We steered clear of Nick because the Lib Dems had as their policy to close down where I worked. Sadly because it was a hung parliament, their policy still got enacted when they went into coalition .

Well I give up with you Cherie,

You claimed that we in the EU offered a deal that even a remainer goverment wouldn't sign up to..Trying to make out it was us ALONE who came up with the WA.


So frustrating to see this train of thought ...sadly its not uncommon.

Sorry you feel I am agressive...maybe i just care

My reasoning for voting Brexit Party given the chance.
Send a message to the shower in Parliament.

Amazing isn't it, they were able to go through with this policy but reneged on others, I didn't know they were planning on closing somewhere what was the rationale behind that :shrug:

Not in European elections, last time out the Tories only got 23% and Labour 24, UKIP won with 27% of the vote..

To be fair though voter turnout has traditionally been abysmal for the European elections with skewed voter turnout for those with a specific interest; hence UKIP getting a large proportion of the vote. I would imagine there will be a relatively high turnout for the upcoming ones as its at the forefront of mainstream media so it's hard to predict how they'll go. I would imagine that the Tories will lose a significant chunk to Faragekru.

Oh right, I know nowt at all about European elections :laugh:

The trouble is that percentages may not translate into who wins. At the end of the day, with the First Past the Post system, it is how it translates into seats.

Compare at the last election how many votes the Green Party got with UKIP and you see, even though the Greens may have got more overall votes than UKIP, they still like UKIP only got one seat.

The European Parliament elections are not first past the post though, they're proportional representation so 25% of the vote = exactly 25% of Britain's alloted seats at the European Parliament, unlike the (somewhat broken, in the current political landscape) FPTP system we use for General Elections where you can get 10% of the popular vote and still few or zero actual seats in Parliament.

I thought FPTP was still used for European elections in the UK, even though the other states use PR?

In 1989 the Green Party in the UK scored 15%. In other countries that would have got them a few seats, but they did not get any, as we used FPTP.

PR since the late 90's, that's why UKIP have done so well in the European elections whilst getting nowhere in UK Parliament.

UKIP didn't get any seats in the last election

Nothing wrong with PR. The Farage crew should be in the EU parliament. He does reflect views of a significant chunk of the electorate.

The problem with full PR in domestic parliament is that our electorate is so fragmented, it would be almost impossible to pass anything. It's bad enough with coalitions and minority governments, as we've discovered.

Most of Europe functions like that and they manage.
Con-LD coalition lasted the duration so :shrug:

FPTP has got to go, we need proportional representation!

It’s a shame Clegg is a Lib Dem.He’s actually a very good speaker.He’d probably do Labour or some other party a lot of good.

Once upon a time maybe but his reputation was trashed alongside the party over the tuition fees issue. It was a major misstep.

I cannot believe he sold out over that, when near all of the votes he actualy got seemed to be specifically for that pledge. He could have backed the tories on near anything else and not ruined himself and his party, but that main peldge, gone in seconds :bored: All for a taste of power, and the amount of actual power he had is questionable..seemed to be just on paper rather than in reality.

Clegg never sold out on his commitment on tuition fees, that's the great deceit. The lib dems with no hope of ever being in power were free to make up whatever bollocks they felt like in their manifesto without fear of ever having to implement anything, they had been doing the same for years. Then they ended up in a coalition, so anything that wasn't feasible got kicked out.

I made the point earlier in this thread, that the public aren't used to coalition governments, and the Lib Dems dropping the tuition fees pledge is the kind of thing that happens when you get coalitions.

Parties put a series of pledges in their manifestos, and then after the election they do deals and the different sides (more often the junior coalition partner[s]) have to drop some promises.

A PR voting system would make this happen more often.

We stuck to a lot of our pledges and got a lot done

Also a political party exists to gain power, if you don't do that you're essentially just a pressure group.

Yeah I've always thought the anger at the Lib Dems over that was misplaced. They were the junior partner in government so they were never going to be able to enact all their pledges as any manifesto is based on what you would do as a majority government. If the Lib Dems hadn't been in government though the fees rise would have been tougher than it ended up being and they achieved more in 5 years in government than they ever could in opposition. On the one hand people complain about FPTP and want PR but then they also punish a party for making the necessary compromises in a coalition government. I actually think the Con-Lib coalition was a pretty sensible and moderate government and better than what we've had since