ColVoting has opened in the Gorton and Denton by-election. With the polls predicting a near-perfect tie between Labour, Reform UK and the Greens, says Politico, for the next 24 hours, the Manchester suburb will be a “full-scale political circus”.
Andy Wootton@kibcol1049 It's "too close to call" but predicted 60% Left to 30% Far Right, so #FPTP has been proved to be anti-democratic. Labour needs to fix this before a General Election or we risk losing our freedom to say "No!" to fascism, without violence. Reform are already planning to take Council pensions, to invest in their dodgy friends. I don't trust the Far Right with money. Electoral Reform needs urgent cross-party co-operation. Let the record show Farage thought so too, a couple of years ago.
RegSTV would be ideal, but there's a large contingent of Labour centrists who are happy with FPTP precisely because the think it gives them the right to demand the votes of people who would naturally vote for other parties.
If RefUK win today there's going to be a wave of insufferable, holier-then-thou centrists complaining about the Greens splitting the vote.
.....if the Greens win otoh then Labour might need to seriously consider switching to PR before the next GE, because FPTP can be brutal in heavily-split, multi-party elections and if voters are leaning towards RefUK/Greens rather than Tory/Labour then they could easily be wiped out like they were in Scotland.
Under PR they'd survive.
@ReggieHere @kibcol1049 Which will look terrible but I hope they do it anyway. It would have been principled before now but now it looks like 'cheating'.
@ReggieHere @kibcol1049 What if Labour come third, as seems most likely?
I'd like to believe that the more pragmatic Labour supporters would see the writing on the wall and flip to the Greens, but I strongly suspect that if RefUK win then they'll whinge abut Green vote-splitting regardless of who comes second and third.