Removal of hereditary privilege is a good thing in principle.

However, given the Labour party just gave children the vote, cancelled local elections in conservative-leaning areas, and now they're removing the (traditionally conservative-leaning) hereditary peers, it's starting to feel a lot like the Left are gerrymandering our democracy.

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Latty 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

They gave 16 year olds the vote, and 16 year olds can leave home, marry, join the army, and so on. Why should they not vote?

They didn't run pointless elections by request of the very councils that were due for them, because those areas are being redrawn and would have to have fresh elections almost immediately, making the results meaningless.

They also gave all the conservative hereditary peers lifetime peerages so they will keep their seats.

Your framing of all three of these is obviously intended to mislead.

	▲	cbeach 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> 16 year olds can leave home, marry, join the army, and so on. Why should they not vote? That's a separate argument. My point is Labour's change to the rules is very politically convenient for themselves. In the most recent polling, 32% of 16-17-year-olds would vote Labour, while only 17% of the overall electorate would vote Labour. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_U... > They didn't run pointless elections by request of the very councils that were due for them, because those areas are being redrawn and would have to have fresh elections almost immediately, making the results meaningless. They allowed individual incumbent councillors to choose whether elections were cancelled. This was politically convenient for the Labour and Tory parties because the Reform Party is new, and while it's polling well ahead of Labour, it doesn't have many incumbent council seats. When a court challenge loomed, Labour quickly u-turned on the latest round of cancellations. Funny how something can seem sensible one day, and can then be u-turned at the slightest whiff of legal scrutiny. > They also gave all the conservative hereditary peers lifetime peerages so they will keep their seats. Can you name a single Conservative hereditary peer that will be given a lifetime peerage in Starmer's reform plan?

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deaux 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

There is no reasonable definition of "the Left" that includes the British Labour party. The only one that fits would be "to the left of the British Conservative party", but that's as arbitrary as redefining it "to the left of Reform UK" and then starting to call the tories "The Left".

	▲	cbeach 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> There is no reasonable definition of "the Left" that includes the British Labour party. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_Party_(UK) > Labour, is one of the two main political parties in the United Kingdom, along with the Conservative Party. It sits on the centre-left of the left–right political spectrum