31–40 of 49 posts
As an American, I wonder what the dominance of SNP in Scotland will mean.
I see two possibilities:
1: They try to keep up the energy kick and scream bloody murder at every turn, but never achieve anything, as they have exactly zero leverage to affect anything in Westminster. They fizzle out, and nothing much happens and things return to normal. Their big shot, independence referendum, has been fired and can't credibly be reloaded and re-fired anytime soon. Even Nicola Sturgeon admits this.
2: They get down to business and negotiates as a serious counterpart for actual regional political influence. This means getting their hands dirty on actual politics and compromise and at least toning down the Tory-hate-rhetorics, which could prove a very bitter pill to swallow for their base. See: Liberal Democrats, 2010-2015.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, seriously. If you don't believe me, what about David Axelrod: "POLITICO: But what about the press? You say it has disproportionate power here. Do you think Britain’s conservative print media is more powerful than Fox News? DA: Yeah, I do. I do think the parties approach media as partisan players. So you see parties disseminating messages through the print media in a way that is unusual. DA: Fox is certainly very…
"Partisan" is very different from "Tame".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It still does not make any sense though. How is it possible that the amount of seats a party get seem so pseudo random?
It's not random at all, it's just that the national vote doesn't factor at all (only the vote in each seat does). It has the (often overlooked, IMO) benefit of a strong 1:1 connection between constituent and MP: even if you didn't vote for the MP, a majority of your neighbours did, and the MP is still your representative in parliament. Organising locally to boot out your MP is much, much simpler than organising natio…
As a Swede without any insight into UK politics other than recent surveillance reports and internet censorships from the UK I can only say that this is disappointing for me.
I get that you consider those to be important, but they were waaaaaaaay down the list in importance.
As an American, I wonder what the dominance of SNP in Scotland will mean.
It seems they went all in on becoming king-maker to a Labour minority government. That didn't work out. I see two possibilities: 1: They try to keep up the energy kick and scream bloody murder at every turn, but never achieve anything, as they have exactly zero leverage to affect anything in Westminster. They fizzle out, and nothing much happens and things return to normal. Their big shot, independence referendum, ha…
Apologies if you already knew that, but there's a lot of commentary about recently that seems utterly ignorant of those facts.
It's probably worth reflecting on your words here too: "never achieve anything, as they have exactly zero leverage to affect anything in Westminster". That's a double edged sword for people who want to keep the union together for the benefit of all.
As an American, I wonder what the dominance of SNP in Scotland will mean.
Pessimistically, it means an acrimonious break-up of the UK to the detriment of both sides, though that depends as much on what the Conservatives have planned as what the SNP wants and is able to do.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, seriously. If you don't believe me, what about David Axelrod: "POLITICO: But what about the press? You say it has disproportionate power here. Do you think Britain’s conservative print media is more powerful than Fox News? DA: Yeah, I do. I do think the parties approach media as partisan players. So you see parties disseminating messages through the print media in a way that is unusual. DA: Fox is certainly very…
"Partisan" is very different from "Tame".
https://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/peter-oborne/why-i-...
This makes no sense to me. Ulster Unionist Party had 114,935 votes and got two seats. UKIP had 3,841,346 votes and got one seat. Conservative had 11,207,547 votes and received 326 seats.
What's interesting from a game theory point of view is to have so many different parties with a FPTP electoral system. You would expect a two party system.
As an American, I wonder what the dominance of SNP in Scotland will mean.
Optimistically it will mean a prompt for the UK as a whole to have a constitutional shake-up, with the House of Lords abolished and replaced with some kind of regional assembly, more devolution within England, federalism, and some kind of PR system introduced mostly to undermine the SNP but accidentally making the voting system better. It may make leaving the EU less likely, as the knock-on effect may be the break up…