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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-49084605
Boris Johnson has been elected new Conservative leader in a ballot of party members and will become the next UK prime minister.
He beat Jeremy Hunt comfortably, winning 92,153 votes to his rival's 46,656.
The former London mayor takes over from Theresa May on Wednesday.
In his victory speech, Mr Johnson promised he would "deliver Brexit, unite the country and defeat Jeremy Corbyn".
Speaking at the Queen Elizabeth II centre in London, he said: "We are going to energise the country.
"We are going to get Brexit done on 31 October and take advantage of all the opportunities it will bring with a new spirit of can do.
"We are once again going to believe in ourselves, and like some slumbering giant we are going to rise and ping off the guy ropes of self doubt and negativity."
Any other comments would be editorializing...
(Score: 4, Interesting) by hemocyanin on Wednesday July 24 2019, @03:49PM (2 children)
At the state level, at least for those states which allow it, the initiative process makes mob rule ever more important. This coupled with the Reynolds v. Simms decision, which destroyed the American concept of a senate at the state level, turned all the state senates into nothing more than a second house of reps, and thereby transferred almost all political power to the large cities in those states, another form of mob rule. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reynolds_v._Sims [wikipedia.org]
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday July 25 2019, @05:16PM (1 child)
This is an interesting point, though it's important to note that many state Houses of Representatives were also not apportioned well at the time according to population. It's true that State Senates were more likely to be explicitly apportioned in some other way, but House districts often became very unequal over time due to people migrating within a state, and states often just avoided redistricting in order to keep incumbents and incumbent parties in power. If there's one thing to learn from that decision, it's that keeping bad districting in place for long periods of time was pretty common in many states.
Note that I'm not necessarily disagreeing that there might be valid alternative forms of governance/representation other than "One person, one vote" policy that the U.S. was suddenly thrust into with the Warren Court. And I definitely think there was some severe judicial overreach in the reasoning of these decisions. On the other hand, without this sort of reasoning, legislative bodies often devolve into representation of random interests which aren't necessarily representing "rural vs. urban" in a fairer way, but just serving the elected officials -- see, for example, the rotten borough [wikipedia.org] problem, which manifested in a different way in many state houses in the U.S.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Thursday July 25 2019, @07:29PM
Those are valid points. In a lot of ways, we are in a damned if you do damned if you don't situation because so often those who run for office only have their own self-interest at heart, and those who fund those candidates definitely always only have their own self-interest at heart.
Being one of those in a rural area, I do feel left out of the process though and surely there must be a middle ground -- simply making senate districts conform to county lines (1 per county) would hinder the steamroller effect metropolitan areas have over the rest of the state. I live in WA and the I5 corridor from Olympia to Seattle (about 60 miles) has more than half the Senate votes here in a state of 66k square miles. Whatever Seattle decides it wants, the rest of the state gets -- no negotiating necessary. I think that is a recipe for instability.