Sampson

Not being funny, Harry Winks was good for us in the Championship last season, but he shouldn’t be playing for England.

Yeh I’m of the same opinion. It’s one of those things where even if he is convinced by the technical letter of the law, it seems immoral to convict someone of that. 18 months in prison seems crazy to me. I’m sure it’s ruined his life enough having to live with the knowledge he accidentally killed someone.

I suppose it depends on what you mean by as part of a conspiracy? I think that indicates there’s higher powers at play than the Conservative Party like some kind of deep state which I don’t think is a mainstream opinion at all. It is a mainstream opinion that they are intentionally trying to sew division to hold power, especially with regards to “the culture wars”. But that’s just political “divide and conquer tactics”. I dunno if many would say it is part of a conspiracy.

You should listen to Caroline Lucas’ interview on the podcast with Rory Stewart and Alistair Campbell where she talks a bit about the frustration of being a leader of a very small party in terms of seats parliament. One of her point was when she put something on the agenda to the speaker, the reality is so many put things on there and there is not time for everything and the speaker has to choose what to talk about and that’s naturally going to be the stuff the major parties want to talk about If you’re the leader of the SNP or LibDems when they have 50+ seats you might be able to get some airtime, but reality is with parties of less than 10 seats you can’t really make any difference on or get much time to talk about policy.

You don’t need lived experience of it to know that “mutilation” is clearly inflammatory language designed to whip up hate and division though which is the point of this discussion. To the original point - yes, Suella Braveman is a cruel, nasty woman trying to create division in society to feed off it, it’s what the right of the Tory party do, sadly the moderate wing had their party taken over by these looney rightists after the 2016 referendum.

She’s clearly setting herself up for leadership. Vile woman but one who is clearly to the very right of the Tory party and unelectable so probably good for Labour.

What are you even talking about? When did anyone say anything about your opinions being wrong? People are questioning your opinions and you’re allowed to question that questioning, that’s how debating should work. You can’t just expect to put things out there and get defensive whenever anything you say is questioned though.

Huh? Where did anyone say you weren’t entitled to your opinion? Huh? You’re the one making your political leanings other people’s business by constantly and openly posting political commentary on a public forum. It just makes you saying you don’t vote and aren’t leaning towards right wing politics hard to take your posts seriously when you clearly do.

For someone who often claims they don’t vote and aren’t party political, you sure as hell are posting criticisms a minor things way way more often now Labour are in power compared to the Tories @David Hankey At least admit your political leanings like the rest of us do.

I can’t see the point of complaining about a name change when there are far more important things to do. Who cares? Seriously?

Post-2016 referendum continues to show a country hugely divided by age. Actually wonder if Lab-LibDem-Greens created a voting block as happens in many mainland European countries whether you’d ever be able to get them out of power for generations.

Straight numbers also is an imperfect way of doing it because you’re assuming voters just want one party to get into power at the expense of anything else. For example, I voted Liberal Democrat in 2010 assuming Labour were their natural allies and a Lab-LibDem coalition was the most likely outcome. I would categorically not have voted for them if I’d had the hindsight to know they’d happily go into coalition with the Tories - was true of many LibDem voters in 2010. It was a mistake on my part but taught me to take into account tactical voting and potential coalitions in the future. To an extent tactical voting is kind of essential to democracy because it’s not and shouldn’t really be a choice of just which party you want to get into power, an informed voter has to be able to take into account potential power sharing arrangements and coalitions into their voting preferences.

Yeah both these elections have given me faith somewhat at least for a few years. A lot of it I think is that the left and centre have learnt to vote tactically in a way they perhaps weren’t in the past.

Anyone else gone down the Reform UK Mark Matlock and Helen Burns rabbit hole today? Post-2015 politics is so wild sometimes.

I mean they probably do know them well enough to call them by the first name tbf: I’d imagine Alan Shearer and Harry Kane have met each other many times.

Never mind.

Plus the massively self-inflicted Tory mess that is Brexit that is costing the UK around £25-100billion per year depending on which figures you look at.

The size of majorities make no real difference neither does the size of the opposition. Even if you argue more discenting voices provide more convincing arguments, the government votes with the whip anyway so it makes no difference if they actually convince a few MPs. Besides, if you think the Tories are useless, don’t you then think it’s a good thing the LibDems have got way more seats so the voices come from a wider array of opinions and not just from the Tories?

I think one interesting thing is the tactical voting between Labour, Green and Liberal Democrat voters. There were actually an awful lot of seats where Labour won and LibDems got really low votes in the north and ones where LibDems won and Labour got really low votes in the south. Now of course Labour generally do better in the North and LibDems generally do better in the south but the actual low number of votes for the other party suggested there was quite a lot of tactical voting going on. And many Green voters voted LibDem or Labour to win the seat. There’s been way more tactical voting going on than we’ve seen in previous elections. According to yougov around 22% of all votes were tactical votes. https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/49886-one-in-five-voters-say-they-are-voting-tactically-at-the-2024-general-election

I think the most interesting thing is that it’s essentially become a 5 party system in the uk rather than a 2 or 3 party system and that’s naturally seeing parties win on a lower vote share. I don’t know if it will continue in future elections but it has created this weird situation where Labour have a massive vote share but feels precarious. I doubt Labour will lose office in 2029 but I can easily see them losing their majority and having to go into coalition with the Lib Dems and/or Greens.

Ok well in that case I think I’d probably agree with you. Though don’t know about the class background of all of them, I don’t think anyone would deny there’s a long way to go with regards to racial equality in politics.

Again, I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about repeating this vague coded language. Why not just say which demographic you think it favours?

I’m genuinely confused at what you’re getting at. Not even being glib but can’t even work out what you’re chatting about.

People who didn’t go to Oxbridge?