General election on the 12th of December 2019 it seems (the amendment to go for the 9th didn't pass, though it was tight).
Campaigning will start some time next week so no idea what platforms people are going to run on here, and what kind of spoiler effect negations will be in place (the brexit party people have previously said under certain conditions they will not run candidates to avoid it, no idea what UKIP will be doing here and if they even represent much of anything any more/right now) and what kind of split positions some will take (this current agreement is far from a hard exit which probably annoys some that wanted that sort of thing, and Labour are also somewhat split as their traditional working base also count a great number of people that wish to leave the EU for whatever reason).
What I am more curious about is some of the other amendments put forward.
Those included dropping the voting age to 16, allowing EU residents a vote and of course a second referendum. A second referendum at this stage is boring to consider in this and was not selected but the other two have something more.
The voting age to 16 is somewhat radical as these things go. A token search has very few places with a voting age of 16, much less for national elections.
It should however be noted Scotland did allow 16 year olds to vote in their independence referendum, and does in some other things within Scotland, as does Wales as of earlier this year, though it will be 2021 before we see it in action. Some of the other UK territories also have such things for their local stuff (Isle of Man, Guernsey and Jersey) but given most such places have trouble with their young folk wandering off one does wonder if it is more about giving them a stake in things. In terms of Europe then Germany has a little bit of this and Austria quite famously became the first to go 16 for just about everything a while back. Estonia also has some stuff.
For reference it was 1970 that the UK lowered voting age from 21 to 18 (though with earlier bills), which was somewhat ahead of many other places though not by much.
Normally at this point I would do some kind of calculation here as I am curious. There was something of a young-old split in voting here (care less about that than the reasons myself -- the whole thing where some of the older set considered joining the EU as snubbing Australia being a fascinating one for me) so if we consider dying off rate and extrapolate backwards* from the then 18 year olds and assume similar turnouts (though that might be fun as 12th of December has some university students, often something of a notable demographic, back home that day or the next as it were from term time where they should technically be registered, thus mandating a postal vote or a trip) that could make for some interesting numbers on an already marginal issue (1269501 votes difference here). However I am lazy and given it seems Labour introduced it and it has the backing of the Scottish National Party and Liberal democrats (both fairly opposed to this leaving the EU lark, though as previously mentioned Scotland has 16 for a great many (don't know about all of the local stuff and whatever else) of the things it can reasonably have them for so that is not entirely unfounded) I am betting they already ran the numbers and it came out in their favour, or at the very least just some good posturing.
*the Austrian example quite notably had more 16 and 17 year olds voting than their peers a few years older, though I suppose if you have nothing better to do.
The EU nationals thing though...
On the one hand there are however many millions living here (
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopula...migrationstatisticsquarterlyreport/august2019 reckons 2.37 million working here and broadly stable since 2016, though rates from the EU have fallen since then and EU8 countries have had totals fall it seems. Recall earlier that the difference in votes was 1.3 million if you round up) and it is nice to have a say in how the place you are living is run.
On the other hand national sovereignty... generally viewed as a good thing. I am not sure anywhere grants some kind of reciprocal rights for national elections to people with such a status (or a philosophically equivalent one), give or take the complicated setup with the republic or Ireland (short version is republic of Ireland citizens if they are resident in the UK can vote, not sure what goes for those that lived here and then moved somewhere else within the last 15 years and UK citizens can do most elections over there -- can't do president but that is mostly ceremonial). A scarce handful of places do it for local and county elections, possibly also MEP, but I can't see anything for nationals outside of a very old piece of Australian law (as in needed to be enrolled before early 1984), and a quirk of New Zealand law but I don't want to go there right now (New Zealand permanent residency if you did want to go looking).
Neither were selected but as it is a time sensitive matter that would require something of a considerable overhaul to the system (that is some extra 3 million in a matter of weeks) and the conservatives threatened to cancel the whole deal if such things passed. Few sources seem to want to report which MP proposed the amendment so I don't know which party that was as of typing this.
So yeah election time. As mentioned officially it does not begin for a few days but practically speaking they have been gearing up for months here, and an interesting one I saw was Labour refused to rule out a 2021 Scottish independence referendum, despite doing so for 2020. Labour are also somewhat down in the polls which made some question whether they would go for such things but we have weeks to go yet.
I have not seen what the Conservative losses and resignations are like at this point. However for most practical purposes nobody cares about their local MP or probably even knows their name (even if they have a notable named role it is still good odds that people in their area care that much) so I don't imagine either any independents or loss of brand recognition being an issue. That said another fun one is it was noted the prime minister does not have the best hold on his seat so may take a tactical shuffle somewhere else as not having a seat means you can't lead and we would then have another leadership campaign if the party got in but he didn't.
Way too early to talk of coalitions here.
There is going to be some good maths and analysis here, even more so if people do the whole tactical voting thing.
", right?
realtimesave
Xdqwerty
Psionic Roshambo
@
RedColoredStars:
@
SylverReZ:
