/r/ukpolitics
Political news and debate concerning the United Kingdom.
The rules of the subreddit can be found in detail here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/wiki/rules
Political articles and debate concerning the United Kingdom.
Anything not specifically concerning politics in the UK or geopolitics involving the UK will be considered spam and removed.
While robust debate is encouraged, at least try to keep things civil. This sub is for people with a wide variety of views, and as such you will come across content, views and people you don't agree with. Political views from a wide spectrum are tolerated here.
Articles from paywalled sites should be linked to directly, and a copy/paste, screenshot or outline.com provided in the comments. Full credit to the author and publication should be given.
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Information on voting in the United Kingdom
Resources
House of Commons Library Constituency Dashboard
- Demographic and economic data for every UK parliamentary seat
- Hansard (the Official Report) is the edited verbatim report of proceedings of both the House of Commons and the House of Lords.
- Erskine May, often referred to as ‘the Bible of parliamentary procedure’ is the most authoritative and influential work on parliamentary procedure and constitutional conventions affecting Parliament. Now available to read for free and in full online.
- The UK operates safe and legal routes for the purpose of providing humanitarian and other forms of protection to vulnerable people. These are detailed here.
Guidelines
1: Robust debate is encouraged, angry arguments are not. This sub is for people with a wide variety of views, and as such you will come across content, views and people you don't agree with. Political views from a wide spectrum are tolerated here. Engagement in antagonistic, uncivil, abusive, or harassing behaviour (including personal insults or group-based attacks) will result in action being taken against your account.
2: Anything not specifically concerning politics in the UK or geopolitics involving the UK will be removed.
3: Link submission titles should use the headline of the article / content (or the full, unaltered text of the Tweet including the author's name) being submitted, and should be changed only where it improves clarity or is absolutely necessary. Please use a link to the original publisher where possible. Including "body text" on a link submission will result in your submission being removed. Your personal opinion should always be expressed in the comments - not elsewhere.
4a: News articles older than 28 days may be removed. If an older article has relevance to events being discussed today, you should outline this argument in a self post that links to said article. On days where events move particularly fast, moderators may remove outdated news regardless of age.
4b: Long form journalism published more than twelve months prior or before significant developments to the topic it discusses should be submitted as part of a self-post detailing why it is relevant today.
5a: Articles from paywalled sites should be linked to directly, and a copy/paste of the article text provided in the comments. Full credit to the author and publication should be given. Some websites may have different conditions applied due to copyright issues or differences in the design of their paywall, and result in automated instructions being sent which explain how to submit their content correctly.
5b: You may use an archive site instead of copy/paste, but only if a copy/paste is not suitable for the paywalled content (e.g. if there are a number of supporting charts / diagrams).
5c: Articles which are submitted from non-paywalled sites should not be copy/pasted as a comment.
6: Links to "live" pages (i.e. pages where the content is frequently updated with new developments) are not permitted and will be removed.
7a: Tweets are acceptable, so long as they are from journalists, pollsters, politicians and so forth. Tweets from random members of the public are not. This is auto-moderated as per our whitelist, but tweets from non-white listed accounts may be approved depending on context and notability. Tweets submitted to the subreddit must include the author's name (or organisation name) as stated on the Twitter account at the start of the submission title.
7b: Twitter posts which do not contribute substance or contain reactionary commentary regardless of author will generally be removed as "hot takes". However, exceptional circumstances aside, tweets from sitting MPs are not likely to be removed.
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23: These rules are not exhaustive, moderators reserve the right to moderate (or not) where it is felt to be appropriate. Past moderation decisions are no guarantee of future mod decisions. Rules are subject to change without notice.
/r/ukpolitics
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Weekly Rumours, Speculation, Questions, and Reaction Megathread - 02/02/25
👋 Welcome to the r/ukpolitics weekly Rumours, Speculation, Questions, and Reaction megathread.
General questions about politics in the UK should be posted in this thread. Substantial self posts on the subreddit are permitted, but short-form self posts will be redirected here. We're more lenient with moderation in this thread, but please keep it related to UK politics. This isn't Facebook or Twitter.
If you're reacting to something which is happening live, please make it clear what it is you're reacting to, ideally with a link.
Commentary about stories which already exist on the subreddit should be directed to the appropriate thread.
This thread rolls over at 6am UK time on a Sunday morning.
🌎 International Politics Discussion Thread · 🃏 UKPolitics Meme Subreddit · 📚 GE megathread archive · 📢 Chat in our Discord server · 🇬🇧 What Britain looks like after Brexit
06:01 UTC
Settled, industrious, essential: it’s time we saw immigration as a British success story | Martha Gill
01:40 UTC
Podcast RENTERS RIGHT ACT 2025
23:59 UTC
Why do we not protest about how ridiculously UK govt. keeps on increasing the amount and ways of taxing people?
Literally in everything they have taxed twice or thrice. Let's take Vinted, Etsy or eBay now. The money which was taxed been used to buy a product with some more tax and now when we sell it, we gotta give tax again? That's really ridiculous. This is just one of the example. They have been taxing everywhere similarly for everything. Earning money or even breathing in the UK turned into crime. Where is all our tax money going to? To dig holes in the same road every week or two over and over again? Even if they are using it for any good, these many taxes is normal for everyone? When will we start telling them? Thought this is a democratic country?
23:49 UTC
Does it really matter which political party is in power
No matter who's in power it doesn't really seem to make a noticeable difference to anything, so does it really matter who's in power? The biggest change in general life that I notice is prices but I don't think the governing party really has much of an effect on that? I mean what does the prime minister and the party as a whole even do, like what are they actually doing in their offices each day? I'm clearly very new to politics, so if someone could explain to me this it would be very helpful, thanks.
19:14 UTC
Democracy Vouchers, Would it Work in the UK?
In British Politics i think all sides would agree that trust in politics has been eroded and that's, at least in part, due to the money in politics. The big donors that fund political parties often these donors may be from foreign interests then we have things like cash for peerages or scandals over who is giving what to political parties.
I stumbled across a potential solution to this and was wondering what others thought. It is by no means a perfect solution but I think it would be better than the current situation where money buys influence in politics.
So this is what i would do....
Ban all donors, the only way a political party can make money would be through "democracy vouchers" issued by the state. Each individual registered to vote gets issued with a £25 voucher (just as an example) and each year decides witch political party their voucher goes to.
The numbers on this are I think are quite compelling, at £25 for all on the electoral role that would be about a £1.2Bn cost to the taxpayer however its fair to assume that not everyone would use their vouchers. Now If we just assumed that for example the 9 Million folks who voted Labour at the last election gave their vouchers to Labour that would actually be about £225 million. More than enough to run a political party of a year and way more than the annual cost of running the party (you can check their annual report online)
The cost to the tax payers is obviously the biggest disadvantage but the benefits could be huge. It would stop the wealthy buying access to our politics, politicians would be held more accountable to the people because if parties do not support or enact policies the people want the people can withdraw funding. It also has a huge benefit to smaller parties, take ReformUK for example (if that's your flavour of politics), they might walk away with only 5 seats but they would benefit form the funding of their supporters. Another interesting idea is that when it comes to voting someone might want to vote lib-dem but tactically goes with say the SNP, under this system lib-dems might not get the vote but they get the funding. It would also i think make people more engaged in politics when they're thinking about where to send their voucher.
The more and more i think about it the more benefits i see for the voter once we get over the annual cost to the tax payer.
Curious to get the thoughts of others?
14:59 UTC