The Revenge of the REMAINERS : It's got to be a thing now?

[Deleted]

Sept 2, 2021 18:46:36 GMT manchesterman said:

Sept 2, 2021 14:38:13 GMT sirbenjamin said:

I'd like to see many more referendums on all kinds of stuff. More direct democracy. More control given to the voters on specific issues.

The idea that by voting for a party one must endorse 100% of their manifesto is silly. More importantly it's very unfair to hold voters to something they didn't want in the first place.

I might vote Conservative because I like 15% of the stuff in their manifesto compared to 5% of the LD manifesto and 1% of the Labour manifesto, therefore it's the least bad option. I can still be dead against 85% of the stuff in the Tory manifesto and would vote against it given the opportunity.

The EURef result was, at last in part, due to large numbers of people feeling they hadn't been listened to directly; that sending members of broad-church parties to parliament on the basis of policy-bundle manifestos wasn't good enough.

Politicians still haven't learned from this. They are still keen to take 'tacit endorsement' of their policies at any opportunity and proclaim that voters 'roundly rejected' everything about the opposition, when the reality is far more complex and nuanced.

I think Mike dealt with this pretty well, but just to take an example about how absurd so-called direct democracy could end up:

Ref 1 -  NHS  -- Do you agree that an extra £X bn is needed to enable our NHS to fulfill all the backlog of work and to fund new research projects? 

Chances are a majority of people would vote YES

Ref 2 a few months later -  To pay for the £X bn you agreed we needed to spend on the NHS, we now need to raise the basic rate of income tax by X pence in the £ - do you agree with this proposal?

People being as they are, this would almost certainly result in a NO vote.

OOPS! What does the government do then?  They;ve been "instructed" by the Direct Democracy process to spend billions on the NHS but forbidden from raising the funds to do so....

Then MPs use the brains they've been given to say "this is insane", do what they need to do and make the decision they feel is in the nation's interest. That is after all what we elect them - and pay them - to do

[manchesterman]

Oh and can we rename this thread please??

For the millionth time there is no such thing as a Remainer (in this sense) anymore; and how is it "revenge"?

[peterl]

Sept 2, 2021 18:46:36 GMT manchesterman said:

Sept 2, 2021 14:38:13 GMT sirbenjamin said:

I'd like to see many more referendums on all kinds of stuff. More direct democracy. More control given to the voters on specific issues.

The idea that by voting for a party one must endorse 100% of their manifesto is silly. More importantly it's very unfair to hold voters to something they didn't want in the first place.

I might vote Conservative because I like 15% of the stuff in their manifesto compared to 5% of the LD manifesto and 1% of the Labour manifesto, therefore it's the least bad option. I can still be dead against 85% of the stuff in the Tory manifesto and would vote against it given the opportunity.

The EURef result was, at last in part, due to large numbers of people feeling they hadn't been listened to directly; that sending members of broad-church parties to parliament on the basis of policy-bundle manifestos wasn't good enough.

Politicians still haven't learned from this. They are still keen to take 'tacit endorsement' of their policies at any opportunity and proclaim that voters 'roundly rejected' everything about the opposition, when the reality is far more complex and nuanced.

I think Mike dealt with this pretty well, but just to take an example about how absurd so-called direct democracy could end up:

Ref 1 -  NHS  -- Do you agree that an extra £X bn is needed to enable our NHS to fulfill all the backlog of work and to fund new research projects? 

Chances are a majority of people would vote YES

Ref 2 a few months later -  To pay for the £X bn you agreed we needed to spend on the NHS, we now need to raise the basic rate of income tax by X pence in the £ - do you agree with this proposal?

People being as they are, this would almost certainly result in a NO vote.

OOPS! What does the government do then?  They;ve been "instructed" by the Direct Democracy process to spend billions on the NHS but forbidden from raising the funds to do so....

Well they could maybe take the radical step of funding more spending on x by cutting spending on y. There is no reason we either have to spend more across the board or less across the board.

[manchesterman]

Sept 2, 2021 19:09:35 GMT peterl said:

Sept 2, 2021 18:46:36 GMT manchesterman said:

I think Mike dealt with this pretty well, but just to take an example about how absurd so-called direct democracy could end up:

Ref 1 -  NHS  -- Do you agree that an extra £X bn is needed to enable our NHS to fulfill all the backlog of work and to fund new research projects? 

Chances are a majority of people would vote YES

Ref 2 a few months later -  To pay for the £X bn you agreed we needed to spend on the NHS, we now need to raise the basic rate of income tax by X pence in the £ - do you agree with this proposal?

People being as they are, this would almost certainly result in a NO vote.

OOPS! What does the government do then?  They;ve been "instructed" by the Direct Democracy process to spend billions on the NHS but forbidden from raising the funds to do so....

Well they could maybe take the radical step of funding more spending on x by cutting spending on y. There is no reason we either have to spend more across the board or less across the board.

so presumably then you have a series of referendums on whether A, B, C , D, E, F ,G ....etc etc will have its spending cut.   And what happens if they are ALL rejected?

[Georg Ebner]

Sept 2, 2021 18:46:36 GMT manchesterman said:

Sept 2, 2021 14:38:13 GMT sirbenjamin said:

I'd like to see many more referendums on all kinds of stuff. More direct democracy. More control given to the voters on specific issues.

The idea that by voting for a party one must endorse 100% of their manifesto is silly. More importantly it's very unfair to hold voters to something they didn't want in the first place.

I might vote Conservative because I like 15% of the stuff in their manifesto compared to 5% of the LD manifesto and 1% of the Labour manifesto, therefore it's the least bad option. I can still be dead against 85% of the stuff in the Tory manifesto and would vote against it given the opportunity.

The EURef result was, at last in part, due to large numbers of people feeling they hadn't been listened to directly; that sending members of broad-church parties to parliament on the basis of policy-bundle manifestos wasn't good enough.

Politicians still haven't learned from this. They are still keen to take 'tacit endorsement' of their policies at any opportunity and proclaim that voters 'roundly rejected' everything about the opposition, when the reality is far more complex and nuanced.

I think Mike dealt with this pretty well, but just to take an example about how absurd so-called direct democracy could end up:

Ref 1 -  NHS  -- Do you agree that an extra £X bn is needed to enable our NHS to fulfill all the backlog of work and to fund new research projects? 

Chances are a majority of people would vote YES

Ref 2 a few months later -  To pay for the £X bn you agreed we needed to spend on the NHS, we now need to raise the basic rate of income tax by X pence in the £ - do you agree with this proposal?

People being as they are, this would almost certainly result in a NO vote.

OOPS! What does the government do then?  They;ve been "instructed" by the Direct Democracy process to spend billions on the NHS but forbidden from raising the funds to do so....

Although admittingly it works in SwitzerLand - but they are used to participate, seeing the state not as an abstract entity top-down as in France or Germany&Austria or the PlayingField of some detached OxBridge-OldBoys. A big plus is, that it is in CH not abstract: Welfare is still done by the municipalities, resulting in varying taxation, what makes the financial impact for every voter very obvious. Finally it helps, that they are wealthy and slow-speed people.

[peterl]

Sept 2, 2021 19:15:35 GMT manchesterman said:

Sept 2, 2021 19:09:35 GMT peterl said:

Well they could maybe take the radical step of funding more spending on x by cutting spending on y. There is no reason we either have to spend more across the board or less across the board.

so presumably then you have a series of referendums on whether A, B, C , D, E, F ,G ....etc etc will have its spending cut.   And what happens if they are ALL rejected?

Hypothetically, people could simultanously choose a series of budget measures and they would then have to be balanced in a way more in line with expressed public preferences.

[Merseymike]

Sept 2, 2021 19:15:35 GMT manchesterman said:

Sept 2, 2021 19:09:35 GMT peterl said:

Well they could maybe take the radical step of funding more spending on x by cutting spending on y. There is no reason we either have to spend more across the board or less across the board.

so presumably then you have a series of referendums on whether A, B, C , D, E, F ,G ....etc etc will have its spending cut.   And what happens if they are ALL rejected?

Exactly what happened in California where they just wouldn't agree to the extra taxation needed to pay for that voted for. The result was that the state went bankrupt.
As I said earlier the person who turned this around was good old Governor Moonbeam. Whether they just accepted tougher fiscal policies from someone who couldn't be viewed as anything other than a left- liberal I'm not sure but he sorted out what others had failed to do.

[Merseymike]

Sept 2, 2021 18:19:00 GMT sirbenjamin said:

Sept 2, 2021 17:52:01 GMT Merseymike said:

But still ended up with a majority on 36% of the vote. The LibDems don't interest me in terms of how well or badly they do. I just want more choice and better representation

Presumably you were a Labour member/activist at the time. How did you feel about it then?

I've always been strongly in favour of PR as all on here will confirm. That was a very difficult election for me. I wasn't a party member then - had left in 2003 over Iraq . I really wanted to vote LibDem because of Iraq, but our house was then in the marginal of Crosby and I wasn't prepared to see the Tories get in because so many of them had voted against civil partnerships. I didn't vote until 9.55 and voted Labour. Really regretted it afterwards!

[manchesterman]

Sept 2, 2021 19:58:33 GMT Merseymike said:

Sept 2, 2021 18:19:00 GMT sirbenjamin said:

Presumably you were a Labour member/activist at the time. How did you feel about it then?

I've always been strongly in favour of PR as all on here will confirm. That was a very difficult election for me. I wasn't a party member then - had left in 2003 over Iraq . I really wanted to vote LibDem because of Iraq, but our house was then in the marginal of Crosby and I wasn't prepared to see the Tories get in because so many of them had voted against civil partnerships. I didn't vote until 9.55 and voted Labour. Really regretted it afterwards!

..and therein lies the madness of FPTP. Why cant we just have a system where people can vote for the party they most support, rather than having to go through such contortions to vote against the party they least support!

[peterl]

Sept 3, 2021 0:03:09 GMT manchesterman said:

Sept 2, 2021 19:58:33 GMT Merseymike said:

I've always been strongly in favour of PR as all on here will confirm. That was a very difficult election for me. I wasn't a party member then - had left in 2003 over Iraq . I really wanted to vote LibDem because of Iraq, but our house was then in the marginal of Crosby and I wasn't prepared to see the Tories get in because so many of them had voted against civil partnerships. I didn't vote until 9.55 and voted Labour. Really regretted it afterwards!

..and therein lies the madness of FPTP. Why cant we just have a system where people can vote for the party they most support, rather than having to go through such contortions to vote against the party they least support!

The question is, what is this mystical system. Its certainly not any form of preference voting if someone's vote is going to actually reflect who they support.

[Merseymike]

Sept 3, 2021 0:05:47 GMT peterl said:

Sept 3, 2021 0:03:09 GMT manchesterman said:

..and therein lies the madness of FPTP. Why cant we just have a system where people can vote for the party they most support, rather than having to go through such contortions to vote against the party they least support!

The question is, what is this mystical system. Its certainly not any form of preference voting if someone's vote is going to actually reflect who they support.

The system in Scotland would have given me much more flexibility.

[islington]

Sept 3, 2021 0:03:09 GMT manchesterman said:

Sept 2, 2021 19:58:33 GMT Merseymike said:

I've always been strongly in favour of PR as all on here will confirm. That was a very difficult election for me. I wasn't a party member then - had left in 2003 over Iraq . I really wanted to vote LibDem because of Iraq, but our house was then in the marginal of Crosby and I wasn't prepared to see the Tories get in because so many of them had voted against civil partnerships. I didn't vote until 9.55 and voted Labour. Really regretted it afterwards!

..and therein lies the madness of FPTP. Why cant we just have a system where people can vote for the party they most support, rather than having to go through such contortions to vote against the party they least support!

... and therein lies the greatness of FPTP. It concentrates the mind and forces voters to think about what really matters to them. Vote with your head, not with your heart.

[Defenestrated Fipplebox]

Sept 3, 2021 8:47:32 GMT islington said:

Sept 3, 2021 0:03:09 GMT manchesterman said:

..and therein lies the madness of FPTP. Why cant we just have a system where people can vote for the party they most support, rather than having to go through such contortions to vote against the party they least support!

... and therein lies the greatness of FPTP. It concentrates the mind and forces voters to think about what really matters to them. Vote with your head, not with your heart.

The flip of that is that, that same thing is also its greatest weakness, why? Because if nobody represents your views, you are in reality voting against all other parties when you put your X in the box, rather than for anyone. This undermines democracy and disenchants people and in the end they often stop voting at all. 

[John Chanin]

Sept 2, 2021 18:46:36 GMT manchesterman said:

Sept 2, 2021 14:38:13 GMT sirbenjamin said:

I'd like to see many more referendums on all kinds of stuff. More direct democracy. More control given to the voters on specific issues.

The idea that by voting for a party one must endorse 100% of their manifesto is silly. More importantly it's very unfair to hold voters to something they didn't want in the first place.

I might vote Conservative because I like 15% of the stuff in their manifesto compared to 5% of the LD manifesto and 1% of the Labour manifesto, therefore it's the least bad option. I can still be dead against 85% of the stuff in the Tory manifesto and would vote against it given the opportunity.

The EURef result was, at last in part, due to large numbers of people feeling they hadn't been listened to directly; that sending members of broad-church parties to parliament on the basis of policy-bundle manifestos wasn't good enough.

Politicians still haven't learned from this. They are still keen to take 'tacit endorsement' of their policies at any opportunity and proclaim that voters 'roundly rejected' everything about the opposition, when the reality is far more complex and nuanced.

I think Mike dealt with this pretty well, but just to take an example about how absurd so-called direct democracy could end up:

Ref 1 -  NHS  -- Do you agree that an extra £X bn is needed to enable our NHS to fulfill all the backlog of work and to fund new research projects? 

Chances are a majority of people would vote YES

Ref 2 a few months later -  To pay for the £X bn you agreed we needed to spend on the NHS, we now need to raise the basic rate of income tax by X pence in the £ - do you agree with this proposal?

People being as they are, this would almost certainly result in a NO vote.

OOPS! What does the government do then?  They;ve been "instructed" by the Direct Democracy process to spend billions on the NHS but forbidden from raising the funds to do so....

That’s what happens in California.  And no they don’t have a solution for it.

[islington]

Sept 3, 2021 9:11:31 GMT Defenestrated Fipplebox said:

Sept 3, 2021 8:47:32 GMT islington said:

... and therein lies the greatness of FPTP. It concentrates the mind and forces voters to think about what really matters to them. Vote with your head, not with your heart.

The flip of that is that, that same thing is also its greatest weakness, why? Because if nobody represents your views, you are in reality voting against all other parties when you put your X in the box, rather than for anyone. This undermines democracy and disenchants people and in the end they often stop voting at all. 

This isn't a weakness.

Voting is about deciding how and by whom you want the country to be run. (Or the local council or whatever.) That's the question you should be asking yourself as you go to vote.

What it isn't about is expressing your views. There are lots of other ways you can do that, for instance you could join an on-line political forum. This is a far better way of doing it because I've read your posts, and your views are much more interesting and nuanced than could ever be adequately expressed merely by putting a cross on a piece of paper.

Or you could send letters to the 'Times', join a political party or pressure group, pester your MP, go on protest marches, write leaflets and hand them out at railway stations, sound off at Speakers' Corner ...

Basically there's no shortage of ways you can express your views, but there's only one way you can choose the Government.

[sirbenjamin]

I'm not convinced that referendums need to mean Swiss-style micromanagement - I see them more as a vehicle for ensuring that popular opinion is represented more proportionally and mitigating against the threat (whether real or perceived) of an 'out of touch elite' controlling everything.

It was very clear that when 52% of voters elected to leave the EU, the % of declared leavers in parliament was a lot less than this. The referendum exposed the underrepresentation and subsequent actions by politicians only served to underline the disparity.

This is almost certainly still the case on issues like capital punishment, immigration and foreign aid. The case for denying the right to referendums would be stronger if parliament were more representative, but it's clearly very lacking.

[Merseymike]

Sept 3, 2021 10:45:21 GMT sirbenjamin said:

I'm not convinced that referendums need to mean Swiss-style micromanagement - I see them more as a vehicle for ensuring that popular opinion is represented more proportionally and mitigating against the threat (whether real or perceived) of an 'out of touch elite' controlling everything.

It was very clear that when 52% of voters elected to leave the EU, the % of declared leavers in parliament was a lot less than this. The referendum exposed the underrepresentation and subsequent actions by politicians only served to underline the disparity.

This is almost certainly still the case on issues like capital punishment, immigration and foreign aid. The case for denying the right to referendums would be stronger if parliament were more representative, but it's clearly very lacking.

But on those sort of issues, we need protecting from the mob. This is why I'm not a populist.

[Merseymike]

Sept 3, 2021 8:47:32 GMT islington said:

Sept 3, 2021 0:03:09 GMT manchesterman said:

..and therein lies the madness of FPTP. Why cant we just have a system where people can vote for the party they most support, rather than having to go through such contortions to vote against the party they least support!

... and therein lies the greatness of FPTP. It concentrates the mind and forces voters to think about what really matters to them. Vote with your head, not with your heart.

But it was exactly the opposite. It was purely a negative vote to keep out the Tories.

[Merseymike]

Sept 3, 2021 9:55:35 GMT islington said:

Sept 3, 2021 9:11:31 GMT Defenestrated Fipplebox said:

The flip of that is that, that same thing is also its greatest weakness, why? Because if nobody represents your views, you are in reality voting against all other parties when you put your X in the box, rather than for anyone. This undermines democracy and disenchants people and in the end they often stop voting at all. 

This isn't a weakness.

Voting is about deciding how and by whom you want the country to be run. (Or the local council or whatever.) That's the question you should be asking yourself as you go to vote.

What it isn't about is expressing your views. There are lots of other ways you can do that, for instance you could join an on-line political forum. This is a far better way of doing it because I've read your posts, and your views are much more interesting and nuanced than could ever be adequately expressed merely by putting a cross on a piece of paper.

Or you could send letters to the 'Times', join a political party or pressure group, pester your MP, go on protest marches, write leaflets and hand them out at railway stations, sound off at Speakers' Corner ...

Basically there's no shortage of ways you can express your views, but there's only one way you can choose the Government.

I actively do not want either Labour or Conservative, or any other party, to form a majority government, unless they have an actual majority.
I don't care whether the current formulations of Labour or Conservative form a government, because I dislike them both about equally.
The current electoral system only gives an effective choice of two entirely unacceptable alternatives.

[Defenestrated Fipplebox]

We are a parliamentary democracy, referendums shouldn't ever come into play.

Getting rid of parliament and having referendums on anything is an option, but not one I'd choose.