Voting… child’s play? 15-year-old Izzy Barrett on lowering the voting age
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This month, dogs were all the rage at your local polling station. Are teenagers next? The new prime minister promises to lower the voting age to 16; however, 51 per cent of Britons oppose such a move, with just 24 per cent in support – that’s all Britons whose opinion is relevant (those over 18 […]
Proportional Representation: principles and systems
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The 2024 general election, in which the Labour party secured a 174 seat majority with just 34 per cent of the popular vote, has boosted interest in different electoral systems. Famously, our British First Past The Post (FPTP) system is shunned by almost all of our European neighbours (with Belarus as the one exception). But […]
Enough with the pantomime; it’s time to admit our mistake. A plea for sanity puts the whole Brexit issue in a nutshell
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Why, in God’s name, do we have to go through this prolonged, painful amateur pantomime of attempting a dignified adjustment to Brexit? The clown’s pants have fallen down. His car is in pieces. The tent has collapsed. Why don’t we just face up to it and stop trying to give dignity to our psychotic break […]
An undelivered address to the Tolpuddle Festival
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For the first time this year, Dorset for Europe was offered the opportunity to run a stall at the Tolpuddle Martyrs’ Festival. Along with the stall comes the invitation to deliver a short speech to explain why we’re there and what we hope to achieve. This prompted me to gush forth an anguished tirade, wholly […]
Putting Reform UK Ltd out of business – letter to the editor
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Dear Editor, In the July 2024 UK General Election, the limited company known as Reform UK ended up with five MPs, having received 14 per cent of the votes cast, some 4 million votes. Under proportional representation they would have gained about 94 MPs. This is a problem, because Reform UK has a political ideology […]
The Primary, the election and neoliberalism: George Monbiot in conversation, Byline Festival
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Please do watch this and share widely.
Reform UK 2024 is so UKIP 2015: the press should stop treating the result as something it is not
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I was shocked to see that Nigel Farage’s ‘Reform UK’ party came second in 120 constituencies. They got the third-highest vote share on 12.6 per cent of the votes, and even got an MP. All of this against a backdrop of the winning party gaining a vote-share only in the 30’s. Oh no, wait a […]
Letter to a friend in America about the UK General Election
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Dear —, I can’t tell you how grateful I am for a seamless transition of power after the general election here in the UK. Outgoing prime minister Rishi Sunak gave the best, most statesmanlike speech of his life when he resigned. If only he’d governed in that tone! Over the past 6 weeks, the Tories […]
Potholed society
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It’s not just our roads which are potholed… the whole country shows similar symptoms of neglect. My article on the disgraceful state of so many British roads, riddled with potholes and crumbling surfaces, leads us to use the pothole theme to evaluate some aspects of our neglected services and faltering social cohesion. From crumbing surfaces […]
Unmissable panel sessions at Byline Festival on what Labour need to do and how to save the NHS
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It’s hard to focus on anything beyond July 4 and the results on July 5, but if you can get to Dartington Hall on Saturday 6 or Sunday 7, or both, you can still get tickets to attend the sessions that West Country Voices are hosting – and they are absolute bangers and wholly in […]
It’s time to face the music – four years on from Brexit
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Four years on from Brexit and I’m taking a look at how various industries have been affected by the realities of our decision to leave the European Union (EU). I’ve already looked at How fishing was gutted by Brexit, and how Brexit has impacted farming. In this article I want to look at how Brexit […]
Hustings in Sidmouth, Devon, 18 June: full report
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“I haven’t prepared anything and if you want to know about our policies, I suggest you look at our website.” Well, this was a first: surely the whole point of hustings is to act as a shop-window for the candidates? On this showing, the Reform candidate for the Honiton and Sidmouth constituency seemed to be […]
Why Lib Dems as HM Opposition to a Labour government would be much better for the UK: an interview with Phil Moorhouse
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With some polls suggesting that the Lib Dems could push the Conservatives out if (a distant) second place, I asked Phil Moorhouse of popular YouTube channel ‘A Different Bias’ for his views on the matter. Could the Tories come third? PM: “Current polling suggests it’s unlikely…but only just. They are predicted to retain about 100 […]
A desperate Johnny Mercer resorts to dubious tactics against Plymouth Moor View’s likely next MP, Fred Thomas
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No doubt there are many Conservative MPs who were complacently confident about the safety of their seats only a few months ago. And no doubt many of those are now realising that that complacency was misplaced. The growing Conservative fury and desperation manifests itself in many ways, from the tetchy belligerence of Sunak, to the […]
“I cried today in hospital. I did not cry for me.”
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Award-winning film-maker David Wilkinson discovered very recently that he had stage 4 bowel cancer. He has been sharing his experience on Facebook with his friends and admirers, of whom there are very many, including the team here at WCV. We asked if we could publish this post. We believe it’s especially important as we approach […]
The war after the battle
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How the far-right may lose the battle, but still hope to win the war As many centre-right politicians and commentators have warned us, what used to be the Conservative Party has become a vehicle for the far-right. Philip Hammond wrote: “the Conservative party has been taken over by unelected advisers, entryists and usurpers who are trying to turn […]
A Maslow manifesto
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Abraham Maslow was an American psychologist who created a model of the hierarchy of human needs, from the most basic upwards. It is always represented as a pyramid and has been adapted several times, but the basics are unchanged. What if Maslow were alive today, what if he were to be our next prime minister? […]
Kevin Foster needs reminding: “Charity envieth not”
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There has never been a general election like this one. The Conservative and Unionist (Tory) Party has made gaffe after blunder after miscalculation after error after outrage. Keir Starmer could sit at home and do nothing for the next three weeks and still find himself prime minister on Friday, July 5th, so amateur and awful […]
Your guide to the tactical vote to defeat the Conservative and push them into third place
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Just because the Conservatives are set to lose power nationally, they are still able to hang on to seats where the progressive vote is split and/or ambiguous, thanks to our anachronistic and undemocratic first-past-the-post system (shared only by Belarus…) Fortunately, we can turn to the big aggregator sites like www.stopthetories.vote and Best for Britain’s www.getvoting.org […]
This is a challenge that all Conservative parliamentary candidates should be happy to meet
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The Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate for South Devon, Caroline Voaden, has thrown down the gauntlet to her Conservative rival, Anthony Mangnall, asking him whether he condemns the lying and the breaches of the ministerial code by Sunak, Coutinho and others. We think that all Conservative candidates should be prepared to answer this same question: Are […]
Interestingly-worded survey, Sir Liam Fox. Excuse me if I answer it my own way…
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An open letter to Sir Liam Fox MP Dear Sir Liam, Thank you for the North Somerset Residents Survey form, which you kindly sent me. It is a rather tasteful shade of green – an interesting change in Conservative branding. The party has, I think, traditionally used blue ever since my grandfather was a Conservative […]
Voting together, cross-party, to defeat the Conservatives: South Devon Primary update
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We are aware that Labour has announced a candidate for South Devon. Some are implying on social media that he intends to run a serious campaign. But we would be very surprised if that’s his plan, after being dropped in by national HQ just weeks from the election. It would be a tragedy if a […]
Is Rishi Sunak trying to lose the general election?
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Nobody who was serious about winning the general election and forming the next government could possibly campaign like Rishi Sunak and the Tories have done in these first few days of the general election… could they? It was called on Wednesday, May 22, 2024: the day the government launched its resilience initiative and told us […]
Your go-to reminder of 14 years of Conservative ‘achievements’. Part 2: environment, housing, public services plus scandals, resignations and suspensions
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A continuation of the list of horrors perpetrated on this country by the Conservatives. Environment Human effluent flowing merrily through our waterways. Failure to regulate and curb energy price rises, leading to massive provider profits and pressure on consumers. Multiple failures to meet climate targets and backtracking on environmental commitments. The loss of EU funding […]
Are we in for the dirtiest general election campaign so far?
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On May 22, 2024, Sunak finally announced the date of the next General Election: July 4. As the polls show, he has quite a challenge to win – or even to prevent Labour from securing an outright majority. But the Conservative Party is traditionally one of the world’s most effective election-winning machines, and it would be complacent not to assume […]
Your go-to reminder of 14 years of Conservative ‘achievements’. Part 1: economy, healthcare and education
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As we brace ourselves for the barrage of self-congratulatory rhetoric from our government and the unelected Prime Moistiness about the “achievements” over the past 14 years since they seized power in May 2010, let’s pre-emptively dissect their record. Behold! The comprehensive list of their so-called “achievements” that we’ve been subjected to while they’ve ostensibly “been […]
Action stations!
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At last, fourteen years of brutal underfunding, politically-motivated austerity, cronyism and corruption can be brought to an end on 4 July, when we can all exercise our democratic right and vote in the general election. With so many Conservative MPs standing down and dissatisfaction with Sunak growing in the Tory ranks, let alone in the […]
Defence dilemma: finding a role will be harder than finding the money
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Welcome to the 25 per cent increase in defence spending, announced by the Prime Minister, for whom the penny has just dropped that we live in dangerous times. First of all, let us make some (possibly rash) assumptions. Let us assume that the percentage increase will not be cancelled by a reduction in GDP, which […]
Operation Save Little Dog
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When it was clear Johnson was on the way out, his allies launched Operation Save Big Dog. This article explores what we might call Operation Save Little Dog – the equivalent for Sunak, in the wake of the worse-than-expected results in the Council elections. The factions on the right are now quite complex: there are the extreme-right backers of the […]