful' at? Sustaining itself as a system growing out of 18th century yeoman farmers and landowners who wanted to tell the aristocracy what to do? Perhaps. Has it delivered the electoral views of the British electorate - when no government since the 1930s has represented a majority of votes and since then more of the electorate has voted 'not for' the government than 'for' it? Does it lead to fair representation when a minor party requires eight times (or more) votes per seat than a major one? And when huge swathes of the electorate cast their votes for the 'least worst', and others don't vote at all? Is it attuned and responsive to the material, economic and social desires of the electorate? [Citation Needed].

By and large yes it does 2cv. More importantly it delivers relative stability to the country. It delivers results that the vast vast majority of the country accepts and gets on with. It delivers an overall country, which despite being a bunch of smaller countries perpetually at odds with each other, has actually managed not to tear itself apart. More importantly it invariably delivers a country which repeatedly shows its desire NOT to tear itself apart.
I rather like that. And value it. As does a very large majority of the country.
As I said, I like slow evolution over radical Revolution. I will happily forego the last iota of democratic mandate - especially in the modern world of instant social media judgement - for some evolving stability.
And yes, least worst is the best possible govt of all. As it always has been, everywhere. History is remarkably consistent on that judgement!

Presumably that would be as opposed to dreadfully unstable countries who are constantly on the verge of collapse and civil war because they don't use FPTP?

You know the ones... those insane idiots who use PR to elect their representatives such as Germany, Finland, Switzerland, Italy, etc, etc...

In fact the only three countries of the forty-three in Europe who don't use PR are the UK, France and Belarus!

[Kermit power]

Pan Pan Pan said:

Kermit power said:

Pan Pan Pan said:

Don't know who you are referring to, but like `I' have no faith in labour, or tory governments, I have no faith in Farage, Tice or or Anderson to run the country. Parties like the liberals, and greens, have the potential to inflict even greater damage to the UK, than even labour, and the tories have been capable of. Especially the liberals, who because they don't believe in democracy when democracy does not give them the results `they' want. must be avoided at all costs.
What is truly naive (in a grasping at straws way) is believing that labour, will do better than the disastrous tories.

That would be one of the funniest things ever written on this forum if it wasn't so utterly terrifying!

At the last General Election (and figures are similar for decades beforehand) it took about 38,000 Conservative voters for each Tory MP elected vs about 336,000 LibDem voters to get one of their MPs in.

Nobody who thinks it is even remotely acceptable to have an electoral system which values the votes of one national party almost nine times as highly as those of another can possibly claim to have even the slightest belief in democracy!!!

The true irony of this is that you hold up LibDem opposition to Brexit on the back of a narrow 52/48 result in a non-binding referendum as some sort of proof that they "do not believe in democracy", yet that referendum itself only happened because David Cameron's Conservative party won a 10 seat majority in parliament despite only winning 36.8% of the vote!!! How in heavens name does that give any credibility at all to anything carried out by his government???

Why do you refer to the referendum in 2016 as being `non binding' As for the 52/48 result being narrow. it does not matter a jot, if the vote had been 51/49, the 51 vote would still beat the 49 vote, That is how a voting system works.
I love the way some try to distort what actually happened, because what actually happened was not what `they' wanted. In the same way, that the liberals tried overturn the democratic result of the 2016 peoples vote, because it was not the one `they' wanted.
You can use all the weasel words, and verbal and numeric gymnastics you like, but it still does not change the `fact' that 52 is a bigger figure than 48. and in a democratic vote, the bigger figure trumps the smaller one.
The liberals have proven, that if they get into power, and the result of a democratic vote is not the one `they' want, they would just ignore, or over turn democratic votes, until they get the result `they' want.

Okay, so you say that in a democratic vote the bigger figure trumps the smaller one?

Presumably you can explain to me how 36.8 is a larger number than 63.2? You must believe it does otherwise how could the Conservatives have won more than half the seats in the 2015 election with 36.8% of the national vote, which I think most people would acknowledge is smaller than the 63.2% that didn't vote for them?

[Kermit power]

DeejRC said:

Kermit power said:

DeejRC said:

2xChevrons said:

DeejRC said:

Because the UKs FPTP system has withstood the test of time and democratic experiment better than anything else so far. And has slowly constantly evolved to keep itself so. As such every govt it has and does elect is instantly valid.
And yes democracy is an experiment and one that we should strive to keeping going. So far, as a general concept, it’s the least worst option mankind has tried and the British version has been the most successful. As with all such experiments things can be improved with iterations. I like slow evolution over Revolution.

These bits genuinely made me snort-laugh at my desk. What has the British version of democracy been 'the most successful' at? Sustaining itself as a system growing out of 18th century yeoman farmers and landowners who wanted to tell the aristocracy what to do? Perhaps. Has it delivered the electoral views of the British electorate - when no government since the 1930s has represented a majority of votes and since then more of the electorate has voted 'not for' the government than 'for' it? Does it lead to fair representation when a minor party requires eight times (or more) votes per seat than a major one? And when huge swathes of the electorate cast their votes for the 'least worst', and others don't vote at all? Is it attuned and responsive to the material, economic and social desires of the electorate? [Citation Needed].

By and large yes it does 2cv. More importantly it delivers relative stability to the country. It delivers results that the vast vast majority of the country accepts and gets on with. It delivers an overall country, which despite being a bunch of smaller countries perpetually at odds with each other, has actually managed not to tear itself apart. More importantly it invariably delivers a country which repeatedly shows its desire NOT to tear itself apart.
I rather like that. And value it. As does a very large majority of the country.
As I said, I like slow evolution over radical Revolution. I will happily forego the last iota of democratic mandate - especially in the modern world of instant social media judgement - for some evolving stability.
And yes, least worst is the best possible govt of all. As it always has been, everywhere. History is remarkably consistent on that judgement!

Presumably that would be as opposed to dreadfully unstable countries who are constantly on the verge of collapse and civil war because they don't use FPTP?

You know the ones... those insane idiots who use PR to elect their representatives such as Germany, Finland, Switzerland, Italy, etc, etc...

In fact the only three countries of the forty-three in Europe who don't use PR are the UK, France and Belarus!

You wish to use Ger and Italy in your argument. Really? You may wish to think again. Then go back and look at the very first thing I said and ponder why it was explicitly the first thing I said. Then plug the lightbulb in above your head as it clicks.
CH is a viable argument. If you have never lived there. If you have, well…hmm. And I speak as someone who loved living and working there. I’d die laughing at the howls of indignation from everybody protesting about being on the losing end of regular referendums if we brought that system across. I suspect you may be one of the first to lead the whingeing.
Finland I have little knowledge of, so will leave any comment there to Sisu who can give chapter and verse.
Revolution of a system rarely leads to improving the lots of too many, whereas slow, boring, dull evolution does.

I have no idea what the first thing you said was! Probably "mama" or "cat" or something like that?

The most fundamental planks of any democracy are:

1. "one person, one vote"
2. that each voter's vote carries the same weight as anyone else's
3. that the makeup of government is a fair representation of the will of the people as voted for in a democratic election.

The electoral system in Germany and Italy delivers a reasonable approximation of all three. The electoral system in the UK delivers on the first one but fails completely and utterly on the second two.

The UK is not a true democracy.

[Kermit power]

Vanden Saab said:

Kermit power said:

I have no idea what the first thing you said was! Probably "mama" or "cat" or something like that?

The most fundamental planks of any democracy are:

1. "one person, one vote"
2. that each voter's vote carries the same weight as anyone else's
3. that the makeup of government is a fair representation of the will of the people as voted for in a democratic election.

The electoral system in Germany and Italy delivers a reasonable approximation of all three. The electoral system in the UK delivers on the first one but fails completely and utterly on the second two.

The UK is not a true democracy.

All PR gives you is a government nobody voted for. Half the people you did not vote for are in positions of power and you do not even get to chose which other parties the one you did vote for makes agreements with. Amusingly part of the reason why right leaning parties are making such gains in Europe are because other parties will not form coalitions with them and end up with parties that are diametrically opposed to their own. This then means more people vote for the right leaning parties rather than have a coalition with a party they utterly oppose.
At least with our system a large minority get what they want.

There is just one single person left alive in this entire country who was old enough to vote the last time we got a government that the majority voted for. Last time out, Boris recorded an absolute landslide victory yet 56.4% of the electorate had not a single person they'd voted for in government! Sure, not everyone gets someone they voted for in government under PR, but a minimum of 50% will, since that's what's required to form a large enough coalition to take power.

As for far right parties gaining traction in Europe, one of four things happens there...

1. Other parties into coalition with them, they get some of what they're after and may well then recede at the next election.

2. Other parties keep ignoring them, and as you say, more people vote for them until eventually they'll take power alone.

3. One or more mainstream parties adopt some of the policies of the extreme parties to win their supporters over.

4. The mainstream parties manage to convince voters to step back from the extremes.

All of those are better than "we rig our electoral system to limit who can win" then get surprised when we have a revolution eventually.