General Election 2024

Hmm. Not convinced by this, think you need to show your reasoning. If we had PR in 2010 then the Tories would've formed a coalition with UKIP, not the LibDems, and you can guarantee that part of the agreement would've been a referendum on EU membership.

Tories would've formed a coalition with UKIP

Sorry, I just can't conceive that one. Maybe I'm naive

The population of Oldham is 242k. 0.7% of that is ~ 1,700 people. It seems possible that some of these people would be relatively geographically concentrated and there would be streets where a relatively low percentage of people speak English.

That's the borough. The town is less than 100k.

700 people, a short street of 40 houses with 3 in each house is 120. That would have to be a very tight distribution. Esp in Oldham, with a large 1st or 2nd generation immigrants who are spread across the town.

The quote is "I could take you to streets in Oldham right now where no one speaks English" so more than one street. Doesn't seem plausible to me.

Even if you find a street where all adults don't speak English, it's unlikely that there won't be at least one school age child there who doesn't speak English.

It's just dog whistle nonsense.

PR would have made Lab-libdem (assuming they could meet somewhere in the middle, which we couldn't guarantee with Clegg) a bigger coalition. Depending on how the rules were, perhaps given the Tories had the bigger vote they'd have had the first chance to pull together a coalition. That said, they wouldn't have been able to beat the lab-dem outright as their vote share together was 52% and you can assume greens and other smaller parties would have been happy to pitch in to shut down a "Tory+UKIP+DUP+BNP (who got 2% of the vote)+other nutters" coalition for ever.

You can't extrapolate from elections held under FPTP because that does not take in to account how differently people would have voted under PR.

Yes. Would stomach a few headbangers in parliament if it meant a more steady, collaborative government. It would take a while to settle as very few current politicians seem to know how to compromise - everything has got so adversarial (feature of fptp not a bug).

Faiza Shaheen can only afford to take her brave, principled stand because one Tory MP more or less isn't likely to make any difference so she has the luxury of being a protest candidate. She knows she isn't going to win and she is only going to help Duncan Smith save his seat. She's leaving it up to other people to vote Labour nationwide to actually do what she claims to want to do, to get rid of the Tories. It's revolting.

^ This is accurate analysis.

Which is not to say that I agree with Labour deselecting her, or the reasons given.

help Duncan Smith save his seat

Please God no.

I wrote a reply but it was tldr - boring myself tbqh

Who's 'PR'?

I assume that is meant to be Proportional Representation (PR) as opposed to First Past The Post (FTTP).

PR = proportional representation

FTTP? Fuck The Tory Party I guess?

I'm not sure her standing as an Independent will help IDS save his seat though, Labour won't win with there new candidate whatever, Chingford and Woodford Green is still Tory country in many respects and they lost a lot of votes by the way the dealt with the whole mess. And a lot of very active activists. One of the reasons it swung towards Labour last time WAS because the candidate was local, and the fact she was labour actively put some off voting for her because of the perceived Corbyn 'Issue'. She might not win, but I don't think she'll stop labour winning there. I say this as a Labour member who lives in the area and has to put up with IDS as my MP

While we are on acronyms, IDS is irritable bowel syndrome right? right?

Insert Anikin Skywalker meme here

Are we now at the point where rather than Tories arguing that if you "vote Reform you'll get Labour" it's "vote Reform and you'll get the Lib Dems as His. Majestie's Opposition".

I could take you to streets in Oldham right now where no one speaks English

Did he ever consider that they might not want to talk to him?

I could take you to streets in Marbella where no-one speaks Spanish

I'd wager good money that Farage has never been to Oldham in his life. I bet he couldn't even locate it on a map.

He may as well be, yes. He's certainly irritating

His face looks like old ham

Old gammon, surely?

#rep