ModCen

@ moderatecentrist @feddit.uk

Posts

27
Comments

276
Joined

5 mo. ago

9h ago

Greens Storm Ahead of Labour in National Poll As Second Most Popular Party
Jump
ModCen @feddit.uk 9h ago
I don't want the UK to murder people, or create a new empire. I think keeping British nukes makes sense though. If the UK and France both gave up their nukes then I think Russia would probably increase their invasion of Europe. In the future China and the US might try to take parts of Europe too.

9h ago

Greens Storm Ahead of Labour in National Poll As Second Most Popular Party

I don’t necessarily think the UK should give up its nukes, they’re an unfortunate necessity in the world we live in

They might well be. Also yes, I think the US treats the UK as a bit of a lapdog. I think the UK should do more to partner with European allies. Europe together has more bargaining power than the UK alone. Europe together has more leverage than the UK to say to the US "actually we're not doing what you want us to do".

I think the Greens are right to oppose very wealthy people who just want to accumulate more wealth and power at the expense of everybody else. But I don't think I agree with them if they want to “immediately begin the process of dismantling our nuclear weapons”.

9h ago

Greens Storm Ahead of Labour in National Poll As Second Most Popular Party

Jump

ModCen @feddit.uk 9h ago

Sure it would be good to reduce reliance on the US, e.g. by replacing Trident missiles with British missiles for delivering nukes. But that web page from the Greens I linked to talks about intending to "immediately begin the process of dismantling our nuclear weapons". I think the UK should keep its nuclear weapons for now, while exploring a future possibility of non-American missiles to deliver them.

14h ago

Greens Storm Ahead of Labour in National Poll As Second Most Popular Party

Jump

ModCen @feddit.uk 14h ago

Personally I don't think this political polarisation is a good thing

The Greens apparently want to "immediately begin the process of dismantling our nuclear weapons, cancelling the Trident programme" which I think is the wrong move when Russia poses such a big threat to Europe. China and the US could pose threats in the future. Nukes deter those big powers from invading the UK. We could also work with our allies in Europe to try and create a nuclear deterrent which covers all of Europe.

Then on the other side you have Reform who want to blame brown people for everything, and I think that's also a wrong move.

14h ago

Starmer’s position on Iran pleases no one, but that is because there are no good options

Jump

ModCen @feddit.uk 14h ago

it would be a project taking years if not decades to disentangle from our US military and intelligence alliances, and we’d be exposed the entire time

Perhaps true, so I guess we shouldn't try to cut our ties with the US straight away. Instead we can work with European allies to build up Europe's defences. Then if the US continues to diverge from Europe, Europe will have its own defences in place.

14h ago

Starmer’s position on Iran pleases no one, but that is because there are no good options

Jump

ModCen @feddit.uk 14h ago

If you join a club for your own interests, and the members of the club (including yourself) agree to appoint leadership for the club, which is renewed by elections every few years, I don't think that means you become a vassal of the leadership of the club.

For example let's say you're in a band. The members of the band agree to have a manager, to handle certain tasks. That doesn't mean the band members are vassals of the manager. The band members can replace the manager if they think the manager is doing a bad job.

17h ago

Green Party wins Gorton and Denton by-election with Labour pushed into third by Reform

Jump

ModCen @feddit.uk 17h ago

I think the German system looks pretty good. Their voting system leads to a much more representative legislature. Another example when looking at proportional representation is the Netherlands, but their system seems to lead to lots of lengthy coalition negotiations and squabbling before they form a government.

Germany, for much of the last 20 years, has had a coalition government between the big centre-right and big centre-left blocs. E.g. in the 2005 election, 69.4% of voters backed either the Union or SPD, who together made up the subsequent coalition government. Compare that to the UK where we have a Labour government who, whether you like them or not, were only voted for by 33.7% of voters.