Well Starmer had a massive majority and could have got whatever was needed passed to sort out public finances, but his MPs rebelled (or he chickened out).
People forget that the government is still mostly the civil service. The thin veneer of politicians over the top doesn't change the operating constraints of the UK unless you can spend a long time on the matter and reshape things slowly. Which was what was happening until this mess.
The issue isn’t the Labour Party it’s the entire country. Brexit has been a disaster, energy costs are through the roof, housing is becoming more costly, and there’s been no real economic growth in a decade.
But no one wants suffer the temporary pain to make the reforms needed to change it. They just want to grumble and say the current leader isn’t any good before moving onto the next one, rather than admitting they might need to actually accept some change in the country.
Most of the real power is in the budget, which is technically a bill, but I would 100% go for "change the voting system". Almost anything except D'Hondt is better than FPTP; for simplicity, we could just copy the Scottish Parliament's use of AMS.
I would also insert a trapdoor that future changes to the voting system would require the approval of >50% of eligible voters, including non-voters. Yes, I know Parliament cannot bind its successors and all that, but at least I can make it look bad to change it again.
Does this solve any of the immediate problems? No. Does it solve the dysfunctionality since 2008? I think so, especially given that polling these days looks like five parties getting 20% of the vote each. Labour themselves came to power on 38% of the vote.
Lots of the problems in the UK stem from a lack of strategic vision. More coalitions, infighting, compromises, etc aren't going to drive serious change home. Don't really care if it's Labour or Tory, tbh, just want national politics focus on bigger picture stuff and bulldoze through regs if it's a matter of strategic investment.
What would be nice for voting reform, is to add regional elections across the nation (replacing the old European ones). This would be a great layer of government to vote in coalitions, who deal with 'softer day to day areas of government' (care, benefits, roads, etc). Would be a great incubator for national talent, too. We should be able to see how future PMs deal with a region before trusting them with national affairs.
The grand coalition governments of the EU are not in any way better. They just result in bickering and gridlock because parties that hate each other get stuck in the same room.
This is your pet issue, completely based on the grass looking greener on the other side.
The gridlock is real whether it happens inside or outside the party. This is partly why we're here in the first place! Starmer is out because he couldn't do coalition management inside the Labour party.
Rejoin the EU, single market, customs union, drop sterling and take the Euro. This would almost certainly start a civil war in the UK (I am not being dramatic) but its what is needed.
EEA like Norway would be both a significant improvement, and does not require Euro. I do think we have to get to the point where we can say that actually Schengen was good and we should have been part of it before we get economically overtaken by Poland.
There shouldn't be any temporary pain from bringing energy costs down or letting the economy grow (on a per-capita basis I suppose, politicians do tend to try and cheat with migration). It would be good for everyone, or at worst neutral with wildly rare exceptions who are worse off. Which does make it a bit of a mystery why the UK and a number of other Western polities put up such a determined struggle against the two.
People are desperate for change! It's just that due to a misinformation fuelled online (and traditional media!) environment, nobody can agree what that is.
Disagree. Every one of the issues you mentioned is a direct result of labour/tory uniparty ideology. Netzero, endless migrants, insane taxation and so on.
I'm opposed too but there's little recognizance of the poor position the UK is in. Under the current decline of Britain's economic foundations, having enough diesel and gas to keep the lights on and the lorries running depends on imports from the US, which could well be banned overnight if the president - any president - feels they need to crack the whip.
Opposing the Oval Office means shortages in the supermarkets, gas power stations turning off and a bond crash that makes the DWP lack the liquidity to service all of the monthly state pension payments, besides a great many other problems.
Locking up placard-wavers is stupid, but so is intentionally waving a placard with the name of a proscribed group, when just about any other message supporting the cause would be fine.
If you do a million pounds in criminal damage and attack a police officer with a sledgehammer, you can't just write it off as 'direct action', you deserve a tough jail sentence whatever the cause.
If the government is legitimately evil for proscribing a group they should be able to deal with their constituents calling them out for it. Materially hindering a genocide is by all currently accepted human standards a good thing.
Ah yes the lovely protesters who spat on me, called me a baby killer and pretended they were going to punch me when I got stuck in the middle of them and said "I don't have time for this - I need to get to my mother" while I was trying to get to my dying mother in hospital and walked right into them leaving a tube station.
Fuck 'em. Sympathy gone.
Also I vote on local policy. The Middle East is a big political distraction from what's actually going on here. 99.9% of us can do fuck all about the Middle East and I suspect 90% of the country couldn't give a flying fuck about it either. But you know the council spent time on a meeting so they have a gaza policy but can't collect the bins reliably.
Are middle-aged women too much of a protected class to be held responsible for their actions?
If I went to practically anywhere in the world and started publicly expressing support for groups which are actively attacking military facilities and key infrastructure, I'd be arrested.
Funny u/JumpCrisscross who was asking for sources has now deleted the post with the question.
> Since July last year, police have arrested at least 2,787 people across the UK for holding signs displaying statements such as “I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action”, according to the civil liberties organisation Defend Our Juries.
> "The law does not have an age limit", the head of the Metropolitan Police said after an 83-year-old retired priest was arrested for supporting a banned protest group.
And in the same above article there's an explanation about why this "violent terrorist group" has been banned:
> The move to ban the organisation was announced after two Voyager aircraft were sprayed with red paint at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire on 20 June. It caused about £7m of damage, police said.
I agree with you generally but the RAF are part of the state and not meaningfully "capital". If you attack the military then yes obviously you are going to get the book thrown at you. That does _not_ justify going after the people with signs.
They did that on purpose, though: Palestine Action has been banned on the basis of being a "terror organisation", this means that supporting them is a criminal offence. Knowing that, they purposedly propested by holding signs saying that they supported Palestine Action... and therefore they were arrested as expected (and really the police has no choice in such cases not to undermine the rule of law).
Note what the Court of Appeal said when ruling that the ban on terror grounds was legal:
[It was] "a fundamental mistake to overlook the fact that Palestine Action overtly promotes unlawful violence amounting to terrorism. It is not - as claimed - a direct action civil disobedience protest group like the suffragettes, operating transparently in the open. It is a covert organisation which operates with secret cells to avoid the detection and prosecution of those using violence to destroy property and cause injury. " [1]
The suffragettes committed dozens of assaults and arsons and at least one deployment of an IED, which suggests bad faith in the interest of political orthodoxy by Lady Chief Justice Baroness Carr.
Oh agreed. If anyone cares that much travel back to whichever country they support and enlist. Also renounce your British citizenship at the same time.