But you’re just saying exactly the same thing. Claiming that the way ‘you’ define it is correct while someone else is wrong is just dogmatic fantasy (much like Libertarianism :p). In the real world people across the political spectrum always share broad labels while disagreeing on many points.
And aren’t the Chinese fairly close to ‘free-market Communists’? I’ll grant you that they don’t adhere to original Communist ideal but considering nobody who called themselves Cummunist ever has it’s a pretty meaningless distinction.
Apart from it doesn’t have a “very specific meaning” at all. Left-libertarianism, anarcho-capitalism and libertarian-socialism all fall under a general libertarian heading. North American political hacks don’t get to define what words mean in the English language, sorry.
You can tell that Labour and the Conservatives are feeling a very real threat of losing votes to the LibDems; the “a vote for them is a wasted vote” and/or “a vote for the LibDems is a vote for Labour/Tories (depending which one scares you more)” rhetoric has seriously ramped up, and the pet media are obligingly playing along (I’ve spotted commentary in the Sun and Daily Telegraph this morning alone along those very lines).
The best thing the LibDems could do is to own the threat: “Labour is saying that a vote for the LibDems is a vote for the Tories. The Tories are saying that a vote of the LibDems is a vote for Labour. We are saying that a vote for the LibDems is a vote for the LibDems. And we’ve got them running scared!”
I’m still expecting prospective LibDems voters to get cold feet at the ballot box though. It happens every time.
I had heard of the electoral system being in Labour’s favour, but this really brings it home. Using the latest poll of polls numbers, the Tories have 33% of the vote, the LibDems 29% and Labour 28%, yet Labour would win the most seats. The seats would be 247, 94, 280. Bring on PR.
Yeah, I think if those results actually came to pass there would be uproar, public protests, and immense pressure to change the system. I’m not totally sold on PR, but there’s no way you could defend that.
The frequently cited argument against PR is the fact that it eliminates the consituency MP link, but it doesn’t have to as there are types of PR that keep a constituency MP. The imbalance between the percentage of votes garnered and the number of seats that translates to has been with us forever, I’m not sure why it’s only now pissing people off.
Because it has never been as bad as that, or looked like being. Very rarely has a party come out ahead in seats but behind in votes to another party in a general election (I think Labour’s win in 1974 was the last, and possibly only, time).
There are a number of other arguments against PR, see Arguments against PR | Lords of the Blog for example.
There have been calls for change for as long as I can remember. The difference recently is that there is actually a chance to actually achieve it and a party pushing it as one of their defining policies (albeit in their own self-interest).
It’s also another symptom of the increased distrust in the current political system. Personally I’m pretty bloody sick of having to choose between two equally unpleasant alternatives. Changing to PR (or similar) would at least give people the opportunity to vote for someone else without it being a complete waste, and maybe one day we might actually get a useful government.
And isn’t the contrast between this thread and the US political threads interesting? We’re on page 7 and there hasn’t been even a small-scale flame war yet.
I’m not sure this is entirely a good thing though, it just shows how dull our politics is
Does anyone know where we can follow the results on US television? CSPAN perhaps? Sure, the new networks will have updates but I doubt the coverage will be continuous. And the internet is an option as well. And at what time do the results start coming in? I know it’s a ways off but I want to be prepared.
Results start coming in around 10pm (British Summer Time, GMT + 1, Thurs 6 May), although they trickle throughout the night. Should have a measure of the majority by dawn the following morning with just a few seats remaining to be called.
Can’t help you with the US TV, but obviously the BBC election website will be the best internet option.
I believe the Brits call their parliamentary constituencies “boroughs,” not “wards.” And you mean “represent,” not “serve” – in theory the members are supposed to serve the whole country. But the answer depends on the particular PR system used; there are many variations (see here). In the straight national-party-list sytem (which Israel uses) there is no connection at all between a member and a particular geographical subdivision of the country. In the multi-member-district system, each district is represented by a delegation of several members, probably of several different parties. I’m not sure what system the Liberal Democrats want.
One and Only Wanderersis a Brit. Boroughs are a specific type of ward (ie., ones located in major cities).
Wards are local electoral constituencies, though, not parliamentary ones. Parliamentary constituencies are defined as collections of wards, and under the current system a ward may be part of two constituencies.
It is certainly the case, and I thought it was common knowledge, that “Libertarian” is a post-1950s mainly-American ideology with roots in (1) Jeffersonian “liberty”, (2) British classical liberalism, and (3) Ayn Rand’s Objectivism; whereas “Anarchist” draws on a more Continental (European) leftist tradition and shares a lot of common ground with Marxism, viz. Anarcho-Syndicalism, with its red-and-black flag. [insert your own Monty Python and the Holy Grail joke here]
To simplify: Anarchists believe the state must be opposed because the state is an instrument of capitalism. Libertarians believe the state must be opposed because the state is a hindrance to capitalism. (Each of these views of the state is entirely true, but neither is the whole truth; as is so often the case in political discourse.)
