The whole point of democratic elections is to allow for a peaceful transfer of power—without violence—when a government embodying one type of policy has become widely unpopular.
The problem we've gotten into in the UK (and also the USA) is that extremists have seized control of one of the regular incumbent parties, and the other parties have responded perversely by moving towards them. Removing the ability for a course change after an election.
Labour or Tories, they're still neoliberals.
@cstross We're reclaiming our state and our country, but it's a slow process because unlike the GQP, we don't consider armed and violent sedition to be acceptable political "speech".
That said, we Ohioans gave our gerrymandered Republican wanna-be overlords two collective middle fingers yesterday (or two sets of two fingers, if you prefer), and next year we're going to take away their ability to draw district lines and give it to a non-partisan citizen panel, and maybe even ranked-choice voting might make the ballot.
If you piss off enough people, then enough people will show up to vote you down. We had nearly 50% turnout for an odd-year issues-only election, which is about on par with midterms and about 20% higher than we normally get on odd-year elections. The only silver lining for our wingnuts in the state house is that the vote was *this* year, rather than *next* year when it would have boosted Democratic turnout.
Charlie Stross
The Rev Dr Sherwood Forrester