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Ming Gone
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
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Dont know whos going to take over as leader but they are going to have a tough job.
:thumb:
He wasnt Merciless... but maybe he should have been. Good bye Ming!
Oh I never though tthat he would be there for anything like four/five years - only that he would see them through the next election.
Still to go "without delay" says that there is something deep behind this.
Desperation and panic I suspect...
Thjat'd probably be best, though I suspect he wouldn't touch the job again.
I don't agree with that at all. We've always been a two party nation. The only reason the Lib Dems have done well since Labour came to power was that the Tories were so shit, and they did a good job seizing on people who would normally vote Tory (old people in particular). That and their stance on the war really helped their polls, but now we're roughly back to day-to-day politics and the Conservatives aren't utterly shit any more, their popularity has gone down because it's the usual left vs. right (or centre vs. centre as it's now known).
That and the boundaries have been rigged so that the tories need more votes per MP than Labour and the Lib Dems need even more.
Rigged?
It's unfortunate alright but it doesn't mean it's rigged, just that in areas where the Tories have greater support are areas where the constituencies are largest.
Yes, but not enough.
I don't think its a conspiracy though, its just that boundaries changes are always behind population shifts
Still, here's to hoping their latest leadership election is as entertaining as the last one was.
I seem to remember the knives being sharpened for Davy Cameron only a few weeks ago. :chin:
Mere sabre-rattling.
How many leaders in how many years Mr. Tory? Hague, Smith, Howard, Cameron. Quite a collection.
I tend to agree with quite a few Lib Dem policies in principle, but they're never gonna get to impliment them on a national scale. I see them more as an effective pressure group. I couldn't care less if the other parties steal half of their ideas, as long as they get implimented. And I think they have by far the most progressive social policies, so I wouldn't like them to disappear.
To be honest I was surprised he was ONLY 66 - he looked a lot older to me ..
Yes, and if we are really lucky we could end up with a thriving democracy like in the US with only two parties.
What an odd thing to say. I wouldn't have thought there's much doubt that the US democratic system works, (and at levels such as council and state there's much less control from the centre than the UK), with a system of checks and balances. Now you may not like the policies that it espouses, but its certainly democratic.
And number of parties doesn't neccessarily result in more or less democracy. Lots of parties may lead to a stable political system such as Germany or one where Government's continually fall and power is often devolved to unelected professional civil servants instead (Italy of old, though probably less so now)
as an aside the UK has always had a multiplicity of parties, at least since the Labour Party arrived on the scene. Even in England the Tories, Labour and Lib Dems regularly win seats, in Northern Ireland there are various Unionist, nationalist and Republican parties. Scotland has the SNP and Wales has Plaid. Plus there are loads of parties which contest seats but never win anything in Westminster, such as the Natural Law Party and the Greens. if we had only two parties the winning party would normally have over 50% of the vote - I'm not sure if that's ever happened since the introduction of universal suffrage.
But that's true of everywhere. Unless you're a dedicated party man or woman you're always going to be choosing a party which doesn't fully represent all you agree with. That's as true of the US, as it is off the UK, France, Germany or Japan
At least in the US there is a clear winner and looser - you know what you're going to get. where there are Lots of parties there also tends to be some form of PR and then what you get is after horse-trading between the parties.
I suppose you are right, there is a balance, obviously if there were a dozen parties then next to nothing would get done. But I still think that having a third large-ish party in the UK does give us more choice and it does widen the political debate.