I strongly believe we need a new political system in the UK.

[Theemeperorsnewclothes]

The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer. It’s always been this way. The Tories have really f upped because the middle classes are feeling the pinch of their disgraceful profiteering from covid. Labour won’t be much better as they are still too far right to make it right. Linda on the council estate is not your enemy. The big corporations who are using the Russian/Ukraine war are. Until a government steps in and actually advocates for the individual we are all f…ed. There is no political knight in shining armour coming to rescue us anytime soon. We need to change the political system in the UK. We need better representation, who actually stand a chance of winning.

that would represent the people’s wishes, as many have said we are now in a situation where one party has overall control but voted by only 30-40% of the electorate

How are UKIP and the Green Party comparable? One has hateful agenda, the other is working towards ideals that are inclusive and attempting some moral good outcomes I.e saving our environment!

Of course more people will vote against someone than for them. That will be true in any system where more than 2 candidates are allowed to stand. Even in a gradual-elimination setup where earlier rounds narrow down the field to two candidates for a head-to-head run-off, both final candidates will have more people that preferred someone else than they have actual first-choice supporters.

That's the point of the "let that sink in"

The problem with democracy is that you also have to give the vote to racists and extremists.

There are more people voting for extremist right wing parties than for the Green party because mainstream parties do have reasonably credible and balanced environmentally conscious policies so you can consider yourself Green without voting Green. But the mainstream parties can never get right-wing enough for those extremists.

The advantage of the FPTP system is that highly marginal extreme views that go against the majority of popular opinion will very rarely get enough votes to win a single constituency, and the mainstream parties have a strong incentive to seek a middle ground that appeals to the average of mainstram opinion rather than the extremes.

Under PR if 5% of the population are racist bastards then yoir legislative body has 5% racist bastard members. Under FPTP so long as those 5% are evenly distributed among all constituencies they will never get a seat.

Yes, but a fringe party with a handful of seats should never be a problem.

You never watched Borgen then? What about May's deal with the Ulster Unionists?

Why don't we have real FPTP ?

You want to win. you need more than 50% of the entire electorate. (Not just the people who vote). If you can't get that then you can either play PR with second and third choices or just not have an MP at all. After all, if half the electorate don't want a single candidate, then go without.

If people act like children (and when it comes to politics it seems we aren't past the toddler stage) then we should be treated as such.

I can have other ideas if you pay me more 😀

PR does not work on the basis of elimination - you're describing a transferable vote system which in many ways is even worse than FPTP for the reasons that you explain.

Of course democracy gives votes (and possibly seats) to parties that some people might define as "extreme" and whose policies are contrary to "the majority of popular opinion." Anything other than this is not really democratic.

But here there are two obvious problems.

What one person defines as "extreme" might seem to be perfectly acceptable and desirable to someone else. Certain mainstream politicians have been quick to define climate protesters as "extremists." The current government has passed legislation that bans protests, attempts to remove the right of assembly and gives the police powers to act against anyone or any organisation that the goverment disapproves of - which is about as "extreme" as you can get in a so-called democracy.

"The majority of popular opinion" is likewise not something that is easily defined. The current government defends its policies as being "the will of the people" based on their mandate achieved with the votes of only 29% of the electorate, while opinion polls (and quite likely the upcoming election) show that they do not have the support of the vast majority of the electorate. There comes a point at which a government ceases to have legitimacy - my personal opinion is that the Conservative government is sailing very close to this point (hence their urgency to limit human rights and make protests illegal) - but for the sake of clarity, the issue would be equally valid regardless of which party was claiming legitmacy based on the votes of a very small minority of the electorate while ignoring the views (and votes) of the vast majority.

Reading this full thread and the post above is the exact reason the " fringe" parties are doing so well here and across Europe and the US.
Most are talking like a dictatorship in that you want to alter the voting system to exclude certain members of society even if that group may be a large percentage and getting larger ( Le Penn )

Orban in Hungary is now talking about a pact with Eastern block nations as the EU will not listen to them.

You can end up with the exact problem you set out to try to fix

The advantage of the FPTP system is that highly marginal extreme views that go against the majority of popular opinion will very rarely get enough votes to win a single constituency, and the mainstream parties have a strong incentive to seek a middle ground that appeals to the average of mainstram opinion rather than the extremes.

I think you've got that the wrong way round.

FPTP has not encouraged political mainstreaming in the UK. It usually gives one party an absolute majority when their overall support may be a marginal majority or even a marginal minority.

PR just makes for ineffective government if you ask me. Most of the European governments seem to spend their time in paralysis because of the constant requirement to trade of policy to gain parliamentary support rather than actually implementing policy that changes things.

Fringe parties have their effect on UK politics, the way they do this is by forcing the main parties to adapt their policies to secure votes.

I think the Greens efforts to raise the profile of environmental issues are laudable and they have caused both Labour and the Tories to shift their policy on this towards a more green agenda. I'm not sure that the Greens are the sort of people I would want making policy issues on a lot of other things though because they have little experience and a lot of their ideas on non Green issues are crazy IMO and don't really stand up to scrutiny. In fact most of the small parties struggle to put together meaningful manifestos. I prefer them where they are. Outside parliament yet still impacting policy.

Do we all agree on one point - that if you don’t bother to vote you are saying ‘I don’t care who wins’

So if you don’t have mandatory voting then you still end up with upset because even with PR you could be the second largest vote but be outgunned by the third, fourth and fifth placed parties who form a ( voting ) coalition.

I can’t remember the exact statistic, but it was roughly that in 50 years of forms of PR in Italy, there’d been 32 governments.

FPTP has not encouraged political mainstreaming in the UK. It usually gives one party an absolute majority when their overall support may be a marginal majority or even a marginal minority.

The current government was elected with the votes of less than 30% of the electorate, and only 43% of those who actually voted and yet had a Parliamentary majority of 80 seats. The vast majority of the electorate were effective disenfranchised while the "elected dictatorship" set to work destroying public services and making everyone (except their donors and chums) poorer than they were 14 years ago.

PR just makes for ineffective government if you ask me. Most of the European governments seem to spend their time in paralysis because of the constant requirement to trade of policy to gain parliamentary support rather than actually implementing policy that changes things.

Even with an 80 seat majority, the Conservatives have been paralyzed by internal divisions under FPTP.

PR requires cooperation and compromise, which means that effective government generally involves a lot less extremes of policy. Problems with some EU governments at the moment are through general weakness of leadership rather than something inherent in their PR systems.

Do we all agree on one point - that if you don’t bother to vote you are saying ‘I don’t care who wins’

Well I agree.

However I would (and just have 😀) suggest the way to counter this is not to resort to mandatory voting, but just to require a winner to get more than 50% of the available votes.

You can bet your life that if Reform or the Communist party actually had to work to court 50% of the electorate, you'd get much more moderate and accessibly policies.

Dodgy coalitions aren't a a given under PR. Remember for all their faults, the LibDems published a formal coalition agreement with the Tories in 2010. This removed a lot of the back room dealing and gave some clarity and transparency..

@GasPanic "PR just makes for ineffective government if you ask me. Most of the European governments seem to spend their time in paralysis because of the constant requirement to trade of policy to gain parliamentary support rather than actually implementing policy that changes things."

As someone who has lived for many years in three different European countries I can confidently say that this is not the case - unless you have some facts to back up your opinion.

"I think the Greens efforts to raise the profile of environmental issues are laudable and they have caused both Labour and the Tories to shift their policy on this towards a more green agenda."

"Fringe parties have their effect on UK politics, the way they do this is by forcing the main parties to adapt their policies to secure votes."

There are countries in Europe that actualy have ministers from the Green party and where the governments have been forced to consider environmental issues.

The main parties in the UK have only adopted and adapted the policies of some fringe parties out of fear of losing votes - most notably the Conservatives' policies on immigration - but also because of entryism. None of the major English parties has incorporated much of the Green agenda into their manifesto (the Conservatives are actively opposed to almost everything "green") and even where these parties do make promises in order to gain votes, these promises are soon forgotten once the party has been elected.

The UK has achieved more carbon reduction than any other European state, without having a single green candidate. There is a lot of negative things you can say about our current politicians but the green agenda has actually been very successful.

@SerendipityJane However I would (and just have 😀) suggest the way to counter this is not to resort to mandatory voting, but just to require a winner to get more than 50% of the available votes.

You can bet your life that if Reform or the Communist party actually had to work to court 50% of the electorate, you'd get much more moderate and accessibly policies.

Assuming that you mean 50% of votes in a constituency, then there are very few constituencies where the winning candidate gains over 50% of the votes cast.

Your model would actually result in an exaggeration of the current situation - there would only be an option of voting for one of two parties, since no other party would stand any chance of winning. In a 3-party constituency (e.g. where Lab, Con, and LibDem all had a similar percentage of support) how would you allocate the seat?

How does this resolve the issue of governments being formed based on the votes of around 30% of the electorate?

How would you ensure that the views of the minorities (which might be as many as 49.99% of the electorate) are taken into account?

Why should people be forced to vote if the only choice is between "Dumb and Dumber" - which in many constituencies is already the current situation? Why should they be forced into endorsing one or other party of which they don't approve?

How will the country ever change from the hegemony of two established but out-of-touch parties if the barries to change are even greater than they are today?

I suspect you are working under the misapprehension that a failure of a candidate necessitates another way of choosing a candidate.

As far as I am concerned there is no necessity (although I did suggest a way forward) , and maybe, just maybe if a constituency can't come up with someone they trust to be their representative, then no representative is sent. And it would be up to the constituents to live without an MP.

The biggest bar to progress in any age has been "it's all about me". Maybe people need to learn it isn't.

Scotland and Wales have had PR since 1999.

During that time Wales has had a Labour government since 1999 and Scotland and SNP government since 2007.

Both stuck with parties in power that the majority didn't vote for.

Why do you think PR for the UK will suddenly change things.

It won't.

@SerendipityJane As far as I am concerned there is no necessity (although I did suggest a way forward) , and maybe, just maybe if a constituency can't come up with someone they trust to be their representative, then no representative is sent. And it would be up to the constituents to live without an MP.

Your "50%" rule would have resulted in just 37 MPs (out of 650) being elected in the last election. Of the 30 seats where the winner had the largest majorities with over 50% of the votes, 20 were Labour wins and 10 Conservative. Your Parliament would have no other parties.

How does that improve democracy? How does that ensure that the views of the electorate are reflected (and better reflected than now) in the resulting Parliament?

I think "democracy" and politics" share the same relationship as "justice" and "law".

Here's one :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010%E2%80%932011_Belgian_government_formation

No government for 600 days. I don't think it has gotten any better since then.

Others have pointed out similar issues. So for example the dysfunctional nature of Italian politics where they have had a huge number of governments over the past 30 years, with presidentially appointed technocrats because no clear decision on who can govern can be reached.

PR tends to lead to endless fighting between parties as the vie for support and power with each other. Most of their time is spent trying to placate other parties rather than actually implementing policy (some might argue that governments effectively being powerless is a good thing).

FPTP actually allows governments to get on with implementing policy and to me is far better in a time of crisis when decisive action is needed. That policy is not always what I want. But I won't be crying to change the system because I believe it works and is effective.

I strongly believe we need to take a long, hard look at who is getting into the position of being selected for all parties, why they got there, and why other people didn't. Or are never coming forward to be considered. As the guy commented on Question Time the other day, the candidates we have very obviously are not the best the UK has to offer, most of us meet better candidates in daily life all over the place, with more life experience, more diversity of thought, more practical expertise, and without pre programmed ideology or personal hobby horses.