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> Or it would have, if the nine MPs across three parties who were scheduled to attend actually showed up. Only one did. Everything else aside, if MPs don't sho

> Or it would have, if the nine MPs across three parties who were scheduled to attend actually showed up. Only one did. Everything else aside, if MPs don't show up for a scheduled meeting they should just be sacked. How many of us can just blow off meetings like that with no consequence?

TillE 4y ago
It just underlines what should be fairly obvious: that such official meetings are not how things are actually decided in representative democracies. I mean that's even more explicit in a parliamentary system, where members are nearly always expected to vote the party line or face consequences.
- mellavora 4y ago
  > I mean that's even more explicit in a parliamentary system, where members are nearly always expected to vote the party line or face consequences. yes, that is a feature (not a bug) of a parliamentary system. A complementary feature is that parliamentary systems tend to have representational seat distribution. So a party that wins 35% of the vote gets 35% of the seats. And those seats are expected to vote as a block unless there is an extreme question of conscience. You could contrast with for example the US system, where the original intent was that the senators/representatives would represent their state, not the party. Worked well for a while. Now, however, they also follow party line or face consequences. But there are realistically only two parties, and the the "first past the post" system locks us into 2 parties.
  - ranko 4y ago
    > a party that wins 35% of the vote gets 35% of the seats At the last general election to the UK parliament (2019), the Tories won 44% of the votes, and ended up with 56% of the seats - first past the post strikes again!
  - dane-pgp 4y ago
    > parliamentary systems tend to have representational seat distribution > the "first past the post" system locks us into 2 parties. What you say is true, but while we're discussing an article about the UK, it is worth stating, for the avoidance of doubt, that the UK also uses the First Past The Post electoral systems (for its national parliament) and therefore doesn't have a representational seat distribution. Indeed, that may be part of the reason that such an extreme policy from such an unpopular party is being put forward at all. (The current government won 43.6% of the vote at the last general election, with 67.3% turnout, meaning it had the support of 29.3% of the electorate, but won 56.2% of the seats).
    - kodah 4y ago
      It would be nice if those who didn't vote actually affected the power of the parties. Not voting is a valid choice, it says, "All the options you gave me suck. Try again." Otherwise you run into a system where people start trying to calculate the delta between two evils and think we're making progress.
      - Thiez 4y ago
        How do you see this work in practice, and wouldn't it just lead to calculating the deltas between three evils, the third being abstention? How would this be better than getting rid of the first-past-the-post system? We saw this is the Netherlands a while ago. There was a referendum about whether there should be closer relations between the Netherlands and Ukraine, and the options were "agree" and "disagree", but many people who were in favor of closer relations chose not to vote at all, hoping that the referendum would fail to hit the minimum turnout. So the minimum turnout was hit, and afterwards they were all whining about it, because they disagreed with the result, but had intentionally chosen not to vote.
        kodah 4y ago
        Your example isn't quite the same thing. More or less, I want my lack of voting to be a signal to the Democratic party that, "Your vision is out of whack and does not serve me". Today, when someone doesn't vote the party and constituents try some mental gymnastics to put fault on people who don't vote as if they don't care.
  - raverbashing 4y ago
    > And those seats are expected to vote as a block unless there is an extreme question of conscience. Actually no. It depends on the "whip" guidance (in the UK) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whip_(politics)#Instructions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whip_(politics)#Instructions
  - mcintyre1994 4y ago
    > yes, that is a feature (not a bug) of a parliamentary system. A complementary feature is that parliamentary systems tend to have representational seat distribution. So a party that wins 35% of the vote gets 35% of the seats. Important context since this is about the UK: we don't have a representation seat distribution like that, we have first past the post. In the last election (2019) these are the results for each party with at least 10 MPs: - Conservative Party, 43.6% of votes, 56.2% of seats (outright majority). - Labour Party, 32.1% of votes, 31.1% of seats. - Scottish National Party, 3.9% of votes, 7.4% of seats. The SNP only campaign in Scotland and win most seats there, which makes them extremely over-represented by FPTP. - Liberal Democrats, 11.6% of votes, 1.7% of seats.
    - Beltalowda 4y ago
      In 2015 UKIP got 12.6% of the votes, making it the third-largest party in terms of votes cast by quite some margin, and they got just one seat. In 1983 the Conservatives had 1.5% fewer votes compared to the previous 1979 election, but ended up with 7.7% mote seats resulting in the largest majority in decades. I think it's a real missed opportunity that the Blair government didn't change anything when they had a large majority in the 90s/00s. They said they would, but it fell by the wayside. The problem is that Labour always thinks this time it will be different and this time they will come out on top. And for a while they will, right up to the point they don't.
  - cronix 4y ago
    > So a party that wins 35% of the vote gets 35% of the seats. And those seats are expected to vote as a block unless there is an extreme question of conscience. Yes, essentially we can just keep the main leaders of each party and assign them everyone's votes from their respective parties (35% in your example) that "won" and get rid of everyone else and end up with the exact same outcome, except orders of magnitude cheaper and more expedient. If you're a member of x party and x party won, why are you actually needed if you're not the leader? Your salary, benefits, retirement and as well as every single person on your staff are all a waste at that point, because you're going to vote for x's position, which is decided by the leadership.
    - caf 4y ago
      In that scenario you are one of those who chooses the leadership, perhaps running for it yourself, and helps decide what x's position is going to be (through party room / caucus processes).
  - Beltalowda 4y ago
    > You could contrast with for example the US system, where the original intent was that the senators/representatives would represent their state, not the party. Worked well for a while. That was (and to a degree, still is) also the intent in the British system: you would primarily represent your constituency, not your party. This is why you have constituency surgeries where you meet your constituents, maybe address some concerns, etc. which are similar to the "town hall meetings" you have in the US. The US essentially copied the British system. I don't know how well it worked in the past as I'm not that familiar with the history; in HMS Pinafore there's already a joke about it ("I always voted at my party's core and never thought of thinking for myself at all"[1]) which is from 1880 or thereabouts, so I'm guessing not very well shrug It's natural for like-minded people with similar ideas to gravitate towards each other and form political parties for strategic and social reasons. In the US the founding fathers set up the system to work without parties, only to found the first political parties themselves a few years later, so that idea broke down pretty quickly. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCBxI9yKLgw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCBxI9yKLgw
  - pjc50 4y ago
    > A complementary feature is that parliamentary systems tend to have representational seat distribution. So a party that wins 35% of the vote gets 35% of the seats. lolnope, this is a FPTP country. The last election, the Conservatives got 43.6% of the vote and 57% of the seats. Even more extreme, although overall irrelevant, the SNP got 45% of the popular vote in Scotland, resulting in 48 out of 59 seats won in Scotland.
- synicalx 4y ago
  > members are nearly always expected to vote the party line or face consequences Reason #2458729349 why political parties should be banned everywhere.
Beltalowda 4y ago
It should be noted this meeting was in the middle of a political crisis where half the government had resigned. I don't know who those MPs were or what they were doing, but I'm betting they suddenly found themselves overloaded with this crisis and this meeting fell through. It's not that uncommon for something like this to happen. I'm not saying it's great this happened, but it happens – MPs are humans too. I wouldn't be so quick to judge in this case. I think the extremely high expectations and little room for error ("they should just be sacked") is part of the problem. If you bollock a child every time they do something slightly wrong they will learn to lie and hide things very quickly.
Barrin92 4y ago
>How many of us can just blow off meetings like that with no consequence? Parliamentarians aren't employees, they're elected officials and this meeting is a lobbying effort (the author being 'head of policy' for some web3/crypto startup) and representatives are accountable only to their constituents, who can 'sack them' in elections.

TillE 4y ago

It just underlines what should be fairly obvious: that such official meetings are not how things are actually decided in representative democracies. I mean that's even more explicit in a parliamentary system, where members are nearly always expected to vote the party line or face consequences.

mellavora 4y ago
> I mean that's even more explicit in a parliamentary system, where members are nearly always expected to vote the party line or face consequences. yes, that is a feature (not a bug) of a parliamentary system. A complementary feature is that parliamentary systems tend to have representational seat distribution. So a party that wins 35% of the vote gets 35% of the seats. And those seats are expected to vote as a block unless there is an extreme question of conscience. You could contrast with for example the US system, where the original intent was that the senators/representatives would represent their state, not the party. Worked well for a while. Now, however, they also follow party line or face consequences. But there are realistically only two parties, and the the "first past the post" system locks us into 2 parties.
- ranko 4y ago
  > a party that wins 35% of the vote gets 35% of the seats At the last general election to the UK parliament (2019), the Tories won 44% of the votes, and ended up with 56% of the seats - first past the post strikes again!
- dane-pgp 4y ago
  > parliamentary systems tend to have representational seat distribution > the "first past the post" system locks us into 2 parties. What you say is true, but while we're discussing an article about the UK, it is worth stating, for the avoidance of doubt, that the UK also uses the First Past The Post electoral systems (for its national parliament) and therefore doesn't have a representational seat distribution. Indeed, that may be part of the reason that such an extreme policy from such an unpopular party is being put forward at all. (The current government won 43.6% of the vote at the last general election, with 67.3% turnout, meaning it had the support of 29.3% of the electorate, but won 56.2% of the seats).
  - kodah 4y ago
    It would be nice if those who didn't vote actually affected the power of the parties. Not voting is a valid choice, it says, "All the options you gave me suck. Try again." Otherwise you run into a system where people start trying to calculate the delta between two evils and think we're making progress.
    - Thiez 4y ago
      How do you see this work in practice, and wouldn't it just lead to calculating the deltas between three evils, the third being abstention? How would this be better than getting rid of the first-past-the-post system? We saw this is the Netherlands a while ago. There was a referendum about whether there should be closer relations between the Netherlands and Ukraine, and the options were "agree" and "disagree", but many people who were in favor of closer relations chose not to vote at all, hoping that the referendum would fail to hit the minimum turnout. So the minimum turnout was hit, and afterwards they were all whining about it, because they disagreed with the result, but had intentionally chosen not to vote.
      - kodah 4y ago
        Your example isn't quite the same thing. More or less, I want my lack of voting to be a signal to the Democratic party that, "Your vision is out of whack and does not serve me". Today, when someone doesn't vote the party and constituents try some mental gymnastics to put fault on people who don't vote as if they don't care.
- raverbashing 4y ago
  > And those seats are expected to vote as a block unless there is an extreme question of conscience. Actually no. It depends on the "whip" guidance (in the UK) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whip_(politics)#Instructions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whip_(politics)#Instructions
- mcintyre1994 4y ago
  > yes, that is a feature (not a bug) of a parliamentary system. A complementary feature is that parliamentary systems tend to have representational seat distribution. So a party that wins 35% of the vote gets 35% of the seats. Important context since this is about the UK: we don't have a representation seat distribution like that, we have first past the post. In the last election (2019) these are the results for each party with at least 10 MPs: - Conservative Party, 43.6% of votes, 56.2% of seats (outright majority). - Labour Party, 32.1% of votes, 31.1% of seats. - Scottish National Party, 3.9% of votes, 7.4% of seats. The SNP only campaign in Scotland and win most seats there, which makes them extremely over-represented by FPTP. - Liberal Democrats, 11.6% of votes, 1.7% of seats.
  - Beltalowda 4y ago
    In 2015 UKIP got 12.6% of the votes, making it the third-largest party in terms of votes cast by quite some margin, and they got just one seat. In 1983 the Conservatives had 1.5% fewer votes compared to the previous 1979 election, but ended up with 7.7% mote seats resulting in the largest majority in decades. I think it's a real missed opportunity that the Blair government didn't change anything when they had a large majority in the 90s/00s. They said they would, but it fell by the wayside. The problem is that Labour always thinks this time it will be different and this time they will come out on top. And for a while they will, right up to the point they don't.
- cronix 4y ago
  > So a party that wins 35% of the vote gets 35% of the seats. And those seats are expected to vote as a block unless there is an extreme question of conscience. Yes, essentially we can just keep the main leaders of each party and assign them everyone's votes from their respective parties (35% in your example) that "won" and get rid of everyone else and end up with the exact same outcome, except orders of magnitude cheaper and more expedient. If you're a member of x party and x party won, why are you actually needed if you're not the leader? Your salary, benefits, retirement and as well as every single person on your staff are all a waste at that point, because you're going to vote for x's position, which is decided by the leadership.
  - caf 4y ago
    In that scenario you are one of those who chooses the leadership, perhaps running for it yourself, and helps decide what x's position is going to be (through party room / caucus processes).
- Beltalowda 4y ago
  > You could contrast with for example the US system, where the original intent was that the senators/representatives would represent their state, not the party. Worked well for a while. That was (and to a degree, still is) also the intent in the British system: you would primarily represent your constituency, not your party. This is why you have constituency surgeries where you meet your constituents, maybe address some concerns, etc. which are similar to the "town hall meetings" you have in the US. The US essentially copied the British system. I don't know how well it worked in the past as I'm not that familiar with the history; in HMS Pinafore there's already a joke about it ("I always voted at my party's core and never thought of thinking for myself at all"[1]) which is from 1880 or thereabouts, so I'm guessing not very well shrug It's natural for like-minded people with similar ideas to gravitate towards each other and form political parties for strategic and social reasons. In the US the founding fathers set up the system to work without parties, only to found the first political parties themselves a few years later, so that idea broke down pretty quickly. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCBxI9yKLgw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCBxI9yKLgw
- pjc50 4y ago
  > A complementary feature is that parliamentary systems tend to have representational seat distribution. So a party that wins 35% of the vote gets 35% of the seats. lolnope, this is a FPTP country. The last election, the Conservatives got 43.6% of the vote and 57% of the seats. Even more extreme, although overall irrelevant, the SNP got 45% of the popular vote in Scotland, resulting in 48 out of 59 seats won in Scotland.
synicalx 4y ago
> members are nearly always expected to vote the party line or face consequences Reason #2458729349 why political parties should be banned everywhere.

Beltalowda 4y ago

It should be noted this meeting was in the middle of a political crisis where half the government had resigned. I don't know who those MPs were or what they were doing, but I'm betting they suddenly found themselves overloaded with this crisis and this meeting fell through. It's not that uncommon for something like this to happen. I'm not saying it's great this happened, but it happens – MPs are humans too. I wouldn't be so quick to judge in this case. I think the extremely high expectations and little room for error ("they should just be sacked") is part of the problem. If you bollock a child every time they do something slightly wrong they will learn to lie and hide things very quickly.

Barrin92 4y ago

>How many of us can just blow off meetings like that with no consequence? Parliamentarians aren't employees, they're elected officials and this meeting is a lobbying effort (the author being 'head of policy' for some web3/crypto startup) and representatives are accountable only to their constituents, who can 'sack them' in elections.