Reform has local councillor defect to Tories

@ArishMell i think resigning and causing a bye election would be the more practical of the two options.

@gandalf1957 I take your point. Resigning completely may be the most honourable as well as practical.

I would not want a situation similar to that of the USA, with really only two parties and very few others, but the plethora of parties we have developed does worry me. It potentially leads to rather unsatisfactory semi-coalitions of the not really willing, elected among a lot of abstentions and the dishonesty of so-called "tactical voting".

@ArishMell Some people may think they are voting for a party, but this has never been the case under first-past-the-post. You vote for the best candidate and they are supposed to act in the best interests of the local constituency . . if that involves alligning themselves with a different political grouping, so be it. Most of our constituencies have traditionally been two horse races (this may no longer be the case in the future). If your "horse" is not realistically in the race, you are better off voting tactically to try to achieve the result you want nationwide. This happened in a big way in 2024 when people voted to ensure the Conservatives were punished and Labour and Lib Dems ended up with proportionately more parliamentary seats than their gross share of the national vote merited.

@SunshineGirl I don't think the method of voting is a problem. Basing the outcome on straightforwards numbers of votes cast is simple, fair, and clear.

Most of the calls for complicated "proportional" voting and the like seem to come from parties unable to grasp that they receive relatively little support because they do not offer policies sufficiently attractive to enough voters. It's no good them blaming the system for their low popularity!

I think in local elections people tend to vote more for the candidates and parties they believe the best for the town or county rather than by ideology; but at national level are more likely to vote for the parties whose ideologies they prefer.

Of course that does mean voting for an individual, but someone has to represent each party at constituency level.


The example you give shows "tactical voting" for the masquerade it is. Voters should do so honestly, not as if the election is some sort of elaborate parlour game. If that means changing one's own long-held allegiance so be it, but at least be sincere.

I believe though that the biggest potential distorter of elections is the body of folks who are too idle to vote. I do not call for compulsory elections as some other countries use, but those who evade voting by defacing the ballot-slip or simply not attending, are not helping the country and have no cause to complain.

@SunshineGirl Labour had a landslide majority when fewer people by around half a million voted for them in 2024 than 2019. It quite amuses me to see Starmer suggesting that voters flocked to Labour and giving the quote to Tories that " ..... they have learnt nothing .....". It appears that actually Starmer and Labour haven't learnt that under the current political climate large majorities in the UK parliament can be wiped out in that one parliament as the Tories found from 2019 to 2024 and as I predict Labour will also find come the next General Election.

@gandalf1957 The "political climate" is certainly unstable, but the Conservatives did more than enough (austerity, Brexit brinkmanship, haphazard approach to Covid, Truss wrecking our fiscal credibility) to secure their own downfall.

@SunshineGirl and I suspect that we are watching the Labour downfall taking place here and now .....

As for Reform we still need to see what they can do in local government, I suspect little of what they have promised especially in lowering Council tax at the same time that the Labour government are trying to have it increased in a way that blames local and not Westminster government.

IMO the Lib Dems will need a new leader by the next General Election as the current one's buffoon stunts will have deemed him unsuitable as a possible PM by then, not to mention the fact that in the Coalition government, firstly he was the minister responsible for the post office and failed to realise the huge increase in the numbers of sub postmasters being wrongly prosecuted for theft, false accounting and fraud due to the Horizon scandal, and secondly as a Cabinet Minister in that coalition of as you put it of austerity - so at the heart of decision making.

@gandalf1957 Labour has over three and a half years left in office, judge them closer to the time. Although I found the lack of detail in their manifesto about taxes that will need to be raised unhelpful and counter-productive, they are implementing intelligent medium to long term policies and investing in infrastructure that has been neglected for years.

People don't want to pay more tax, but they also don't want to lose any of their services. We have a huge deficit to pay off after the Covid giveaways. Politicians are not showing much leadership, but to be fair this is not the easiest electorate to lead 🤷‍♀

@SunshineGirl I think the UK might be in an even bigger mess without the Covid give aways if by that you mean by the "huge deficit" the furlough scheme and the financial help to businesses. I can't imagine the chaos if people had been sent home with no money at all to pay ongoing bills and feed themselves, and businesses had not been saved for people to go back to subsequently after the pandemic. My recollection was that Starmer said he and Labour supported those schemes and that at the time Sunak was virtually the most popular chancellor of the exchequer. But that spending was a bit like a credit card spend, it has to be paid off and hence the large debt. I would have hoped any of the UK main stream political parties would have done similar.

@gandalf1957 I support the schemes, but they do need to be paid for at some stage.