The now-enacted will of (some of) the people

[snowychap]

1 minute ago, imavillan said:

no.....not at all

what i am saying is if an MP defects there should be a bye election.....

And if a party removes the whip from an MP?

[imavillan]

Just now, bickster said:

Fighting inside what?

The whole mess parliament is currently in, is because there’s a whole bunch of MPs following the whip, after being lead by a pair of imbeciles to positions of impossibility

if you honestly think leaving an established party to form a new one is the easy option then you understand very little about UK politics

i understand politics.....

i now that a first past the post system has no place for minor parties of 10 MP's/candidates.

I agree that too many follow the ''whip''.......

[imavillan]

4 minutes ago, snowychap said:

It's not a case of 'not getting it'. I get what you wanted to say. It was a whole lot of nonsense, though.

MPs are representatives not delegates. They are there to represent what they deem to be the best interests of all their constiuents (that's not just those who voted for them or those that voted but everyone who is in that constituency).

Whilst manifestos give a flavour (hopefully) of what a pparticular party are intending to pursue, they can only be held to that manifesto by means of the ballot box.

Leaving a party does not delegitimise an MP however much people may regard themselves as actually voting for a party and not a person.

The argument that would be made (probably with more legitimacy than cases where people cross the floor from Labour to Tory or vice versa) in the case of those who have left the Tories and Labour in recent times (and those that are threatening to do it) is not that they have changed their position but that the parties whose whip they have been taking have changed their positions.

I understand all of that....but what i was saying is i think it is wrong and if an MP jumps ship there should be a bye election.

How many would get re-elected as an individual (TIG,Ind, etc) if they did....very few

Most people vote for the part and not the person.

[chrisp65]

Just now, imavillan said:

but it's not is it...

it's about accepting the majority.

so your area voted labour but conservative won or vice versa.....

it maybe not what you voted for......but you accept it and get on with live

or in the case of brexit....maybe not

well it clearly isn't, as a majority once voted to join

then a majority voted to remain

then a majority voted to leave

what makes that the last ever vote on the matter?

 

democracy is the right to change your mind, the right to ask people to think again

there is no way on god's great earth that a 48 / 52 remain vote would have been the end of the matter

 

some very scary people seeping out of the shadows to protect this one piece of democracy

Once I see the EDL and Redwood and Yaxley Lennon and Rees Mogg and Gerard Batten lining up to protect this one piece of democracy, the more I can see it might well have been a mistake.

I'm not a natural remainer, but I see the sort of people arguing for leave, and they deeply worry me.

[imavillan]

6 minutes ago, snowychap said:

And if a party removes the whip from an MP?

if an MP defects from his party he/she should have the balls to stand for a bye election.

If they believe in it that much they should be able to sell it to the people.

But reality is they know they will fall

[snowychap]

9 minutes ago, imavillan said:

I understand all of that....but what i was saying is i think it is wrong and if an MP jumps ship there should be a bye election.

Your post suggests that you neither understand it nor agree with it.

9 minutes ago, imavillan said:

Most people vote for the part and not the person.

Most people, I'd suggest, won't have read the manifesto for the respective party (or, indeed, any party).

Edited April 6, 2019 by snowychap

[snowychap]

2 minutes ago, imavillan said:

if an MP defects from his party he/she should have the balls to stand for a bye election.

If they believe in it that much they should be able to sell it to the people.

But reality is they know they will fall

That's not an answer to my question.

If someone has the whip withdrawn, i.e. they cease to represent the party whose rosette they wore when they were elected, should there be a by-election?

 

[imavillan]

1 minute ago, chrisp65 said:

well it clearly isn't, as a majority once voted to join

then a majority voted to remain

then a majority voted to leave

what makes that the last ever vote on the matter?

 

democracy is the right to change your mind, the right to ask people to think again

there is no way on god's great earth that a 48 / 52 remain vote would have been the end of the matter

 

some very scary people seeping out of the shadows to protect this one piece of democracy

Once I see the EDL and Redwood and Yaxley Lennon and Rees Mogg and Gerard Batten lining up to protect this one piece of democracy, the more I can see it might well have been a mistake.

I'm not a natural remainer, but I see the sort of people arguing for leave, and they deeply worry me.

I understand where you are coming from ref the far right and agree with you, but  with everything thats going on its a danger and breeding ground and probably what they want, Particularly if we have MEP elections. 

I believe that democracy is delivering the original vote of leave. 

[bickster]

4 minutes ago, imavillan said:

I believe that democracy is delivering the original vote of leave. 

Which version of leave won the referendum? 

[NurembergVillan]

6 minutes ago, imavillan said:

I understand where you are coming from ref the far right and agree with you, but  with everything thats going on its a danger and breeding ground and probably what they want, Particularly if we have MEP elections. 

I believe that democracy is delivering the original vote of leave. 

It's not just about the far right.

It's bell ends like Gove, Johnson, Francois, James **** Dyson, that word removed from Wetherspoons, Neil Warnock, Rees-Mogg, Kate Hoey, Raab, Davis, Leadsom, and Jim Davidson.  Farage is in a league of his own.  Like an uber-word removed or something.

Even the poster-boy for middle England xenophobia, Jeremy Clarkson, thinks leaving is a bad idea.

[imavillan]

6 minutes ago, snowychap said:

Your post suggests that you neither understand it nor agree with it.

Most people, I'd suggest, won't have read the manifesto for the respective party (or, indeed, any party).

i do understand......

yes, most people do not read the manifesto but most people have an elegance to a party and take in the top headlines they read in the papers, see on BBC/SKY news....thats the reality.

''i'm working class so i vote labour'' 

''i'm middle class so i vote conservative''

 

i mean, ffs who in there right mind would vote for the person that is Dianne Abbott or Jacob Rees Mogg???

No, they've voted for the party

 

[imavillan]

1 minute ago, bickster said:

Which version of leave won the referendum? 

the one that says we leave the EU

[imavillan]

17 minutes ago, NurembergVillan said:

It's not just about the far right.

It's bell ends like Gove, Johnson, Francois, James **** Dyson, that word removed from Wetherspoons, Neil Warnock, Rees-Mogg, Kate Hoey, Raab, Davis, Leadsom, and Jim Davidson.  Farage is in a league of his own.  Like an uber-word removed or something.

Even the poster-boy for middle England xenophobia, Jeremy Clarkson, thinks leaving is a bad idea.

I Take it your'e a remainer????

As for Jeremy Clarkson.....well ffs he's the biggest bell end of all time....if he's your poster boy i suggest you get a new one..... have a look at Jack Grealish, Tammy Abraham or John McGinn or Tyrone Mings

Edited April 6, 2019 by imavillan
forgot Tyrone Mings, so added him to the list

[Awol]

37 minutes ago, snowychap said:

It's not a case of 'not getting it'. I get what you wanted to say. It was a whole lot of nonsense, though.

MPs are representatives not delegates. They are there to represent what they deem to be the best interests of all their constiuents (that's not just those who voted for them or those that voted but everyone who is in that constituency).

Whilst manifestos give a flavour (hopefully) of what a particular party are intending to pursue, they can only be held to that manifesto by means of the ballot box.

Leaving a party does not delegitimise an MP however much people may regard themselves as actually voting for a party and not a person.

The argument that would be made (probably with more legitimacy than cases where people cross the floor from Labour to Tory or vice versa) in the case of those who have left the Tories and Labour in recent times (and those that are threatening to do it) is not that they have changed their position but that the parties whose whip they have been taking have changed their positions.

I expect you’ll have no problem when the Tories topple May, install a new PM and just crack on - because you know, they can. 

[VILLAMARV]

All this talk of democracy makes me wonder hard democracy or soft democracy?

Quote

Thus, After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

I have always thought that servitude of the regular, quiet, and gentle kind which I have just described might be combined more easily than is commonly believed with some of the outward forms of freedom, and that it might even establish itself under the wing of the sovereignty of the people.

Our contemporaries are constantly excited by two conflicting passions: they want to be led, and they wish to remain free. As they cannot destroy either the one or the other of these contrary propensities, they strive to satisfy them both at once. They devise a sole, tutelary, and all-powerful form of government, but elected by the people. They combine the principle of centralization and that of popular sovereignty; this gives them a respite: they console themselves for being in tutelage by the reflection that they have chosen their own guardians. Every man allows himself to be put in leading-strings, because he sees that it is not a person or a class of persons, but the people at large who hold the end of his chain.

By this system the people shake off their state of dependence just long enough to select their master and then relapse into it again. A great many persons at the present day are quite contented with this sort of compromise between administrative despotism and the sovereignty of the people; and they think they have done enough for the protection of individual freedom when they have surrendered it to the power of the nation at large. This does not satisfy me: the nature of him I am to obey signifies less to me than the fact of extorted obedience. I do not deny, however, that a constitution of this kind appears to me to be infinitely preferable to one which, after having concentrated all the powers of government, should vest them in the hands of an irresponsible person or body of persons. Of all the forms that democratic despotism could assume, the latter would assuredly be the worst.

When the sovereign is elective, or narrowly watched by a legislature which is really elective and independent, the oppression that he exercises over individuals is sometimes greater, but it is always less degrading; because every man, when he is oppressed and disarmed, may still imagine that, while he yields obedience, it is to himself he yields it, and that it is to one of his own inclinations that all the rest give way. In like manner, I can understand that when the sovereign represents the nation and is dependent upon the people, the rights and the power of which every citizen is deprived serve not only the head of the state, but the state itself; and that private persons derive some return from the sacrifice of their independence which they have made to the public.

Democracy in America - Alexis de Tocqueville 1840

Quote

Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people.

Soft despotism gives people the illusion that they are in control, when in fact they have very little influence over their government. Soft despotism breeds fear, uncertainty, and doubt in the general populace.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_despotism

Not sure which side of the Brexit coin this will/is supposed land. I'm sure like many ideas there will be bits that appeal to all or both sides. (Perhaps that's the point). Just felt there was some relevance. Point being that de Tocqueville was a fan of parliamentary democracy, yet wary of it's extremes.

Carry on

there's a Brexit etc

[StefanAVFC]

53 minutes ago, imavillan said:

i mean, ffs who in there right mind would vote for the person that is Dianne Abbott

Majority of 35,000.

52 minutes ago, imavillan said:

the one that says we leave the EU

What does a leave vote actually mean in terms of how we leave?

[snowychap]

50 minutes ago, imavillan said:

i do understand......

yes, most people do not read the manifesto but most people have an elegance to a party and take in the top headlines they read in the papers, see on BBC/SKY news....thats the reality.

''i'm working class so i vote labour'' 

''i'm middle class so i vote conservative''

So what you are really arguing for is harder party entrenchment for UK politics?

Anyone who votes because of the headlines that they read in the 'papers, see on BBC/Sky, blind party allegiance or some notion that one party supposedly represents the class that they envisage themself to be is an idiot and I think we'd have much better politics if those people's views were taken a lot less seriously.

I'll try this one again: If someone has the whip withdrawn, i.e. they cease to represent the party whose rosette they wore when they were elected, should there be a by-election?

[snowychap]

55 minutes ago, Awol said:

I expect you’ll have no problem when the Tories topple May, install a new PM and just crack on - because you know, they can.

 

If your suggestion is that I would be demanding an election because the Tory party had changed their leader and that person had replaced May as PM then no, I wouldn't. That's not the way it works.

I'm pretty sure that I argued as much when May took over from Cameron and when Brown took over from Blair.

I think I've always argued that we don't elect a PM. I would prefer to return to a more cabinet government with the PM being primus inter pares but then I accept that's probably a bit of fanciful idealism.

Edited April 6, 2019 by snowychap

[a m ole]

we must respect the democracy of a legally non-binding advisory referendum where one side broke electoral law in their campaign.

Edited April 7, 2019 by a m ole

[Enda]

6 hours ago, Awol said:

I totally get that you haven’t followed the actual detail of counter insurgency operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia etc.why would you? AQ in Iraq for example we’re systematically demolished by UK and US special forces. That’s not an isolated case. If the IRA fancied a comeback it would be horrific for them. Not what some people may want to hear, but still a realistic assessment of the current operating environment. 

The more I think about it,

"Yes, No Deal may well re-ignite the troubles in Northern Ireland... but it's okay we can just bring some of the tricks we learned in Somalia to the streets of Belfast"

is a rather wonderful encapsulation of the Brexit mindset.