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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   29886 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 1, 2024

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Any chance that they'll actually change that system? It seems ridiculous. Until now it mostly benefited Conservatives at the expense of labor and third parties, right?

The problem we keep seeing with this in Canada is that changing it is almost never in the interests of the sitting government, i.e. whoever actually won the most recent election. After all, they just won under the current system, and therefore probably think that system is pretty swell. So no-one proposes any serious electoral reforms who actually has a chance of pushing them through successfully, even if they might have made some noise about it during the election campaign. (The clearest example being none other than the sitting PM.)

As a general rule that makes sense. But in this specific election, they only won because the opposition was fractured into two dueling parties. At some point, they're going to coalesce and then they'll once again have the votes. You'd think that labour might realize they have only a brief window of control here where they can act.

But in this specific election, they only won because the opposition was fractured into two dueling parties.

You could argue that the left is more fractured than the right, even if they're not warring, and that in most UK elections it is actually the Tories who have regularly won due to the other side being fractured. Labour + Lib Dems + Greens + SNP makes a significantly bigger share of the vote than Tories + Reform, and similar equations would have given similar results in the past.

I think to try for PR, Labour would have to believe that the fracture between Reform and the Tories was likely to soon mend, but it's a pretty deep schism so I can't believe they would even notionally consider it till a possible second term.

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