elections | the brilliantly leaping gazelle

July 3, 2026

33:64 presents “Gerry Mandering”

Here’s a conundrum. Is the right thing to do, still the right thing to do if it is done for the wrong reason? I’ve been atop the horns of that particular dilemma for a week now. And all because the government is re-introducing previous voting system for electing mayors, reverting back to the Supplementary Vote system (SV) that been used up until 2024.

I know that this shouldn’t bother me. That to most people it’s simply a dull procedural matter of no importance and besides, there are more pressing concerns to worry about. But that is precisely why it bothers me so. I’ve never thought politics dull. Every single aspect of our lives is governed by political choices over which we have no control. Politics even decided whether you were born or not.

Did your mother have access to contraceptive advice, let alone have access to them? If she chose to have you, how easy might ante-natal services be to access? How well funded would the hospitals maternity unit be? What about healthcare needs after the birth, the follow up checks, vaccinations, mother&baby clubs? Or could she have had a termination if she chose? If not, then how likely was it that she could choose to have the baby adopted. Everything is political, and so the method by which we choose our politicians is about as important as it gets.

But what is the SV and how does it differ from the first-past- the-post system (FPTP). Well, as the names suggests, FPTP means that whoever wins the most votes wins. As simple as that. There is no threshold, no winning margin required, just coming first is all that matters. SV is a bit more complicated than that. Its a ranked ballot, meaning that voters have the option to rank candidates. If no candidate gets more than 50.1% in the first round of counting, then the candidate with the lowest amount of votes is eliminated but the second choice of the eliminated candidate voters are then added to the tally. As soon as a candidate reaches the magic 50.1% threshold, thats it. It’s an just incomparably fairer.

Does this renewed enthusiasm for proportional representation suggest the end is nigh for FPTP? Is it a long overdue acknowledgement of the fundamental structural unfairness inherent our democracy? A belated acceptance of the notion that every vote should matter? And then if the answer to all of the above is ‘Yes’, then if FPTP isn’t fit for mayoral elections, it follows that it isn’t fit for general elections either.

But that is to forget what happened in 2024. In the space of a month, Reform UK came from basically nowhere to win over 14% of the vote at the 2024 general election. Since then, all political parties have had to adjust to a new political landscape. In the UK, this has been most problematic for the Labour Party. Despite ‘winning’ the 2024 election, it did so with the lowest ever share of the vote in any UK general election, 33% but ending up with 64% of the seats – hence the title of this blog – it was acutely aware that its traditional supporters were not supporting them in the way Labour had always assumed they would. The one word answer is Brexit. For more words, read this blog I posted a few days ago.

So clearly FPTP had its flaws. But canny voters realised that by voting tactically, they could vote in by elections for candidates not on the basis of wanting that candidate to win, but on the basis of wanting someone else not to.This happened in the Caerphilly by election of 2025 and in the Gorton and Denton one in 2026. I wrote blogs on both of them, full of boring statistics to prove my main point. Long story short; that rather than presenting a united front – a defiant coming together of different political tribes in order to defeat a common enemy – which the prevailing narratives were keen to promote, the very opposite was true.

Because in both cases the reason for the winning party’s increase in the share of the vote could be explained almost exactly by the decreases suffered by all three main parties from the last time elections were held there. And it’s not as if lack of voter awareness was to blame for the low turnouts. The media loudly trumpeted the threat that Reform posed.

This to me offers a more plausible explanation as to why there’s been a change back. Even before Andy Capp became Westminster bound, his chances of becoming mayor again were looking slim. Yes, he got 63% of the vote in that election. But only 32% of the voters bothered to do so. And that was two months before the general election. Before Reform had even been a thing and long before all the various ‘Two-Tier Kier’ headlines that were shorthand for political ineptitude and institutional preferences. Instead of doing the ‘hard yards’ and changing political ideology to better align with with the values of the people the party was set up to represent, much easier to change the voting system expressly to deny them that

The last thing Andy Capp needs is for Manchester to elect a Reform Mayor. That would really rain on his parade. Its fine for the people to speak, just as long as they’re telling what he wants to hear.

April 30, 2025

34:63 presents “The Corporal Jones guide to politics.”

In recent days there has been a lot of speculation in the press concerning what exactly Plonker will do in order to nullify the threat of a Reform UK rout of Labour at the upcoming local elections tomorrow. They have pretty much conceded the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby, which voting also place tomorrow, which on paper they should win, given as how the former MP Mike Amesbury won it with a majority of nearly 15,000 at the General Election barely a year ago.

But then having a by-election forced upon you because the sitting MP had to resign after recieving a 10-week suspended prison sentence after pleading guilty to punching a constituent last year, is not a good look. But neither is it a good look for a politician to carefully finesse his public image so that him saying little about actual policy in the general election campaign – so that everyone can fill in their own hopes onto him – works only so far. Which in his case, turned out – to no-ones surprise – to be until he was elected and soon thereafter revealed himself to be as slippery as most other politicians.

Anything less than a resounding victory for Labour- an increased majority, an increased voter turnout from the general election and the other parties being thoroughly rejected by the electorate – will be a defeat. It remains to be see if its a crushing one or not. The local elections pose more of a threat, because most people will vote based on how competent or not they judge central government to be. Sad but true. Its politics. Just like when in February Local Government Secretary Angela Ratner announced that local elections in East Sussex, West Sussex, Essex, Thurrock, Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, Norfolk, Suffolk and Surrey would be delayed for one year to allow major reorganisations to take place. It may well be true, maybe there’s a compelling rationale behind her decision. But in order to prevent the taint of political chicanery being levelled and gaining traction, making the announcement less than three months before they’re happening, again, isn’t a good look.

But this government seems to be constantly bedevilled by events, responding to them, and being in constant firefighting mode, rather than shaping them and exuding calm. The postponement of the aforementioned is but one example of this. Another is sudden flurry of headlines this week suggesting that Plonker will take a stronger line on immigration in order to try and mitigate the threat from Reform UK. Its not because of something as old fashioned as its the right thing to do and that doing such – reducing the numbers of people being granted asylum – might have a beneficial effect on already overstretched public services. That Plonker seems unwilling to grasp this obvious political calculation is one reason why Reform UK is polling so well and why all Plonker has are desperate last minute throws of the dice. His default position on immigration is to label anyone who thinks that immigration needs tougher action as racist or bigoted or far right extremists, effectively attempting to shut down any sensible discussion on this topic.

But as Reforms growing threat, and Labours craven reaction to it amply demonstrate, while such a strategy might work in posh metropolitan circles, out in the wild, out where most of the electorate live, out where the very real consequences of immigration are being felt, that strategy isn’t working.

Don’t be thinking I’m in any way a fan of Farrago. I think he’s nothing more than a snake oil salesman, all smarm and the kind of bluster that most people mistake as plain speaking. Like a lot of people flirting with Reform UK, its only because of the lack of any other viable political alternative And like a lot of people who are considering voting Reform UK, my values and principles, my fundamental conception of what the state should do – and what it shouldn’t – and what obligations the state owed to the citizen – and vice-versa – haven’t really changed. Its the political parties who have changed out of all recognition.

Despite the many horrors that the Grocers Daughter visited on the UK, she at least had ideological underpinnings to them. There was a logic, twisted and serving the interests of a minority, yes, but a logic. The most socialist thing about Plonker is his first name, and the only thing he stands for is a piss.

November 30, 2024

34:63 presents “Simplifying parliamentary procedure using ‘Life of Brian'”

The juvenile in me can’t resist stating the obvious that House of Commons, in having voted to progress the assisted dying bill onto its next parliamentary stage really put the black into Black Friday. You know, because black is the colour most people associate with death, wear when mourning and at funerals. No other reason. I just felt the need to point that out, because of times we live in. I’m not sure what’s worse; either feeling that you have to explain it in case deliberately people misconstrue it for reasons of their own, or going ahead and doing it anyway, just to be on the safe side.

Anyway, the theme of this post isn’t to discuss the merits or otherwise of yesterdays vote, as long overdue as the outcome was welcome was. Its to make the rather obvious point that rather than showing parliament at its best, which seems to the prevailing opinion, pronounced upon by MP’s themselves and slavishly reported on and amplified by the media, it showed it at its worst, and as MP’s as the self-aggrandising blowhards I’ve always suspected most of them are.

Consider this. Yesterday the chamber was packed. There was barely enough standing room. The debate lasted hours. MP’s on both sides of the argument made impassioned, intelligent speeches. Lots of them admitted they had changed their minds after speaking to their constituents. Some even shared those stories. The mood was of calm solemnity, befitting the occasion.

Now try and think back of the last time you can think of that happening. Difficult isn’t it? Those seemingly never ending Brexit votes don’t count. They were to calm and reason what death is to life. No, its only when a decision to go to war is being debated that the chamber is like it was yesterday. The one that sticks out in my mind was the debate on the eve of the Iraq war and that was in 2003! Possibly there been a few more since, but only a handful, and a newborn baby’s hand at that.

Normally the chamber is hardly ever close to being full. Only for Prime Ministers Questions (PMQ’s) is it full and that’s only because MP’s hope that they’ll get the chance to ask the Prime Minister a question, which’ll hopefully get them on national or regional TV news and remind their constituents who they are. They can then put a clip of it on their website. PMQ’s lasts for half an hour once a week and as soon as it’s over MP’s vanish as fast as a virgin on prom night. So far from yesterdays debate showing Parliament at its best, it in fact showed what it could be, but very rarely is, the exception that proves the rule..

That’s my first problem with all this. The second concerns what happens next. Because if you only based your conclusions on TV news footage from outside Parliament as the result of the vote filtered out, you’d be forgiven for thinking that by the end of next week there’d be disabled people in wheelchairs screaming as they were being propelled by unscrupulous relatives to death centres and it would all be perfectly legal.

The problem with a properly functioning democracy is one of its inherent flaws; that unless the electorate knows how it functions – at least have a have a basic understanding of how it all works – it isn’t a properly functioning one. Not in my book anyway.

Whilst the bill passed the second reading in Parliament yesterday, there are still loads more stages for it to go through if it is ever to become law. Many MP’s appeared on TV stressing their unease about the bill as it is currently drafted, but were at pains to point out that they’d only voted for it to progress through its many Parliamentary stages precisely because they wanted the time to scrutinise it, to suggest amendments and have more debates. The haggle scene in ‘Life Of Brian’ is the clearest example of what all this means in practice; the earliest it’ll become a law that people can make use of is early 2026 at best.

And having a right to do something doesn’t mean you’ll actually ever do it, but that if you wanted to, you could. As far as I’m concerned, the sort of people who are wilfully misinterpreting what happened yesterday in parliament are not too dissimilar to anyone who detects an ‘ist’ at the start of this post.