UK Politics & Brexit Discussion

[RandoEFC+]

32 minutes ago, Rucksackfranzose said:

Out of curiosity: Does this election have any impact on you and the way your governed, foreign politicy aside? Asking since I seem to remember your living on the Isle of Man? Genuine question?

Edit: Googled it and saw all laws with validity for the whole UK are valid on the Isle of man as well, so yes it has.

Yeah, the Isle of Man does actually have its own elected Parliament but it isn't overwhelmingly independent these days. The UK government has quite direct impacts on us even if we don't vote in the General Election and aren't technically directly governed by them. For example, I'm a teacher and we've had a lot of staffing issues over the past few years because teaching in the Isle of Man is very largely similar to teaching in the UK. At the moment very demanding and not very rewarding. However, Labour's promise to train up 6,500 new teachers, if they manage to follow through with it, would have a very big impact on us because we recruit most of our teachers from the UK and that would therefore go some way to fixing our staffing issues.

We do also have a lot of differences in some ways. For example the UK has a school inspections organisation called Ofsted which is largely deemed toxic and not fit for purpose by the teaching community in the UK. Indeed a primary school headteacher even committed suicide last year, mostly due to the pressure of her school being inspected. On the Isle of Man, we don't have Ofsted at all and have the freedom to organise our own inspection system internally. So yeah, it's a bit of a grey area overall really. We have some independence to do our own thing but generally follow what the UK does.

Either way, the Tories have been corrupt, dishonest and incompetent in their time in power, each Prime Minister worse than the one that came before them. From a simple "right thing" perspective, it will restore some of my faith in humanity and the electorate to see them get absolutely decimated.

11 hours until the exit poll.

[Bluebird Hewitt]

1 hour ago, Rucksackfranzose said:

Out of curiosity: Does this election have any impact on you and the way your governed, foreign politicy aside? Asking since I seem to remember your living on the Isle of Man? Genuine question?

Edit: Googled it and saw all laws with validity for the whole UK are valid on the Isle of man as well, so yes it has.

This is similar in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland as well. 

Each one has their own government and varying amounts of devolved responsibilities (I think Scotland has the most devolved to them compared to others), but we all primarily fall under the UK government for the majority of our laws and policies as well.

It's why you may sometimes read about my disdain for the Welsh Government (Labour run), as there are things that happen here that barely get criticism simply because it's Labour running the show (it's also why I'm not too fussed on Starmer, as he doesn't seem to care much about Wales, like the other PM's before him). That's all for another time though.

[Rucksackfranzose]

2 hours ago, Bluebird Hewitt said:

This is similar in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland as well. 

Each one has their own government and varying amounts of devolved responsibilities (I think Scotland has the most devolved to them compared to others), but we all primarily fall under the UK government for the majority of our laws and policies as well.

It's why you may sometimes read about my disdain for the Welsh Government (Labour run), as there are things that happen here that barely get criticism simply because it's Labour running the show (it's also why I'm not too fussed on Starmer, as he doesn't seem to care much about Wales, like the other PM's before him). That's all for another time though.

Well, from my point of view, there's a important difference: While Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland are parts of the UK and therefore got the right to vote in this election, the Isle of Man and  the Channel Irelands aren't as crown depencies and therefore got no voting right.

Edited July 4 by Rucksackfranzose

[Tommy]

 

[Stan]

Good in general. 

Worrying how many votes and turnout Reform are planned to get. 

Worrying how many racists are outing themselves by voting for them. 

[RandoEFC+]

I hope Reform don't get into double figures. Seeing Farage win in Clacton on his own would have been bad enough.

Labour now need to actually be a decent government and hopefully not get too tied down with "seeing off" Reform by being even more non-commital on immigration and other issues.

[Redcanuck]

Results are very slow.  Polls closed 3 and a half hours and there has only been a few results.

[Redcanuck]

You still counting votes manually?

[RandoEFC+]

Yeah this 13 Reform seats thing isn't looking likely now. The exit poll had them to possibly win Barnsley against Dan Jarvis and they were 8,000 votes behind.

[RandoEFC+]

Galloway is out - good.

Reports that Corbyn is going to win Islington North as an Independent candidate.

[RandoEFC+]

Waking up to Labour en route for well over 400 seats, Lib Dems gaining 50 seats, Labour losing 5 seats so far to either Corbyn, Green Party or pro-Palestine independents, a number that outstrips the four seats that Farage's little bunch looks set to win overall.

We will not hear left wing, pro-Palestinian or pro-environment voices amplified in the media in response to the millions of votes they've won though. We will only see and hear an awful lot more about Nigel Farage who will increasingly be treated as the unofficial opposition by the print and broadcast media including the BBC.

Mustn't get too upset preemptively though. I've just seen Jacob Rees Mogg lose his seat not 5 minutes ago.

[Azeem]

This is discrimination against politicians

[Stan]

Delighted to wake up and see the likes of Mercer, Coffey, Rees-Mogg, Shapps, Gullis and Fabricant fucked off. 

Absolute mercenaries. 

 

[Stan]

Truss booted out. 

[6666]

Great to see the Tories get decimated but would've been nice if there were more left leaning gains.

[RandoEFC+]

18 minutes ago, 6666 said:

Great to see the Tories get decimated but would've been nice if there were more left leaning gains.

The left wing vote definitely has taken a bit of a chunk out of Labour in ways that not many people predicted. Most predictions had Corbyn as a toss-up and he cruised it, nobody had the independents standing as a Palestine protest vote against a Labour Party who are perceived to have been weak on the issue actually winning and a smattering of them did. Jess Phillips and Wes Streeting only held on by the skin of their teeth and even Starmer himself saw his personal vote share fall. Not many had the Greens to win as many seats as Reform either. Labour also failed to unseat Iain Duncan Smith because they needlessly deselected Faiza Shaheen who was very popular locally and matched the Labour candidate with 12,000 votes each.

It's a historic majority for Labour but a fragile one in many ways and if you dig into it, the left-wing vote has done a pretty impressive job of organising the protest vote and sent some serious warning shots at the Labour leadership. They can't afford to write off the left next time around if the Tory and Reform vote unites again behind one of the right wing parties.

I think it's quite a fascinating set of results actually even if the headline seat count has gone pretty much as expected.

[RandoEFC+]

 

Incredible rise and fall. Elected to Parliament in 2010 and in 14 years, managed to rise to one of the great offices of state, become Prime Minister, be ousted as PM and then lose her seat.

[Azeem]

 

[Reluctant Striker]

Really is amazing the size of the swing from Conservative Brexit majority, to this Labour majority. The biggest 1 election swing since 1945. Blair had a similar size win in 1997, but was from within a few seats prior to that election.

I think it's fair to say some significant portion is because of how bad the Boris, Truss & Sunak self destruct rollercoaster has been to real people.

It is quite troubling exactly what portion of the vote Reform got. If people want to protest vote, what is wrong with the Greens?

But, we can hope to have a sensible PM making some sensible choices.

I do wonder how long before proportional representation voting is put forward. It sounds good. Probably is. Whether it's Labour or Conservative, if they currently get a big majority, it's always with under 50% of votes. PR near guarantees coalitions & somewhat empowers nationalists, whether Reform or the non English ones. But on balance, is probably the socially responsible way to go, especially within a nation of nations.

[Gunnersaurus]

Correct me if I'm wrong but despite only getting 4 seats reform  had 15% of the vote? Which shows there is a lot of support for them. And despite getting less seats than the lib dems more people voted for them. 

I voted for the greens and I think they got in in my constituency I'll have to check. 

I think Labour will improve things. I do respect starmer being honest and making all these false promises. My worries with Starmer are that he won't do enough to tackle climate change.  We may see more privatisation of the NHS. Not as much as we would of got under the conservatives but to much perhaps. Also I'm abit concerned that he may force people to work that are disabled and incapable of doing so. But we'll see what happens 

[RandoEFC+]

The ratio of vote share to seat share is a total mess this time around. Proportional representation is clearly a more democratic system even if the cost of it is more seats for parties like Reform. It's hard to get that through though because the government at any given time will always be a party who have won more than 50% of the seats with less than 50% of the votes and so by introducing proportional representation they're putting through a law that removes them from power. Hard to see how it ever comes about unless we get an election where Labour and Tory become so unpopular that they have to go into coalition with the Lib Dems or Reform and their partners agree on the condition they'll introduce PR or at least hold a national referendum on doing so.

[Gunnersaurus]

@Reluctant Striker. Unfortunately  the greens don't always tell people what they want to hear. There are a lot of reform voters who will vote for them because of immigration. If they feel reform will get it down or even stop it they will vote for them. If it fucks everything else up they will still vote for them as long as there are less foreigners it the UK. I don't what your background is but I live on the edge of a rough area and see people like this all the time.  

[Reluctant Striker]

1 hour ago, Gunnersaurus said:

@Reluctant Striker. Unfortunately  the greens don't always tell people what they want to hear. There are a lot of reform voters who will vote for them because of immigration. If they feel reform will get it down or even stop it they will vote for them. If it fucks everything else up they will still vote for them as long as there are less foreigners it the UK. I don't what your background is but I live on the edge of a rough area and see people like this all the time.  

Yes, sounds similar to me. My constituency is one of the new revised ones, but has basically switched straight back to Labour after its 1st time Brexit Conservative.

But, votes were 12k Labour, 8k Conservative, marginally ahead of 8k Reform, 1.5k Green, the Lib Dem & 2 independents all under 1k each. The order pretty much similar to any other election I've known.

As those numbers suggest, I do encounter plenty that would seem right at home chatting things over with Nigel Farage etc.

In addition, I did have 2 Irish grandparents & 2 Welsh great-grandparents. It does always feel noticeable to me how the English-British far right genuinely can't seem to comprehend the UK is actually a collection of nations. They certainly never seem to approach things with that in their mind. For me I think they all totally missed the point that even their non English backers looked at the EU as being an extension of what the UK itself was all about & what they liked about it. 

[RandoEFC+]

People who have moved from Conservative to Reform (at least some) are the type who believe that "dealing with immigration" is something that can just easily be done overnight when in actual fact it's an incredibly complicated issue for the UK due to geography, politics and commitment to international law.

A lot of these people think that the Conservatives have proved that they "won't" deal with it whereas Reform have never had power and so that accusation can't be levelled at them. In actual fact, the Conservatives simply couldn't deal with immigration in the way these people wanted within the restraints that exist in our democracy. Farage could be made PM tomorrow and have all 650 seats in Parliament and you still wouldn't see him achieve net zero migration or whatever it is these people want in a full term.

The left actually have better solutions to managing immigration then the right (creating safe routes, spending more money on processing migrants and catching people traffickers, having a closer relationship with France/Europe, actually just welcoming more immigration to help staff the NHS and care services) but unfortunately Labour are still too frightened that the media and political landscape will ruin them for it that they aren't making the a strong case for any of these approaches.

One thing is for sure, the Rwanda scheme is absolutely bat shit crazy on a moral, practical and economic level.

[Redcanuck]

Seems similar to what happened in Canada 30 odd years ago.  Our conservative party at the time where called Progressive Conservatives.  A number of conservatives felt they had become more progressive than conservative and formed the Reform party.  Reform and the PC's split the vote the next couple of elections allowing the Liberals to get pretty easy majority governments while not really increasing their share of the vote. Kind of like Labour gaining over 200 seats while increasing their share of the vote by less than 2%.  Eventually the right united and formed the Conservative party , won the next election and were in power for 10 years. Then people growing tired of the then government threw them out and put the Liberals back in for a little over ten years.  We have an election next year and with the Conservatives over 20 points a head in the polls, it's expected we will have Conservative government next year.  The thing is nothing every changes no mater who is in power, the differences between the two main parties really isn't that great.