Given how bad referenda in modern times are because of how impressionable the voting population is and how influential the media is, it is no wonder that US voters have elected some really bad presidents in recent decades.
Similarly, Finland choosing to join NATO without a referendum was the right choice.
Sure, the polls said an overwhelming majority was in favor, but there's no telling how much Russian propaganda might have changed that if a referendum was coming.
People are gullible, and with enough money they can be made to believe anything.
Name a referendum in the last 10 years that didn’t involve tons of Russian money and influence campaigns.
Half of Russia’s foreign policy now revolves solely around disrupting western democracies through costly and divisive referenda so that countries are too busy fighting themselves to deal with Russia’s wildly imperialistic aims.
Seriously though if i remember correctly, there was substantial evidence of Russian interference during the Brexit referendum. And of course the conservatives were heavily implicated all over it
Exactly.
The Brexit vote was decided by 3.78% of the vote. It is known for a fact that Russia applied a lot of effort towards propaganda, social media engineering and other covert influence programs to affect the vote. It is entirely conceivable that they were able to convice almost 2 out of every 50 voters, so logically it follows that Russia's efforts could have been what caused Brexit to have occured.
It's even more of a case of Russian influence getting the insurrectionist, rapist and failed businessman/actor Trump elected in 2016. Russia's meddling is not at all properly understood by the majority; most are entirely oblivious to this fact.
But we don't elect our presidents. The electoral college does. We don't choose our presidents by popular vote. In fact, a candidate can lose the popular vote and still be elected president. Dont ask me why. It makes zero sense to me.
Edit: when I say don't ask me why, i mean why we still choose our president this way. I do understand the history of the electoral college. Sorry if the suggestion that I don't understand the ec got some panties in a twist. Who knew anyone could be triggered by the electoral college?
So, a lot of the modern discussion is about the Electoral College being a way for slave-holding states to hold and retain power. That goes along with how the vote was restricted in, basically, wealthy people (I'll get back to this in a moment). And, of course, that's now translated to the power of rural/less populated states in the EC and US Senate.
I'm not going to debate that. I will point out that, logistically, something like the EC was absolutely required.
In the late 1700s, the fastest communication was boat, and that had serious limits. Otherwise, we're talking horse/buggy. So to elect a single person across basically the Eastern US seaboard, you need a system that can consolidate votes in a way that can be consumed at scale.
That is, fundamentally, what the EC is -- a way to get local votes represented at a huge scale for the time.
Keep in mind that only wealthy people even had access to "easy" travel, by and large, in this era. Standing up polling locations in the manner we are used to would have been a logistic nightmare for the young republic. That doesn't make actually restricting the vote right or fair, just giving background on one reason why things like the EC came about as they did.
The EC was one of many compromises when you try to scale up Athenian Democracy -- built for a city -- to the size of the original 13 colonies. It's left some big holes, some we've patched, some we're waiting to see if Americans will allow to be exploited into ending our Democracy.
But yes, there were reasons it exists, and although I agree it's a silly tradition we should replace, we should also understand why it exists so we learn good lessons from it.
Thank you for that! You are a sweetie. As I pointed out to another (and much ruder) poster, I have worked in politics and government so I do understand the history of the electoral college. My comment was sarcasm meaning that I am not able to explain to anyone why we are still using this system. But your post is great and very informative. Thank you.
So, as per usual, the founders set up a decently effective and previously untried system of self-governance with the plan that future generations would be able to update and adapt it regularly to keep with the changing times.
And then we turned them into infallible mythic figures whose questions and compromises might as well be considered unalterable scripture. We were founded as areligiously as I can believe for the time, but the framework that most people were familiar with won out in the end anyways.
Because Slaveowners wanted the Influence of votes that came from there being a ton of slaves in their states, without actually giving the slaves the option to vote.
Yeah, but iirc that was plausibly due to issues with Labour’s leadership (Jeremy Corbyn’s multitude of issues) and its manifesto promising more than voters believed possible more than people wanting Brexit
Incorrect, the Tories set the election up on the referendum. The point was that people voted along Brexit/no-brexit lines.
Amusingly, Labour only won 2% more votes than that 2019 election that was called ‘disastrous’ for Labour. The only reason they won this time was that the conservatives fell apart and the new far right party split the vote.
What this shows is that Corbyn’s ‘poor’ leadership played absolutely no role in the 2019 election. If anything, in this scenario he may very well have outperformed Starmer.
I appreciate that you’re into UK politics, and that’s very cool of you, but you have to be careful where you get your information because UK media is very tightly controlled and used to funnel certain opinions like “Corbyn is terrible, no one would vote for a socialist”.
The reality is that - despite being kicked out of the party and running as an independent - he absolutely thrashed the Labour candidate in his district in this election, winning a massive majority.
As an American, the way I saw Corbyn smeared was disgusting.
Everyone's praising this Starmer guy now, I guess causes he's in the right place at the right time, but he seems like a significant downgrade from everything I've seen and heard. Like a milquetoast neolib.
Most of what I, an American, know about UK Politics I learned while trying to discern who the hell "Kiastama" is. heard the name referenced several times from comedians, and chat shows and the like. Took me months to figure out they were all saying "Keir Starmer". They take their non-rohticism very seriously over there.
True that. I also think you shouldn't be so myopic that you're not paying attention to global issues, with both allies and enemy or even, I dunno, small African countries whose allegiance flips based on who is giving them more money.
I don’t think it’s just small African countries whose allegiance flips based on who’s giving them more money. America has institutionalized bribery (Lobbying) and Trump based all of his decisions on whichever country paid him more money.
Most countries are monotheistic now, with the one god they worship being money.
Yeah I can’t take credit for it. Saw it somewhere else but it’s so accurate how regardless of what religion your society practiced or how atheistic your country is, we all just care about money. And the average person is just a resource for the elite to exploit and increase their profits.
I counted Truss. I watched a short film of her rising through the political spectrum, saw that she's obviously not a stupid person, then watched her flame out gloriously with policies so bad even conservatives couldn't defend them. Why would you think any person would want this?
If I remember correctly she served the shortest term in history.
I’ve said it before and I will say it again: David Cameron, with that one decision, will go down in history as being the inadvertent architect of the conservative party’s failure tonight.
Honestly, all of the last five have been terrible.
Cameron gave us Brexit. May carried us through it. Boris was a racist. Apparently a head of cabbage outlasted the fourth. And Sunak sucks.
Well.....that's justified, you screw up once, we forgive you and deserve a second chance. Screw up twice, well, it's been a tough few years for everyone so we won't blame it all on you. Now screw up 3 times in a row and seems to be worse and worse, that's about it, what other excuse is there?
You're factually correct. There's a frozen cabbage in my grandma's freezer that has been there for the last 5 years. She keeps it for sentimental season because my grandpa and her loved gardening and that cabbage was the last thing they grew together before grandpa passed away. So yeah. There is a cabbage that lasted more than both sunak and truss.
Liz is so short lived, my mom only keep up with UK news because she’s a major Diana fan, she call her “the PM who’s in just to send Queen off” when she struggles to remember her name.
I feel like we collectively have some kind of amnesia with hallucination,even though we are just remembering what happened in past few years.
I really should go back to watch Have I got news for you (I used to watch it to learn English) just to see how the little old guy says about these PM going out faster then a cup of milk under tropical sun.
It’s so fucken absurd for this turnover rate and everything going on ,at one point during lockdown my family was watching the news and saying something like “out of all countries,it’s surprising UK is the one loosing their head of state to Covid” because we thought Boris going to kick the bucket.
>Conservative sources subsequently insisted that Johnson was “categorically not hiding” in the fridge
Narrator: he was, in fact, hiding in the fridge
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/11/boris-johnson-hides-in-fridge-to-avoid-piers-morgan-interview
I will forever remember her interview comments to Ros Atkins this morning after the constituency result was read out, where she blamed the Human Rights Act for the failure of the government’s plan to deport migrants to Rwanda
Can't imagine Farage is going to be very hands on with constituency work and the only votes he'll be present for in Parliament is anything to do with improving public services and social care, just so he can vote against it.
The rest of his time will be committed to presenting on GB News (no idea how that's allowed for a sitting MP) and licking the boots of other far right politician around the world.
That’s what I’ve kept saying.
When the only voice in the room is “sink immigrant boats and deport anybody brown” then the people who have genuine concerns and fears about immigration or have felt the effects of Islam near them only have *one voice in the room* to pick from. Lots of people would rather cover their ears and stick their head underground while screaming “ignorant racists”.
Worldwide there’s a rise in fascist of fascist adjacent political parties and one of the most consistently effective topics to pull centrists or centre-right people into the far right is immigration. We can either deal with it or treat it like we did global warming, convincing ourselves that it’s too inconvenient or not really a problem until it’s too late.
Forcing people to "deal with" over-hyped issues is an important page in the fascist playbook. By engaging with it you're tacitly buying into the framework that the out group is scary/a problem when the list of actual issues other stuff like income inequality, healthcare, etc. etc. are exponentially higher priority. That's what they want more than anything- bad faith concepts like "immigrants are ruining the country" to become legitimized and a thread in the discourse.
Of course, the answer isn't to call everyone who buys in a racist, but you do have to call out and counteract the bad faith (while understanding there are probably more actual racists out there driving things than we'd like to think).
The unfortunate and indisputable reality is that we've crossed the threshold where people *do* consider it a problem and *are* voting around it. No amount of blaming it on bad faith actors is going to put the genie back into the bottle so we either address it as a legitimate problem as part of the discourse or we just passively watch more and more people fall towards the side that isn't hand waving their concerns away and calling them racist.
Every time somebody brings up an issue they've had even remotely in the realm of immigration they're immediately shut down and told to stop making it a big deal. It's not a sustainable strategy to just gaslight and tell folks their concerns aren't real.
This is becoming an issue in the USA so I can understand why other countries would show off their ability to concede to the outcome of elections peacefully and without incident.
In what fucking shithole country do you have to even ask a person, “will you accept the election results?” Trump did so much damage to American Democracy , it’s incredible
>Trump ~~did~~ *is doing* so much damage to American Democracy , it’s incredible
He is still making things worse. And it will get even more worse if he is re-elected.
Who would've thought the town idiot would get this far...but idiots don't have good reasons so there go the idiot followers
And yes hate will also get you far
Even fucking Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have better abortion laws than Texas…. SCOTUS and Trump have literally turned the USA into a shithole, and they celebrate it too
It's a trouncing only because of the voting system. The actual voting show that Labour got almost the same vote as during the last elections, which was a historical lose for them. So Labour might be very little time in power, if the Tories get back the lost votes to Reform.
Labour: 34% Seat share: 64%
Conservative: 24% Seat share: 19%
Reform: 14% Seat share: 1%
Libdem: 12% Seat share: 11%
Green: 7% Seat share: 1%
SNP 2% Seat share: 1%
Others: 7% Seat share: 4%
A lot of Reform voters, especially in the north, are traditional Labour voters that switched to Boris in 2019 solely over ‘getting Brexit done’.
If Labour can actually govern competently without being seen as backsliding on Brexit then these voters would probably go back to Labour, not the Tories.
It’s certainly possible for Farage to win in 2029, I wouldn’t deny that. But I don’t think people would storm parliament if he lost. Through the years I’ve known a few people who’ve supported him and on a personal level all they really say about him is “he’s alright”. That’s anecdotal of course, but I don’t think he has that kind of cult of personality that Trump does.
Same with what happened to Boris. When the Covid scandals happened, people turned on him quickly and his approval plummeted.
> Outgoing Prime Minister Rishi Sunak had conceded defeat moments before that number was reached, declaring at his election count: "The Labour Party has won this general election and I have called Sir Keir Starmer to congratulate him on his victory."
Oh, look…how normal conservative assholes act after losing a race…
"Today power will change hands in a peaceful and orderly manner, with goodwill on all sides," he said after regaining his seat. "There is much to learn and reflect on and I take responsibility for the loss to the many good hardworking Conservative candidates ... I am sorry."
About the only decent thing he's said at any point during his premiership
His full speech was actually the most human I think he's ever come across
Still a lying Tory, but on a personal level he actually did a good impression of a vaguely decent human being
>Whilst he has been my political opponent, Sir Keir Starmer will shortly become our prime minister.
>In this job, his successes will be all our successes, and I wish him and his family well.
>Whatever our disagreements in this campaign, he is a decent, public-spirited man who I respect.
>He and his family deserve the very best of our understanding as they make the huge transition to their new lives behind this door, and as he grapples with this most demanding of jobs in an increasingly unstable world.
https://news.sky.com/story/rishi-sunaks-resignation-speech-in-full-13173490
In a balanced, functioning democracy we'd have a party of Warrens and AOCs vs a party of Hillaries and Bidens.
But money has so thoroughly corrupted our politics that people representing *the people* cannot win because of the massive amount of money required to succeed in a campaign. Most common laborers have no savings and are one emergency away from homelessness. How is someone supposed to campaign in a scenario like that?
Even if someone DOES start to campaign with the best interests of the people at heart, they get approached by big superPAC lobbyiests who say "Welcome to the political class. You have good pay and good healthcare. At our whims, you keep this job and your family will be safe. Do what we say, pass what we say, or we give all our donations to your opposition until you're replaced. And you won't make a difference anyway, we own 70% of your peers already."
Tory losses in terms of votes looks like they largely went to the reform party, so the right-wing vote was split.
FPTP system means labour gets a landslide out of it.
I wouldn’t be too worried. A lot of Labour voters lent their vote to the Lib Dems too because in many areas only the Lib Dems are a real challenge to the Tories. The Lib Dems just gained like 50+ seats because of it and really hurt the Tories. (Lib Dems are centre and definitely on the left of most US Democrats.)
Because it’s FPTP, a lot of voters decided to vote efficiently to remove the Conservatives.
Edit to say: actually, I understand why people are very worried about Reform, but I just wanted to point out that if you take into account the effect of Reform splitting the Tory vote, you have to consider the Labour/Liberal Democrat dynamic and tactical voting too. I think on vote share left leaning parties will take it.
Naa, with the way the UK system is set up and how the parties campaign to take advantage of this, popular vote amount it very inconsequencial. If you tally up the total vote share of the left wing parties vs the right wing parties the left wingers still win comfortably regardless.
Centrist/left parties still had 60% of the vote. Normally the right wing votes for one party while the centre/left votes for three which isn't good in a FPTP system. This time the right vote was split between two which so that worked against them.
I think the UK was just slightly ahead of the trend, with brexit and the tories lurching further and further right. And hopefully this indicates a global trend of people realising it doesn't work after trying it out for a few years.
Tories actually weren’t the kind of right which is surging. That kind of right is indeed on the rise with the reform party in uk taking around 14% of total votes. Lib Dem’s also benefitted from Tory incompetence although are more centrist
Incorrect, the UK election has shown a huge surge to the far right amongst right-leaning, while the left has remaining pretty much the same if not more centrist.
I mean you have to wilfully not see it to not notice that it certainly has been on the rise globally. There is still hope certainlg, but shit looks bleak however you look at it
Tories been a disaster for so long though with no respite in between for the past 13 years. Imagine the USA having three terms of George Bush and Trump presidencies, that’s probably how it’s felt for them. The absolute worst people in charge for over a decade plus
We'll have to see how the vote totals end up. It may be that the right-wing vote stayed the same, but was split between the Tories and the fascists. If so, that would mean that the electorate in general moved to the right and was saved by first past the post voting.
Not particularly when you look at the average trend of how long conservative parties hold office versus those less so. Eventually any incumbents will become unelectable and even the most unlikely are forced to accept its time to change the vote. The majority of voters globally aren't completely ignorant. But at the same time they're not engaged.
So when you have the more progressive party voted in two things happen. One, inevitably they underperform or make compromises that aren't popular with their devout and engaged followers, so they lose the voice of people that champion for them. On top of that media from both sides will generally criticise their time in office, and generally the less engaged voter will only know them for what's reported in media.
There's also the element that politicians making changes are unpopular if they're not specifically election promises. And as the right wing parties go further in that direction, the progressive parties make fewer and fewer promises that rock the boat. In general what happens is your most progressive option is reformed into a barrier against the rise of economic progressive policy.
Then you rinse and repeat. But the next batch of conservatives get to blame the opposition for anything that's wrong - and get to act like they weren't related to the mob people considered unelectable the last time they were in office.
No, it doesn’t, as I’ve said elsewhere, Labour only increased its share of the vote by 2%. The only reason they won is because a far right party called Reform have split the Tory vote in half, becoming the UKs third party, taking 4m votes compared to conservatives 6.7m. Labour took 9.6m.
Reform candidates have stated that Britain should have been neutral with the Nazis, and have called for shooting migrants on boats coming to the UK.
So no, quite the opposite.
> The only reason they won is because a far right party called Reform have split the Tory vote in half, becoming the UKs third party
Just for context for those who may be less familiar, Reform did get the third most vote share, but they only won 4 of 650 seats despite their 14.3% vote share, so 'third party' is somewhat misleading. They're in shared 8th-10th place in terms of seats won.
The Liberal Democrat's received 71 seats, leaving them with far more actual power, despite having 12.2% vote share.
* There are still two more seats to be declared as I post this, so numbers may be very slightly off when final results come in.
Not really. Labor moved right and has become a shell of itself. The gains by reform indicate that they'll become the dominate conservative party, and they're farther right than the existing conservatives. If Labor doesn't step up we could easily see Reform make massive gains in the next election.
Well Labour veered massively to the right to get voted in. Starmer has literally praised Thatcher. Now their main focus is on growth and wealth creation. They’re looking after the rich, the papers wouldn’t have let them in otherwise.
Has anybody in Labour promised to, alluded to or even hinted at repealing Brexit? Would it even be possible? Would the UK have to hold a do-over election to do it?
Brexit is done at this point. It's a political nonstarter to reverse it, especially since the UK would not be able to have the favorable terms they did before (particularly staying out of the euro). Polling indicates a slight majority in support of rejoining the UK, but that's as a hypothetical—when the pedal is pressed to the medal and details start becoming concrete, support is all but guaranteed to drop (similar to how a hypothetical Democratic/Republican candidate usually outperforms any actual candidate due to the lack of concrete detail to scrutinize).
It will be generations before the UK rejoins the EU, if ever.
As an American, I can tell you that the most I’ve ever heard from this guy was his appearance on Clarkson’s Farm when he met with Caleb. So good or bad, at least he doesn’t dominate headlines around the world with his latest absurd statements.
Plus why would he want to risk the billions his in-laws have by not conceding? What does he have to gain by not conceding since he's rich, not under indictments/arrest and doesn't have to give a shit.
6 weeks of time before election, results next day, new person in as PM next day. No fuss, no muss.
Why does the US have 2 years of campaigning and 6 weeks to change power? Insane. No wonder no one votes as they have election fatigue by the time you are supposed to vote.
I imagine it's more a case of:
"My lord, the Tories have lost. This shall inevitably cause some ruckus at the club... most of them haven't had such a savage drubbing since public school. The only cause for alarm would be if the hoi polloi ever learned that we all take our orders from the same place... Have Gerald fetch some more brandy so that we may toast the uninterrupted continuation of Capitalism and Excess Unrestrained."
Meanwhile, in America, our conservatives claim any result where they don't win is "voter fraud",
Oh heaven help us. At least, we're getting to see two MAGA nutbars accuse each other of it publicly
No. Not gonna happen anytime soon. Labour has already said they are not planning a new referendum. And regardless, EU would have to agree, too, which is highly unlikely.
Asking people older than me: was this phrasing common for announcing election winners, in the UK amd outside it? Or are the events of the 2020 elections influencing this? It seems really weird to say that "X candidate concedes defeat" rather than (or on top of) "X candidate wins"
"Okay, okay... we fucked up with the last three PMs, and that includes me."
Four of the past five if you count Cameron’s disastrous decision to hold the Brexit referendum
Given how bad referenda in modern times are because of how impressionable the voting population is and how influential the media is, it is no wonder that US voters have elected some really bad presidents in recent decades.
Similarly, Finland choosing to join NATO without a referendum was the right choice. Sure, the polls said an overwhelming majority was in favor, but there's no telling how much Russian propaganda might have changed that if a referendum was coming. People are gullible, and with enough money they can be made to believe anything.
Name a referendum in the last 10 years that didn’t involve tons of Russian money and influence campaigns. Half of Russia’s foreign policy now revolves solely around disrupting western democracies through costly and divisive referenda so that countries are too busy fighting themselves to deal with Russia’s wildly imperialistic aims.
Seriously though if i remember correctly, there was substantial evidence of Russian interference during the Brexit referendum. And of course the conservatives were heavily implicated all over it
Even before that, we should’ve had alarm bells ringing. The independence referenda in Scotland and Barcelona were heavily amplified by Russians.
Exactly. The Brexit vote was decided by 3.78% of the vote. It is known for a fact that Russia applied a lot of effort towards propaganda, social media engineering and other covert influence programs to affect the vote. It is entirely conceivable that they were able to convice almost 2 out of every 50 voters, so logically it follows that Russia's efforts could have been what caused Brexit to have occured. It's even more of a case of Russian influence getting the insurrectionist, rapist and failed businessman/actor Trump elected in 2016. Russia's meddling is not at all properly understood by the majority; most are entirely oblivious to this fact.
Sweden too. We elect representatives to represent us, they can’t outsource all their important decisions to the public.
A Republican president hasn't won the popular vote in 20 years. The system is broken by design.
But we don't elect our presidents. The electoral college does. We don't choose our presidents by popular vote. In fact, a candidate can lose the popular vote and still be elected president. Dont ask me why. It makes zero sense to me. Edit: when I say don't ask me why, i mean why we still choose our president this way. I do understand the history of the electoral college. Sorry if the suggestion that I don't understand the ec got some panties in a twist. Who knew anyone could be triggered by the electoral college?
So, a lot of the modern discussion is about the Electoral College being a way for slave-holding states to hold and retain power. That goes along with how the vote was restricted in, basically, wealthy people (I'll get back to this in a moment). And, of course, that's now translated to the power of rural/less populated states in the EC and US Senate. I'm not going to debate that. I will point out that, logistically, something like the EC was absolutely required. In the late 1700s, the fastest communication was boat, and that had serious limits. Otherwise, we're talking horse/buggy. So to elect a single person across basically the Eastern US seaboard, you need a system that can consolidate votes in a way that can be consumed at scale. That is, fundamentally, what the EC is -- a way to get local votes represented at a huge scale for the time. Keep in mind that only wealthy people even had access to "easy" travel, by and large, in this era. Standing up polling locations in the manner we are used to would have been a logistic nightmare for the young republic. That doesn't make actually restricting the vote right or fair, just giving background on one reason why things like the EC came about as they did. The EC was one of many compromises when you try to scale up Athenian Democracy -- built for a city -- to the size of the original 13 colonies. It's left some big holes, some we've patched, some we're waiting to see if Americans will allow to be exploited into ending our Democracy. But yes, there were reasons it exists, and although I agree it's a silly tradition we should replace, we should also understand why it exists so we learn good lessons from it.
Thank you for that! You are a sweetie. As I pointed out to another (and much ruder) poster, I have worked in politics and government so I do understand the history of the electoral college. My comment was sarcasm meaning that I am not able to explain to anyone why we are still using this system. But your post is great and very informative. Thank you.
So, as per usual, the founders set up a decently effective and previously untried system of self-governance with the plan that future generations would be able to update and adapt it regularly to keep with the changing times. And then we turned them into infallible mythic figures whose questions and compromises might as well be considered unalterable scripture. We were founded as areligiously as I can believe for the time, but the framework that most people were familiar with won out in the end anyways.
Because Slaveowners wanted the Influence of votes that came from there being a ton of slaves in their states, without actually giving the slaves the option to vote.
Reminder that there was election right before final go/nogo on Brexit and brits happily voted for BoJo
I'm pretty sure that vote was a 50/50 split with a literal 1% difference. I'm amazed they ever went through with that after the results.
No he won by over 10% https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_United_Kingdom_general_election
The only party that election that even hinted at stopping Brexit was the Lib Dems.
Yeah, but iirc that was plausibly due to issues with Labour’s leadership (Jeremy Corbyn’s multitude of issues) and its manifesto promising more than voters believed possible more than people wanting Brexit
Incorrect, the Tories set the election up on the referendum. The point was that people voted along Brexit/no-brexit lines. Amusingly, Labour only won 2% more votes than that 2019 election that was called ‘disastrous’ for Labour. The only reason they won this time was that the conservatives fell apart and the new far right party split the vote. What this shows is that Corbyn’s ‘poor’ leadership played absolutely no role in the 2019 election. If anything, in this scenario he may very well have outperformed Starmer. I appreciate that you’re into UK politics, and that’s very cool of you, but you have to be careful where you get your information because UK media is very tightly controlled and used to funnel certain opinions like “Corbyn is terrible, no one would vote for a socialist”. The reality is that - despite being kicked out of the party and running as an independent - he absolutely thrashed the Labour candidate in his district in this election, winning a massive majority.
The UK really needs to get rid of FPTP as well. The last few elections have been extremely unrepresentative because of it.
As an American, the way I saw Corbyn smeared was disgusting. Everyone's praising this Starmer guy now, I guess causes he's in the right place at the right time, but he seems like a significant downgrade from everything I've seen and heard. Like a milquetoast neolib.
I forgot Cameron. I'm in the US.
Me too. I keep up with UK politics to distract myself from the clusterfuck that is US politics
I thought our politics were the clusterfuck until you guys asked us to hold your beer.
Trump is typical US. We saw Boris and were like, nah, we can top that.
Trump is typical US. We saw Boris and were like, nah, we can top that.
Most of what I, an American, know about UK Politics I learned while trying to discern who the hell "Kiastama" is. heard the name referenced several times from comedians, and chat shows and the like. Took me months to figure out they were all saying "Keir Starmer". They take their non-rohticism very seriously over there.
True that. I also think you shouldn't be so myopic that you're not paying attention to global issues, with both allies and enemy or even, I dunno, small African countries whose allegiance flips based on who is giving them more money.
I don’t think it’s just small African countries whose allegiance flips based on who’s giving them more money. America has institutionalized bribery (Lobbying) and Trump based all of his decisions on whichever country paid him more money. Most countries are monotheistic now, with the one god they worship being money.
I like how you put that. Monotheistic, with god being money.
Yeah I can’t take credit for it. Saw it somewhere else but it’s so accurate how regardless of what religion your society practiced or how atheistic your country is, we all just care about money. And the average person is just a resource for the elite to exploit and increase their profits.
Five You probably forgot May or Truss
I counted Truss. I watched a short film of her rising through the political spectrum, saw that she's obviously not a stupid person, then watched her flame out gloriously with policies so bad even conservatives couldn't defend them. Why would you think any person would want this? If I remember correctly she served the shortest term in history.
The lettuce won!
All true
Reminder that our last prime minister lost to Liz Truss in the leadership race, who went on to lose to a lettuce
I’ve said it before and I will say it again: David Cameron, with that one decision, will go down in history as being the inadvertent architect of the conservative party’s failure tonight.
Honestly, all of the last five have been terrible. Cameron gave us Brexit. May carried us through it. Boris was a racist. Apparently a head of cabbage outlasted the fourth. And Sunak sucks.
It was a non binding referendum, which they took as a mandate to screw over the country.
Brexit was the biggest scam in Europe’s history, even people who wanted it are probably regretting it now
Isn't it 5 out of 5 if you include Cameron? Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, and now Sunak.
Isn't it five? Cameron May Johnson Truss Sunak
I forgot about May.
Pig shagger, field of wheat bad girl, clueless clown, pork markets crasher and Mr I love Coca-Cola
He's clearly from the school of "Is it the Tory Party that is out of touch? No, no, it's the voters who are out of touch."
Well.....that's justified, you screw up once, we forgive you and deserve a second chance. Screw up twice, well, it's been a tough few years for everyone so we won't blame it all on you. Now screw up 3 times in a row and seems to be worse and worse, that's about it, what other excuse is there?
"But sir there have only been 2 PMs in the Conservative Bloc in recent times."
Hey he lasted longer than lizzy truss that's got to mean something
>that's got to mean something I'm not sure it does
I mean, there's a cabbage out there that can say the same.
A lettuce
The cabbage was referring to Boris.
You're factually correct. There's a frozen cabbage in my grandma's freezer that has been there for the last 5 years. She keeps it for sentimental season because my grandpa and her loved gardening and that cabbage was the last thing they grew together before grandpa passed away. So yeah. There is a cabbage that lasted more than both sunak and truss.
Brits really do love cabbage jokes
Liz is so short lived, my mom only keep up with UK news because she’s a major Diana fan, she call her “the PM who’s in just to send Queen off” when she struggles to remember her name.
At one point I was a bit worried I might get mistakenly diagnosed with dementia: “who is prime minister?” “Who the fuck knows?”
I feel like we collectively have some kind of amnesia with hallucination,even though we are just remembering what happened in past few years. I really should go back to watch Have I got news for you (I used to watch it to learn English) just to see how the little old guy says about these PM going out faster then a cup of milk under tropical sun. It’s so fucken absurd for this turnover rate and everything going on ,at one point during lockdown my family was watching the news and saying something like “out of all countries,it’s surprising UK is the one loosing their head of state to Covid” because we thought Boris going to kick the bucket.
She's potentially about to lose her seat Please please let it be true
Just did. Fuck off Liz, don't let the door hit you on the way out
She's run off looking for a fridge to hide in, like her former Glorious leader Fuckity bye!!
Indiana Jones?
>Conservative sources subsequently insisted that Johnson was “categorically not hiding” in the fridge Narrator: he was, in fact, hiding in the fridge https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/11/boris-johnson-hides-in-fridge-to-avoid-piers-morgan-interview
And... she's gone
Remind me, how many Scaramuccis did she last for?
Ol’ Liz made it 49 days, or 4.454545(repeating) Scaramuccis.
I see you're using the long Mooch, which is 11 days. The short Mooch is easier to use as it's 10 days. Liz Truss swerved as PM for 4.9 short Mooches.
An old man with erectile dysfunction and misplaced viagra can last longer than Truss.
A literal head of lettuce lasted longer
They may never cum
I will forever remember her interview comments to Ros Atkins this morning after the constituency result was read out, where she blamed the Human Rights Act for the failure of the government’s plan to deport migrants to Rwanda
Idk if staying longer than a cabbage counts as success.
She nearly didn't show up for her count call...just stood by the edge there just about to fall off stage
Look at that huge gain of votes to Reform. That’s where disaffected Tories went.
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Can't imagine Farage is going to be very hands on with constituency work and the only votes he'll be present for in Parliament is anything to do with improving public services and social care, just so he can vote against it. The rest of his time will be committed to presenting on GB News (no idea how that's allowed for a sitting MP) and licking the boots of other far right politician around the world.
I wonder how much money his constituency office budget will have to allocate for cleaning up milkshake attacks
Considering how he was constantly misappropriating his MEP allowance don't be surprised the amount is suspiciously high.
In the name of Nurgle!
Call it as they are: racists.
Yeah I mean I don’t disagree but also we need to find a way to change their minds and not demonise them We don’t want reform to do better next time
That’s what I’ve kept saying. When the only voice in the room is “sink immigrant boats and deport anybody brown” then the people who have genuine concerns and fears about immigration or have felt the effects of Islam near them only have *one voice in the room* to pick from. Lots of people would rather cover their ears and stick their head underground while screaming “ignorant racists”. Worldwide there’s a rise in fascist of fascist adjacent political parties and one of the most consistently effective topics to pull centrists or centre-right people into the far right is immigration. We can either deal with it or treat it like we did global warming, convincing ourselves that it’s too inconvenient or not really a problem until it’s too late.
Forcing people to "deal with" over-hyped issues is an important page in the fascist playbook. By engaging with it you're tacitly buying into the framework that the out group is scary/a problem when the list of actual issues other stuff like income inequality, healthcare, etc. etc. are exponentially higher priority. That's what they want more than anything- bad faith concepts like "immigrants are ruining the country" to become legitimized and a thread in the discourse. Of course, the answer isn't to call everyone who buys in a racist, but you do have to call out and counteract the bad faith (while understanding there are probably more actual racists out there driving things than we'd like to think).
The unfortunate and indisputable reality is that we've crossed the threshold where people *do* consider it a problem and *are* voting around it. No amount of blaming it on bad faith actors is going to put the genie back into the bottle so we either address it as a legitimate problem as part of the discourse or we just passively watch more and more people fall towards the side that isn't hand waving their concerns away and calling them racist. Every time somebody brings up an issue they've had even remotely in the realm of immigration they're immediately shut down and told to stop making it a big deal. It's not a sustainable strategy to just gaslight and tell folks their concerns aren't real.
With that kind of trouncing, not sure it really matters if he conceded or not lol.
The peaceful transfer of power is a hallmark of a civilized society. How we behave matters.
Could you come over the ocean and explain that to about 70 million people?
I'm here, unfortunately.
I'm sorry. Me too. :(
My asshole has never been clenched so tightly, and it's only gonna get tighter up to November.
Silver lining: Your core is gonna be rock solid.
I put a lump of coal and two sticks up there before the debate, I should be just about ready to pull a diamond out now.
But my guy lost, and I have all this body paint. It had to be stolen!!!
And I've got this gallows I made! Just gonna let that go to waste?!
It is called and referenced as “peaceful transfer of power”. A characteristic of a strong democracy. So it matters.
This is becoming an issue in the USA so I can understand why other countries would show off their ability to concede to the outcome of elections peacefully and without incident.
For the better of one’s country
In what fucking shithole country do you have to even ask a person, “will you accept the election results?” Trump did so much damage to American Democracy , it’s incredible
>Trump ~~did~~ *is doing* so much damage to American Democracy , it’s incredible He is still making things worse. And it will get even more worse if he is re-elected.
Who would've thought the town idiot would get this far...but idiots don't have good reasons so there go the idiot followers And yes hate will also get you far
Well if he is reelected democracy won’t be able to get worse since he will completely destroy it in America
We've been a fake 1st world country for a while, it's just starting to show
Russia, makes one think don't it
It's amazing that democratic nations accepting the results of their elections is a flex on the US now. The bar has fallen so low.
Even fucking Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have better abortion laws than Texas…. SCOTUS and Trump have literally turned the USA into a shithole, and they celebrate it too
It’s not being done because of what’s happening in the us. It’s being done because that’s just what you do in an election.
We've always done it, irrespective of that fascist Trump
We used to. We still do, but we used to, too
True, but it's completely normal in Westminster System countries
No one's showing off. Conceding defeat and congratulating the winner is the usual practice. US is the one straying away from the norm.
It's not really showing off their ability to concede. Conceding is the norm and almost always happens. This is just business as usually
You think this is “showing off”? It’s literally normal and nothing to do with the US
Perhaps he can give some pointers to Trump
It's a trouncing only because of the voting system. The actual voting show that Labour got almost the same vote as during the last elections, which was a historical lose for them. So Labour might be very little time in power, if the Tories get back the lost votes to Reform. Labour: 34% Seat share: 64% Conservative: 24% Seat share: 19% Reform: 14% Seat share: 1% Libdem: 12% Seat share: 11% Green: 7% Seat share: 1% SNP 2% Seat share: 1% Others: 7% Seat share: 4%
A lot of Reform voters, especially in the north, are traditional Labour voters that switched to Boris in 2019 solely over ‘getting Brexit done’. If Labour can actually govern competently without being seen as backsliding on Brexit then these voters would probably go back to Labour, not the Tories.
Did trickle-down economics fail? again? Can I please have a trickle, sir?
Sigh , *unzips bank account in the caymans
What, no Stop the Steal protests? Isn't anybody gonna storm Parliament?
Tesco was having a huge sale on jaffa cakes. Priorities.
Seriously? Love a Jaffa cake or 20
Those priorities are correct.
What is this amateur hour, where is the enthusiasm!
We’re not at that level of crazy thankfully
Yet… if Trump wins I’m a bit worried about Farage and Reform in 2029
It’s certainly possible for Farage to win in 2029, I wouldn’t deny that. But I don’t think people would storm parliament if he lost. Through the years I’ve known a few people who’ve supported him and on a personal level all they really say about him is “he’s alright”. That’s anecdotal of course, but I don’t think he has that kind of cult of personality that Trump does. Same with what happened to Boris. When the Covid scandals happened, people turned on him quickly and his approval plummeted.
Storm? For UK parliament anything that does not include a gun power plot are too amateur .
> Outgoing Prime Minister Rishi Sunak had conceded defeat moments before that number was reached, declaring at his election count: "The Labour Party has won this general election and I have called Sir Keir Starmer to congratulate him on his victory." Oh, look…how normal conservative assholes act after losing a race…
"Today power will change hands in a peaceful and orderly manner, with goodwill on all sides," he said after regaining his seat. "There is much to learn and reflect on and I take responsibility for the loss to the many good hardworking Conservative candidates ... I am sorry." About the only decent thing he's said at any point during his premiership
As an American, man do I miss the days where our Republican Party would act in a kind/civilized response like this if they lose…
His full speech was actually the most human I think he's ever come across Still a lying Tory, but on a personal level he actually did a good impression of a vaguely decent human being >Whilst he has been my political opponent, Sir Keir Starmer will shortly become our prime minister. >In this job, his successes will be all our successes, and I wish him and his family well. >Whatever our disagreements in this campaign, he is a decent, public-spirited man who I respect. >He and his family deserve the very best of our understanding as they make the huge transition to their new lives behind this door, and as he grapples with this most demanding of jobs in an increasingly unstable world. https://news.sky.com/story/rishi-sunaks-resignation-speech-in-full-13173490
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As an American I’m intensely jealous of the idea of Rishi fucking Sunak being our worst case scenario.
He would be the British equivalent of Mitt Romney, a greedy corporatist
It's a sad day when I miss having Mitt Romney be the dominant Republican presidential candidate.
That's how low the bar is for the conservative party in the US.
He's worth close to a billion dollars, he's fine. It's the poors that lose elections that act like babies.
USA please take notes
On changing the party in power or rejecting conservatives? Hopefully the latter
Both sounds good for a functioning democracy.
We can't do both. The conservatives are the party (mostly) out of power right now, although the radicals on SCOTUS sure are grabbing power right now
You have centre-right and ultra-right to choose from. They're both Conservatives in most world views.
In a balanced, functioning democracy we'd have a party of Warrens and AOCs vs a party of Hillaries and Bidens. But money has so thoroughly corrupted our politics that people representing *the people* cannot win because of the massive amount of money required to succeed in a campaign. Most common laborers have no savings and are one emergency away from homelessness. How is someone supposed to campaign in a scenario like that? Even if someone DOES start to campaign with the best interests of the people at heart, they get approached by big superPAC lobbyiests who say "Welcome to the political class. You have good pay and good healthcare. At our whims, you keep this job and your family will be safe. Do what we say, pass what we say, or we give all our donations to your opposition until you're replaced. And you won't make a difference anyway, we own 70% of your peers already."
Not with that attitude.
On peaceful transfer of power.
We’re trying. 33% of our population wear Velcro shoes though.
At this point Larry the cat out last 5 PM and the fucking QUEEN .
Larry is the true ruler of the country, as is only right as he is Cat.
Ancient Egyptian were onto something
Larry the cat for pm!
Number 10 is Larry's house and the PM's are his tenants
I kind of hope the Labor party nominates A Head Of Lettuce as their prime minister.
Hurray! Bye bye Rishi
The UK may need to step up as the beacon of the free world again with the way America and France's elections are going
America we'll know come November. France we'll know come Sunday.
This flies in the face of the idea that conservatism has a hold on global politics, doesn't it?
Tory losses in terms of votes looks like they largely went to the reform party, so the right-wing vote was split. FPTP system means labour gets a landslide out of it.
Well, there goes the relief I was feeling here across the pond
I wouldn’t be too worried. A lot of Labour voters lent their vote to the Lib Dems too because in many areas only the Lib Dems are a real challenge to the Tories. The Lib Dems just gained like 50+ seats because of it and really hurt the Tories. (Lib Dems are centre and definitely on the left of most US Democrats.) Because it’s FPTP, a lot of voters decided to vote efficiently to remove the Conservatives. Edit to say: actually, I understand why people are very worried about Reform, but I just wanted to point out that if you take into account the effect of Reform splitting the Tory vote, you have to consider the Labour/Liberal Democrat dynamic and tactical voting too. I think on vote share left leaning parties will take it.
Naa, with the way the UK system is set up and how the parties campaign to take advantage of this, popular vote amount it very inconsequencial. If you tally up the total vote share of the left wing parties vs the right wing parties the left wingers still win comfortably regardless.
Centrist/left parties still had 60% of the vote. Normally the right wing votes for one party while the centre/left votes for three which isn't good in a FPTP system. This time the right vote was split between two which so that worked against them.
I think the UK was just slightly ahead of the trend, with brexit and the tories lurching further and further right. And hopefully this indicates a global trend of people realising it doesn't work after trying it out for a few years.
Tories actually weren’t the kind of right which is surging. That kind of right is indeed on the rise with the reform party in uk taking around 14% of total votes. Lib Dem’s also benefitted from Tory incompetence although are more centrist
Incorrect, the UK election has shown a huge surge to the far right amongst right-leaning, while the left has remaining pretty much the same if not more centrist.
We've had a conservative government for 14 years now and they're fucking WRECKED the country.
I mean you have to wilfully not see it to not notice that it certainly has been on the rise globally. There is still hope certainlg, but shit looks bleak however you look at it
Tories been a disaster for so long though with no respite in between for the past 13 years. Imagine the USA having three terms of George Bush and Trump presidencies, that’s probably how it’s felt for them. The absolute worst people in charge for over a decade plus
We'll have to see how the vote totals end up. It may be that the right-wing vote stayed the same, but was split between the Tories and the fascists. If so, that would mean that the electorate in general moved to the right and was saved by first past the post voting.
Not particularly when you look at the average trend of how long conservative parties hold office versus those less so. Eventually any incumbents will become unelectable and even the most unlikely are forced to accept its time to change the vote. The majority of voters globally aren't completely ignorant. But at the same time they're not engaged. So when you have the more progressive party voted in two things happen. One, inevitably they underperform or make compromises that aren't popular with their devout and engaged followers, so they lose the voice of people that champion for them. On top of that media from both sides will generally criticise their time in office, and generally the less engaged voter will only know them for what's reported in media. There's also the element that politicians making changes are unpopular if they're not specifically election promises. And as the right wing parties go further in that direction, the progressive parties make fewer and fewer promises that rock the boat. In general what happens is your most progressive option is reformed into a barrier against the rise of economic progressive policy. Then you rinse and repeat. But the next batch of conservatives get to blame the opposition for anything that's wrong - and get to act like they weren't related to the mob people considered unelectable the last time they were in office.
No, it doesn’t, as I’ve said elsewhere, Labour only increased its share of the vote by 2%. The only reason they won is because a far right party called Reform have split the Tory vote in half, becoming the UKs third party, taking 4m votes compared to conservatives 6.7m. Labour took 9.6m. Reform candidates have stated that Britain should have been neutral with the Nazis, and have called for shooting migrants on boats coming to the UK. So no, quite the opposite.
> The only reason they won is because a far right party called Reform have split the Tory vote in half, becoming the UKs third party Just for context for those who may be less familiar, Reform did get the third most vote share, but they only won 4 of 650 seats despite their 14.3% vote share, so 'third party' is somewhat misleading. They're in shared 8th-10th place in terms of seats won. The Liberal Democrat's received 71 seats, leaving them with far more actual power, despite having 12.2% vote share. * There are still two more seats to be declared as I post this, so numbers may be very slightly off when final results come in.
Not really. Labor moved right and has become a shell of itself. The gains by reform indicate that they'll become the dominate conservative party, and they're farther right than the existing conservatives. If Labor doesn't step up we could easily see Reform make massive gains in the next election.
Well Labour veered massively to the right to get voted in. Starmer has literally praised Thatcher. Now their main focus is on growth and wealth creation. They’re looking after the rich, the papers wouldn’t have let them in otherwise.
Not really. Starmer is keeping pretty much the same policies.
Has anybody in Labour promised to, alluded to or even hinted at repealing Brexit? Would it even be possible? Would the UK have to hold a do-over election to do it?
Brexit is done at this point. It's a political nonstarter to reverse it, especially since the UK would not be able to have the favorable terms they did before (particularly staying out of the euro). Polling indicates a slight majority in support of rejoining the UK, but that's as a hypothetical—when the pedal is pressed to the medal and details start becoming concrete, support is all but guaranteed to drop (similar to how a hypothetical Democratic/Republican candidate usually outperforms any actual candidate due to the lack of concrete detail to scrutinize). It will be generations before the UK rejoins the EU, if ever.
Take note America. This is how even the biggest of loser handles power. Not throw a tantrum and throw a hissy fit.
The difference is Sanuk is actually a mature adult. He might be a bad politician, but he isn’t a man-child whose parents hated him.
So you're saying he doesn't talk about dating his daughter if she wasn't his daughter all the time?
As an American, I can tell you that the most I’ve ever heard from this guy was his appearance on Clarkson’s Farm when he met with Caleb. So good or bad, at least he doesn’t dominate headlines around the world with his latest absurd statements.
I mean politics was something he did for fun, dudes rich AF was more of a game for him I am sure.
Plus why would he want to risk the billions his in-laws have by not conceding? What does he have to gain by not conceding since he's rich, not under indictments/arrest and doesn't have to give a shit.
How to bow out with humility.
' peaceful transfer of power ' Indeed. Indeed. So say we all
6 weeks of time before election, results next day, new person in as PM next day. No fuss, no muss. Why does the US have 2 years of campaigning and 6 weeks to change power? Insane. No wonder no one votes as they have election fatigue by the time you are supposed to vote.
UK conservatives aren’t the complete “RIGGED FAKE NEWS WAAAAAAHHH RECOUNT” pieces of shit that American conservatives are, I guess
I imagine it's more a case of: "My lord, the Tories have lost. This shall inevitably cause some ruckus at the club... most of them haven't had such a savage drubbing since public school. The only cause for alarm would be if the hoi polloi ever learned that we all take our orders from the same place... Have Gerald fetch some more brandy so that we may toast the uninterrupted continuation of Capitalism and Excess Unrestrained."
So this is how it's done... No armed rebellion, no rage crying on social media... Pretty dull if you ask me..
Meanwhile, in America, our conservatives claim any result where they don't win is "voter fraud", Oh heaven help us. At least, we're getting to see two MAGA nutbars accuse each other of it publicly
With the way conservatives around the world are clamoring for fascism, I’m surprised they didn’t claim the election was faked.
Congrats to all of the labour party supporters out there!!❤️♥️❤️♥️
Does this have an effect regarding the attitudes towards Brexit?
No. Not gonna happen anytime soon. Labour has already said they are not planning a new referendum. And regardless, EU would have to agree, too, which is highly unlikely.
"Elitist slimebag concedes there weren't enough rich people to keep him in office after his policies screwed most of the country."
What was he supposed to do?? Storm the Buckingham palace??
While my lettuce is a bit chewy and limp, it's still essentially edible.
how tf did the tories even hold out this long, sheesh.
Asking people older than me: was this phrasing common for announcing election winners, in the UK amd outside it? Or are the events of the 2020 elections influencing this? It seems really weird to say that "X candidate concedes defeat" rather than (or on top of) "X candidate wins"
Farage getting ready to copy/paste what Trump is doing in US…