I think there’s something fundamentally wrong with British culture. How do they keep electing such garbage politicians? It’s like every decision they make looks awful to everyone but Brits only realize it after the fact.
While you are not wrong it’s worth noting he was not elected by the public and even worse before he was basically handed the job he ran (internaly) on a platform of fixing the economy he fucked as chancellor of the exchequer
I hate this excuse, everyone knows how parliaments work. You vote for representatives that form a government. Everyone votes for their own constituency only but not everyone ends up with dickheads so consistently.
everyone knows how parliments work.
I think you vastly over estimate the knowledge of your average love island watching, down the pub every night after work, get their entire worldview from Facebook, British person.
It’s not an excuse. While you correct in that’s the mechanics of how it works here very few could even tell you the name of the representative they are voting for they just base their vote on the team and or team leader.
Hell. I remember my mum discussing how she couldn’t vote for kinnock because she can’t stand him. In her Scottish constituency
The guy that was elected by the public was Boris Johnson, who is arguably even worse.
I agree but sadly that gave him more legitimacy than this bell end
He lost the only party member leadership vote he took part in. He lost to someone completely detached from reality, that immediately sought to destroy the value of most people pensions that only benefitted a few hedge funds looking to profit from the UKs demise.
Your preaching to the choir. If it were up to me the whole party wouldn’t get a wiff of power from the first time I was old enough to vote.
Instead “I got my way” once with these asshats running this shithole even further into the ground ever since
Britain elects parties who then choose the leader. Thats how weve had so many different PMs. Its not like for example where the people elect an individual for four years.
We had a PM who lasted less time than a lettuce. All chosen by the conservative party
USA doesn’t really elect our leaders either. It’s basically the same, we have a bunch of people that are expected to vote the way their local population votes but they don’t have to, they can vote anyway they want. Popular vote means nothing. Only difference is once elected they get the whole 4 years.
Happy to be wrong since Im not American, but I thought for the presidency it was a ballot that literally had people on them (which are from certain parties / independents)
I’m a different person than you replied to. You are both correct.
When we, Americans, vote for president we vote for an individual by their name on the ballot. Technically, we’re voting for electors who have been chosen by our candidate. Those electors get to vote for the actual presidency and can technically change their vote (relative to the popular vote), but in many places they would be penalized for doing so. To my knowledge there have been few, possibly no, legal cases which have tested these laws or systems. So in practicality it doesn’t matter.
Appreciate the clarification! thanks
You are wrong, sadly. While the ballot does have candidates for president, technically what you’re doing is a district election for your presidential delegate, who then casts a vote for the president however they want. Usually this means they vote whatever way the popular vote goes in their district, but sometimes you get a “faithless elector” who legally overrides democracy and votes for a different candidate.
It’s supremely fucked up.
Edit: not false elector, it’s faithless elector
Ah right the electoral college and that sort of thing. Thanks!
USA doesn’t really elect our leaders either. It’s basically the same…
It was supposed to be basically the same, back when Electors were chosen by state legislators instead of by popular vote (a choice deliberately made to dilute the power of the public/prevent what the founding fathers saw as ‘mob rule’). Now it’s just a fucked up half-measure midway between a parliamentary system and direct democracy that flat-out doesn’t work right.
Look who is voting and who isn’t.
From an American: We have no idea!
(Tongue in cheek)
We didn’t vote for him, and i did not vote for his party at the last election. Now i get to take it in the butt by his policies.
It bugs me when they say that they are doing this and that “for the will of the people” when the majority of the people didn’t vote for them. And even if they did, it might have been for a different reason than the thing that they are talking about at the time.
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Something is wrong with British culture? https://youtu.be/N_oIys5KS4A?si=mrsIxQ2hypNxAUa8
Surely the next Tory PM the British voters elect won’t try to implement all of the terrible and unpopular policies that the tories openly espouse!
Two nitpicks
1st: the UK never voted for Rishi Sunak. Truss (also unelected) left and the Conservative party internally chose their new leader, who they appointed as PM since they’re the party in government.
2nd: most people in the UK vote against the Tories and always have. All they need to do is get a couple of percent above the next most popular party and it gives them 100% say. The worst part is that if another anti-Tory party comes around, all it serves to do is split the anti-Tory vote more, and hand them more power.
It’s our voting system that is broken. People in general do not like the Conservative party.
To clarify for those who never lived in Britain and as I explained above:
- In the UK even as little as 37% of votes cast (which can be less that the votes from 1/4 of voters, due to abstention) can translate into a 50% + 1 majority in Parliament and the country has no written Constitution, so a simple majority in Parliament can easilly changing laws around things most people consider essential, unlike in countries with Constitutions were certain things can only be changed with 66% or even 75% - depending on the country - of parliamentary votes.
People in, for example, the rest of Europe, get all surprised when the UK government just makes demonstrations de facto unlawful and add extreme requirements for labour strikes so that it’s extremelly hard for unions to organise them, because in most of those countries, unlike the UK, changing such essential rights is not something a party that only got 25% of voters on their side can do whenever they feel like it.
did you know that any time a child is born in britain that child has a 10% chance of becoming a tory PM when the sitting one resigns in shame?
Start the lettuce.
I mean okay but just like the US, you get what you voted for.
Honestly that’s the thing about when the UK talks shit about US politics - yeah, we have our problems but yall VOTED to destroy your economy and close your borders to your own detriment and you currently have a revolving door PM where one of them got outlasted by a head of iceberg.
In all fairness Britain are the only self-proclaimed Democracy (“Oldest in the World”, they tell us) with an even more undemocratic political system than the US, because in addition to a First Past The Post voting system, they also have a monarch with - as was exposed a couple of years ago - real power as head of state, an unelected Second Chamber with inherited and nominated-for-live positions and, probably worse, no written Constituition so any party in Parliament with a simple 50% + 1 majority can pretty much do whatever they want.
The FTPT + No Constitution combination is probably the worst part, as it means that a party with a mere 41% of votes of cast (so about the votes of only 1/4 of voters, due to abstention) - such as the current ones - can get a parliamentary majority (so, more than 50% of seats) and do things that in other countries would require constitutional changes (which generally require 66% or 75% of votes, depending on country), so things like changing the local definition of Human Rights.
Mind you, the Brexit vote isn’t at all affected by these things, so your point still stands unaffected by those considerations.
I appreciate the response, because this is actually fascinating. As much as I think America’s system is broken, it’s more to do with political spend and gerrymandering than literal centuries of aristocracy deciding it.
It mostly boils down to First Past The Post (single-representative electoral circles) IMHO - There is no such thing as Gerrymandering in countries were the matemathical method to allocate parliamentary representatives is Proportional Vote - such as The Netherlands - because all votes count the same and the party voted for or the party other people in the same area voted for makes no difference at all.
FPTP systems directly boost the number of representatives for the two major parties by quite a lot (for example, the Tories in the UK have around 60% of members of Parliament with only around 42% of votes cast) and indirectly because people switch their vote from smaller parties to “electable candidates” thus giving even more votes to larger parties which they would never get in a Proportional Vote system.
From there a ton of broader problems arise in terms of the behaviour of politicians (such as corruption) or simply not at all acting for the interests of their electorate (because people have no realistic option to replace one politician by a significantly different one, at most only by one serving the same lobbies but with a different discourse in the moral field). You even get insanelly adversarial politics (the more they’re alike in caring not economic equality and good quality of life for most people, the loudest the theatre they make around moral issues)
I also lived in The Netherlands which has Proportional Vote and its very different: even decision making tends to be all around seeking consensus (win-win solutions, if you will) rather than adversarial theatre on morals and behind-closed-doors deals on sharing the cake.
a monarch with - as was exposed a couple of years ago - real power
What is this in reference to?
That’s 30% lower than members of Rishi’s personal bathroom.
Surprised it’s not higher given how catastrophically badly his party have been running things
For what it’s worth, in 2019 a majority of people voted for parties other than the Tories. They received 43% of the vote, and their leader at the time was Boris Johnson.
The last two Prime Ministers weren’t elected by voters, though I suppose you could argue that the majority of voters didn’t elect Boris either.
The comments I’m seeing saying something like “well you voted for this” are incredibly misguided. We have a fucking terribly archaic voting system that doesn’t serve us at all, there are several large pushes throughout the UK trying to change that.
First past the post has to go. I believe it’s the most important issue in our country right now, because it’s stopping us from dealing with the actually important issues. To wit: we’re debating sending 100 refugees or less a year to Rwanda as a matter of the utmost urgency while the world is catching fire, in any metaphorical sense you care to mention. Geographical concentration of voters should no longer confer political power where the open internet exists.
There are two problems with the urgent need to change this broken broken system though: 1. I don’t know what better to replace it with, and 2. I don’t have enough faith in the British public anymore to actually agree on the more important issues once it’s gone.
Side note: the argument doing the rounds about “but the far right will get in” is irrelevant because our last two home secretaries have been irreconcilable, despicable far-right headbangers. They’re already in.
I’m not from the UK but from what I have seen the UK seems to really be heading in the same direction as the US where there are two absolutely awful parties to vote for and one is like 10% better.
Only if you buy into the Murdoch press. Similar thoughts tend to be expressed about Australia’s Labor party also, when the actual reality is markedly different.
The last labour government that was in power was the most right wing, neoliberal one there has ever been, and yet they still massively improved the country over the shit state that Thatcher and Major got it into.
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Over doubling of NHS funding, bringing it up to being the highest ranked health service in the world for a time.
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Homelessness massively cut down, with rough sleeping virtually
irradiated(EDIT) eradicated. Bizarre autocorrect there lol -
The minimum wage and a bunch of other workers rights improvements.
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Parliamentary processes made more transparent
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Devolution of powers to Scotland, Wales, NI
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Massively improved schooling
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Massively reduced crime, especially violent crime.
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Longest period of sustained low inflation since the 60s despite having a rapidly growing economy
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More years in economic surplus than the Tories
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Didn’t interfere with the BBC, even going as far as to put in place a Conservative chairman, because he was the best suited for the job, rather than appointing a mouthpiece for the Labour party.
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Help for childcare costs
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Drastic improvements for people with disabilities in terms of infrastructure, schooling, care
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Expansion in LGBT rights, including the right to adopt
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probably a bunch of stuff I’ve forgotten.
I’d much, much much rather have an actually competent government that broadly seeks out to improve people’s lives, even if they do have failings (e.g. failure to do much about the housing crisis) rather than the Conservative party, under whom the UK has got worse in practically every single way.
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Seems like a simple answer to vote for the one that’s 10% better
I am from the UK and let me tell you, we’ve been there for a while. We had a progressive in the 10% better party that made it actually substantially better but the media decided that supporting Palestine is tantamount to antisemitism and basically crushed his chances. Obviously backed by the stupidity of the average voter, who decided that some vague assertions of antisemitism were more important than the numerous failings (e.g. brexit) and verifiable racism of the other party.
Aside from that brief period, we’ve been forced to hold our noses and vote for the lesser of two evils for a long time. Starmer is generally disliked and nobody knows what he stands for (Because the answer is basically nothing) but he is still going to wipe the floor with the Tories. That isn’t because he’s good, just because the Tories are really that useless.
That is where we are now.
Did he even go to Eton, he’s a little colorful for such a muted place /s
Sunak Sunak Done.
Maybe they shouldn’t have voted for him just a thought.
They didn’t though.
He became PM through an internal Tory vote for a leader, after the previous PM stepped down. She became leader in exactly the same way and had only lasted a seven weeks since her predecessor was forced to quit.
The Tories are truly awful, and their choice of leaders has shown that.
I feel like by now they know what they’re getting by voting Tory. They got exactly what they voted for.
He was not elected, not by the country and not even by the members of his own party.
The Brits keep choosing to take political actions they hate. How many Torries have been elected since Brexit? A decades worth?
