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Politics

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AV or not ?

334 replies

theoldbrigade · 20/04/2011 19:00

Thoughts please.

OP posts:
GiddyPickle · 06/05/2011 12:02

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Wordwork · 06/05/2011 12:15

The AV campaigns (pro and anti) have surely shown that constitutional reform isn't very effectively managed as a party-political football.

In countries with a written constitution, proposals for constitutional amendment are generally treated very differently from the passing of other laws. There are procedures to take the debate to some extent outside the normal run of party politics.

But in the UK, several constitutional changes were made (e.g. fixed-term parliament) when the coalition first came into office without any procedures that would insulate such changes from gerrymandering by the parties; the decision to hold a referendum for AV rather than making that change alongside the other constitutional changes was an ad hoc political one; and most devastatingly there were no procedures in place that might have encouraged the referendum to be conducted with a wealth of neutral information -- for example there was no state-sponsored provision of neutral public-information broadcasting and so forth. We simply don't have a political culture that empowers us to reform a largely decadent political system from outside, rather than allowing its participants to conduct reform in a self-interested way from within.

I don't know how we might go about establishing that kind of external point of leverage, or what form it might take (we wouldn't for example want to give too much power to judicial constitutional oversight). I'm guessing that countries only manage to develop robust written constitutions during (or, rather, immediately after) times of very great crisis -- Germany after the war, for example. Short of very intensive crisis in the UK I think we are completely screwed. British politics is broken.

GiddyPickle · 06/05/2011 13:02

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Wordwork · 06/05/2011 13:09

But it is broke, and I think that most people do feel that is broke. But they react by withdrawing -- either into apathy/nonparticipation, or into nonparliamentary politics (new internet-led forms of protest for example).

Many people defend the status quo by speaking of the 'decisiveness' of 'majoritarian' politics. But we don't have a decisive system. We have a system whose electoral politics corners parties into fighting over a few hundred thousand centrist votes influenced by a media-led focus-group issues. So we lack parties with coherent, principled manifestos.

GiddyPickle · 06/05/2011 13:29

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edam · 06/05/2011 22:57

Giddy, I didn't notice any horror or outrage last year - apart from Ian Hislop on HIGNFY. Most people were irritated or amused at the sight of befuddled politicians who didn't have a clue what they were supposed to be doing. (Not that they usually do, but they usually manage to keep up the pretence.)

GiddyPickle · 06/05/2011 23:04

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Missingfriendsandsad · 07/05/2011 05:56

Its a mess, let's face it, its a carve up between two main parties. Keeping an election system that guarantees that is the real politician's fix.
If only the 35 - 60% of people who don't vote had their own party, none of them would be able to play.

Missingfriendsandsad · 07/05/2011 05:57

Where's our childrens' hospital, nurses, police and body armour Dave?

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