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Politics, politics, politics (so long and thanks for all the fish)

Mikey10 said:
Big gains in a sense; however, Reform are down from 41% of the vote in local elections they contested last year to 33% in yesterday's elections. That is quite a significant drop, and suggests that as people see Reform in power they are not always keen on them (e.g promises of no council tax rises actually metamorphising into Reform-led council rises of 9%).

Also, the turnout yesterday was 43%. It is likely to be at least 60% in a GE; local elections are always a chance to kick the governing party and those motivated to vote largely want to do that.

That said, I don't think Labour have a chance at the next GE unless Starmer (who I personally think has done a decent job, but has communicated terribly what the party have done) goes.
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Unfortunately, IMO, Starmer suffers from not being a 'personality politician' which in the current climate is a very, very dangerous thing (sad to say).
 
Can I ask a question here

I've seen a few videos today from Candidates who are standing or who have won who cannot speak a word of English, how can they be allowed to stand if they cannot at least converse with everybody in their constituencies
 
MartyFunkhouser said:
Clearly just sitting dormant. Twitter is just full of open racism in the form of "free speech" so its just spread again like wild fire.

I don't think this is a bad thing though, reform have shown so far they can't run a tap locally, let alone a council, so maybe this is needed for people to realise they have no substance before the next election
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Society said it wasn't socially acceptable to be a racist.
Brexit gave racism a voice again (tough brick to any Brexiter that doesn't like that - it's true, own it).
 
WillWeEverBeGoodAgain said:
Can I ask a question here

I've seen a few videos today from Candidates who are standing or who have won who cannot speak a word of English, how can they be allowed to stand if they cannot at least converse with everybody in their constituencies
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It isn't a requirement.
Requirements are: 18+, live or work locally, be a UK/EU citizen.

It's right that it isn't a requirement - one of the important things in policy makes is the unintended impacts. How do you measure if a candidate "can speak English"? Every answer you come up will create a barrier for a working class kid from a poor area of the UK that didn't do well at school etc. And the cornerstone of UK democracy is that anyone should be able to stand to represent their local community.

The balance of that is the voter - you wouldn't expect voters to vote someone in that cannot communicate in English.
Of course the flip side argument to that is, if they are a brilliant thinker and official, are they better than the English speaking village idiot?
 
monkeybarry said:
It isn't a requirement.
Requirements are: 18+, live or work locally, be a UK/EU citizen.

It's right that it isn't a requirement - one of the important things in policy makes is the unintended impacts. How do you measure if a candidate "can speak English"? Every answer you come up will create a barrier for a working class kid from a poor area of the UK that didn't do well at school etc. And the cornerstone of UK democracy is that anyone should be able to stand to represent their local community.

The balance of that is the voter - you wouldn't expect voters to vote someone in that cannot communicate in English.
Of course the flip side argument to that is, if they are a brilliant thinker and official, are they better than the English speaking village idiot?
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Our FPTP system doesn't really help with that though.

@WillWeEverBeGoodAgain : do you have a couple of links to the videos you mention? I could well understand that English might not be the first language of all candidates but would expect that they would be able to speak it to a basic level, maybe one-to-one rather than in a public speaking environment. Or that they have a translator.
 
Glenda's Legs said:
Our FPTP system doesn't really help with that though.

@WillWeEverBeGoodAgain : do you have a couple of links to the videos you mention? I could well understand that English might not be the first language of all candidates but would expect that they would be able to speak it to a basic level, maybe one-to-one rather than in a public speaking environment. Or that they have a translator.
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