99. Time for a 'Progressive Alliance' against the Tories? - LIVE SHOW
The Owen Jones Podcast
Owen Jones
4.4 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 21 June 2021
⏱️ 76 minutes
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Summary
After the Lib Dems smashed the Tories in Chesham and Amersham, the idea of a "progressive alliance" - of anti-Tory parties working together to get the government out - has revived. But are the Lib Dems "progressive" - and is this an idea emerging out of desperation because Labour is so weak?
I'm joined by Labour MSP Paul Sweeney - who is for - and Tribune's David Broder - who is against, plus, the mother of Osime Brown - a 22-year-old autistic man who won his case against deportation to Jamaica, a country he left as a small child - joins us to talk about their horrendous ordeal.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to the show. What an exhausting week in so many ways, |
| 0:13.2 | spoke politically and otherwise. We'll talk about that. We've got quite a cracking show today. |
| 0:18.2 | It's very eclectic and very packed because there's quite a lot going on in the moment. |
| 0:24.0 | So today, what we're talking about, I thought this was quite an interesting thing to talk about. |
| 0:27.5 | It's this so-called progressive alliance thing, which kind of occasionally does the rounds. |
| 0:32.1 | Basically, it's this idea that purportedly anti-conservative parties should form some sort of |
| 0:39.6 | electoral pack together in order to get rid of the conservative party. And one of the, I guess, |
| 0:45.0 | the kind of founding principles of it is that first past the post isn't a fair system and because |
| 0:52.1 | of geographical spread and so on, the conservatives can win whopping big majorities and even though |
| 0:58.5 | they win a minority of the vote, they're quite a large minority of the vote, but nonetheless, |
| 1:02.3 | 55% of people didn't vote for them. And yet, they end up with an ATC majority. So people go, well, |
| 1:08.4 | hold on a minute. What happens if the so-called important point, progressive parties get together, |
| 1:14.7 | form packs on the basis of where one party is stronger, the others step aside to give them a free |
| 1:20.8 | run. There's lots of arguments against that. We've got a great debate today between two big |
| 1:26.9 | ball on the left who have very different takes on this. One argument would be, are you really |
| 1:32.5 | calling the liberal democrats progressive? The other is this would completely, politically, |
| 1:37.0 | emasculate the Labour party and its guiding political mission. And another basic point is some |
| 1:42.9 | would argue it's massive desperation. It's a sort of argument you hear floated around when |
| 1:47.3 | Labour's not doing very well, so then it becomes this crotch trying to game a system under which it |
| 1:53.3 | it has to win, because some people would say first pass the vote, not very fair is it? That's the |
| 1:57.6 | electoral system stuck with it. Labour has to somehow form a government through that system, even if |
| 2:02.6 | he supports changing the electoral system. There's lots of arguments which we're going to go into |
... |
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