Friday, May 14, 2021

Flaky Tony and the numbers

So, Tony Blair is in the news having a panic attack about "wokeness" killing the Left.  

While I don't doubt they are some culture war issues on which the Left looks a bit nuts, gullible, and sometimes illiberal, I wish Blair and this type of commentary would bear in mind that total Left wing vote is not as bad as that for Labour (or Labor) alone.



I assume you can call the Liberal Democrats centre Left?  Labour, them and the Greens make up 46.5%.  True, if you add Brexit Party to the Cons, their vote is up to 45.6%.  But my point still stands.

Blair might spend his time better arguing for preferential voting than sounding like Mark Latham lite.
 
Update:   see this article in Quartz looking at the terrible results that they get from their first past the post system.  It obviously stinks.   And I didn't realise that they had attempted to introduce a preferential system of sorts in 2011.   Then PM Cameron opposed it - another way in which he helped damage the country, I see.

My point about Blair is stronger than I realised - he would be better campaigning for another go at electoral reform, perhaps using a simpler preferential system

1 comment:

Not Trampis said...

He may well have been right when Corbyn was leader but it is absurd to say this is now the case with Starmer as leader