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But people keep voting them into office, literally the worst of all alternatives. I think for the last 50 years, possibly excepting one Labour leader, the wide

But people keep voting them into office, literally the worst of all alternatives. I think for the last 50 years, possibly excepting one Labour leader, the wider electorate have seen Labour as literally the worst of all alternatives. That's why the Conservatives are consistently voted in. The problem isn't really either of our two terrible main political parties though, it's the absence of any realistic competition. If there were an obviously better alternative I believe that despite any historical affiliations voters today on all sides would leap to it. We've had that 50 years to find an alternative and there's still nothing palatable waiting in the wings. Why this is, I think is more debatable. Maybe the answer is PR, maybe we need to pay MPs more in line with historic rates in real terms (and more than some recent software dev grads), maybe it's something else. But it's pretty clear to me that as much as people don't want the Conservatives, they really don't want Labour either.

gambiting 3y ago
I've heard more than one person completely honestly say "I hate the Tories, but not as much as I hate labour". There is some national belief that labour would destroy the country(even more than the Tories do) so in response labour is slowly morphing into Tory Party 2 just to get some voters over. Even if they win the upcoming election(and I really doubt that) I don't think the overall policy would be much different to what we have now.
contravariant 3y ago
I think you're making an assumption that the parliament is in any way an accurate representation of the opinion of the wider electorate. Which, given the UK's insane voting system, is very unlikely.
- andrekandre 3y ago
  > the UK's insane voting system i don't live in uk so i'm not familiar, but what is particularly bad about it?
  - contravariant 3y ago
    They split the country into arbitrary plots of land which each get to elect one member for the national parliament. It used to be even worse, with the plots of land having no consistent size (with some of them having a population of 1). Rather predictably this means the number of votes a party gets has no relation to the number of seats they get in parliament. Since the number of seats per party is far more important for the political course than who gets elected for each party this is undesirable. This gives weird results like the Scottish nationalist party getting 3.9% of the vote and 48 seats, while the libdems got 11.6% of the vote and 11 seats.

gambiting 3y ago

I've heard more than one person completely honestly say "I hate the Tories, but not as much as I hate labour". There is some national belief that labour would destroy the country(even more than the Tories do) so in response labour is slowly morphing into Tory Party 2 just to get some voters over. Even if they win the upcoming election(and I really doubt that) I don't think the overall policy would be much different to what we have now.

contravariant 3y ago

I think you're making an assumption that the parliament is in any way an accurate representation of the opinion of the wider electorate. Which, given the UK's insane voting system, is very unlikely.

andrekandre 3y ago
> the UK's insane voting system i don't live in uk so i'm not familiar, but what is particularly bad about it?
- contravariant 3y ago
  They split the country into arbitrary plots of land which each get to elect one member for the national parliament. It used to be even worse, with the plots of land having no consistent size (with some of them having a population of 1). Rather predictably this means the number of votes a party gets has no relation to the number of seats they get in parliament. Since the number of seats per party is far more important for the political course than who gets elected for each party this is undesirable. This gives weird results like the Scottish nationalist party getting 3.9% of the vote and 48 seats, while the libdems got 11.6% of the vote and 11 seats.