Then he’s not serious about wanting proportional representation. Coalitions are inevitable with PR (and probably a good thing IMO), and you’re never going to have the perfect coalition partner.
Replies
It’s fine to have hard lines, but if they exclude all your potential partners you’re just excluding yourself from government and handing power to more pragmatic parties.
sep 2, 2025, 11:51 am • 1 0 • view
In this scenario Keir Starmer has just led Labour from a landslide victory in one election to a loss at the next. Excluding working with him personally isn't excluding a coalition partner, it's just telling them that they'll need a new leader. Which in that scenario, they would anyway.
sep 2, 2025, 3:17 pm • 2 0 • view
labour have repeatedly said that they wouldn't form coalitions, even in the runup to previous elections where they could only realistically have formed a government in coalition with the SNP. I don't recall anyone saying they weren't serious. Polanski has only said he wouldn't work with Starmer.
sep 2, 2025, 12:27 pm • 0 0 • view
PR isn’t Labour policy (the members have sometimes supported it, but it’s not in the manifesto).
sep 2, 2025, 4:53 pm • 0 0 • view
sure, but coalitions do happen under FPTP, and from 2015 to 2024, when the SNP were the 3rd largest party and the tory vote was yet to collapse, labour could only have formed a coalition, or a minority government propped up by the SNP. Despite this, they ruled any deals with other parties out.
sep 2, 2025, 6:53 pm • 0 0 • view
besides, like you said, labour have no intention of bringing in PR, which means the next general election will be a FPTP one, so his willingness to work with starmer bears no relevance to his position on PR
sep 2, 2025, 7:17 pm • 0 0 • view
It's also not unrealistic that Greens, LibDems, SNP and Plaid could win more votes between them than labour in a future election.
sep 2, 2025, 12:28 pm • 0 0 • view