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The Forum > Article Comments > Why is British politics so fragmented? > Comments

Why is British politics so fragmented? : Comments

By Mal Fletcher, published 9/4/2015

Will any political party ever again command a mandate to govern on its own? Will any party leader ever again speak with authority to and for a constituency beyond their own members and committed supporters?

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The problem with modern politics in the west can be summed up in six words: people are now smarter than politicians. The whole Westminster system is based on assumptions that are no longer valid: that people living in the same area share the same interests, for instance, and that people won't notice that swinging electorates get better treatment.

Australia is a little behind Britain on the curve, mainly because compulsory voting brings out electors who would otherwise neither know nor care who is in charge, and these tend to favour the major parties -- but the same kind of fragmentation is going to happen here too. It's to do with electors and interest groups learning how to game the system, in the way that politicians and political parties have been doing for decades.
Posted by Jon J, Thursday, 9 April 2015 6:45:45 AM
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Let me just add, by the way, that although I am an Obama fan, 'humble' is the last word I would use to describe him: and that if Christians are avoiding political debates (are they really?) it's possibly because they know that their arguments are crap.
Posted by Jon J, Thursday, 9 April 2015 6:54:40 AM
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British politics like Australia has been hopelessly infiltrated by cowards who have allowed secularist legislate in destroying the family unit. Leftist Christophobes rave about keeping religion out of politics while allowing Islam to soil areas of the country. They display their moral outrage at fantasies such as global warming while condoning the slaughter of millions of babies many times because of their own moral failures. They say private life does not affect public performance and then attack the character or beliefs of anyone with any decency. Secularist/feminist/socialist are really hidden codes for selfishness and that is exactly what is and will destroy the west. The rejection of the One who blessed these nations and replacing Him has left a total moral vacuum. No wonder so many young are turnng to the barbarism of Islam.
Posted by runner, Thursday, 9 April 2015 7:25:10 AM
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Runner, it might be off topic, but I need to point out to you and others, that the God which you worship is the same God so vehemently revered by your Muslim enemies.

Jon J. I have to agree with your comments about Obama, "humble" is certainly not a word I would use to describe him.

Back to the topic. Australia has already started to head down the same path. One only has to look at the size of the upper house ballot papers in the last few elections, both state and federal, to come to that conclusion.
David
Posted by VK3AUU, Thursday, 9 April 2015 9:01:16 AM
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'Runner, it might be off topic, but I need to point out to you and others, that the God which you worship is the same God so vehemently revered by your Muslim enemies. "

Oh I see David that must be why the followers of Mohammed kill followers of Christ in Iraq, Kenya, Indonesia, Syria etc etc. It is ignorance like yours shared among some of the apostate church that leads to so many problems/ Ask any Muslim if he serves the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ or the God of Israel and then tell me we serve the same God.
Posted by runner, Thursday, 9 April 2015 9:14:56 AM
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Runner, the Sunnis also kill Shiites and vice versa, all in the name of you non existent God.
David
Posted by VK3AUU, Thursday, 9 April 2015 9:23:55 AM
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Until one of the major parties gets some decent policies, none of them deserve to govern on their own. But if a government actually governs well then the main party in the coalition would probably be able to gain an absolute majority next time round, particularly if their coalition partner's not standing in most seats (as is the case with the SNP).
Posted by Aidan, Thursday, 9 April 2015 9:30:22 AM
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Well, when born to rule parties put winning first and foremost, followed by party loyalty, followed by an idiotic ideological imperative, followed by suppressing dissent and the uncivilized rubbishing of ideas that don't fit the increasingly narrow ideological fit, and those who present them!

And when courage of conviction has disappeared with the advent of the media cycle, thirty second media breaks, and poll group driven policies!

Gone are proactive progressive eloquent advocates with revolutionary or reformist ideas, who can take the population with them!

Replaced by (missing in action) lightweight reactionaries, who swing with the prevailing populist idea!

And blame shift with every opportunity! Rather than present a (persona non gratia) new idea!

Little wonder some parties and their endless non core promises are being increasingly rejected!

The rural sector seems to be going to hell in a hand basket, with rural towns and rural industries dying in front of our eyes!

Yet the Nats remain in the coalition and roll over and beg for a tummy rub; when in fact they'd weld more power and influence outside it!

And indeed regain the support they seem to be losing to the independents! But no, they'd sooner remain inside the "tent" and apply their (emperors new clothes) influence from there!

And think a few new roads inside our city environs makes up for the lost railways, industries and towns; and the me/me mindset!

And then wonder why they and the same old same old is being increasingly rejected!

What do they think will happen to them and their minor party support, when optional preferencing replaces the dog wagging the tail compulsory preferencing we're stuck with for the moment; which has to go if the major parties would exercise any form of control in the senate!
Rhrosty.
Posted by Rhrosty, Thursday, 9 April 2015 10:34:53 AM
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"why can't the parties build support bases that are broad and deep?

Maybe because their core policies are inherently anti-British: Eurocracy, globalisation, multiculturalism.

The same is true in other Western countries.

Australia is a mirror image, only lacking the Eurocracy, but there are proposals for a Asian-Pacific doppelganger, which I'm sure the Tweedles would sign up for in a heartbeat (without consulting "the people" of course).

Which is even more ludicrous than the European Union, considering the range of unrelated cultures/civilisations within Asia/Oceania.
At least Europeans are related to each other.

The problem really is that we don't truly have a DEMO-cracy.

If we did, there'd be primarily referenda/plebiscite-based policies/laws, with elected politicians being mere "managers/implementers" of the decisions of the people, rather than the decision makers themselves.

That will never happen in our lifetime, despite the ease of computer technology in enabling it.
The parties and their principal participants have too much to lose (power, fame, money, connections, etc.).

VK3AUU "the God which you worship is the same God"

Same God, different theology.
Jim Jones had the same God as Mother Teresa.
It's not the God that poses any potential threat, but the believers.
In the world today, which believers do you think pose the most threat?

"so vehemently revered by your Muslim enemies."

It is they that define *us* as their enemies.

However tolerant we are, Muslims will never truly tolerate other religions, the non-religious [myself], self-defined women, sexual minorities [myself], etc.

This wasn't a problem in 1886, with 3 camel drivers and 1 haberdasher.
It will be a problem with 500,000+ of them.

Why should I "tolerate" anyone that would happily chop off my heretical, perverted head and dance around my "Satanic" corpse?
Posted by Shockadelic, Thursday, 9 April 2015 10:57:03 AM
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David

secularist murder millions of unborn and others because they are to blind to see that one day they will face their Creator. That is why secularist/socialist often apologise for Islam while being totally Christophobic. They are both death cults.
Posted by runner, Thursday, 9 April 2015 11:06:33 AM
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Runner and reality are not friends, arguing with him is like shouting at the wind.

To the article, i think the author is confused multi party parliaments create compromise and more balanced representation not less it.

Finally, if Christians feel marginalized then can can only say that runner a great example why this is the case. He believes his world view is beyond reproach and the rest of us are evil, killers even. There is no talking or common ground there.Runner like most fundies would take us back to the stone age if he could.
Posted by Cobber the hound, Thursday, 9 April 2015 12:20:19 PM
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“In the end, obsession leads some of us to use our freedom to deny freedom to others, by shouting down their voices or demanding them access. This is intellectual fascism.

Former Minister for Education, Michael Gove told the Daily Telegraph this week that people of Christian faith are marginalised in certain debates because they are intimidated.”

Indeed!

The LGBT lobby’s bullying tactics are a case in point. The silent British majority are still shell-shocked by supposed Conservative PM Cameron caving into the LGBT lobby’s demand for the legalisation of same-sex ‘marriage’, and now they have to suffer the consequences.

Brendan O’Neill frankly observed that wherever same-sex ‘marriage’ has been legalised, “it has battered freedom, not boosted it. Debate has been chilled, dissenters harried, critics tear-gassed. … There are awkward questions the ‘freedom to marry’ folks just can’t answer. Like: if gay marriage is a liberal cause, how come it’s been attended by authoritarianism wherever it’s been introduced?” (Brendan O’Neill, “Gay marriage and the death of freedom”, The Spectator, 6 December 2014 URL http://www.spectator.co.uk/australia/australia-features/9390702/gay-marriage-and-the-death-of-freedom/
Posted by Raycom, Thursday, 9 April 2015 12:40:13 PM
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' The silent British majority are still shell-shocked by supposed '

Yes Raycom because secularism is based very much on the basis of individual selfishness as opposed to the good of society. The homosexual lobby is just one of many groups who puts their selfish interest in front of what is good for the whole. What was held as decent is now trashed and demonised.
Posted by runner, Thursday, 9 April 2015 12:51:51 PM
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Raycom,

"Former Minister for Education, Michael Gove told the Daily Telegraph this week that people of Christian faith are marginalised in certain debates because they are intimidated.”

I hope you're not inferring that the likes of dear runner are marginalised "because" of their Christian faith?

If runner is challenged on this forum, the one and only reason is that "runner" is amongst the most abusive and belligerent posters around here.

Nary a day goes by when he doesn't paste fellow posters with the most heinous and insulting epithets...all the while hiding behind his "Christianity" as some sort of mitigating essence.

It would serve him well to learn some respect - and perhaps cease his provocative, offensive and judgmental slandering of fellow posters.
Posted by Poirot, Thursday, 9 April 2015 3:06:27 PM
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Poirot

runner has the same right to exercise his freedom of speech as you do.

runner happens to be well informed about attacks on, and the suppression of, religious freedom, both here and internationally.

The following Brendan O’Neill observations of what happened in France, USA and Britain, are pertinent:

“Consider France. Hundreds of thousands of French people — or ‘bigots’, as the gay-marriage lobby brands anyone who disagrees with it — marched against the legalisation of gay marriage in 2013. And they were beaten and tear-gassed by riot cops. Parisians in t-shirts celebrating traditional marriage were arrested for holding ‘unauthorised protests’. In the words of Parisian writer John Laughland, critics of gay marriage were turned into ‘ideological enemies’ of the French state. It’s a funny expansion of freedom that so violently pummels the right to protest.

Consider America. The authorities there haven’t had to whip out their truncheons because non-state mobs have policed the opponents of gay marriage on their behalf. In the words of the author Damon Linker, a supporter of gay marriage, Americans who raise even a peep of criticism of gay marriage face ‘ostracism from public life’. We saw this with the medieval hounding of Brendan Eich out of his job at Mozilla after it was revealed that — oh, the humanity! — he isn’t a massive fan of gays getting married. Linker says the gay-marriage brigade has created a menacing climate, where the aim seems to be to ‘stamp out rival visions’. Americans who fail to bow at the altar of same-sex hitching, from wedding photographers to cake-makers, are harassed and boycotted and sometimes put out of business. The ‘freedom to marry’ clearly trumps the freedom of conscience."
Posted by Raycom, Thursday, 9 April 2015 4:41:20 PM
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Post cont.
"Consider Britain. One of the first things gay campaigners here did when they won the right to marry was demand Catholic schools be forced to teach that gay marriage is as good as straight; even though they don’t believe this. Screw you, freedom of religion. Perhaps Catholic schools should bring back ‘priest holes’ to discuss their beliefs free from the watchful stare of the gay-marriage lobby, which, in Linker’s words, demands ‘psychological acceptance’ of gay marriage from all.

Why is this alleged freedom so feverishly embraced by politicians who can’t spell the word freedom? There’s David Cameron, demolisher of press freedom; French officials, so allergic to liberty that they won’t let Muslim women wear what they want; Obama, Christendom’s spymaster-in-general. What draws such freedom-fearing rulers to the ‘freedom to marry’? It’s simple: gay marriage has diddly-squat to do with freedom. Rather, this new institution, invented from pure cloth by tiny numbers of sharp-suited lawyers and agitators, is better seen as a Trojan horse for the enforcement of a new morality, one which calls into question the old virtues of lifelong commitment and familial sovereignty and replaces them with the flightiness and flexibility more commonly associated with gay relationships. ‘Gay marriage’ is the lick of paint modern society gives to its own discomfort with the traditional family set-up and its desire to dismantle, or at least dent, that set-up in favour of pushing new, post-traditional, state-defined hook-ups.”
Posted by Raycom, Thursday, 9 April 2015 4:43:05 PM
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oh Raycom you're as bad as Runner, you would have been against inter-race marriage, divorce, Women getting the vote, English mass, the whole lot.

Every step to freedom we have taken you would/do see as bad.

Christian family values are a joke, women and children are the mans possessions. The bible evens says its okay to sell your kids to slavery. The secular world you hate so much has changed your Christianity to a powerless form and mores the better for non Christians and Christian alike
Posted by Cobber the hound, Thursday, 9 April 2015 5:11:41 PM
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Raycom,

"runner has the same right to exercise his freedom of speech as you do."

Yes, he does.

He also has the responsibility (like the rest of us) to avoid jumping onto forums and serially abusing and offending his fellow posters.

"runner happens to be well informed about attacks on, and the suppression of, religious freedom, both here and internationally."

runner's well-worn argument on this forum has little to do with being "well-informed" on anything - and everything to do with a closed-minded agenda to attack anyone and anything which doesn't conform to his world view.

There is no suppression of religious freedom in this country - except perhaps the sort of suppression that the likes of runner would impose on religions other than his own - ie, Islam.

For that reason, runner's constant belligerence to people on this forum who do not share his religious outlook appears to be just something he chooses to do because that's the way he is.
Posted by Poirot, Thursday, 9 April 2015 5:12:23 PM
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Homosexual marriage, I refuse to allow them to usurp a perfectly respectable word gay, is of absolutely no importance. In another 30 years if they are silly enough to want to be "married" they will be about the only ones that are.

The reason British & our politics are so fragmented is the standard fate of democracy. Once all the bludgers realise they can vote for a living, rather than work for it, the system is doomed. It is just a matter of time.

No party could ever be elected with nation building policies. The huge screams when Abbott & co wanted to trim some of the ridiculous spending of our previous dills should show you that. The only way to get elected is with the vote buying policies we have seen in Victoria & Queensland recently.

We have a huge bureaucracy doing little but sweep up tens of thousands od useless graduates from our equally bloated university sector. Add a health care sector, paying surgeons millions to stick spare parts into mostly totally useless people, just because they can, & between these 2 alone we have a burden the productive sector is unable to support long term.

Add the NGOs, & welfare sector, & there is no possible chance we can sustain our spending, but to say so is electoral poison.

The Greeks gave us democracy, & are now showing us the ultimate result of it's implementation.

All the bleeding hearts, who think we can afford everyone a comfortable standard of living would never vote for a party with policies for a competent government.

So eat, drink, fornicate & be merry folks, because tomorrow we'll be paying the price of the 70 year party since WW11, & it won't be pretty.
Posted by Hasbeen, Thursday, 9 April 2015 11:32:27 PM
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Onya Hasbeen.

British politics is fragmented because multiculturalism with it's attendant ethnic vote buying through an out of control welfare state has fragmented and bankrupted the country.

What holds every society together is a generally accepted belief in what constitutes acceptable behaviour. Importing people who hate us right from the word go, consider ripping off our welfare systems as compensation for alleged past wrongs to "their" people, who think that western women deserve to be raped, hardly encourages social cohesion. For God's sake, we are importing people into this country that do not even believe in freedom of speech, and they are succeeding in using our own craven politicians to support their medieval mindset.

We have been badly let down by our political class who have consistently put their own self interest above that of their own people. As Labor elder Graham Richardson once quipped, the only thing that matters is getting into power using "whatever it takes."

Continuing to fragment our own society by importing people who have diametrically opposed cultural values to our own, who demand that we change our ways to conform to their ways, and who's primary contribution to our country appears to be the expansion of welfare related jobs, penal institutions, and counter terrorism police, will to continue to destroy our own social cohesion. This of course benefits our Graham Richardson type politicians who use "divide and rule" to maintain their stranglehold on power.

The trick is to import as many welfare dependent and socially unassimilatable people into western societies as possible, to create as many social problems as possible, and buy their votes with welfare. Then buy the votes of the ever expanding graduate class by creating an army of formerly unemployable graduates to "solve" the problems we need never have created. When we run out of money, just borrow it until the bankers take away our credit card. Then drive away our most productive by taxing them right out of existence. And when we turn into another Greece, Cyprus or Spain, blame the people who opposed multiculturalism in the first place.
Posted by LEGO, Saturday, 11 April 2015 6:59:01 AM
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