UK General Election 2029 - Trading ONLY thread

[Euler]

I did some work looking at local election cycles and how they relate to incumbent parliaments and general election cycles. This is what I found.

[jamesedwards]

Glad to see the BBC are on the ball.

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[LeTiss]

I think the market is spot on with regards to the next UK GE

If it were held today, the market predicts Reform would win most seats, but would struggle to win enough for an overall majority

[Euler]

Looking in detail at a lot of the votes, it looks like, in some cases, certainly around my area, Reform has split the vote with the Conservatives and occasionally let in a different councillor. All the Labour councillors have suffered a haemorrhaging of support.

In my constituency, Labour got just 16 votes.

[ForFolksSake]

How can Labour carry on running the Country - they are effectively dead

Surely there's got to be an early election

[Euler]

Interesting escape route: -

There is an escape route for Labour from certain disaster at the general election: use their Commons majority to ram through PR. It’s cynical, + they’d never govern alone again, but it locks Reform out of No10. The left (Lab, Gr, LD) still have a majority over the right in the UK

[LeTiss]

Interesting escape route: -

There is an escape route for Labour from certain disaster at the general election: use their Commons majority to ram through PR. It’s cynical, + they’d never govern alone again, but it locks Reform out of No10. The left (Lab, Gr, LD) still have a majority over the right in the UK

The problem is that people would see through that cynicism. It would lead to Reform and Tories joining forces, and people would vote tactically in areas, especially where the Lib Dems have so many seats in former strong Tory areas

[firlandsfarm]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8dsvclf3Tk

[jamesedwards]

Interesting escape route: -

There is an escape route for Labour from certain disaster at the general election: use their Commons majority to ram through PR. It’s cynical, + they’d never govern alone again, but it locks Reform out of No10. The left (Lab, Gr, LD) still have a majority over the right in the UK

The problem is that people would see through that cynicism. It would lead to Reform and Tories joining forces, and people would vote tactically in areas, especially where the Lib Dems have so many seats in former strong Tory areas

I do wonder whether this will eventually all end up back with proper right wing Conservative vs left wing Labour parties again.

Reform get most seats at the next election but need a Tory coalition to govern, and could easily end up uniting permanently under some sort of 'New Conservative' banner. Meanwhile Labour is forced more left wing to prevent being wiped out by the Green monster that they created, and end up killing them off.

[weemac]

I do wonder whether this will eventually all end up back with proper right wing Conservative vs left wing Labour parties again.

That sounds about right. In my constituency, the greens came in a close second place.

Heaven help us.

[ForFolksSake]

... Starmer is a delusional fraudster if he thinks he can carry on being Prime Minister till the next election...

[Dublin_Flyer]

Interesting escape route: -

There is an escape route for Labour from certain disaster at the general election: use their Commons majority to ram through PR. It’s cynical, + they’d never govern alone again, but it locks Reform out of No10. The left (Lab, Gr, LD) still have a majority over the right in the UK

The problem is that people would see through that cynicism. It would lead to Reform and Tories joining forces, and people would vote tactically in areas, especially where the Lib Dems have so many seats in former strong Tory areas

The problem with tactical voting in PR though, is so many people don't understand how PR works that they make a bollox of their tactical voting We have it in Ireland over 100 years and many people still don't understand it.

Take a 7 candidate constituency for 4 seats, with candidates Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet.

Voter thinks "I'm a huge fan of Orange, and also like Red and Yellow, and I don't like the others so I'll vote 2,1,3,4,5,6,7.

Red and Orange (1 and 2) pass the quota on 1st count and Yellow (3) is eliminated, Indigo (6) gets in on 5th count so your vote now passes onto Green (ironic but I didn't name the rainbow colours order!) So on go the transfer of votes and it turns out Green won the last seat because it was your 4th preference and every vote counts in PR. Congratulations, you just elected a member of the British Communist Party

Whereas the voter, if only 3 candidates aligned with their ideas then they should be voting 1,2,3 or 2,1,3 in the Orange/Red/Yellow order, leaving the rest of the boxes blank, so it's "I vote for any of these in preference, and none of the rest have my vote" so their vote counts toward their preference, but not towards the remainder.

PR is the best for making every vote count, but if the UK were to introduce it, I'd wager highly it would take a long time for people to understand how it works....unless it was introduced as part of a school topic for Civic and Social classes for the 12+ age group so it would be ingrained in their heads what was going on and they had a thorough understanding of it. Even then you'll still have dickheads spoiling their votes writing Pedo/Dickhead/Conor McGregor(C*nt) in boxes instead of a number or leave blank

[SpikeyBob]

The political landscape in the UK changed massively today. The old party's have been found out ... people are fed up with their BS ... the poor are rising! They are sick to the back teeth of all this 'I'll pat your back if you pat mine' crap! Viva La Revolution!

[firlandsfarm]

The problem with tactical voting in PR though, is so many people don't understand how PR works that they make a bollox of their tactical voting We have it in Ireland over 100 years and many people still don't understand it.

Take a 7 candidate constituency for 4 seats, with candidates Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet.

Voter thinks "I'm a huge fan of Orange, and also like Red and Yellow, and I don't like the others so I'll vote 2,1,3,4,5,6,7.

Red and Orange (1 and 2) pass the quota on 1st count and Yellow (3) is eliminated, Indigo (6) gets in on 5th count so your vote now passes onto Green (ironic but I didn't name the rainbow colours order!) So on go the transfer of votes and it turns out Green won the last seat because it was your 4th preference and every vote counts in PR. Congratulations, you just elected a member of the British Communist Party

Whereas the voter, if only 3 candidates aligned with their ideas then they should be voting 1,2,3 or 2,1,3 in the Orange/Red/Yellow order, leaving the rest of the boxes blank, so it's "I vote for any of these in preference, and none of the rest have my vote" so their vote counts toward their preference, but not towards the remainder.

PR is the best for making every vote count, but if the UK were to introduce it, I'd wager highly it would take a long time for people to understand how it works....unless it was introduced as part of a school topic for Civic and Social classes for the 12+ age group so it would be ingrained in their heads what was going on and they had a thorough understanding of it. Even then you'll still have dickheads spoiling their votes writing Pedo/Dickhead/Conor McGregor(C*nt) in boxes instead of a number or leave blank

Hey Dublin, I'm sure your 'clarification' is right but I don't understand it! From what I think you describe isn't it more of a 'Transferable Voting' system? It's ridiculous to have such a complicated system (that sounds more complicated than the off-side rule!) and schooltime won't help for many ... . "unless it was introduced as part of a school topic for Civic and Social classes for the 12+ age group so it would be ingrained in their heads what was going on and they had a thorough understanding of it" are you saying that every school leaver fully learns and understands every subject they were taught at school?! Have you tried putting that to the test? Go down your local High Street and ask everybody how to solve a quadratic equation! It's taught at school but ...

I must admit my version of PR would be every constituent gets 1 vote. You add up all the votes in all constituencies and pro-rata the available seats according to the share of total votes. The 2024 GE would return the following seats (with a 'rounding' rule to allocate all seats less the Speaker's Team) ...

Party Seats Votes
Labour 222 9,708,716
Conservative 156 6,828,925
Reform UK 94 4,117,610
Liberal Democrat 80 3,519,143
Green Party 42 1,843,124
Scottish National Party 17 724,758
Sinn Féin 5 210,891
Workers Party of Britain 5 210,252
Democratic Unionist Party 4 172,058
Plaid Cymru 4 194,811
Alliance 3 117,191
Social Democratic & Labour Party 2 86,861
Ulster Unionist Party 2 94,779
Scottish Green Party 2 92,685
Traditional Unionist Voice 1 48,685
Social Democratic Party 1 33,811

OK, that could be fine tuned by allocating seats within a country based on the votes in the country but that may require a form of English Parliament to balance things. Labour as the biggest party would have had the first shot of forming a coalition which they would have done by teaming up with LibDems and Green.

Taking your "Pedo/Dickhead" point I heard that at least one constituency would interpret anything next to a candidate's name as a vote (assuming there weren't 2 or more 'pedos' on the ballot paper!)

The thing I have against any form of PR is that the person you voted for will probably not be the one assigned to your constituency and therefore there is no direct connection between constituency and MP making it easy to dodge responsibilities.

BTW, congrats on using "Indigo" ... I can remember a quiz programme on BBC many years ago where the question was the colours of the rainbow and the answer given included 'Indigo' but the quizmaster ruled that was incorrect stating it's "Purple"!

[wearthefoxhat]

Next UK General Election - Overall Majority Betting Odds

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