To think that there will be little option but to change the current First Past The Post system after this election.

[OneNight]

The prospect of change may well have been rejected in 2011 but I am reading some new figures which estimate that in this general election, under the current UK FPTP system, the average MP could be elected with less than 46% of the votes cast. (Edinburgh West could well be won with just 25% of the votes on current predictions.)

This can not be good for democracy and I have noticed even people on this board questioning whether they'll bother to vote at all under the current system. I'm sure that voter apathy with voter turnout below 70% since 2001 could well be a result of some people thinking that their vote simply could not count.

I can't see how any party could credibly reject a change although they may well wish to argue on the shape that any change might take.

Re: Upper house.

I've always thought an upper house compromised of the candidates who came second in the parliamentary election would be a simple mechanism to reflect the fact that the winning candidate had some opposition.

Winner goes to House of Commons, runner-up to House of Lords (or House of Losers) where they get review and approval powers pretty much in line with the present House of Lords.

It'd never happen though. Far too simple and inexpensive.

Apart from the exceptions mentioned above, the actual date of the election was the decision of a Prime Minister within a time frame but the choice boiled down usually to May or October. (I thought it was 4 years max but I might be wrong.)

I'm a cynic and thought at the time that Osbourne was gambling that bank shares would take 4-5 years to recover enough so he could flog 'em off in time for this GE and be able to boast that he'd fixed the economy.

Economies are cyclical. Everybody knows that, if you take control of a government in a recession, then you've only luck on your side if things are looking up when the next poll arrives. What's happening now, is that nobody is making any claims about anything. It's just a let's suck it and see, election. But, if anyone here is a real Keynesian, I'm game for hearing a spending plan!

I prefer first past the post. Where you have proportional representation, you get permanent gridlock and the statistics show that voter turn out is lower in systems with proportional representation because your vote is much less likely to affect a change. You end up with a bunch of parties horse trading with each other and voters can only hope to see a slight change in the proportions of the mix. In the end voters get the feeling that "nothing ever really changes" and voting is a pointless exercise. Of course, small parties like it. It is their only chance.

With first past the post, you generally get a clear outcome. And it behooves parties to move to the centre ground if they wish to hold power rather than spin off to the fringes looking to find a unique constituency as happens with PR. Again, I like that. A focus on the middle, rather than the fringes.

Finally, I think FPP isn't working well at the moment for two reasons:

1. The constitutional arrangement between the nations is out of whack, and there is not a reciprocity of rights and responsibilities. Those chickens are now coming home to roost.
2. The voting districts have not been adjusted in a Loooong time, to the point that it sometimes looks like gerrymandering. Those advantaged by the unfair districts of course oppose a redrawing, but for the sake of democracy it must be done.

I notice in the news today that Israel now has a government seven weeks after their election.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-32618192

One complained that an extreme right coalition, under Netanyahu, was not nationalist enough. OK.

And now Netanyahu governs having won a quarter of the available seats and having brokered a majority of one.

I thought it was 4 years max but I might be wrong.

Five years. Major's (April 1992 to May 1997) and Blair/Brown's (May 2005 to May 2010), both slightly over five years. Close behind would be Thatcher/Major's (June 1987 to April 1992) and Wilson/Callaghan (October 1974 to May 1979), both a few months short of five years.

The voting districts have not been adjusted in a Loooong time, to the point that it sometimes looks like gerrymandering.

Blame the Lib Dems. They took the huff over Cameron campaigning against A, and in revenge blocked the changes to electoral boundaries (more accurately, blocked the reduction in size of the Commons to 600, which obviously involved huge amounts of boundary changes. Not being the sharpest tools in the political box, and clearly not having memories extending back to the mid 1970s that don't involve shotguns and dogs, the Lib Dems didn't think to get an agreement on how the Tories would campaign, because they were so happy to get a referendum at all. Revenge, in this case, is not necessarily a dish best eaten cold, because the effect of the Lib Dem's petulance is to favour Labour.

A => AV.

Namechange. Thanks for jogging my memory. Perhaps 5 years didn't seem so very long back then!

Also, correct me if I'm wrong on this one too. Didn't the Cons and Dems both agree to campaign for a Yes vote in the AV referendum?

enochroot

Also, correct me if I'm wrong on this one too. Didn't the Cons and Dems both agree to campaign for a Yes vote in the AV referendum?

You couldn't be more wrong.

LibDems wanted a referendum - ideally with PR as the choice.
Conservatives (who traditionally - let's see how long that lasts) have been fiercely opposed to any form of electoral reform agreed to the referendum as the price of coalition, but reserved the right to campaign against it. Which they did. With Labour.

Personally, I view that as a much more grown up and nuanced approach to government (which requires a more grown up and nuanced electorate to appreciate). Two parties with differing views managed to work out a compromise, and yet keep their political integrity. It may have seemed a little odd to those unfamiliar with the notion of compromise, but it actually did the trick, in the sense that we've had 5 years of a government.

In 1975, the Labour government gave the public a referendum on whether to stay in Europe. However they campaigned for (and were sure of) a NO vote. They lost. Big time. And it's worth remembering that anti-Europe sentiment was worse then, believe it or not. (I know - I was at school and bullied badly).

The Lib Dems wanted PR and by that token coalition politics.

When we got coalition politics all the LD voters bitched and whined about it. As I'm sure they will if there is another coalition.

And so did lots of other people who didn't like coalition politics who are now saying PR is the solution.

PR stops independents standing for individual seats, meaning you have to join a party and campaign on a larger level to have any hope of a single seat. Which means that there is a limitation on who can stand. At present if you can cobble along the £5k deposit you have a chance of being elected. Which is less elitest in some regards.

I think the thing for me is, all the electoral reform stuff misses the point. Its an easy thing to complain. The trouble is, you could change the system, but you'd still be stuck with the out of touch career privileged politician that every feels doesn't understand or represent them.

And that's the crux of the problem rather than the electoral system imho.

I rejected AV because it's a crap system and a Yes for that would have meant no more change for ages.

At least the No vote has left the door open for proper PR, and I suspect it will come ever closer with every Coalition government.

Didn't the Cons and Dems both agree to campaign for a Yes vote in the AV referendum?

No.

In 1975, the Labour government gave the public a referendum on whether to stay in Europe. However they campaigned for (and were sure of) a NO vote.

That isn't what what happened. Wilson (Prime Minister) suspended collective responsibility, and allowed factions to campaign against each other. But Wilson campaigned firmly for staying in, as Healey (Chancellor), Callaghan (Foreign Secretary) and of course Roy Jenkins (Home Secretary). That's the four offices of state going for "Yes".

The No campaign was mostly the party's self-indulgent left (Benn himself, Foot, etc).

It simply isn't true to say that Labour campaigned for "No": the leadership of the party were firmly in favour of Yes. Wilson's mistake was to indulge Benn and his allies for fear of splitting the party on other matters. With hindsight, that indirectly gave us 15 years of Thatcherism. The 1979 election would have gone to the Tories whatever, but 1983, 1987 and arguably 1992 were fought by a divided and unelectable Labour Party. Had Wilson called Benn's bluff and told him to form his own party to fight for leaving the EU we would have been spared the creation of the SDP and had a Healeyite (Dennis, not Gerry) Labour government through most of the 1980s.

Marx, starting from a quote by Hegel, writes in "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon" that history happens twice, once as tragedy, once as farce. Benn's decision to rip the Labour Party to pieces over EU membership was a tragedy. Farage is just farcical.

I think the thing for me is, all the electoral reform stuff misses the point. Its an easy thing to complain. The trouble is, you could change the system, but you'd still be stuck with the out of touch career privileged politician that every feels doesn't understand or represent them.

easily solved by creating a limit on how many terms an MP can stand.

My (US based) brother met his local senator who noted that the US system was similarly riddled with career politicians, which was something the founding fathers never intended - they envisaged people stepping up to do their civic duty for a term or two, then returning to everyday life.

No US president can serve more than 2 terms.

Of course the counter argument is that politicians who can't seek re-election become incautious. But using the US example, with the exception of Cuba, Obama has hardly gone loco.

namechange0dq8

thank you - I was 9 at the time .

Of course the overweening irony is that it was Conservative Edward Heath that took us into Europe. Without a vote. Something it seems the Tories have felt they have needed to exorcise ever since.

I would prefer to see voting made compulsory (and voting conducted on the weekend) than AV or PR. I think it would have a far bigger impact.

This is from the coalition agreement of May 11th 2010

"The parties will bring forward a Referendum Bill on electoral reform, which includes provision for the introduction of the Alternative Vote in the event of a positive result in the referendum, as well as for the creation of fewer and more equal sized constituencies. Both parties will whip their Parliamentary Parties in both Houses to support a simple majority referendum on the Alternative Vote, without prejudice to the positions parties will take during such a referendum."

So I was mistaken about them agreeing to campaign for a Yes vote.

However, interestingly, the Labour manifesto in 2010 supported the introduction of AV via a referendum, to "ensure that every MP is supported by the majority of their constituents voting at each election".

No US president can serve more than 2 terms.

Actually, ten years less a day. If you become president more than half way into someone else's presidency, you can still be president for two full terms if you are elected. Johnson didn't get beyond the primaries in 1968, but he was not disbarred by the 22nd amendment even though had he been elected he would have served 9 years (1963 to 1972). Conversely, had he wished to stand for election, Gerald Ford could only have served one further term, as he became president less than two years into Nixon's second term.

If you watch the recent docudrama "Coalition", it appears the Labour promise may have been designed to make a Lib-Lab coalition more palatable than a Lib-Con.

In the drama, the Conservatives are shown to be so against electoral reform, that it would be impossible for a coaliltion. That is until they believe that Labour might offer voting reform without a referendum.

Real life is a daily series of compromises. It's odd we believe our parliament should somehow be immune.

namechange0dq8

Thank you (again). Not being a native USAian, it's "big picture" for me (doubtless to the disgust of my US forbears ).

Tomorrow might be a day to reflect on this matter. Are people content that the result is 'fair' even though they're perhaps annoyed at what has actually happened?

Just watching the BBC and thinking that it appears that if we did have PR, we could expect the Torries propped up by UKIP. We'd be heading hard right and possibly right out of the EU.

I greatly prefer FPP. It encourages everyone to push towards the centre.

I live in one of the safest Tory seats in the country.There is no point voting.Why shouldn't my vote count as much as some There is absolutely no point voting.Why should my vote be worth less than that of someone living in a marginal seat?