Published on 12, July, 2020
Just wondered if people on here are happy or unhappy at the general election result last week? I stayed up most of the night to watch the results come in.
It would be wonderful if we could have a calm, logical, reasoned political discussion on here that doesn't result in anger, name calling and the mods locking the thread
Come on guys lets prove we can do it!
I see that after voting to implement Proportional Representation in 2022, Labour have now pushed the idea off until after the next election
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jul/17/labour-divided-over-calls-to-scrap-first-past-the-post-after-landslide-win
his [Starmers[ leadership team have dismissed any chance of action [on implementing PR], saying people would be “kidding themselves” if they believed it would find any bandwidth within a first term of government.
It sounds like they are not even supporting their own policies now they have a supermajority.
Snouts are firmly in the trough with their curly tails waving at the electorate. Who could have predicted it?
Conference motions are non-binding and that one didn't make it into the manifesto two years later. So it's a bit rich to claim it's "their own policy" because lots of conference resolutions didn't make it in. And "supermajority" is not a thing in the UK, it's just a majority. If you can look at the first two weeks of Labour's raft of progressive policies and call them pigs with "snouts in the trough" then I don't know what you are watching, GB News maybe?
LateToTheParty said:And "supermajority" is not a thing in the UK, it's just a majority.
Supermajority is a new word and was coined for the current election.
It has no dictionary definition as yet but it is intended to refer to a "massive majority" which is what Labour clearly have.
Background to the term is here: https://fullfact.org/election-2024/supermajority-parliament-explained/
Just because it is not "official" does not mean it lacks meaning as is the case with most new words.
LateToTheParty said:Supermajority already has a meaning in other jurisdictions, so you ant just start using it to mean something else in the UK.
You just DON'T want to open that "can of worms"!
(That can of worms being the misuse or redefining of words one....)
I have to disagree with this - the word can be taken into another field and used however it is used, There are no grammar police to dictate how a word can and cannot be used in a new environment and even if there were, society is always, like, changing how words are used (see what I did there?).
LateToTheParty said:That article says the exact opposite of what you claim...
It says the word has no official meaning. Yet. But still it is used - that is how languages evolve and grow,
To say is means something opposite is disingenuous.
LateToTheParty said:A supermajority in the US means two thirds of the seats
The US has a different electoral system completely to the USA so you are comparing apples and oranges.
If you want to get technical with the term then I refer you to Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermajority
A supermajority is a requirement for a proposal to gain a specified level of support which is greater than the threshold of more than one-half used for a simple majority.
So that puts it at 75%. Labour currently have 63% of seats which is closer to the 66% you suggest, so how do you chose a measure to meet the criteria which are not yet defined?
I don't see the point in arguing further as there are no concrete facts to mark as goalposts here and the journalists were creating new vocabulary around the fact Labour now have unchallengable levels of power based on only 34% of the vote.
That article says the exact opposite of what you claim...
Nicholas Allen, professor of politics at Royal Holloway, University of London told the i newspaper the term “supermajority” is meaningless in the UK parliamentary system. As there are 650 seats, to have an overall majority one political party must win over half, or 326 seats.
Supermajority already has a meaning in other jurisdictions, so you ant just start using it to mean something else in the UK.
A supermajority in the US means two thirds of the seats, needed to impeach a president, or pass an amendment to the constitution. Labours majority gives them no more powers than the Tories previous 80 seat majority. It was a scaremongering term thrown about by the desperate Tories.