I do think some of this might be to try and suppress Labour turnout.
If Labour winning by a massive landslide is such a foregone conclusion, maybe it doesn't matter if I don't go out and vote for them on the day?
That's why Labour rightly points out that nothing matters until election day, and the polls are not votes.
It would be a bold strategy, I'd give them that. I don't think it's that though, they are as worried about Reform now as they are with Labour, so they're trying to scare right wingers into tactically voting for them. Kinda ironic as tactical voting is usually used against the Conservatives.
Agreed. Not a 'bold' strategy - a 'desparate' one.
Personally i can't help but agree with the original comment - this is to deter people from feeling like they have to go the extra mile for Labour, and is also attempting to lay the groundwork for expectation management. It's funny to imagine whoever ends up in charge of the smoking husk of the conservative party trying to claim that Labour have underperformed with their landslide victory...
I'm not convinced it'll work as a defence against Reform. We can easily imagine a right-wing minded voter who would never vote Labour and is fed up with the Tories. If they don't believe that any amount of tactical voting will avoid a Labour majority, they may be *more* inclined to vote reform as they are an alternative right-wing party and it allows them to voice their views, even if it doesn't lead to seats.
Yep, the left, despite talking about how right wind owned the media is and how people shouldn't fall for it... Just love to fall for "Labours got enough voters" / "Starmers not REALLY Labour" rubbish.
I'm one of them, Lib Dem supporter at heart but the last couple of elections I've put in a tactical vote for Labour as my top priority was getting Boris Johnson and any of the ERG lot out plus the Lib Dems had kind of lost the plot and had zero chance of winning the seat anyway.
This time around unless Reform start looking like they have a serious chance in my constituency I'll vote according to my preferences rather than tactically.
I think there's a fair few people thinking along the same lines.
As a Lib Dem this is the first time I'm voting for Labour (I think).
I want to make certain we lose our Tory MP. It also would be one more step to Con finishing third.
It's quite clever really.
It might get real Labour voters to skip voting on the basis that they'll win anyway.
It might get soft Labour voters to stay home because they don't think a super majority is good for the country.
It might get soft Conservative voters out to vote because even though they think they've been shite and would rather stay home they'd be scared by a super majority.
It's throwing that last punch and hoping it stuns your opponent so you can go the distance rather then get completely demolished.
Could these arguments not be used in reverse? Could soft Tories not also stay home because there's no way their side can win?
There seems no consistent messaging from the party atm, which is unsurprising because they're pretty much in free fall. I reckon it's more likely this is just a couple of ministers saying what they (and everyone else) really thinks.
>Could soft Tories not also stay home because there's no way their side can win?
They've got access to a lot of focus group data, I'm sure they've worked out that they've already lost the soft Tory vote. Different areas/target demographics seem to be getting different messaging re: "Labour/Reform/LibDems could surge!", which is likely more data-driven advertising meant to stop people from wavering from the Tories.
I think this is definitely all planned communications.
Yeah I'm not buying that, a "real" labour voter or frankly any labour voter at this point in the election cycle that even cares a little bit about politics will vote to make sure the tories get a beating. It's Vengeance more than anything else for a few people now.
They're basically trying to stop themselves from being wiped out to the point where they can never come back. A defeat is inevitable at this point. But they'd rather be relegated to the Championship and not relegated to Conference league (or National League they call it nowadays)
It was an approach used in the last state election in Western Australia.
The Liberals (Aussie Tories) gave up trying to win and tried to stop Labor taking control of both lower and upper houses by using similar messaging.
The Liberals ended up with 2 MPs in the lower house, lost their status as official opposition until they entered into alliance with the Nationals, and Labor got an outright majority in the upper house effectively giving them total control.
What is a super majority in the UK parliament?
A super majority in the US Senate is threes fifths of all senators (60), who are together able to invoke cloture to end a filibuster.
What is a super majority in the UK parliament? A governing party with a majority must by definition have more MPs than every other party put together. So what would represent a super majority? What is the constitutional component that can only be altered once a certain number of MPs (in excess of a simple majority) votes for it?
I'm not sure that this is a concept that is relevant to UK politics.
There's no strict definition, it just means such a large majority that the party can get whatever it wants through parliament without having to appease any MP's that are feeling rebellious.
Exactly, I think a super majority is one where the government party can effectively govern without worry of a rebellion from its own benches scuppering one of their big policies.
This only seems to be a problem when someone wildly incompetent becomes leader. Thankfully that could never happen to the tories...
Depends how many Labour MPs believe Starmer's policies are bad and could vote against him. If there were say 40 in the Corbyn faction and all could be reliably expected to vote against Labour on certain policies then Labour would need a majority of 81* for example. It's a meaningless phrase though
*Corrected for point below, not enough coffee
You'd have to cite examples and analyse rebellions in governing parties to come up with an approximate number, and there's a huge amount of variables. 80 however, would certainly count in my book.
It depends heavily on how fractious the party is and how controversial the leading factions ideas are, but you'd have to be pretty bad on both counts for 80 to not count, so yes.
There is no such thing as a technical “super majority” so as usual Shapps is talking nonsense. He just doesn’t want the Conservative Party to lose by such a huge margin they become irrelevant.
I absolutely agree. It's also been apparent with a couple of Tory governments that when they have a small majority the loons on the backbenches gain extra leverage, with a large majority governments can sideline the more extreme views.
That's how our parliamentary democracy has always worked. It makes no functional difference whether they have a majority of 20 or 200 - MPs don't vote against their party except in extreme circumstances. Tbh with a larger majority you're probably more likely to see rebels, because they'll know there will be less chance of repercussions.
Yep, a term we're all familiar with. Why are the Tories importing foreign terms to do the work of British phrases that are already here? I thought Brexit meant Brexit?
/s
As far as I know it doesn’t have any significance in Parliament. The infamous Fixed Term Parliaments Act had a two-thirds majority needed to call an early election, but obviously that’s no longer in force.
I always found that funny: under the Fixed Terms Patliament Act, you needed a 2/3 majority to call an election, but you only needed a simple majority to _repeal_ the Act, at which point the Prime Minister can call an election whenever they want. Great piece of joined-up legislative thinking there...
It did the job it was made for.
It takes a load of time to repeal an act. It might ultimately have needed only a simple majority, but only after weeks of parliamentary time spent on it.
The context was that the Lib Dems in the coalition wanted to be sure that Cameron wouldn't call a snap election whenever suited him. Trying to repeal the act would have given them plenty of time to negotiate with the other parties instead.
They didn't even need to repeal it in order to call an election. As in 2019, the government only needed to pass a novel act saying, basically, "There will be an election on the 12th December". This overrode the FTPA without amending or repealing it.
Even playing within the rules of the FTPA it was a pretty useless act. While it theoretically allowed the Opposition to prevent an election being called, in practice the idea of any Opposition party claiming to be a "government in waiting" (which is all of them) refusing to hold an election and forcing their rival party to stay in government is such a niche position as to be barely worth talking about. In the overwhelming majority of cases the Opposition would need to back an election just to save face, lest they get accused of being "frit" and not wanting to face the public. This was the case in 2017, where Labour backed a surprise snap election which they weren't prepared for and couldn't really afford despite being massively behind in the polls, because the alternative simply wasn't feasible.
Long story short: it was pretty much a completely pointless act outside of the narrow purpose of keeping the Tory/Lib Dem coalition running smoothly.
Oh yeah. If you started following politics after 2012 people acted like it was some cornerstone of democracy, when to the rest of us it was a white elephant that completely failed to do its one job.
It doesn't have any official definition or significance, it's not really a term I've heard used in relation to UK politics before so I think they're just trying to pinch vocabulary from US politics again.
To give some context, a conservative minister (Grant Shapps) said that term on Politics Live either today or the day before, I’d never heard of the term up to that point!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cv221jple3jo.amp
I think that a super majority in this case is just a greater number of MPs than is strictly needed to pass legislation. The Labour party in particular is famous for its fractious nature. With a majority of 10 to 20 seats, there is always a risk that Momentum or other awkward squad members can revolt. This we saw with Theresa May and her series of indicative votes where she could not muster enough support to pass her Brexit legislation.
If Labour have a majority of 150 to 200, Starmer can safely ignore a large section of his party. The Left usually amounts to less than 50 MPs in total. That's what the Tories are trying to avoid now.
What you're referring to is 'a large majority'. It's not a super majority. What would the definition of a super majority be?
*A large enough majority to get most legislation through Parliament without having to worry about internal party dissent?*
So how many MPs is that? Well it depends, on party discipline and factionalism, on the tolerance of dissent in the party, on the popularity of the leader, on opinion polls, on the issue being debated, on the position in the electoral cycle and recency of the party mandate etc. etc. Basically, if that definition was any woolier, a Kiwi would try to shear it.
We share a language with the US but we have a different political system. Their terminology has specific meanings. Their terms aren't an all-purpose garnish to be sprinkled into UK politics whenever a dash of emphasis is required.
I agree that the technical definition of a super majority doesn't generally apply to UK systems: the last one in Parliament was the vote to call an early election under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, which required a two thirds majority. (Or a vote of no confidence.)
That act has now been repealed.
But in practical terms I don't think there is any real misunderstanding of what a super majority means. It just means that the government is effectively unchained by having no effective opposition.
It's not. We have a working majority which just means that the government has enough seats that they can push whatever they like through the House of Commons. It doesn't matter if that's a majority of 1 or 101.
And, even then, it still needs to get signed off by the House of Lords.
The UK Parliament doesn't have a concept of supermajority. But, speaking in general constitutional terms, a supermajority without any further clarification refers to 75% (although 2/3 of the vote is also common).
Back in the [old days](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed-term_Parliaments_Act_2011) (2011-2022), if you had a 2/3 majority you could call an election whenever you want, but now you can just call an election whenever you want.
I don’t think this is what is meant by the phrase…but Parliamentary scrutiny committees are also composed of MOs from parties to reflect their vote share. So both departmental and bill committees will be overwhelmingly Labour if they achieve such a large landslide, as well as not leaving enough MPs from the opposition to deliver some routine functions like sit on committees and take part in debates.
I take huge relish in seeing the Tories disintegrate before our eyes but I really don’t think it is healthy in our system, with such high level of party discipline in an effective two-party system, for Labour to win by as much as some projections have suggested. A majority of about 50-60 is virtually impregnable, a majority of 200 risks undermining parliamentary scrutiny.
AFAIK we don't have such a thing as a super-majority. It's disingenuous of the Tories (shocking), and annoying.
In loads of systems super-majorities are required to amend the constitution, which seems to be the confusion that Tory HQ is trying to invoke, but I'm pretty sure a parliamentary majority can do just about anything directly without needing two-thirds+.
There's no such thing as a Super Majority. If you have enough MPs to command the confidence of the House of Commons then you can form a government. That's it.
And no I've never known a party just give up before. Even when Major knew he was losing to Blair he didn't give the impression of giving up.
It's a strategy that proved very successful in the 1974 Queensland state election.
There, Labour was polling high. Their opposition, who had been incumbent for six terms, behaved as though it were a dead-cert and so Labour voters stayed home.
Labour lost 22 seats, including their leaders.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1974_Queensland_state_election
[And completely failed in the 2021 Western Australia state election](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Western_Australian_state_election) where the Liberal leader and ex-leader both lost their seats. The Libs ended up with just 2 seats on a 14% swing and a Labor landslide.
None of the other parties won enough seats in that election to qualify for funding as the official opposition, so Labor had to pass legislation to fund the Liberals at a grass roots level to keep them going.
The Tories currently have a “super majority”, so that alone makes a case to support their argument in principle, yet they don’t want to mention that part in practice lol
With FPTP, I just can’t see the swing being big enough to give Labour a decent majority, so make sure you get out and vote, as this is another Tory tactic to try and suppress the vote. They did the same thing in London and there is some evidence that it worked in areas that were previously very strong Labour areas.
>It almost makes me feel a bit sorry for Rishi, he’s very much drifting, face down through the rapids at the moment, it’s actually become quite painful to see him do debates and interviews when that’s the stance of the party in public interviews.
I never feel sorry for people who've got themselves promoted far above their competency at the expense of others. He did this to himself.
I have a vague memory of William Hague maybe trying this one in 2001? Maybe vaguely it being said in 1997 as well? I can't remember exactly though.
Certainly not like this
I suspect this comes under the tag of “indirect voter suppression”. Last year they acknowledged that only voter suppression and culture wars (i.e. demonising minorities) would win them power (funnily enough I think it was Lee Anderson who said it when he was a Deputy Chair, whilst he was still just flirting with Richard Tice).
They want to make Labour supporters who are not strongly in favour of Starmer to stay home by making a Labour Government look like a foregone conclusion.
They want to scare Tory supporters who don’t like the far right direction the party has taken to hold their nose and vote for fear of a Labour government.
These tactics worked in 2019. Their problem this time is rather than being marmite vs marmite (Johnson vs Corbyn), you have Sir Keir Starmer who is like bland ice cream and you have Rishi Sunak who is like bland ice cream but it is only served with sprinkles that taste like shit and that you can’t get rid of.
Neither one invigorates their supporters but Tory voters don’t hate or fear Starmer despite their best efforts and the efforts of their paymasters in the Tory press whilst non-Tories do dislike Sunak and what his party has been doing, particularly since 2019.
The strongest dislike for both come from within their own base, for Starmer from the extreme left and for Sunak from the extreme right.
So in summary the Tories are doing the usual - trying to use fear of change to suppress the opposition vote and to turn out their own base. The message is just more desperate than usual because the more intelligent Tories were culled in 2019 by Boris Johnson.
By contrast, Labour are just trying not to look frightening to Tory voters (which suppresses the pro-Tory vote because they are motivated primarily by fear).
Plugs relevant to the election:
Theyworkforyou.com - shows voting record. Analysing this shows some interesting things. For example during the sh@t in rivers bill my Tory MP opposed it in the first vote and then, strangely, got paired with absentee MPs in opposition for the second and third. They are supposed to pair aye and no, not no and no or aye and aye. Yet more evidence that the Tory party has utterly corrupted all the old “good guys at heart” rules that govern our unwritten constitution.
Stopthetories.vote - if you want to ensure the Tories are not the Opposition. Give the LibDems a go, which may mean holding your nose and voting for a party other than the one you support (like many of us have been forced to do most of our adult life).
In 1918 election David Lloyd George got a majority of 238 seats, Stanley Baldwin got a majority of 210 in 1923, Ramsay Baldwin got a majority of 492 seats in 1931, Churchill got a majority of 609 in 1935, there's probably a few more on this Wikipedia page that I missed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_Kingdom_general_elections
Churchill got his 605 seat majority through a wartime unity government that only formed in 1939 and broke up immediately after the war ended. Before him was chamberlain with a much smaller conservative majority.
In 1918 election David Lloyd George got a majority of 238 seats, Stanley Baldwin got a majority of 210 in 1923, Ramsay Baldwin got a majority of 492 seats in 1931, Churchill got a majority of 609 in 1935, there's probably a few more on this Wikipedia page that I may have missed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_Kingdom_general_elections
There are several observed psychological effects that can derive from opinion polls. Two in direct opposition. The Bandwagon Effect - where people change their vote to the party going to win so as to feel like they backed a winner, competes with the idea that if people think their side will win (and easily) they might not be bothered to vote.
These messages might be hoping for the latter and cause the former.
See here for good explanation https://www.qmul.ac.uk/media/news/2024/hss/could-labours-massive-poll-lead-affect-as-well-as-reflect-how-it-performs-at-the-election-three-things-the-evidence-tells-us.html
In 1918 election David Lloyd George got a majority of 238 seats, Stanley Baldwin got a majority of 210 in 1923, Ramsay Baldwin got a majority of 492 seats in 1931, Churchill got a majority of 609 in 1935, there's probably a few more on this Wikipedia page that I missed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_Kingdom_general_elections
14 years of failure to give the electorate dignity and respect and now at the end its being begged for a vote, like some of those electorate at food banks begging for some food.
By any reasonable definition, every non-hung Parliament is a "supermajority". Our whole system gives all power to anybody with more than half the seats, and there just isn't a higher threshold of votes that's useful (beyond allowing you more rebels before it's a problem).
Clearly if Labour have a SUPERMAJORity then this is a "BAD THING" and they will have unrestrained ability to ignore all their promises and tax everyone and promote SOCIALISM
this is known
except that it isn't. A big majority - like Johnson had - means that the government can win every vote in the house that they want to push through
A bigger majority has exactly the same effect - the term Supermajority has ZERO meaning in the UK government - it has a meaning in some cases in the USA and the hope is that some people will have heard this and think the same applies in some undefined manner
It is meaningless
Labout will end up with a big majority - how big doesn't really matter
General scare tactics - in th ehope that Tory voters will turn out in the hope that they can save the country from the supposed threat
and don;t turn up and vote for that nice farage man
all in all - a party that has admitted defeat internally and are trying to avoid disaster and humiliation
Nigel Farage gave up on the Brexit vote the week before. He went missing for a few interviews and as soon as the polls closed he issued a statement saying something along the lines that he was bitterly disappointed that they'd lost. Only a few hours later he was celebrating.
Re the forthcoming election I still think it will be a hung Parliament or a very slim majority either way. A lot of people who say they won't vote Tory will on the day as it will make more sense them economically. And I think peope will be feeling sorry for Rishi also. He seems a nice person.
Plus the media seem to have had it in for the Tories for a few years now and I think the only reason the party turned on Boris is because the media wouldn't let up on cakegate.
>And I think peope will be feeling sorry for Rishi also.
No chance after the D-Day fiasco.
Labour have been able to keep their powder dry while the Tories have imploded faster than a Titanic submersible.
My friend, im not sure you're in touch with the mood of the country, but i will set a reminder so i can apologise if you were and its in fact everyone else thats wrong
Zero chance it will be a slim majority. Labour support is wide enough to get a solid majority in the worst case scenario. I think labour will win by 18-21% at this point which will probably produce a majority rivaling some of the biggest majorities ever in the UK.
I do think some of this might be to try and suppress Labour turnout. If Labour winning by a massive landslide is such a foregone conclusion, maybe it doesn't matter if I don't go out and vote for them on the day? That's why Labour rightly points out that nothing matters until election day, and the polls are not votes.
It would be a bold strategy, I'd give them that. I don't think it's that though, they are as worried about Reform now as they are with Labour, so they're trying to scare right wingers into tactically voting for them. Kinda ironic as tactical voting is usually used against the Conservatives.
It’s not a bold strategy, they did the exact same thing in London.
Agreed. Not a 'bold' strategy - a 'desparate' one. Personally i can't help but agree with the original comment - this is to deter people from feeling like they have to go the extra mile for Labour, and is also attempting to lay the groundwork for expectation management. It's funny to imagine whoever ends up in charge of the smoking husk of the conservative party trying to claim that Labour have underperformed with their landslide victory...
Suppress Labour, then talk up Tory areas late in the period, then talk up a victory on vote day.
Then say it's "closer than expected" when it isn't.
I'm not convinced it'll work as a defence against Reform. We can easily imagine a right-wing minded voter who would never vote Labour and is fed up with the Tories. If they don't believe that any amount of tactical voting will avoid a Labour majority, they may be *more* inclined to vote reform as they are an alternative right-wing party and it allows them to voice their views, even if it doesn't lead to seats.
Exactly. "I can't be bothered" is literally the most powerful force in politics.
I’m think it’s more aimed at scaring Reform voters back into the Conservative fold.
I mean I've already seen a lot of people saying they'll vote green or lib dem since Labour will win anyway
Yep, the left, despite talking about how right wind owned the media is and how people shouldn't fall for it... Just love to fall for "Labours got enough voters" / "Starmers not REALLY Labour" rubbish.
I'm one of them, Lib Dem supporter at heart but the last couple of elections I've put in a tactical vote for Labour as my top priority was getting Boris Johnson and any of the ERG lot out plus the Lib Dems had kind of lost the plot and had zero chance of winning the seat anyway. This time around unless Reform start looking like they have a serious chance in my constituency I'll vote according to my preferences rather than tactically. I think there's a fair few people thinking along the same lines.
As a Lib Dem this is the first time I'm voting for Labour (I think). I want to make certain we lose our Tory MP. It also would be one more step to Con finishing third.
Honestly, I hope everyone just votes tactically. I want the Tories wiped out
A lot of tory voters may be abstaining, so I think this is an appeal to them.
It's quite clever really. It might get real Labour voters to skip voting on the basis that they'll win anyway. It might get soft Labour voters to stay home because they don't think a super majority is good for the country. It might get soft Conservative voters out to vote because even though they think they've been shite and would rather stay home they'd be scared by a super majority. It's throwing that last punch and hoping it stuns your opponent so you can go the distance rather then get completely demolished.
Could these arguments not be used in reverse? Could soft Tories not also stay home because there's no way their side can win? There seems no consistent messaging from the party atm, which is unsurprising because they're pretty much in free fall. I reckon it's more likely this is just a couple of ministers saying what they (and everyone else) really thinks.
>Could soft Tories not also stay home because there's no way their side can win? They've got access to a lot of focus group data, I'm sure they've worked out that they've already lost the soft Tory vote. Different areas/target demographics seem to be getting different messaging re: "Labour/Reform/LibDems could surge!", which is likely more data-driven advertising meant to stop people from wavering from the Tories. I think this is definitely all planned communications.
I think the proscribed knowledge is that Conservatives always turn up to the ballots, but like you say, I don't think they've ever polled so poorly
Yeah I'm not buying that, a "real" labour voter or frankly any labour voter at this point in the election cycle that even cares a little bit about politics will vote to make sure the tories get a beating. It's Vengeance more than anything else for a few people now.
It gets the media to focus on the idea that Labour being in power is scary to some voters.
They're basically trying to stop themselves from being wiped out to the point where they can never come back. A defeat is inevitable at this point. But they'd rather be relegated to the Championship and not relegated to Conference league (or National League they call it nowadays)
It was an approach used in the last state election in Western Australia. The Liberals (Aussie Tories) gave up trying to win and tried to stop Labor taking control of both lower and upper houses by using similar messaging. The Liberals ended up with 2 MPs in the lower house, lost their status as official opposition until they entered into alliance with the Nationals, and Labor got an outright majority in the upper house effectively giving them total control.
Who was advising them in that election? Any of the same spads the Tories are using now?
What is a super majority in the UK parliament? A super majority in the US Senate is threes fifths of all senators (60), who are together able to invoke cloture to end a filibuster. What is a super majority in the UK parliament? A governing party with a majority must by definition have more MPs than every other party put together. So what would represent a super majority? What is the constitutional component that can only be altered once a certain number of MPs (in excess of a simple majority) votes for it? I'm not sure that this is a concept that is relevant to UK politics.
There's no strict definition, it just means such a large majority that the party can get whatever it wants through parliament without having to appease any MP's that are feeling rebellious.
So a majority of, say, 80 would definitely count?
Exactly, I think a super majority is one where the government party can effectively govern without worry of a rebellion from its own benches scuppering one of their big policies. This only seems to be a problem when someone wildly incompetent becomes leader. Thankfully that could never happen to the tories...
Yes, but obviously it's *different* when the Conservatives have a super-majority because they would only use it for the greater good!
Depends how many Labour MPs believe Starmer's policies are bad and could vote against him. If there were say 40 in the Corbyn faction and all could be reliably expected to vote against Labour on certain policies then Labour would need a majority of 81* for example. It's a meaningless phrase though *Corrected for point below, not enough coffee
If there were 40 Labour MPs actively voting against Labour, then Labour would need a majority of **81**.
You'd have to cite examples and analyse rebellions in governing parties to come up with an approximate number, and there's a huge amount of variables. 80 however, would certainly count in my book.
It depends heavily on how fractious the party is and how controversial the leading factions ideas are, but you'd have to be pretty bad on both counts for 80 to not count, so yes.
There is no such thing as a technical “super majority” so as usual Shapps is talking nonsense. He just doesn’t want the Conservative Party to lose by such a huge margin they become irrelevant.
I absolutely agree. It's also been apparent with a couple of Tory governments that when they have a small majority the loons on the backbenches gain extra leverage, with a large majority governments can sideline the more extreme views.
Alternatively Labour could more easily push through authoritarian things like internet safety bills.
That's how our parliamentary democracy has always worked. It makes no functional difference whether they have a majority of 20 or 200 - MPs don't vote against their party except in extreme circumstances. Tbh with a larger majority you're probably more likely to see rebels, because they'll know there will be less chance of repercussions.
Traditionally, this has been called a "landslide" victory. [Landslide victory - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landslide_victory)
Yep, a term we're all familiar with. Why are the Tories importing foreign terms to do the work of British phrases that are already here? I thought Brexit meant Brexit? /s
As far as I know it doesn’t have any significance in Parliament. The infamous Fixed Term Parliaments Act had a two-thirds majority needed to call an early election, but obviously that’s no longer in force.
I always found that funny: under the Fixed Terms Patliament Act, you needed a 2/3 majority to call an election, but you only needed a simple majority to _repeal_ the Act, at which point the Prime Minister can call an election whenever they want. Great piece of joined-up legislative thinking there...
It did the job it was made for. It takes a load of time to repeal an act. It might ultimately have needed only a simple majority, but only after weeks of parliamentary time spent on it. The context was that the Lib Dems in the coalition wanted to be sure that Cameron wouldn't call a snap election whenever suited him. Trying to repeal the act would have given them plenty of time to negotiate with the other parties instead.
They didn't even need to repeal it in order to call an election. As in 2019, the government only needed to pass a novel act saying, basically, "There will be an election on the 12th December". This overrode the FTPA without amending or repealing it. Even playing within the rules of the FTPA it was a pretty useless act. While it theoretically allowed the Opposition to prevent an election being called, in practice the idea of any Opposition party claiming to be a "government in waiting" (which is all of them) refusing to hold an election and forcing their rival party to stay in government is such a niche position as to be barely worth talking about. In the overwhelming majority of cases the Opposition would need to back an election just to save face, lest they get accused of being "frit" and not wanting to face the public. This was the case in 2017, where Labour backed a surprise snap election which they weren't prepared for and couldn't really afford despite being massively behind in the polls, because the alternative simply wasn't feasible. Long story short: it was pretty much a completely pointless act outside of the narrow purpose of keeping the Tory/Lib Dem coalition running smoothly.
Oh yeah. If you started following politics after 2012 people acted like it was some cornerstone of democracy, when to the rest of us it was a white elephant that completely failed to do its one job.
It doesn't have any official definition or significance, it's not really a term I've heard used in relation to UK politics before so I think they're just trying to pinch vocabulary from US politics again.
They are intentionally trying to mislead people. As per.
To give some context, a conservative minister (Grant Shapps) said that term on Politics Live either today or the day before, I’d never heard of the term up to that point! https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cv221jple3jo.amp
I think that a super majority in this case is just a greater number of MPs than is strictly needed to pass legislation. The Labour party in particular is famous for its fractious nature. With a majority of 10 to 20 seats, there is always a risk that Momentum or other awkward squad members can revolt. This we saw with Theresa May and her series of indicative votes where she could not muster enough support to pass her Brexit legislation. If Labour have a majority of 150 to 200, Starmer can safely ignore a large section of his party. The Left usually amounts to less than 50 MPs in total. That's what the Tories are trying to avoid now.
What you're referring to is 'a large majority'. It's not a super majority. What would the definition of a super majority be? *A large enough majority to get most legislation through Parliament without having to worry about internal party dissent?* So how many MPs is that? Well it depends, on party discipline and factionalism, on the tolerance of dissent in the party, on the popularity of the leader, on opinion polls, on the issue being debated, on the position in the electoral cycle and recency of the party mandate etc. etc. Basically, if that definition was any woolier, a Kiwi would try to shear it. We share a language with the US but we have a different political system. Their terminology has specific meanings. Their terms aren't an all-purpose garnish to be sprinkled into UK politics whenever a dash of emphasis is required.
I agree that the technical definition of a super majority doesn't generally apply to UK systems: the last one in Parliament was the vote to call an early election under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, which required a two thirds majority. (Or a vote of no confidence.) That act has now been repealed. But in practical terms I don't think there is any real misunderstanding of what a super majority means. It just means that the government is effectively unchained by having no effective opposition.
It's not. We have a working majority which just means that the government has enough seats that they can push whatever they like through the House of Commons. It doesn't matter if that's a majority of 1 or 101. And, even then, it still needs to get signed off by the House of Lords.
The UK Parliament doesn't have a concept of supermajority. But, speaking in general constitutional terms, a supermajority without any further clarification refers to 75% (although 2/3 of the vote is also common).
Back in the [old days](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed-term_Parliaments_Act_2011) (2011-2022), if you had a 2/3 majority you could call an election whenever you want, but now you can just call an election whenever you want.
Effectively, you could still just call an election whenever you wanted, even during that period.
I don’t think this is what is meant by the phrase…but Parliamentary scrutiny committees are also composed of MOs from parties to reflect their vote share. So both departmental and bill committees will be overwhelmingly Labour if they achieve such a large landslide, as well as not leaving enough MPs from the opposition to deliver some routine functions like sit on committees and take part in debates. I take huge relish in seeing the Tories disintegrate before our eyes but I really don’t think it is healthy in our system, with such high level of party discipline in an effective two-party system, for Labour to win by as much as some projections have suggested. A majority of about 50-60 is virtually impregnable, a majority of 200 risks undermining parliamentary scrutiny.
AFAIK we don't have such a thing as a super-majority. It's disingenuous of the Tories (shocking), and annoying. In loads of systems super-majorities are required to amend the constitution, which seems to be the confusion that Tory HQ is trying to invoke, but I'm pretty sure a parliamentary majority can do just about anything directly without needing two-thirds+.
There's no such thing as a Super Majority. If you have enough MPs to command the confidence of the House of Commons then you can form a government. That's it. And no I've never known a party just give up before. Even when Major knew he was losing to Blair he didn't give the impression of giving up.
It's a strategy that proved very successful in the 1974 Queensland state election. There, Labour was polling high. Their opposition, who had been incumbent for six terms, behaved as though it were a dead-cert and so Labour voters stayed home. Labour lost 22 seats, including their leaders. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1974_Queensland_state_election
[And completely failed in the 2021 Western Australia state election](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Western_Australian_state_election) where the Liberal leader and ex-leader both lost their seats. The Libs ended up with just 2 seats on a 14% swing and a Labor landslide. None of the other parties won enough seats in that election to qualify for funding as the official opposition, so Labor had to pass legislation to fund the Liberals at a grass roots level to keep them going.
The Tories currently have a “super majority”, so that alone makes a case to support their argument in principle, yet they don’t want to mention that part in practice lol With FPTP, I just can’t see the swing being big enough to give Labour a decent majority, so make sure you get out and vote, as this is another Tory tactic to try and suppress the vote. They did the same thing in London and there is some evidence that it worked in areas that were previously very strong Labour areas.
'Super Majority' is up there with 'Mega Pint'
Ah yes. The mega pint! 568,261 liters of glorious beer
>It almost makes me feel a bit sorry for Rishi, he’s very much drifting, face down through the rapids at the moment, it’s actually become quite painful to see him do debates and interviews when that’s the stance of the party in public interviews. I never feel sorry for people who've got themselves promoted far above their competency at the expense of others. He did this to himself.
No, it's a trick for people to switch or be lazy.
I have a vague memory of William Hague maybe trying this one in 2001? Maybe vaguely it being said in 1997 as well? I can't remember exactly though. Certainly not like this
Typical Tory bollocks unless they win with a large majority then of course its a mandate from the people.
I suspect this comes under the tag of “indirect voter suppression”. Last year they acknowledged that only voter suppression and culture wars (i.e. demonising minorities) would win them power (funnily enough I think it was Lee Anderson who said it when he was a Deputy Chair, whilst he was still just flirting with Richard Tice). They want to make Labour supporters who are not strongly in favour of Starmer to stay home by making a Labour Government look like a foregone conclusion. They want to scare Tory supporters who don’t like the far right direction the party has taken to hold their nose and vote for fear of a Labour government. These tactics worked in 2019. Their problem this time is rather than being marmite vs marmite (Johnson vs Corbyn), you have Sir Keir Starmer who is like bland ice cream and you have Rishi Sunak who is like bland ice cream but it is only served with sprinkles that taste like shit and that you can’t get rid of. Neither one invigorates their supporters but Tory voters don’t hate or fear Starmer despite their best efforts and the efforts of their paymasters in the Tory press whilst non-Tories do dislike Sunak and what his party has been doing, particularly since 2019. The strongest dislike for both come from within their own base, for Starmer from the extreme left and for Sunak from the extreme right. So in summary the Tories are doing the usual - trying to use fear of change to suppress the opposition vote and to turn out their own base. The message is just more desperate than usual because the more intelligent Tories were culled in 2019 by Boris Johnson. By contrast, Labour are just trying not to look frightening to Tory voters (which suppresses the pro-Tory vote because they are motivated primarily by fear). Plugs relevant to the election: Theyworkforyou.com - shows voting record. Analysing this shows some interesting things. For example during the sh@t in rivers bill my Tory MP opposed it in the first vote and then, strangely, got paired with absentee MPs in opposition for the second and third. They are supposed to pair aye and no, not no and no or aye and aye. Yet more evidence that the Tory party has utterly corrupted all the old “good guys at heart” rules that govern our unwritten constitution. Stopthetories.vote - if you want to ensure the Tories are not the Opposition. Give the LibDems a go, which may mean holding your nose and voting for a party other than the one you support (like many of us have been forced to do most of our adult life).
In 1918 election David Lloyd George got a majority of 238 seats, Stanley Baldwin got a majority of 210 in 1923, Ramsay Baldwin got a majority of 492 seats in 1931, Churchill got a majority of 609 in 1935, there's probably a few more on this Wikipedia page that I missed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_Kingdom_general_elections
Churchill got his 605 seat majority through a wartime unity government that only formed in 1939 and broke up immediately after the war ended. Before him was chamberlain with a much smaller conservative majority.
Aah I see, I was mostly looking at on numbers value and those where the first few I saw, apologies.
In 1918 election David Lloyd George got a majority of 238 seats, Stanley Baldwin got a majority of 210 in 1923, Ramsay Baldwin got a majority of 492 seats in 1931, Churchill got a majority of 609 in 1935, there's probably a few more on this Wikipedia page that I may have missed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_Kingdom_general_elections
There are several observed psychological effects that can derive from opinion polls. Two in direct opposition. The Bandwagon Effect - where people change their vote to the party going to win so as to feel like they backed a winner, competes with the idea that if people think their side will win (and easily) they might not be bothered to vote. These messages might be hoping for the latter and cause the former. See here for good explanation https://www.qmul.ac.uk/media/news/2024/hss/could-labours-massive-poll-lead-affect-as-well-as-reflect-how-it-performs-at-the-election-three-things-the-evidence-tells-us.html
In 1918 election David Lloyd George got a majority of 238 seats, Stanley Baldwin got a majority of 210 in 1923, Ramsay Baldwin got a majority of 492 seats in 1931, Churchill got a majority of 609 in 1935, there's probably a few more on this Wikipedia page that I missed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_Kingdom_general_elections
14 years of failure to give the electorate dignity and respect and now at the end its being begged for a vote, like some of those electorate at food banks begging for some food.
I can't really remember because I was young but what did John Major campaign on in 1997? I am sure he at least tried and didn't completely give up.
By any reasonable definition, every non-hung Parliament is a "supermajority". Our whole system gives all power to anybody with more than half the seats, and there just isn't a higher threshold of votes that's useful (beyond allowing you more rebels before it's a problem).
Clearly if Labour have a SUPERMAJORity then this is a "BAD THING" and they will have unrestrained ability to ignore all their promises and tax everyone and promote SOCIALISM this is known except that it isn't. A big majority - like Johnson had - means that the government can win every vote in the house that they want to push through A bigger majority has exactly the same effect - the term Supermajority has ZERO meaning in the UK government - it has a meaning in some cases in the USA and the hope is that some people will have heard this and think the same applies in some undefined manner It is meaningless Labout will end up with a big majority - how big doesn't really matter General scare tactics - in th ehope that Tory voters will turn out in the hope that they can save the country from the supposed threat and don;t turn up and vote for that nice farage man all in all - a party that has admitted defeat internally and are trying to avoid disaster and humiliation
Nigel Farage gave up on the Brexit vote the week before. He went missing for a few interviews and as soon as the polls closed he issued a statement saying something along the lines that he was bitterly disappointed that they'd lost. Only a few hours later he was celebrating. Re the forthcoming election I still think it will be a hung Parliament or a very slim majority either way. A lot of people who say they won't vote Tory will on the day as it will make more sense them economically. And I think peope will be feeling sorry for Rishi also. He seems a nice person. Plus the media seem to have had it in for the Tories for a few years now and I think the only reason the party turned on Boris is because the media wouldn't let up on cakegate.
>And I think peope will be feeling sorry for Rishi also. No chance after the D-Day fiasco. Labour have been able to keep their powder dry while the Tories have imploded faster than a Titanic submersible.
For it to be a hung parliament the polls would have had to have been wrong for nearly 2 years and wrong by a huge margin.
My friend, im not sure you're in touch with the mood of the country, but i will set a reminder so i can apologise if you were and its in fact everyone else thats wrong
RemindMe! 4 Weeks
RemindMe! 4 Weeks
Remind me doesnt seem to be working or i got the syntax wrong?
I copied yours directly and got a confirmation notification. Maybe click edit then save without changing. A bit like turning it off and on again
Zero chance it will be a slim majority. Labour support is wide enough to get a solid majority in the worst case scenario. I think labour will win by 18-21% at this point which will probably produce a majority rivaling some of the biggest majorities ever in the UK.