It might have passed the rest of the world by, but there has been a general election in the UK resulting in a hung parliment, where not one party holds enough seats to command a majority. This is a problem when there are 3 or more strong parties in a country. At the moment these are horsetrading with each other to see if any can join up to form a majority.

To simplify, there is one right wing party (Conservative) with more seats and popular vote than any other and two centre-left (I would say centre) parties (Labour and Libberal Democrats) which together would command more votes and share of the votes than the right wing Conservative party alone. They could also collaborate with a few more minor centre left parties to command a majority. However what is happening at the momement is that the 3rd party the centre left Liberal Democrats has given the right wing Conservatives first chance for talks to form a government. I don't think this will come off, but it will be almost totally against the wishes of the Liberal Democrat voters if they do, who largely hate the Conservatives as do Labour.

It is suggested here that we can learn a lot from the consitution in New Zealand which have have procedures and conventions which come into effect in the event of no single party gaining a majority.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politi...10/8665835.stm

This is the most interesting statement

It stresses that there should be a level playing field. That is to say, silver and bronze can band together to beat gold, and the party with the biggest number seats does not get to go first in attempting to form a government.

Don't be fooled into thinking proportional representation leads to fair or effective government, this country implemented Mixed Member Proportional representation (MMP) to spite politicians and I would be incredibly surprised if we do not return to First Past the Post at the first opportunity to get rid of MMP.

Under MMP all we have successfully done is replaced "Tyranny of the majority" with "Tyranny of the minority" where governments are kept in power by parties with 5-10 seats in parliament and collapse if they don't get what they want, further to this we have parliament that is 50% comprised of people that were not elected, it is not inconceivable that we could end up with a Prime Minister and cabinet made up entirely of people that never received a single vote.

My suggestion is that if you do nothing else you should avoid following our parliamentary procedures like the plague.

I'm a great fan of the first past the post on the grounds that it forces politicians to be accountable and visible at a local level. It enables voters to select the person they like the most, or the policies that they agree with the most. The party that has selected the best (most popular) representatives wins and gets to form the govt. So my voice is one of 40-50K people, as opposed to 45-50 million, where I'm simply part of the background noise, now I have a politician accountable to me - supposedly!

Originally Posted by Partisan

I'm a great fan of the first past the post on the grounds that it forces politicians to be accountable and visible at a local level. It enables voters to select the person they like the most, or the policies that they agree with the most. The party that has selected the best (most popular) representatives wins and gets to form the govt. So my voice is one of 40-50K people, as opposed to 45-50 million, where I'm simply part of the background noise, now I have a politician accountable to me - supposedly!

Sometimes it can be better since it leads to strong government, but strong government is a nightmare if everyone else hates them.

The big disadvantage is that you could have two parties that approximately believe in the same thing but their vote is divided which means they get very few representatives despite having more than half of the popular vote between them. This is hardly democratic.

Now our Prime Minister has just announced he will resign in the near future, the Conservatives immediately caved in to the Liberal Democrat demands for something called an alternative vote + referendum in the hope they will form an Alliance with them to create a majority. This is something which will heavily compromise the number of Conservative representatives in a future election. Labour have already offered AV+ so it looks as if some sort of PR will happen now.

The right wing has never achieved a majority of the popular vote in the UK but has got elected merely because the left was divided, this partly led to the move to the centre ground by the left to capture more votes.

Originally Posted by perseus

Sometimes it can be better since it leads to strong government, but strong government is a nightmare if everyone else hates them.

The big disadvantage is that you could have two parties that approximately believe in the same thing but their vote is divided which means they get very few representatives despite having more than half of the popular vote between them. This is hardly democratic.

Now our Prime Minister has just announced he will resign in the near future, the Conservatives immediately caved in to the Liberal Democrat demands for something called an alternative vote + referendum in the hope they will form an Alliance with them to create a majority. This is something which will heavily compromise the number of Conservative representatives in a future election. Labour have already offered AV+ so it looks as if some sort of PR will happen now.

The right wing has never achieved a majority of the popular vote in the UK but has got elected merely because the left was divided, this partly led to the move to the centre ground by the left to capture more votes.

Whilst I am not a fan of any of the parties (major or minor), my big fear about PR is, as I've already said I'm part a huge mixing pot, whereas a locally elected MP, who has a majority in his constituency, has to engage with the constituency to gain that. That is not so with a PR elected individual.

Also I know that some countries manage this well (ish) - Germany, but some countries manage it badly - Italy, I know that given the capability of our politicians and perfidiousness of our Civli Service we would trend more to the latter than the former. Truly we are Lions led by donkeys, what is worse is we let them do this double dealing in front of us without a murmur - time to take something more than kebabs from Greece and get out on the streets, but that's easy for me to say as I"m not there - for the reasons stated above.

my big fear about PR is, as I've already said I'm part a huge mixing pot, whereas a locally elected MP, who has a majority in his constituency, has to engage with the constituency to gain that. That is not so with a PR elected individual.

The method proposed by the Labour party to the LDs is the Alternative Vote + which creates single member constituences, bear in mind there are about 10 versions of PR, some are a hybrid between true PR and first past the post.

Under AV+, most candidates are elected from single-member constituencies under the Alternative Vote (AV), also known as the instant-runoff voting system. An additional 15–20% of candidates are elected under the regional party lists. Like the Additional Member System (AMS), AV+ list seats are allocated to offset the disproportionality created by the single-member constituencies. Unlike AMS, with 20% or fewer of legislators elected from party lists, AV+ would not achieve full proportionality, but would correct some of the disparity caused by single-member-district elections. List candidates are elected on open lists, meaning voters have a role in choosing which particular candidates on the party lists are elected. This helps address criticism that AV+ would create two classes of legislators: one with individual mandates and one without.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_Vote_Top-up

Originally Posted by perseus

The method proposed by the Labour party to the LDs is the Alternative Vote + which creates single member constituences, bear in mind there are about 10 versions of PR, some are a hybrid between true PR and first past the post.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_Vote_Top-up

The problem with PR is not the method of voting it is with the party lists, what you end up with are lists of party "faithful" (biggest contributors and MP's that will not survive an election) who are put high up on the party list so they end up in Parliament without a mandate.

The only PR system I kind of liked (aka the best of a bad bunch) was Single Transferable Vote.

The argument against First Past the Post is that it disenfranchises those who vote for the minor parties, the problem with PR is it disenfranchises those who vote for the major parties as none of them ever get enough to form a government and are held hostage by minority parties.

The Single Transferable Vote is the form of PR the Liberal Dems were in favour of because it benefits the party the others hate least rather than like best. Alternative vote+ is a halfway house between that and first past the post.

Anyway there will be a referendum on some form of alternative vote as a condition of the coalition. This coalition formally started last night, probably the most unlikely marriage since the Ulster Democratic Unionists and Sinn Fein!

Funnily enough this turns out to be the first time anyone I have ever voted for in 30 years of voting has ended up in power, and I am furious at the result. LOL!

Looks like Britain's new government may reflect a changing attitude in Europe. The citizens may be more interested in government fiscal responsibility than social programs.


"Reporting from London
The Conservative-led government that got down to the business of running Britain on Thursday is the latest manifestation of a rightward tilt of politics across Europe."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...,0,72445.story

The shift to the right, underway for several years, has persisted despite the near-meltdown of the global financial system and the worldwide recession that followed. Rather than punish the right for the failings of unbridled capitalism, voters have turned to conservative parties to fix the situation, analysts say.....

Except the Labour government have been in power for 13 years. In practise they embraced the Thatcherite capitalist policies which led to the crisis.

Although the Conservatives did not win a majority of either the national vote or seats in Parliament, they easily outperformed their rivals. Now in an unexpected coalition government with the left-leaning Liberal Democrats, the Tories have prevailed over their junior partner on the matter of spending cuts.

The Liberal Democrats and Labour differ only in detail, if they could have amalgamated votes they would have crushed the Conservatives. The voting system they advocate would have effectively achieved a similar object. And indeed don't forget that 80% of the press were pro-Conservative and we were going through an International crisis which always gets blamed on the incumbent government

Rather than a simple move to the right there seems to be a worrying trend of voting in 'pretty boy 40 some thing's with good PR skills: Blair, Cameron, Clegg. 'Right winger' Milliband (Hilary's idol) will no doubt win the election for Labour leader. I doubt if any of them were as competent as Brown who has been demonised by the press and doesn't perform too well in public. The new TV election debates didn't help in this respect.

Sorry, but I partly blame this on women voters, who always have a tendency to vote Conservative despite receiving most benefits and equality from Labour. As a left wing female political commentator said, they are like Turkey's voting for Christmas.