Brexit, Briefly

[Gromit]

C P G Gray tries to assess what happens next.

Do you think he will ve right?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3_I2rfApYk

[jim360]

I saw that video a while back. I think he's got the "nothing happens" and "maximum Brexit" odds the wrong way round but, for the moment, it's a fair enough comment. About as reasonable as anything else people have said about what happens next.

[TheChair]

It sums it all up pretty accurately - particularly Cameron's motivation for calling the referendum in the first place, and the fact that the chief brexiters (Gove and Johnson) never expected, or indeed wanted, to win.

[chiaroscuro]

He suggested that London could become an independent country - accurate my ****

[Old_Geezer]

I think the speed of delivery is to ensure no one can take note of all the nonsense that is put out from there in order to dispute it. It went wrong very near the start when the FPTP system was called terrible. That gave a massive clue to how accurate the rest was going to be. I'm sure there must be a percentage of reasonable information in there, somewhere, but there was so much tripe taking the attention that it was difficult, especially at the speed it was going, to sort out any decent stuff from the nonsense.

[AB Editor]

Chiaroscuro - my friends in London immediately discussed this. The conversations feel alien.

[chiaroscuro]

I'm not surprised, Ab Editor, London does seem very different from the rest of the country but to suggest there is a 5% chance of a breakaway state is ludicrous.

[jim360]

OG continuing to persist with his belief that the FPTP system is not terrible, when it fact it fails on nearly every measure conceivable to reflect the voters' intentions accurately.

[Old_Geezer]

On the contrary it succeeds admirably on the one thing is it meant to do. Selecting the candidate in the local area that has most first choice support as the local representative. Plus it avoids both the undemocratic party system imposing a representative of their choice that the locals didn't vote for, and the likelihood of ending up with an unsatisfactory middle-of-the-road compromise representative due to transferring votes.

[AB Editor]

I agree OG.

FPTP is great for creating strong governments which can take action.

Right now there's a general/universal distrust of ANY institution. As such we're pretending the direct democracy or PR is a solution. It's only a solution if you like very tied up governments.

I quite like the idea, as I've said lots of times, of replacing the house of lords with partly PR elected officials. That way you get a bit of that PR representation while not hurting the commons ability to function.

but that's just me.

[jim360]

"FPTP is great for creating strong governments which can take action."

While this is true, the problem is that it artificially inflates the support for those governments, so that the action taken is rarely (in fact, since our modern voting system was finalised in the 1950s, never) in this wishes of the majority of voters (here I am ignoring the deflated turnout). The 1997 landslide for Labour was a particularly awful example of this -- ditto 2015, if it comes to that, when the Conservative party obtained a (slender) majority despite essentially matching their 2010 support levels.

I can recite the arguments in full but I already know OG that you aren't a very receptive audience. For now, let me just point out that of your three advantages of FPTP, the first is (as I said) massively misleading anyway, because: first-choice support is often affected by tactical voting (I chose Labour in 2015 not because I supported that party but because I didn't want the SNP to win); the existence of de facto "safe" seats allows a party to impose candidates anyway -- while the inverse problem is that most campaigning is focused on key marginal constituencies at the expense of the rest of the country; and compromise candidates aren't necessarily a bad thing anyway. Being strongly appealing to a minority, or acceptable to a majority. What is so awful about the latter?

The flaws of FPTP are evident and, mostly, avoidable. And you don't even have to switch to full-on PR either. At any rate, reporting criticism of FPTP as nonsense is frankly far more nonsensical. There is no dispute that FPTP is awful in many ways. If you don't mind those flaws, fair enough, but to pretend that they don't exist is massively dishonest.

[New Judge]

“OG continuing to persist with his belief that the FPTP system is not terrible, when it fact it fails on nearly every measure conceivable to reflect the voters' intentions accurately.”

Yes I have to agree with OG. FPTP only fails to reflect voters’ intentions because voters have been fooled by political parties into believing they are electing a party and not individual MPs. This is an unfortunate by-product of party politics. Individual MPs should publish their own manifesto tailored to suit the needs and wishes of the constituents where they stand. There would be difficulty for the Queen to select somebody capable of forming a government but MPs would be free to vote on individual issues as they think fit bearing in mind their constituents rather than being whipped into line. I know there would be difficulties but personally I would rather have the choice of a number of candidates who pay heed to local issues rather than a party stooge parachuted in to provide his or her party with another Commons vote for their policies.

[jim360]

Again, NJ, that's simply wrong. Even in FPTP elections at constituency level they go wrong, and not just because of party v. party but even if you removed the party aspect entirely then the winning candidate isn't necessarily reflective of the voters' wishes. FPTP cannot capture party politics, and can't capture individual politics either.

If you like, the inverse problem exists here: some voters have been duped into thinking that FPTP is better than any other system, partly because their chief source of information is from people who benefit from FPTP and would be hurt by changing it. This insistence that FPTP is in any sense the best system available is wrong in so many levels. Again, accept the flaws if you like but don't deny their existence, which should be plain for all to see.

[New Judge]

Sorry, jim, I was only talking about FPTP at national level.

Whenever there are more than two candidates for any election there is a very strong likelihood that, under FPTP, the winning candidate will be elected on less than 50% of the votes. But I do not believe this is sufficient reason to abandon it. Alternatives to it (voting in order of preference, transferable votes, lowest placed candidates dropping out of the first round, etc.) all suffer from the defect that many voters will either have their votes realingned away from their first choice, or will be forced to vote again for a candidate they may not support (or not vote at all).

All voting methods ever devised have defects and FPTP is no exception. But it produces winners who have secured more votes than any other candidate. I agree that unless they have secured >50% of the votes this is not more than votes “against” them. However, personally I don’t subscribe to the view that a vote for candidate B is a vote “against” candidate A. Voters should not vote “against” somebody, they should vote in favour of somebody and if there is nobody they favour then they should not vote at all. However I do accept that people vote (say) Labour to keep the Tories out. But on balance I believe the defects of the FPTP system are less severe than most others.

[jim360]

Like I said, NJ, that's a very different thing from dismissing criticisms of FPTP as nonsense. I'd still disagree with you that it's the best system out there, but it's important to recognise the flaws. Perhaps CGP Gray (whose presenting style I like, although of course you have to research more yourself into topics he talks on because, well, obviously) goes too far in his criticisms, but they are valid all the same, and pretending otherwise was what I was objecting to.

Returning to the specific video, he's wildly overestimating the probability that London will become independent -- but that the idea is even remotely plausible is a surprise.

[whiskeryron]

Any way of slowing the video down so that at least I may understand what's going on ?

[New Judge]

I’ve never heard of CPG Gray, Jim and have no idea who he is or what he does. I haven’t watched the video because U-Tube never works properly via AB on my machine. But the idea that London will gain independence from the UK is fanciful in the extreme and claims by anyone putting the probability at even as high as 0.1% must be treated with, to say the least, a little caution.

[jim360]

I'd recommend checking him out at some point -- his patter delivery is really quite fun, if nothing else.