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“In the US, we have a set of electoral and legislative institutions that drive us toward only having two parties,”
Mark Copelovitch told us.
“That allowed the 20 to 25 percent of people that support the far right to basically take over one of the two parties,
and everything in our system is weighted towards the Republican constituency
— the Supreme Court, the gerrymandered House, the way the Senate is apportioned.
All of these things basically bias the electo…

@pre@boing.world
2025-06-26 17:04:54
Content warning: UKPol, Palestine Action, Email to my MP

Dear Emily Thornberry,
I don't usually bother to write to you on most issues because I figure there is pretty much no point communicating with a whipped MP in a safe seat under first past the post. Such an MP has no reason to listen to their constituents at all, and is entirely a tool of the party leadership.
I make an exception today since I hear your government is about to classify Palestine Action as a terrorist group. Despite them being peaceful, non-violent, and dedicated entirely to preventing the greater crime of the ongoing genocide of Gazan Palestinians.
This is obviously a gross overreaction and a completely unjustifiable act designed not to prevent domestic terrorism but to cover up British forces and UK government involvement and collaboration with the genocide in Gaza.
If we are taking suggestions for groups to ban as terrorists even though they aren't terrorists, I would like to suggest the Labour Party! The party has helped facilitate a genocide abroad, and continues to supply the perpetrators with arms and intelligence to aid their actions.
I don't expect you to take that suggestion seriously, but maybe Reform will take it seriously when they get elected in a few years and I suggest it again to them. After all, a precedent will have been set that groups which aren't terrorists can be banned under anti-terror legislation anyway. Democracy will have already been eroded.
I was ready to be disappointed by this Labour government, but I confess that the level of gut-wrenching visceral disgust I am experiencing at them surpassed all my wildest expectations. Taking money from the disabled to buy new war-planes from a fascist US president while abetting a genocide in Gaza makes me wonder if Reform wouldn't be better in the end anyway. At least they might do electoral reform and nationalize the water companies.
Labour's only hope, the country's only hope, is to remove Starmer. I wish you had won that leadership election instead of him.
Anyway, as I say, I don't expect it to make any difference at all because under this election system even MPs in safe seats are nothing but tools of the party leadership and the party leadership seems determined. But I thought I'd let you know that I see you. I see what you are doing.
I support Palestine Action more than I support this government. Let me know where I should hand myself in for my "crime".
Yours sincerely,
Adam

@benrosstransit@mastodon.social
2025-06-20 12:48:23

@… @… Political parties in an electoral system that enables a party to win a majority is the traditional means of overcoming this. The US currently has a system of one disciplined political party and one party composed of individual…