Boris Johnson

Indeed – as I said very few countries have it and only some of those enforce it. Under the threat of fines or worse for not voting I could easily imagine individuals putting a cross anywhere if their true desire was for none of the candidates. I would take some convincing before accepting that coercion produced a genuine mandate.

I can’t think of anything worse than ‘forcing’ (or coercing) people to vote; that’s hardly likely to produce a result that is more representative of what the electorate actually care about, given that currently, many of them don’t care enough about anything to even bother voting!

Wouldn’t taking away the actual right to vote be worse? That has been suggested (probably not terribly seriously) due to the consistantly low (and probably uneconomically poor) turnout.
But.
If they had to vote do you seriously think that they would just tick the first box they see, or might they actually take notice of what the candidates/parties represented so that they choose one that might carry their views forward?

I also don’t see how it would make politicians ‘clean up their act’ or that low turnouts allow politicians to get away with ‘treating the public like idiots’?

If you were forced to vote would you vote for the politician who rides roughshod over your views, promising but never delivering, who takes the mickey with things like expenses and his/her disregard for the voter? The MP who has two constituency surgeries a year is disrespecting his constituents; the MP who takes up high paying jobs in the city – in addition to their political positions – is he/she really able to concentrate on their constituency or their political role unbiased by their paymasters? Cronyism and corruption would be difficult to implement or continue
A poll that is backed by a 100% turnout is going to grab the attention more than one where the winning majority was from less than 20% of the potential voters (imagine how the Scottish independence vote would have been regarded by all sides had the turnout been less than 50%, with all claiming that the propaganda from the other side convincing their supporters not to vote. Or something).

I agree. Very few countries have mandatory voting and fewer enforce it. I cannot see that obliging people to do something they do not want to do will produce a “better” result.

It works rather well(!) in North Korea; the dear leader always has a strong and unarguably clear majority, but let us ignore that.
Yet Argentina, Brazil and Australia all have compulsory voting and therefore their political masters have a genuine mandate to govern – something that has been questioned in the past in Britain and currently in the US by those not in favour of a black president. Other countries (like Peru, Singapore, Uruguay and Cyprus) also have compulsory voting.

I agree. Very few countries have mandatory voting and fewer enforce it. I cannot see that obliging people to do something they do not want to do will produce a “better” result.

I can’t think of anything worse than ‘forcing’ (or coercing) people to vote; that’s hardly likely to produce a result that is more representative of what the electorate actually care about, given that currently, many of them don’t care enough about anything to even bother voting!

I also don’t see how it would make politicians ‘clean up their act’ or that low turnouts allow politicians to get away with ‘treating the public like idiots’?

Hmm. Cut back on the number of voters – what a magnificent idea. The number who participate is embarrassingly small enough now, without reducing it further…
A better option might be that everyone is legally required to vote on pain of financial incentive, as happens in some other countries. There is a feeling of disenfranchisement from some parts of the demographic so, whilst there could be moans about forcing the population to participate against their will, the politicians would have to clean up their act knowing that they could no longer rely on the large proportion of no-shows that currently allow them to get away with treating the public like idiots.

Comments?

So, following that argument, as all but a tiny percentage of the EU migrants to this country are net contributers to the exchequer, they should be allowed to vote as well.

“contributing to the countries coffers”

So that includes everyone. If you’re retired, or, you are still contributing thru’ indirect taxation.

Now there’s an intriguing idea – disenfranchising the grey vote!!:D

Just as there is a lower age limit for voting perhaps there should be an upper one too?
Perhaps only those actually contributing to the countries coffers (or able to?) should be entitled to determine the future path of the country?

They are indeed, but they are there ones less likely to vote. That’s what makes it interesting.. Had they all voted in the last general election, we would have Milliband as PM..

An interesting challenge then. I am sure I have seen some some stats suggesting that a very high percentage of 18 to 30 year olds are for staying in. 75 or 80% I think it was.

If Boris’ entrance stage right means anything at all, it is his potential to influence the ‘young’ voters in this country. That will count.

The 1975 result went roughly two thirds yes and one third no, nationwide, on a 67% turnout. I wonder how significant turnout will be this time. And what might happen, outside politicians’ control, to influence the vote over the next 4 months….

It’s all got very interesting hasn’t it?, Especially after the clear attacks on Boris from David Cameron today, it’s clear Cameron is rattled and senses it’s actually possible the country could vote to come out of the EU. What is fascinating is while the Conservative party is pulling itself apart over this Labour is just sitting back at the moment, yet we all know that cracks are there too on this subject.

As to Boris he is a career politician who plays the bumbling fool, but is anything but and if he has caught the mood of the country on this matter it will propel him into being future leader of the Tory party. I think most know that Boris will blow in any direction that will make him popular, so really no surprises there. However I would say by contrast David Cameron has came back with a not so strong deal in Europe and I suspect he knows it and although he does not intend to go for election again, this will make or break him, his reputation is on the line here.

To think we have have 4 months of this to go, makes you wonder what will happen next.

This is huge opportunism by Boris – no more than that.

If ‘Out’ do win, then he is the clear candidate for next leader of the Tory party.

The whole thing is a huge sideshow of political opportunism. My guess as of this moment, is that there will be a narrow win for the ‘In’ team, of a similar magnitude to the Scottish question.

My further prediction is that regardless of who wins, the imminent recession will start to bite by the autumn, and each side will blame the other for the result we got, thus avoiding the real story. Cameron had to call the vote before that happened – this will take considerable heat off the government.

We will see…

In my seemingly long life I could probably count those politicians with little or no sense of self-intetest on the fingers of one hand. Boris is emphatically not among them. I think the media are obsessed with him and hugely overplay his potential effect. And I am unconvinced that his addition to the disparate Leave group will make the difference among the 30% undecided. Still at least down here in East Kent the local newspaper poll reports over 70% of us on the Leave side!!!;)

So, in other words, a typical politician !

He is just doing it to become PM…
The opportunist that he is has come to the decision that if he is in the out camp, and Cameron loses the stay in vote, then he must be a shoo in for the new leader. Being the devious fiend* that he is, when the talks take place for leaving the EU, he will engineer some way of getting an acceptable solution to staying in – and we won’t be going anywhere. Why should the country trust him when his wife can’t…?

*BoJo has a well-earned reputation for being underhand, a cheat and a liar when it suits his purpose, a man whom a biographer, Sonia Purnell, claims has an “opportunistic approach to politics“.

As I’ve always said to anyone bored enough to listen, you can’t beat your local for political clout.

It’s a fact that the forthcoming Referendum will be won not so much on the ‘playing fields of Eton’ as the saloon bar of the Dog & Fox.

Well John, regarding sweeping statements as you are the past master of them, perhaps I should bow to your intimate knowledge of my friends, acquaintances and the local media for how well he is regarded in the my local area. Where do you live again?

For example, we were actually talking about this issue last week in the pub, and many of the people in my cycling group ( 20 + on that occasion) who are quite a bit further in your direction politically compared to me were saying that they would want to stay in the EU for economic reasons as almost all of them own small businesses in the area. None had a good word to say about Boris although this was before he took his decision