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18 comments:
PR then, TB?
Glad to see you'll be supporting Labour's call for a referendum on FPTP, then?
V. interesting . . .solution?
Hi TB, good to bump into you Friday night.
I am sure electoral reform is on agenda for DC. I read that a modest re-drawing of boundries would give us 30 more seats.
Also if the West Lothian Question gets answered, (50 extra seats for English votes) Labour will not have any influence on English politics again.
Lalala "Things can only get better" lalala
LABOUR'S call?!?!!! Get out.
Last time I checked, Labour was in government and hanging on for every last breath of this parliament. If Labour was calling for a referendum on FPTP, it would call a referendum on FPTP.
I hope the Tory party will now support PR as you do!
Let's try getting rid of Labour's rotten boroughs first. :)
The biggest complaint about against PR is the way closed lists favour cronyism and removing the local factor of representative democracy.
However, the spectre of multi-disgraced Peter Mandelson's many returns - including his present position of vast influence with no democratic mandate whatsoever - shows the current system is no longer any barrier to obscene levels of cronyism.
As for the representative democracy; the antics of Labour, parachuting in former SpAds and Wonks to safe seats, and also DC's eerily Blair-esque penchant for CCHQ approved A-lists and woman-weighted shortlists, show there's not much to be said for the ideal of a Parliament of local representatives these days.
The real problem with PR is they lead to weak-as-piss governance with little chance of instigating effective and important reforms. They also mean the BNP would probably secure themselves a few seats at the big table.
"hypnoticmonkey said...
Last time I checked, Labour was in government and hanging on for every last breath of this parliament. If Labour was calling for a referendum on FPTP, it would call a referendum on FPTP."
As long as Brown is PM and Labour was calling for a referendum on FPTP, Brown would bottle it and cancel.
Wow - the Tories only turn to electoral reform when they realise it's unfair on THEM, despite the fact that the electoral system's been unfair to everyone else since its inception centuries ago, despite a number of 'reforms' throughout the 19th century...
If you guys do get in, will the next five years see policies as selfish as this?
this is why everyone hates the lib dems they twist peoples words.
there is more to reform that the weak PR.
All up for reform though. Reducing the number of MPs and making every constituency of the same size to within 1000 for starters. then an elected lords.
Get a grip TB! Are you seriously suggesting that Highland constituencies should have the same electorate as inner London?
What you're proposing is a gerrymander of the tallest order. Then again, you guys do have form in this field. East Renfrewshire, East Dunbartonshire, or Stirling Councils anyone?
So long as the system doesn't have some multi-member aspect, gerrymandering will always be too much of a problem.
Hughes.: It's a good thing that PR doesn't require closed lists then. In fact neither AV+ or STV, which are the only forms of PR that prominent supporters back for Westminster, use closed lists (STV doesn't use lists and AV+ uses open lists).
We only think it leads to weak government because we're used to the British system where a hung parliament is seen as a disaster. Plenty of European countries that have parties similar to ours do fine with coalition government (and don't bring up Italy, PR isn't the culprit there.)
Those who say that coalitions are undemocratic forget that parties themselves are coalitions of the willing; coalitions between parties actually shed light on the factions that exist within them.
As for the BNP, well, this is one reason I support single transferable vote. Extremists don't attract transfers. Voters for mainstream parties AND voters for other small parties would transfer enough votes to keep the BNP out, in most cases at least.
Besides, the real problem with the BNP is not what they do when they're elected (experience on councils shows that they are too incompetent to do much of anything) but the ideas that lead people to vote for them - those need to be fought by all of us no matter what electoral system is in use.
TB: If I remember correctly, a reduction in the number of MPs is actually Lib Dem policy.
Stuart are you suggesting rural and urban types differ in value and thus should be represented differently??
All constituencies should contain the same number of people. Simple as.
And Ross, Cameron has committed to reducing the number of MPs to 500. A good start.
Well said, Stuart, let's entrust democracy to Labour, whose record of abusing their own massively flawed postal voting system wasdescribed by one judge as electoral fraud on an industrial scale, meant that here in the UK we had to have the shameful indignity of international election monitors supervising ballots.
A shining example for the whole world! I wonder where Hamid Karzai looked for his standards of electoral integrity?
It seems to me that if you want a proportional system of represetation you're best off with... proportional representation.
Simply saying 'it's not fair, we're not as well spread as you' doesn't really cut it.
In the interests of fairness can we uninvent the systems currently thought of as being Proportional Representation? Which are anti-democratic nonsense.
Did I mention I used to be a LibDem? Like John Bercow I'm on an epic political journey.