FPTP - couldn't agree more. However, Labour are the only ones who can do it, and Starmer has not said a word about it so far, so in typical Labour fashion they will be so thankful of 'a turn' in power to lose the generational opportunity to truly improve the governance of the country
A 3rd party did try, Lib Dems Vs Labour and Tory, and the Lib Dems lost. Labour haven't shown that they would be for a change to the voting system, so I can't see why they would support it.
They also sabotaged the remain vote by saying they were pro-remain whilst saying that leave is the only option.
I don't know why anyone would trust Labour to do the right thing.
There was a referendum on Alternative Vote (which is actually not that different from FPTP). I don' want to be overly pedantic, but I think the difference does matter.
The campaign was also filled with misinformation and emotional manipulation. I'm not saying this invalidates the result, but "we had a good long look at our electoral system and made a wise and informed decision" it was not.
> Getting rid of the first-past-the-post voting system would be a good start.
Yes but there was a referendum on that and people said "keep FPTP".
IMO large chunks of UK constitution needs replacement. Working out which parts are causing trouble will require putting the whole current ad-hoc mess into a single document, even if only so that people can work out if Eton really is the nexus of aristocratic nepotism and cronyism that is it's reputation.
> A figurative one surely? Actually going to the moon would make much more sense in cooperation with other countries in any case.
If we can convince the British establishment that it's Space Australia, and assuming this doesn't kill everyone involved (big if), it might work. Possibly.
> Yes but there was a referendum on that and people said "keep FPTP".
The campaign against was run by the same guy that ran the Brexit campaign, and featured posters of premature babies suggesting they didn't need a new voting system, they needed more NHS funding.
And as with Brexit, they got neither. Adds further irony to the "will of the people" catchphrase popular after Brexit though.
I don't know, at a certain point the pro-Brexit pro-FPTP protest voters will be fed up by the state of things, and decide to protest vote for the Euro, rejoining EU, and eliminating FPTP.
Don't forget that apart from the Tory cronies, there is practically no one left in Britain that is happy with how things are going. Times might be ripe for a counter protest vote.
The point is not merely technically correct, it is actually correct. If you want to say funding didn't go up enough for your liking, say so directly. Don't say something you know isn't true, and then when called on it try to wriggle out of it.
And as for the FT's take - "Tory austerity" didn't even balance the budget. The UK cannot afford to have the level of state spending it already has, let alone increase it yet further.
IMO the problem with austerity is that it presumed the economy would grow, which it then promptly didn't.
I won't pretend to have enough economic nous to know if Keynesianism is worth anything, but I do know it says to do the exact opposite: for governments to borrow and spend more in bad times to grow the economy, and pay down that debt only when things recover.
Austerity as a concept doesn't really presume that, austerity is just a weird word meaning a government cutting spending. It doesn't contain any argument about the future. The Tories implementation did presume growth which is why the UK had austerity-lite vs what actually turned out to be needed.
Keynesianism is a self-contradictory concept which is why it always fails. It's predicated on the assumption that governments are good at investing. But if that is true then governments have no answer back to the people who argue that good times = an even better time to invest, because if government ROI is always positive why would you not invest more when tax revenues are flowing freely? So in practice it immediately turns into high levels of government deficit spending all the time, because if you use wordplay to turn spending into "investment" then a deficit today can always be claimed to be paid off tomorrow from the ROI. So it's just an excuse for spending more than the tax take allows, all the time.
The problem with this theory is that governments are notoriously bad at investing. They are rarely in a position to even measure ROI let alone ensure it's positive. Beating the market is really hard even for full time expert investors, some argue it's impossible over the long run, and that's with the full accountability of market mechanisms in play. Without those you end up with Soviet-style "investment" in highly visible and labor-intensive heavy industry projects, or for the UK, an endless succession of heavy rail projects.
The UK cannot afford its current level of welfare and spending, along with most of the rest of Europe. Unless the economy suddenly goes into overdrive the future will have far more austerity, along with many angry citizens faced with broken promises and rotting, decaying infrastructure.
Getting rid of the first-past-the-post voting system would be a good start.
> Needs a miracle breakthrough technology (graphene? quantum computing?) - a literal moonshot - to reverse this decline
A figurative one surely? Actually going to the moon would make much more sense in cooperation with other countries in any case.