Honourable Members- Interest Check

@cyanide

I havn’t finalised which other parties I plan to include yet. But Incan assure you that I will be politically nuetral when writing the game.

@silent15

There is some speculation that the Lid Dems may experience a revival as a result of defectors from Labour. Whatever happens it’s useful to have them in the game so as to provide you with a “third option” on the various issues.

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Don’t forget the 12.5%, or about 1/8t of the electorate who voted for them. Though perhaps that may have hopefully said more about how fed up some people are by “New Labour’s” Thatcherism lite.

That is perhaps a little bit harsh of a statement. As @Cataphrak said classical liberalism has always been and still is an important part of British politics. They still received about 2.5 million votes, and if representation in the UK was a bit fairer they could still have fielded about 50 MP’s (compared to UKIP’s 80 or so, but still…) .
Really the LibDem lesson, aside from the fact that Clegg has been a poor standard bearer for British Liberalism is that winding up the junior coalition partner to a party and a PM that only has a lukewarm commitment to democracy and none at all to liberalism, perhaps wasn’t the best move they could have made.

Oh absolutely, I’m not arguing that point. I merely meant that another party may have to pick up that standard as the lib dems have alienated most of their support base. I’m not quite certain how they can really recover from this.

@silent15
If our Tories could go from two seats to a majority government within two decades, the Lib-Dems could probably manage, especially if they end up fighting as dirty as Stephen Harper does.

Rename the thing to the Liberal party again, choose a new leader and alter the political strategy and you can turn almost any political (mis)fortune around.
If Corbyn succeeds in moving the Labour party significantly to the left again and UKIP and the Conservatives battle it out for the right and George Osbourne remains committed solely to the interest of the City that would logically leave the center wide open for the Liberals (or LibDems, if they insist on keeping that brand) to attract both the genuine liberals and the people who would not like the Conservatives to become the “default option” yet would find Corbyn’s Labour party too socialist.

Fair enough, I concede the point about rebranding the lib dems. But your second point relies on people being logical, something we are manifestly not. In an ideal world where we all considered our problems rationally your argument would be dead on the money. But I fear there is a fairly well-entrenched belief that the Liberal Democrats are at best a second tier party that are maybe worth tactically voting for in order to keep out another party. The coalition was the closest they’ve been to power since the Second World War and as such many people just don’t see them as a viable party to vote for, for fear of wasting their vote.

The same thing happened to me back when I still brought in to socialism in a big way. Even then I didn’t vote for the SWP or whatever the equivalent was because there was no hope in hell of them being elected. And the same may well happen here, those who would normally defect from Corbyn’s Labour would be somewhat more hesitant when there is no clear party that sands a chance of winning to defect to.

I should note, I wrote this while rather sleep-deprived, so if it is somewhat unreadable and nonsensical, that’s the reason why.

And this last point is completely off topic, but I have to ask, is your icon Lord Blain from Seven Kingdoms? If so, why the guy who is normally the most hated guy in it?

True, the chances of something like that happening in RL are fairly low (but not nonexistent) in the game it would be up to our politician characters to convince the electorate of the logic of it all. Something a well played character ought to be able to do.

It is and I don’t really hate him, he’s the comic relief if anything (and quite cute to boot). I, and most of my characters. reserve our genuine hatred for actual jerks, Like Jarrod, or princesses who try to have us killed (his sister).

@MacMaster, just wondering, in the game, will you be allowed to be a crossbencher, remembered a certain british prime minster who did that

Edit: sorry meant the term cross the floor

Sorry for the late reply, I’ve been away from my computer for the last few days.

I was under the impression that we were discussing real life. Sorry, my mistake. From a gaming perspective I agree, it makes a great deal of sense, especially if it were balanced in some way. (harder to get elected, but easier to rise in the party ranks maybe?)

Wait, do you mean that Gisette is behind the riding incident? Damn, I actually kinda liked her.

@MacMaster
Speaking of certain cantankerous half-American prime ministers, and more importantly, the amount of leeway he got by being a member of the aristocracy; how much control will we have over our characters’ social standing and origins? Will it not be an issue, or will it have influence over your support base and the support of your party apparatus?

Would you, for example, be able to leverage membership in the Harrovian/Etonian “old boys” network to get a way into a Tory cabinet; or maybe play up working class roots to gain support in a primarily industrial riding, at the risk of being dismissed as an illiterate rabble-rouser by your opponents?

Social background is a really good one to raise. Truth be told though, if it’s set in modern day, people at the top of the Labour party are generally (not totally but generally) pretty middle class and well educated (usually oxbridge). Its genuinely rare to have a working class frontbencher, so working class background could be seen as a help or a hindrance i suppose, like either a social disadvantage or a popular novelty.

Also, just a little note @Cataphrak , it took me a second to work out what you meant when you said “riding”. Again if we’re talking about modern day here, it’s a pretty antiquated term and I think it only ever referred to areas of Yorkshire…

@AlexClifford1994
Huh, I didn’t know that. “Riding” is still used as a pretty common term in Canadian politics, so I guess I’m just used to using it.

@Cataphrak Oh, interesting…
Thinking about it, industrial is also pretty antiquated, its not like Britain has any industry any more… :pensive:

Doesn’t the City call itself the financial (services) industry?
Didn’t it just surpass New York in importance to the global (financial) economy?
If so Britain does have industry, just not of the sort that benefits the general population all that much.
I believe Britain also still has a significant artisanal, cottage industry, at least compared to some other EU countries.

I’d actually like to play a unionist Scotsman as a character, the accent is fantastic (if not laid on too thick, for those who’ve played that game just think prince Sebastian in Dragon Age 2). I know the SNP currently holds almost all the Scottish seats due to the vagaries of FpTP, but let’s not forget they only got approximately half the vote.
Also I’d like to avoid Oxbridge, for my character, if at all possible. Obviously a true Scotsman would have studied in Scotland itself, Edingburgh, has a decent university, from what I hear. For a pro-EU character he or she could even have participated in the EU’s Erasmus programme.

It’s true, I recently did some Googling on the Canadian elections, apparently I have 94% in common with the Communist party of Canada, I didn’t even know Canada still had a Communist Party. 2024 Political Quiz (and 98% with New Democratic, but since I’m generally not in favour of overt displays of religion…)
I guess by Canadian standards I’d be a pinko-commie!
Also your mr. Trudeau apparently didn’t get the memo that politics ought to be show business for the less pretty people.
All of this brings me to this: to what extent will we be able to define our characters appearance in the game and what, if any, effects will it have?

Yeah…especially if the Conservatives and Ukip are going to battle it out for the right and Labour is still pressured by the Greens, the SNP and Plaid Cymru on the left, that should leave the center wide open for any cunning politician who can successfully revive the British Liberal party.

@idonotlikeusernames
I’m not surprised, the NDP has a pretty big support base. They’re actually really strong in the riding I live in.

-and you leave Justin Trudeau alone! It’s not his fault he was effectively born to the purple as the heir to arguably the most effective Canadian PM in recent history!

It would be interesting to play someone who can capitalise on charisma and a dashing appearance to win votes. However, wouldn’t being youthful and attractive have different results based on factors like gender (attractive women in politics tend to get the short end of the stick there, more so than attractive men)?

Depending on where you take it, we can presumably see what results it yields for our dashing cavalry officers in Lords.

Eh?, Our local Greens never did better than when they were still led by a relatively attractive woman. Although it is still somewhat true that with our inevitable coalitions (due to a strong PR system) no party leader is effectively running to become (the temporary) “supreme ruler” of the country, so maybe that mitigates the importance of their personality to some small degree. Although the post of PM has increased in power, prestige and importance somewhat over the last few decades.

At the very worst youthful and attractive politicians might be seen as callow and less trustworthy by some people, however they might also have greater success with some demographics and perhaps even in bringing out the all important youth vote to offset that to some degree. Many higher political offices in many countries also still have age requirements beyond just being of voting age, lessening the impact and influence of youthful politicians.
Whether that’s a good thing, or not and what the minimum age should actually be, is, as always, open to debate.

Things like background (wealthy and elitist, or not), actual performance in the media and even sexuality (the inevitable gay thing, for most of my characters) are likely to still trump appearance alone.
It is however likely to be a factor in late-night comedy shows across the country, but then again so is almost any distinguishing feature of any prominent politician. If our character is very pretty they’ll exaggerate that for comedy purposes, same as if he is very bald.

Aside from his appearance, doesn’t that make him the opposite of what most people seem to want nowadays, as in leaders who are not from political dynasties and backgrounds of extreme wealth?
Or is that only the US?

@idonotlikeusernames
Gender in that sense would matter more in your character’s role as an MP than as a party leader methinks: it’ll be a filter which all your actions would be seen through: witness the media uproar after Belinda Stronach crossed the aisle in the mid 2000s (never have I seen so many supposedly respectable publications make so many ‘blonde whore’ jokes).

As for the glorious Imperial House of Trudeau ™, I would like to note that unlike certain political dynasties, the founder of that family’s political legacy was actually good at his job. Think more Roosevelt than Bush.

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