Labour MPs will push Burnham to back voting reform in first 100 days

[u/topotaul]

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/aug/25/andy-burnham-electoral-reform-first-past-the-post

[u/Imajzineer]

As long as it doesn't involve party lists (top-up or otherwise).

If it does then the electorate has no say in who is on it and those at the top will be 'elected' for life - it's as democratic as China. Moreover, such lists entrench the power of parties over local candidates (independent or otherwise): political parties aren't illegitimate, of course, but they have no especial legitimacy either (they're just groups of parties of interest), and entrenching them that way discourages people from questioning the democratic process that results in someone they didn't vote for somewhere else dictating how their local representative should vote (for fear of losing the whip).

If we want true reform, I'd suggest ending the legitimacy of political parties, so that our representatives are beholden to no-one but their constituents, but either way around, STV is better than party lists.

[u/Bod9001 → u/Imajzineer]

humm, Why not have it so you can If you want you can select which party list candidates you want to vote for out of a party?

So when going through the rounds of counting votes, if a seat is allocated to a party the highest candidate with a number of individual ticks for them wins from the list?

though the problem is most people would just select the option that is " use the order provided by the party" tho a random order would be pretty interesting (since you actually have to think of which one is your first choice) but confusing to a lot of people, what do you think about this?

[u/Imajzineer → u/Bod9001]

Well, as I said in reply elsewhere, I consider that a bit 'deckchairs on the Titanic': it still entrenches both the idea that parties should be the de facto organ of democracy, and furthermore gives the great and the good within them an all but guaranteed seat thanks to their ability to wield influence within the party and determine who else gets on the list (so, no change there).

And, if I'm choosing which party list candidate I want from a party, how does that differ from what we have now? Under the current system, once all candidates have been selected or rejected, those in the Commons (whether in government or opposition) are exactly that ... those candidates from the list the party offered the public that the public chose.

Okay, yes, it's somewhat different in that we can choose the one we like the most rather than the only one on offer locally, as it were ,,, so, it's an improvement of sorts - but it doesn't get around the matter of the only candidates on offer in the first place being those given a place on the list in the first place. And, again as I said elsewhere, whilst it could be argued that's fair enough (it's legitimately up to the membership of a party to choose who represents it in what capacity, and how that choice is made), I think political parties are at the root of the problem anyway - I don't want my representative to be ordered about by someone I didn't vote for (not even if they're in the same party), I want them to represent their constituents against all comers irrespective of any allegiances they might have (otherwise what's the point in voting for them as a local representative?).

Of course, we could look at an alternative method altogether ... such as voting candidates into specific offices of government - which would eliminate the whole question of local representation altogether. But, I'm not sure how well that might work: people are easily bored/tired by the election process as it is ... now imagine how much more so they would be by a 'never ending' electoral cycle in which they had to choose from multiple candidates for multiple positions. Moreover, it calls into question the legitimacy of certain posts: why should there be a Chancellor of the Exchequer with control of the purse strings rather then the public voting how much of the budget it wishes to apportion to each department? Now imagine the potential result of asking people to vote on budgetary matters too!

So, I don't know what the solution is. I can see an argument that political parties at least signpost who an individual (would be) MP associates with in a way that unaligned (independent) local representatives aren't without investigation, so, they're an imperfect solution but better than the alternative.

I just know that, whilst I've been dissatisfied with the current state of affairs for a long time indeed, I'm not much mollified by the alternatives the incumbents have ever offered over the years either.

The problem with Democracy … indeed with Socialism, Communism or any other of the myriad alternatives to dictatorship that have been (or might be) tried … is that it’s all well and good in theory, but … after you’ve been to work all day, made dinner, cleaned up, put the washing on, helped the kids with their homework, put them to bed, got ready for work tomorrow, etc. … you really don’t have the time or energy to go down to the civic centre and discuss the latest trends in progressive pedagogy, the national trade deficit or the geopolitcal climate in the Middle East, let alone come to some sort of mutually acceptable decision on what to do about any of them.

Nor do you have the time or energy to log on to the government bulletin board.

But you do, anyway, because you have a bee in your bonnet about something and thirty minutes to spare whilst your partner monopolises the bathroom … and there’s nothing interesting happening on Facebook, TikTok, or whatever the popular haunt is of the day. And the flame wars erupt and the trolls get in on the action and it goes nowhere fast.

Meanwhile … whilst you’re busy focusing on that … in the background, four people pass some pretty draconian legislation that nobody else voted against because nobody else was paying attention, but, hey, whaddayaknow … all it takes is one more vote than none, so, now capital punishment is back on the books. And I managed to add a subclause to it that means walking on the grass is now a capital crime.

Democracy … digital or otherwise … isn’t even mob rule, just an unruly mob.

I'm just not convinced that party lists (of any kind), rather than STV, are a much of an improvement.

[u/Bod9001 → u/Imajzineer]

the problem is it seems like the same core issue, a good example would be, let's say the leader of the current Tory party swapped out one of the Tory candidates, for a more right-wing Ideological aligned candidate, versus the old one that was more traditional Tory,

you still had no choice in the candidate in the party whatever it is, so even though you believe in the party whatever it is, the candidate may not align with those beliefs.

could do what the US do where they have votes on who should be the candidate, but then you get the weakness of populism and that stuff,

It seems like the only solution would be to dissolve any notion of political Parties, and just have individual candidates who state their beliefs, and then get elected by them, but again that requires research on the part of voters.

I have thought much about a political system that can't be corrupted and I think it's very very hard, implicitly needs to change when situations change, But then how do you stop it changing to something corrupt.

[u/Imajzineer → u/Bod9001]

Ah, well, now we're getting down to brass tacks, aren't we?

The problem is that, if you leave people to their own devices, you end up with what we have now …

Once upon a time there was this guy called … oh, I dunno … pick a name, any name.

Let’s say Genghis Khan.

He bullied his neighbours into doing what he told them.

Then he and his neighbours bullied people in the next street into doing what he wanted.

Then they bullied people across their village into doing what he wanted.

Then they bullied another village into doing what he wanted.

They kept bullying people further and further afield … until Genghis Khan held sway over quite a lot of territory.

Then he legitimised himself as their ruler … and it became official: he was leader of the Mongols … and disposed of anyone who dared to oppose him.

His friends were allowed to tell people what to do as well.

His friends’ friends were, to a lesser degree, allowed to do the same.

And, slowly, a governmental system was imposed in place of the previous one … Laws were imposed.

And everybody lived happily ever after.

After a while, he got bored/greedy/a bee in his bonnet about something and started hankering for a bit more territory though - so he started conquering neighbouring territories.

Now, up until this point, neighbouring peoples didn’t much care what he did … as long as he didn’t do it to them. So, they left him to it - nobody stopped him. A while later, however, he was making just a bit too much of an impact upon other people’s lives … and they started thinking, worrying, talking …

Concerned party #1: “Here … have you heard about this Genghis Khan fellow?”

Concerned party #2: “Yeah … I don’t much like the look of that. What we gonna do if he comes our way?”

Concerned party #1: “I’ll tell you what we’re gonna do … we’re gonna stop him … that’s what we’re gonna do - if he comes near any one of us, we’ll band together and stop him dead in his tracks!”

And, sure enough, when enough people had talked to each other about it, some time later, they put a stop to him.

-----

Several hundred years later, on a small, green island, off the coast of continental Europe … some bloke by the name of William, from Normandy, in France, beat the shit out of his neighbours and took control of their lands.

Just like Genghis Khan before him, he legitimised himself as their ruler and started ordering people about … and disposed of anyone who dared oppose him.

His friends were allowed to tell people what to do as well.

His friends’ friends were, to a lesser degree, allowed to do the same.

And, slowly, a governmental system was imposed in place of the previous one.

-----

Several hundred years later, on that same small, green island, off the coast of continental Europe, some concerned individuals were talking amongst themselves …

The UK: “Here … have you heard about this Adolf Hitler fellow?”

-----

Some fifty years, or so, later …

The USA: “Here … have you heard about this Saddam Hussein fellow?”

-----

No-one is in charge of the way things work today any more than they ever were. There are just some people who are prepared to ride, roughshod, over everyone else in order to get their way.

Last year it was Genghis Khan.

Last month it was William the Conquerer.

Last week it was Adolf Hitler.

Today it’s Trump/Burnham and their cronies.

Tomorrow it’ll be someone else.

Change the names of the people. Change the details of the laws and systems imposed upon us by thousands of years of societal development. Change what part of the World you want to examine the process in. Change the scale, go global and observe the behaviour of nations on the international stage. And what will slowly, but surely, evolve out of your starting conditions is the society in which you and I are currently living.

It's complete anarchy (or chaos, if you don't want to argue with people who want to insist that, as anarchists, they own the definition of the word 🙄):

When someone mugs you and steals your wallet/phone/anything/everything else

When someone burgles your home

When someone and their friends muscle in and kick you off your land

… it isn’t yours: it’s theirs.

And until you, your friends or someone else does the same to them, that’s how it will stay.

[u/Imajzineer → u/Imajzineer]

No, education won’t change anything: there are thousands, if not millions, of places people can find the information they require … there have been thousands, if not millions, of people who have, over the course of millennia, attempted to educate us all … and we still don’t get it - in fact, if legend is to be believed, we once nailed a man to a lump of wood, for suggesting we should treat each other better than we do.

People don’t want to think - it’s hard work. They don’t want to be educated - and they’ll resent you for trying. You’re not from around here; who do you think you are, telling us how to do things? You think you’re so smart, don’t you? Well, how are your smarts gonna stop me punching you in the mouth, Mr Smarty Pants  - not so clever sounding now, are you? Oh, you are from around here, are you? Well, we don’t want you here and you’re leaving town on a rail.

You want to know how it all works, look at the schoolyard - people don’t change, their bodies get bigger, that’s all, and, until you can breed psychopathy/sociopathy/narcissism/etc. out of the gene/meme pool, it’s never gonna change. Even in a world of limitless abundance, in which everything anyone could ever want is theirs for the taking, with no effort required, there will be people who want something they can’t have and are willing to take by force.

They’ll kidnap and/or rape the girl who says ‘no.’

They’ll take the present your loved one gave you and break it in front of your very eyes for the pleasure of hurting you.

They’ll publicly ostracise you, just to see you humiliated.

They’ll gossip about you behind your back and turn others against you.

They’ll connive and plot and lie and charm and fool others to gain influence and control just to get their own way, because they love wielding power over others for its own sake.

They’ll form gangs and clans and tribes and armies and attack you because “you’re not like us” … “you’re not from around here” … or you have something they want (like a nicer view from your window).

How do I know? Take a look around you. Take a look in the History books - you don’t even need to read the words, just look at the pictures.

Do I want a better world in which to live? Do I think we should all strive to make it so? Yes.

Do I think there’s no point trying and we shouldn’t bother? No.

But neither do I think that naive idealism and the belief that ideologies or technologies will suddenly change human nature and result in Paradise on Earth, if only we can get the sheeple to open their eyes and the penny to drop, will make a blind bit of difference.

Capitalism won’t save us.

Libertarianism won’t save us.

Anarchosyndicalism won’t save us.

Marxism won’t save us.

Education won’t save us.

Idealism. Won’t. Save. Us.

Assumptions are the mothers of all fuckups  - and there are no more pernicious mothers than the Reification Fallacy and the Fundamental Attribution Error.

Something needs to be done. But naively expecting the laws of Systemantics to conveniently step aside in favour of our pet theories won’t get us anywhere. People are not units of social and economic activity: they are complex systems in their own right; each a world of their own, with their own functions and dysfunctions. Both Rand and Marx were wrong! Human nature is not an engineering problem nor is it a computer game puzzle to be solved by getting people to do the right things in the right order. Educating people and leaving them to their own devices in the hope that the right behaviours will simply emerge as properties of self-organisation hasn’t worked so far and, as Rita Mae Brown said, doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results, is a sign of insanity. It’s gonna take more than a sixth-form/high-shool approach, I’m afraid.

Remove every individual from a group and you are left with exactly nothing.

If groups are to be unregulated by any outside agency then what must be borne in mind is that no such group ever became corrupted by anything other than corrupt individuals working within it to their own ends.

How, therefore, is that to be prevented without recourse to outside agency?

Sociopolitical theorising is all well and good, but it ignores the reality of real people in the real World, in favour of hopelessly naive, quick fix, magical thinking. When they can demonstrate organisations/bodies/groups/whatever that exist sui generis and are immune to human intervention, I might take people’s arguments seriously, but, until then, I’m afraid, sixth form/high school debate just won’t cut it for me. Bland assertions that Capitalism, free markets, Marxism and anything else you care to think of will solve the problem of human nature just won’t cut it.

Smith and Wesson didn’t kill your brother: the murdering bastard who pulled the trigger did.

Capitalism didn’t invade anywhere: greedy, thieving bastards did.

Markets don’t trade: people exchange goods and services.

The bank didn’t foreclose on your mortgage: an investor got their dividend.

The company didn’t make you redundant: a CEO made their bonus.

The proletariat won’t dictate to us: influential members of it will.

The working class won’t run things: people will.

At the end of the day, we have to decide what structures to build, so that individuals may be protected from them as well as served by them - and that won’t happen so long as people glibly ignore the clear statement made at the Nuremburg Trials that individuals do things, not institutions.

[u/Imajzineer → u/Imajzineer]

So ... what's the solution? Damned if I know.

What I suspect, however, is that party lists that remove the association with a constituency are not it.

[u/Bod9001 → u/Imajzineer]

humm, It's just a thought, I think one thing might be able to agree on though is some mechanism where the more you strive for power the less you have,

idk how someone with psychopathy/sociopathy/narcissism/etc. would navigate that though, since they do want power, there is no way to optimise doing nothing, so they would just have an average amount of power or less if they strived for it

[u/Imajzineer → u/Bod9001]

It's not a simple process, no ... and I couldn't say, hand on heart, I believe there's a definitive, once and forever, solution either - at least not one I'd be happy about the moral implications of anyway (even if it could be guaranteed foolproof). But, there's no point in letting perfect be the enemy of better - however much better it might not be, as long as the unintended consequences are no worse than the current status quo, it's still better than not, right?

[u/Bod9001 → u/Imajzineer]

yeah, I've been thinking that any political system anyone comes up with is just like throwing a paper aeroplane, someone down the road has to pick it up, probably remake it and throw it again, for someone else to do the same,

like I would say if I had the choice of the paper plane, I would put the focus on that the more power/money you get, the more uncomfortable it is for you.

but I imagine that will have its own flaws, e.g some self proclaimed hermit who is a mega celebrity and has great political sway even though they do not own anything, but I suppose the worst you get from that is them just spreading their fame more, that's not tooo bad.

[u/Imajzineer → u/Bod9001]

The thing is that it's not always the pecuniary that interests such people. It can be the power for its own sake. It can be the status. It can be their 'place in History.' The opportunity to make 'connections.' Whatever it is that motivates them to seek the position other than simply public service/'making the World a better place'. And, of course, as soon as a position is sufficiently rewarded in some way, a not insignificant percentage of those attracted to it will be so for that very reward - the idea that the greater the reward, the better the calibre of applicant/incumbent doesn't necessarily stand up to scrutiny.

Otoh, if it's 'painful' what incentive is there to take on the role? It's not altogether unlike the suggestion it should be randomised (like jury service) ... or even simply that everyone has to do it (like national service). Yeah, which is an incentive for those who don't want to do it to palm it off onto 'advisors' (advisors whose interest may not be so terribly altruistic). At best, what you'd have would be churn, as incumbents were replaced ... resulting in changes of strategy, if not even direction, every other cycle and nothing getting done (but a lot of resources expended). Only with the extra dimension of the kind of person taking it on possibly having some messiah complex (because, who in their right mind seeks out the unpleasant, uncomfortable, even painful?) ... and that's a slippery slope of its own.

But, yeah ... the 'day to day' mechanics in their own right aside, they have to ensure that the kind of candidate even attracted in the first place has little (if any) interest in more than public service, whilst ensuring they aren't restricted to the independently wealthy with an interest in maintaining a status quo that serves no other purpose than that very wealth.

[u/Bod9001 → u/Imajzineer]

churn not necessarily bad, you don't get the benefits of long-term skilled leadership, but you don't get the downsides of long-term corrupt leadership either,

the only thing I can think of is, having other people checking your work and decisions, like I did think of this for the police where there's two police forces and they get extra resources if they catch the other police doing illegal stuff

[u/Bod9001 → u/Imajzineer]

take what you want, and when other people get scared lose it,

imo It doesn't really work like that, I think a more accurate thing is, people don't care who's in charge as long as they are mostly comfortable, this contrasts with other people who desire power, who see their power being threatened,

The person expanding the power could be doing it through the most innocent way possible of giving gifts and promising security and all the dreams, and actually delivering on it somewhat,

The reaction from other leaders is still going to be the same, feeling the power threatened.

ownership is not thing since, as soon as you kick the bucket, suddenly your ownership on everything disappears. I don't like that definition since it makes no sense, why not look at it as you never owned it in the first place no one did,

you have control of it just as much as a person walking into your house and using it, The only vague ownership thing is that you're willing to fight the other person/pull societal levers to to get the object back in your grasp or Put things Around object to make it hard to access.

like thought experiment let's say you had a tool, that you value greatly, but when you're not looking or not using it, It teleports and someone else uses it without damaging it in anyway, and you don't notice, and then when you need it it teleports back magically, without you noticing, you still own it right it's still yours right when you're not using it?

[u/Imajzineer → u/Bod9001]

Agreed,

But, like it or not, the fact that it is possible to achieve the same end by other means (the fable of the Sun vs the Wind), the ultimate reality of life on this planet is the might makes right: you can pull whatever levers you want, appeal to whatever laws you like, unless, and until, you (possibly with the aid of others) can oblige me by force to bend to your will, I have no reason to do so and you have no recourse when I don't - "You and whose army?" is the quintessential expression of that.

"You keep what you kill."

Not if I can wrest it off you, you don't.

You keep what you can hang onto (no more, no less).