Severelius wrote:I would argue two things here:
1. Coalition governments are almost the expected norm in many other countries and they get along just fine. They've only historically been ludicrous dumpster fires in the UK because our electoral system for Parliament is designed to deliver strong majority governments (or at least that's how the defence of it goes) so when that doesn't happen people tend to lose their shit. I still remember the weeks of hand-wringing and panicked doomsaying when the Tories and Lib Dems formed the coalition in 2010. Grown adults and media professionals just didn't seem to be able to fucking comprehend how this situation could possibly have happened and oh god what are we going to do now, everything is chaos.
You're right, that in many other countries, coalition governments are the norm, but they have never been so, here. Indeed, many of our political institutions revolve around majority leadership setup. I would also argue that coalition parliaments can be dumpster fires elsewhere too, not just in the UK.
Just because they work somewhere else, doesn't mean they will work here, we already have a system, that has, for a century atleast, been very effective at good government (much of the time)
Severelius wrote:If coalitions happened as regularly as they do elsewhere, we'd all collectively be able to get used to the idea of 'government by compromise' instead of 'government by fuck you' that we currently have.
But they don't and everytime we have one, it's a disaster, you point to the Tory/LibDem coalition, but I would argue, that the Lib Dems, would consider that coalition a complete disaster, it saw their party completely humiliated. The only real pieces of legislature they managed to get through, where those that the Tories let them, which inevtiably turned out to be losers in terms of success and public support. Yeaah... awesome!
It might not be a national crisis every times we have one, but it's certainly not great.
Severelius wrote:I mean for all the Tories love the "coalition of chaos" line (Cameron's argument in 2015 was that a Labour-led coalition would be chaos and would lose Scotland because of the SNP's influence, May argued that Corbyn would lead one if he won in 2017 and Johnson made the same point again in 2019), the 2010-2015 Tory/Lib Dem coalition was arguably a weirdly more stable and better government than the subsequent Tory governments have been.
See, this is a misunderstanding of the way the Tories always operate. In the Lib Dem/Tory coalition, the Tories had a single goal, make the Lib Dems look bad. They were quite artful, so much so, that come the next general election, the Tories cleaned up at the election and the Lib Dems? never recovered.
The Tories need a strong opposition force, to be kept on point, kept together and to prevent them running off with all the money. Without some form of outside opposition, the Tories inevitably full upon one another like a bunch of pirahna, backstabbing, throwing eachother under buses etc. People often fear an unoppossed tory government, but they needn't. They'll soon tear their own party apart in a feeding frenzy.
Severelius wrote:Giving one party the entirety of the power only works if that party isn't terrible, having a party that has to compromise with a different often very ideologically distinct one to get anything done moderates the worst instincts of the worst people within that party.
See, this sounds like someone who has been exposed too much to American politics and the American brand of democracy. The entirety of our political establishment, is built towards this goal, a strong, majority government, that holds the reigns of power and is kept in check by an equally robust opposition party. Many of the faillings in limiting Tory excess in the past, have come at times, when there has been weak or non existant opposition, as opposed to strong opposition. Take the current climate for example, I feel the SNP does a better job of acting as opposition to Tory ambitions in Westminster right now, than Labour does. Because labour remains a deeply divided, schismatic party, that can't decide who it represents.
Severelius wrote:2. We literally fought a Civil War over the subject of the monarch getting too involved in Parliament's business. This is why the Queen's only involvement in Parliament these days is to give the 'royal assent' that has not been refused in hundreds of years, and to deliver a speech written by the government at the beginning of every year's session of Parliament. That and the whole "I've asked Her Majesty to allow me to form a government" thing every PM says after an election that again, is just an expected symbolic formality because the monarch is never going to refuse that..
You need to brush up on the role of monarchy, in this century alone, in British politics and indeed, in politics across Europe (where a given country has a constitutional monarch)
George V, for example, was a very active figure in British politics, becoming well regarded for navigating and mediating, some of the most important political crisis, of his times. Monarchs in Sweden and Spain, have also taken active participation in government, acting as arbiters, during times of political deadlock, helping to resolve political crisis, where nobody else could.
It has only been with Queen Elisabeth, who has chosen to take a completely hands off approach to her responsibilities as monarch, that we don't have a monarchy, that fulfills that same role.
If you want a coalition style of government, then your going to need someone, who is positioned to break deadlock when it inevitably occurs. France has a president, as does America, other countries have similar persons that assume similar roles.
We don't.
Severelius wrote:Charles is an idiot, but he still at least understands that as soon as the monarch interferes with the Parliamentary process in any way, be it refusing to allow the winner of an election to form a government or refusing royal assent to a bill that has passed through Parliament, the monarchy is going to be gotten rid of it. That thing only exists because it's a harmless symbolic position, there is no actual power associated with it and everybody knows that..
You assume the role of the monarch would be... usurping power? Denying legally elected power? Ofcourse not, in those circumstances, a monarch would have to go, rightly so. There is, actually plenty of power invested in the monarchy, it's just the current holder of the title, perhaps wisely so, chooses not to use it. Personally, I think alot of people might have been in favour of her maj, stepping in during the brexit gridlock, if the old girl is still around, she might come out with something to say, when Scotland has it's referendum.
The role of the monarch, is not to deny a properly elected government from forming or refuse royal assent to a bill, fairly voted on, it is to resolve issues, that elected officials prove unable to, to end petty infighting and cut to the heart of an issue.
What if the Queen had stepped in during the Brexit fiasco and "suggested" that a second referendum be called to resolve the matter? I bet alot of people would have been in favour of that and while it might have cost the royal family some political clout, it would have won them friends in certain quarters (and possibly upset people in others)
But the monarchy could take a more active political role and not become a pre-cromwellian absolutist wannabe
René wrote:PopTart wrote:Ironically, on a more serious note, you spoke about being very much against parliamentary majorities, yet it is most often in minority and coalition parliaments (in England and the UK atleast) that politics descend into the shit show you speak of. Every time in history, that the UK has had coalition or minority governments, it's been a complete, bickering, intransigent clusterfuck, once or twice in history, being so bad to as to topple parliament entirely! The few times it hasn't, has required arbiters in the form of power figures, such as the King (at the time) or retired politician, to step in and arbitrate. Could you imagine Charles becoming active on the political scene? :shudder:
That's because of FPTP. Look at countries with proportional representation, where you don't get situations where one party gets 33% of the vote but 50%+ of the seats in parliament. You find far more examples of stable coalition governments there, as well as a much wider variety of political parties to choose from to match one's views.
I'm not so sure anymore. I used to agree with you, that PR was the way forward, but I've seen just as many national governments, which rely on it, that don't provide results that i would argue, are any more beneficial.
Why change the entirety of our political establishment for just PR? At that rate, we might aswell talk about far more fundamental and radical reform, why not go state federal? Hell, there are other options too.
I think that we have to face upto one fact at the very least and that is, that the current political setup in the UK, isn't working anymore and will continue to be dysfunctional, until we sit down as a nation (and collection of nations) and start to seriously talk about how things need to change.
Posted: 25 November 2020, 13:22
Count me in, Supreme Leader Marm A. Duke! 
eeew