Empty Vessels

[cromwell]

No, not the ones that make the most noise, political parties.

To me and to many others, the Conservatives aren't very conservative any more and since the days of Tony Blair the Labour party hasn't been the party of the working class (imo). Parachuting the sons and daughters of academics into safe working class northern seats proved that, I think.

Anyway recently the Conservatives have come out with stuff like this:-
"A trans woman is a woman" - Penny Mordaunt.
"Owning a car is outdated 2oth century thinking" - Trudy Harrison.
And now the Conservative government is to introduce new rules saying that a car must give way to a pedestrian at a junction, and that it is perfectly OK for a cyclist to cycle in the middle of the lane, thereby holding a line of cars up.

99.99% of the people would disagree with Penny Mordaunt and Trudy Harrison. Ms Harrison's statement indeed sounds more like something from a communist.
And those rules for cars, bikes and pedestrians are going to lead to anger and accidents for sure.

But here's the thing. Virtually nobody outside parliament would agree with any of this, but just about everybody inside parliament would.
So how are we a representative democracy? None of this represents our views.
More, where's the differences between the parties? If they all agree on so much stuff what's the point of voting for any of them? However you vote you get the same policies.

We need some new parties but people are just tribal; they will go on voting for the same old same old no matter what.

[medsec222]

To be fair Cromwell, at least Nigel Farage at one stage did offer something different even if it was Brexit, a fact which seemed to get him a lot of votes. However, he was decried as a racist and too far right wing, and by implication anyone who voted for him was also racist. You don't have to be racist to believe in your own country and to speak up and express an opinion without fear of being shouted down, or worse, as people have lost their livelihoods for expressing an opinion that most of us would consider quite normal.

We are all getting watered down and homogenised - Clones we are - all expressing the same viewpoint without exception for fear of offending anyone and having to face the consequences.

[Workingman]

I have said much the same and for some time. We are getting some new parties, but look at the votes they get - pathetically small.

The alternative is to get new activists into the old parties, but they have to be the right sort of activists. Unfortunately what we have had so far are the likes of CRG / ERG (Tory) and Momentum (Labour) and they do not appeal to the majority on either side of centre - most of us are centrists of some sort. All they do is split the parties as we are now seeing.

[TheOstrich]

How about old activists for old parties - I've popped in a new thread on a specific topic so as not to cut across Crommers' thrust here .....

The car ownership comment by Harrison does really make me wonder if they are actively hitting on the hard stuff at these Christmas parties (err gatherings) .....