No PR or the BNP will get seats

The BNP stops PR, how does that make sense.

Very true! The Conservatives are for keeping the status quo (essentially) and not supporting people towards change then I'm for change and enabling people to make positive changes.

Lyndon Johnson has one of my all time favourite quotes:

"You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, ?you are free to compete with all the others,? and still justly believe that you have been completely fair. Thus it is not enough just to open the gates of opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates. This is the next and the more profound stage of the battle for civil rights. We seek not just freedom but opportunity. We seek not just legal equity but human ability, not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result."

In many ways I don't consider the 'welfare state' to be truly progressive as it doesn't provide an incentive for people to change or the tools for them to change things for themselves and I think there are a lot of things the government does need to do for people that they don't do yet. Does that make sense?

YEs, and neither will any other small party.

FrakkedUpTheElection, it also depends how you define progressive

Pretty much, heathen!

Right wing economic policy but a certain amount of welfare support and social liberalism. An economically pragmatic centrist party?

I haven't really thought about it. It just sounded like a good idea (in my head) given that I consider myself fairly right-wing but see why we need a welfare state, am fairly socially liberal and economically conservative., pro-Europe but not a doormat... It depends how you define right-wing across a whole range of things really.

I only invented it because I took the voteforpolicies test and it told me I was pretty much split down the middle!

Well, you know what if the people want them in, revolting though they are, what we are supposed to say? You can't speak because we don't agree?

BNP have nothing now in the UK. No council seats. Why is that? People know they are clowns after a term.

They don't worry me. I think the British people are an amazingly tolerant lot generally but the majority just won't stand for racist bull.

Are there any other parties that should be shut up?

I think that if we had a proper, decent system of voting that held MPs directly accountable there would be an awful lot fewer votes for extremists.

It's always said people voted BNP because they felt desperate....you'd have to, wouldn't you?

the BNP got 6.2% at the European Parliament Election. 10% is perfectly plausible too.

Flowerbean that is pretty much what I worked it out to be.

In terms of the BNP thing it has all been said really. There is the possibility of a threshold system and the simple fact that there are nasty folks out there and if we want a democracy we have to accept that they are citizens too and have a vote. If the BNP got a significant majority then Britain really would be broken and it would be nothing to do with the voting system. Similarly if a predominantly black and Asian neighbourhood got a BNP MP then whose fault would it be? It would hardly be the system's fault unless the LibDems-Cons are planning on a return to an electoral system where not only voting education (as DF argued against in her infamous thread) for minorities are stopped but also where it is illegal for minorities to vote. If they don't do that and a BNP candidate got in as described then it would be the fault of the people in that region for not bloody voting.

Exactly Winky.

And if they get in with slightly more than 5%, then let them in.

That is what is called democracy.

Let them in, most extremist parties are absolutely HOPELESS at governing. They truly truly are.

They do not often keep their seats for a second period.

BUT with PR parties like the Green Party would have a fairer chance. And they would introduce ideas and policies that would benefit the country.

But you can have PR with the prerequisite of a 5-10% rule. Eliminate the lunatic fringe easily.

PR is exactly the reason the BNP have MEPs. Definitely a reason not to vote yes for PR in a referendum.

Europe has shown how to deal with far right parties.

Let them be elected then let them fail spectacularly.

Austria - Haider was perhaps successful but after his death there were a LOT of allegations came out about him.

Germany - Far Right coalition government in Hamburg fell apart after the "law and order" party leader was caught taking cocaine and partying all night with prostitutes.

The problem with these parties is that they are often headed by megalomaniac who shoot themselves in the foot when given a tiny bit of power.

The 5% rule works very well and if a party gets more than 5% then it should be represented in parliament, no matter how distasteful we find them.

To say that the Nazi party would get into power if they got 5% is absolutely ridiculous, for the simple reason that they are banned in Germany. And any party spouting Nazi paroles would be too.

NZ has mixed member PR
I did essays on it prior to it coming in while at uni there

I know! Isn't it marvellous what you can find on t'internet? Highlights the reduced need to do one's own research on a subject - someone else has always done it already...

Blimey, flowerybeanbag, someone spent a lot of time working all that out!

Anyone know, does any country actually use pure PR?

This is interesting, examples of what would have happened under various PR systems.

To be fair, claig, the Le Pen thing was a bit of a freak of the French voting system, they have mulitple ballots to elect the president and he ended up being the only other one left in. But otherwise, yeah, true.

What policies would a progressive right-wing party have, frakked? Socially liberal but financially conservative?

Countries do tend to swing to the right with the advent of PR. This is particularly dangerous is Britain as we have a 70/30 left bias and the Conservatives are the only right wing option.

I'm going to start a progressive right wing party to fill the void. Who wants to join me .

I shall carry on in good right-wing tradition by having non-doms (me) pay a key role.

if people vote for it, it should be represented. better still, don't have representatives.

I think they are a threat. Look at similar parties in Europe. The Front National in France does not win power but Jean-Marie Le Pen came second in the Presidential election to Jacques Chirac. Also Jorg Haider was powerful in Austria, and I think the Swiss have a very right-wing powerful party. Pim Fortuyn did well in Holland and there are other examples. They are all more professional parties than the BNP. But it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that the BNP might one day transform themselves into parties like that.

I think - I hope - that getting an MP or two elected wouldn't really help them?
They haven't covered themselves in glory in their council seats, Question Time did them no favours... I'm not sure they hold up well to the searchlight (as it were) of public exposure.

So, they get a seat or five in Parliament and then... what? Are a real threat? If people want to vote for them their choice should be represented.

Stretch, a predominantly Asian area isn't likely to get a BNP MP, is it? Even if that happens, it may be that there are other people who don't trust/want their own MP who has been voted in by their neighbours. I am generally pro-Conservative but now live in a constituency where a total arse of an MP who fiddled his expenses big-time has just been re-elected. I voted Green

The Christian Party already exist and have candidates in many seats...

The BNP, IMO, are more of a threat because they are not 'exclusive' (not just for any one faith).

Jon Cruddas has a good article on how the FPTP system allows the BNP to thrive in safe Labour etc. seats.
here.

But yes, the BNP might get seats under PR (proper PR, not AV). But I don't think that's a good reason to shy away from it.

Here in the Czech Republic there's a 5% threshold, but it contributes to a "wasted vote" thing so I'm not too keen on it. I.e. people don't know whether to vote Green in the forthcoming elections or not, since opinion polls show them at 4% and people don't know whether they'll cross the threshold. (They used to have more, and were in the last government).

(I'm not suggesting that any party on a couple of % should get in, but just saying that a % threshold doesn't work well with opinion polls).