LabourTCB

Have you ever wondered what parliament would look like if the Tories, Labour, Lib Dems, Greens, and Reform all got 18% of the vote?

No? Well unlucky.

Tories: 185 seats (-193) Labour: 219 (+24) Lib Dem: 100 (+92) Reform: 38 (+38) Green: 28 (+27)

As you can see, despite all the parties achieving the same share of the vote, there are some minor discrepancies on seat numbers.

Interesting article by Beth Stratford concerning how to reduce currently increasing levels of landlordism through promoting co-operative ownership while avoiding blowing up the economy.

Be interested to hear peoples opinions about the article and why they think it might/might not work in reality.

The growth of private landlordism is (imo) one of the biggest structural issues in our economy and also one of the hardest to tackle. If anyone else can suggest readings that suggest solutions to this issue I would be very interested in hearing them.

http://www.gmhousingaction.com/an-end-to-landlordism/

I've been doing a little reading around the idea of Land Value Taxation, the general idea of which is that all land ought to be taxed according to the unimproved value of a lot in its location.

The idea seems to have a bevy of positive impacts (encouraging development of underutilised urban lots, discouraging land/property speculation and properties being left empty, penalsies second home ownership to an extent) plus the tax is progressive in nature and very hard to evade.

What are other peoples opinions on Labour campaigning for a Land Value Tax? Are there any major flaws with it I'm missing?

In my mind it seems a sensible policy that go some small way to helping alleviate the housing cr

Earlier today I proposed a region-based PR system to replace FPTP. That post, which details the specifics of the system, can be found here. Since then I have revised the threshold for seats down from 10 to 5%, which I agree is much more reasonable.

I ran the numbers on what would have happened if this system had been in place for the 2019 Gen Elec, and here are the results, with the irl seat totals in brackets:

Conservative: 296 (365), Labour: 223 (202), Lib Dem: 75 (11), SNP: 27 (48), Brexit: 7 (0), Plaid: 4 (4), DUP: 6 (8), Sinn Fein: 4 (7), SDL

Pretty self-explanatory. What policies would you personally like to see included in Labour's 2024 manifesto.

Alternatively what do you expect for Starmer and team to include, based on signals from his leadership campaign and since.

"We have been calling for some time for the government to take a more strategic approach and ensure it supports UK industries. That support, however, must be focused on retaining and increasing employment.

"It must also build value for our country - with companies receiving support prevented from engaging in share buy-backs and dividend payments. And it must be in line with our commitments on climate and the natural environment.

"Other countries have imposed forward-looking conditions on support, and the UK should learn from their positive example."

Link to Text.

Starmer should commit the party to reforming the Tory's new immigration rules to move away from a one size fits all wage requirement and towards industry specific policies.

The most obvious case where this is applicable is the health and social care sectors. We could also highlight the hypocrisy of the Tories labelling our "keyworkers" as "unskilled".

I also believe we should try to make it easier for existing and new immigrants to become citizens. Personally I'd be in favour of reducing the residency requirement to 3 years and providing existing residents without good English skills with subsidised language lessons (which could be incorporated into the wider adult education aspects of th