John McDonnell calls for proportional representation

[claig]

"John McDonnell calls on Labour to back proportional representation"

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-john-mcdonnell-proportional-representation-pr-make-votes-matter-protest-a7018056.html

I am not a Labour supporter, I prefer common sense, but it is sad to see them becoming increasingly irrelevant in Scotalnd and soon in Wales and soon never to win in England either.

The good news is the worse Labour do, the sooner they have to get serious and support proportional representation so that we all can get a government that reflects the people's will.

I disagree with the idea that PR gives a government that "reflects the people's will". It means we always get a coalition. PR supporters will add together the votes of the parties involved to show the coalition has majority support. The reality, of course, is different. As we saw with the coalition in 2010 many LibDem supporters and a significant number of Conservative supporters were unhappy with the coalition.

PR also means that a manifesto is a negotiating document, not a commitment. Of course no party every fully delivers its manifesto. Things change. But we can expect them to at least deliver a significant proportion of it. In a PR system they can always say that their coalition partners stopped them from delivering against their promises.

Most PR systems make it harder for the electorate to remove politicians they don't like.

Many politicians love the idea of a PR system because it reduces the power of voters and increases the power of politicians. I hope we don't get PR in the UK.

Did we not have a vote on changing our FPTP system a while ago? I doubt there will be another in the near future. Personally I would vote against PR, I don't think coalitions are an effective or efficient way to run a government and they definitely don't reflect my will.

This just reeks of labour's desperation. They can't get elected on their policies so next best thing is to change the voting system so they can be in a coalition - no thanks.

No Government with a working majority that has been elected under FPTP will ever offer a referendum on any alternative voting system.

However I could imagine the UK having it imposed on us by the ECJ at some point to assist.

Another good reason for voting LEAVE.

Don't pick the list system, it makes it impossible to remove someone the public dislikes. All of the constituency candidates go on the list, so even if Sturgeon had been voted out of Govanhill she was top of the SNP list, as were all the other party leaders on their list.

PR may not be perfect, but it's better than FPTP which is barely democratic. Do we really want a repeat of the 1951 general election*? Because under the Tories boundary reforms, that's increasingly likely.

Labour received the most votes and the largest share of the vote, but lost the election.

Its not "Tory Boundary Reforms" the Boundary Commissions are independent and the aim is to equalise as far as possible the number of voters represented by each MP and to reduce the number of MPs to 600. It started under a coalition and will complete under a Tory government and will fix the Labour bias created by the Labour party manipulation last time.

Do we really want a repeat of the 1951 general election

It happened in 1971 too, although that time it was the Tories who received most votes but lost the election.

Because under the Tories boundary reforms, that's increasingly likely

No it isn't. Under the old boundaries Labour could get an overall majority even when the Tories won most votes. The new boundaries may redress that imbalance. They are unlikely to tip it the other way.

The argument against PR is that it returns weak government. That argument ignores the fact that PR reflects the country. If we are a weak and divided people, we will have a weak and devided government. A strong majority in Parliament that can trample over the majority of the population may be easy government, but it does not work for the people.

If we had PR, then UKIP would have had 80 seats in Parliament after the last election. I think that is argument enough about why PR is such a good thing and reflects the true will of the people rather than the will of the BBC, Oxbridge and Eton.

I can only repeat, PR doesn't reflect my will, nor that of a lot of people and the BBC, Oxbridge and Eton has nothing to do with it.

'I can only repeat, PR doesn't reflect my will'

Is that because uou are, perchance, BBC. Oxbridge and Eton combined?

It may not reflect your will, but it reflects the will of the 4 million UKIP voters, the 1 million Green voters and just about every other voter apart from the Old Etonians.

Even Establishment favourite, Chuka Umunna, is now in favour of PR voting. That shows how desperate Labour are getting. If he has jumped from the Establishment ship and joined the clamour for PR from the people, then the Old Etonians' days are well and truly numbered.

Here are the words of the Establishment favourite.

"Britain's political system will stay broken without proportional representation, Chuka Umunna warns"

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/britains-political-system-will-stay-broken-without-proportional-representation-chuka-umunna-warns-a6861161.html

It is very good news that the Establishment favourite, Umunna, has joined the cry for PR becuse the Establishment never listen to the people and they certainly don't listen to Farage, their nemesis, but they are all ears for every profound politically correct pronouncement from their favourites like Umunna.

These are the words of Umunna, whom the Establishment and the BBC respect greatly and take very seriously, even if the majority of the public don't share their enthusiasm for the Establishment favourite

“Everybody is pi*d off with our democratic system, which is in crisis. They are disillusioned with it. Frankly that is what this campaign is about – it’s about fixing our democratic system,” he told the conference.

“Until we fix the system I don’t think we’re going to be able to do anything about that.

“It is not sustainable to carry on with First Past the Post: I honestly think that if we do not fix this there is a serious danger in the future that things will boil over when people don’t feel they have a voice.”

"Why does it take Nigel Farage to make the case for electoral reform?

Mehdi Hasan

OK, I’ll say it out loud. I agree with Nigel. Sorry, I can’t help it. For once, Farage is spot on. The UK’s “winner-takes-all”, first-past-the-post (FPTP) voting system is, to quote the Ukip leader, “totally bankrupt”.

In May’s general election, 3.8 million people cast their votes for Ukip – almost half as many as those who voted Labour and more than double the number who backed the SNP. Yet while Labour won 232 seats and the SNP secured 56, Ukip voters elected a single MP to parliament. So, too, did the Greens, despite amassing more than a million votes nationwide.

So why isn’t electoral reform a higher priority for the left? How can any self-styled progressive support an electoral system that denies millions of voters a voice in parliament – no matter how reactionary or regressive, in the case of Ukip, that voice is deemed to be?"

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/02/nigel-farage-electoral-reform-left-first-past-the-post-proportional-representation

Because the Establishment cronies didn't care that millions of voters were disenfranchised as long as they could keep picking up their expenses and could continue lecturing the people on the BBC. But now that they may never gain power again, they suddenly care about PR voting and democratic representation.

it reflects the will of the 4 million UKIP voters, the 1 million Green voters and just about every other voter apart from the Old Etonians

Which is, of course, why it was decisively rejected in the 2011 referendum. UKIP and the Greens may support PR (I haven't checked) but that does not mean everyone who votes for them shares that view.

AV was not proper PR which is precisely why it was put before the people by the Establishment.

Yes, the UKIP leadership and the Green leadership support PR and the decisive factor is Chuka Umunna, the favourite whose opinion the Establishment care about.

I understand all parties apart from Tory are now moving to support and push forward a PR system.

About. Fucking. Time.

Changing House of Lords to a PR body would solve 2 problems at once.

Also reduce the HoL to about 400 members (or how many can actually fit in the room at once).

That way we keep MPs tied to specific constitutencies with duty to represent needs of all there (even those who didn't vote for them). HoL body would represent the party views but allowed to bring own conscience into their votes, too.

claig
'I can only repeat, PR doesn't reflect my will'
Is that because you are, perchance, BBC. Oxbridge and Eton combined?

Haha no - I have no involvement with the BBC apart from occasionally watching one of its programmes, left school in 1961 at 16 to go to work so no university for me and my school was about as far apart from Eton as you could get. Nice try though.

It doesn't matter which parties want PR, they aren't getting it. As I said above we had a referendum in the not too distant past when an alternative to FPTP was offered and rejected, so we won't be getting another any time soon, especially (and fortunately) with the Conservatives in Government.

With a (hopefully) Out win at the forthcoming referendum we can safely ignore what the EU may or may not want with regards to our voting system.

I read one of your posts on another thread, claig, I can't remember which and I surprisingly agreed with every word you wrote. I was quite shocked and wondered if this was the start of a meeting of minds but no, I see we are back to normal in this thread.

'I read one of your posts on another thread, claig, I can't remember which and I surprisingly agreed with every word you wrote'

I expect it was a Trump thread. A lot of people have said the same about the Trump posts.

I'm totally for PR. The reason the last AV vote failed was because no one understood what was happening. With a proper campaign I think the public could get behind it.

The only problem is The Tories won't want it, therefore the right wing media won't get behind it and will shell out their usual misinformation. The corporate elite need a Government that supports their needs and Murdoch is their King.

Another reason why the most recent vote to change FPTP failed is because all major parties at the time, Tory, Labour and Lib Dem were firmly opposed to change. There was a lot of fearmongering surrounding "giving loonies like UKIP more power"

Now tables have turned and all major players want change.

*Make that all major players bar the Tories

'There was a lot of fearmongering surrounding "giving loonies like UKIP more power"
'
Yes this is the Establishment's standard way of operating. When they don't want something they all fearmonger and you find that all the Labour Establishmenf favourites and the Tories all agree on it.

It was similar when the LibDems held negotiations for a coalition with the Tories just after the Tories won in 2010. The Establishment probably phoned the LibDem stooges up and told them to use the tried and tested fearmongering routine of which the MPs are masters about the BNP and the LibDem MPs in the negotiation then duly dropped their demand for PR, the Establishment breathed a sigh of relief and the Tories opened the champagne, probably paid for by the public. And all of this even though the LibDems had pretended to the public that they were all for PR for years. They call it the Westminster bubbly because of the amount of champagne they drink (probably on expenses).