Another unelected labour PM

[voteanythingbutBNPplease]

Gordon brown resigns.
So if LIb dems do deal with labour - ANOTHER unelected PM.

hmmm

haven't seen a single journo, politician or commentator attempt to argue that there is more natural LibCon synergy than there is LibLab synergy, but I've seen most of them arguing the opposite (including every single senior LibDem who's been authorised to talk to the press).

David Steel refused to indicate either way (as i said down the thread)

i really don't think there is that much in common policy wise (any more than labour have in common with the conservatives..). The Lds have opposed labour on many issues central to their core belief (detention without charge, ID cards, etc etc..)

my point stands. people didn't vote for a coalition that didn't exist before the election...they may be satisfied with either form after the fact...and the worst outcome for the LDs is that they don't reach an agrement with either and look like the party-poopers - that would lose them even more respect in the eyes of the voting public.

AV is a system where you rank the candidates and when your top preference is eliminated you move onto your second preference.

It's sort of STV but keeping the same constituencies, if that makes sense?

Did you read the whole thread Policywonk - 'cause you certainly took my post out of context.

AV - alternative vote - it is the system they have in Australia. Eliminate the one with least votes and redistribute their votes according to their second (alteriative vote) preference

Greensleeves - d'ja reckon?

Fembear, I'm not saying that it's impossible that the LibCon deal could come off. It's perfectly possible that some sort of limited arrangement could me arrived at, I suppose. I was arguing Edgar's (I think?) point that Lab and Lib supposedly have much less in common than Lib and Con - I just don't think that's true.

What's Clegg been doing? He was doing exactly what he said he would do, before the election. Presumably trying damned hard to get an agreement. Behaving entirely honourably IMO.

Another one here who thinks WetAugust should apologise to MMeLindt. Off to play up my own end now.

Not just AV but AV+??
(goes off to google AV+..)

I'm still really about AV. It's even more distorting than FPTP even though it eliminates tactical voting and it totally locks out smaller parties unless they get an outright majority like Caroline Lucas did.

I agree with EdgarAllenPole. I don't think people voted for a hung parliament or that they voted for a specific coalition. The hung vote merely reflects the fact that we are in difficult times and there is a real split of views on what the best way is to deal with the current situaion unlike anything we have ever known before.

I vote for a referendum. There's never been a referendum in my lifetime - I want to try one of those!

Aussienq, I did read the whole thread and I remember thinking that I wasn't sure which side you were coming down on Sorry if I misinterpreted.

Frakked up - lots of systems lock out smaller parties. Even full on PR systems often have rules which mean that parties with say less than 5% of the national vote can be ignored - it's how you keep out loonies and the BNP.

He hasn't offered it, he has offered a referendum.

Yes, AV is a shite system from what I've heard.

They did vote for a hung parliament, Aussie - did you see the polls before the election? More than 60% thought a hung parl would be best outcome, IIRC.

The thing is that even though we elect a local MP and not a PM,most people elect an MP in the knowledge that he/she will support a party which is being led by a particular person.The leader of the party sets the tone and has a big say in policy and will also be on the world stage as our country's leader so it does have a big part in people's voting intentions to to not acknowledge this is to be naive.

No party can deliver PR ,there is no majority in Parliament to carry a vote for PR ,in addition PR is complex and will take several years to bring in not least because under the Liberal's preferred version there will have to be a redrawing of the boundaries,bear in mind this generally takes several years to do and is currently already based on out of date census data because they have not been able to keep up with the last census.

Hague has now said that they would vote against any change in the voting system which does not involve a referendum and as Lib-Lab does not not have a majority in the House of Commons they will not get the change through ,Labour knows this and is therefore offering an empty hand.

AV+ is AV but with a top-up vote from a regional list.

It doesn't actually exist yet, we would be the first to use it. It's broadly proportional but you weirdly end up with 2 types of MPs: constituency and top-up.

No worries policywonk, I haven't actually expressed my political views - in some ways I'm just pointing out the same as you, which is that a lot of nonsense gets talked when sometimes it seems people don't realise the full implications of what they say or state that they want. Expressing my views on individual points and comments and policies does not necessarily require me to disclose my political allegiances - there is good and bad on all sides and if possible I'd give 60% of my vote to one party and 40% to another!

AV locks them out even more than a % bar on PR would.

AV is majoritarian and inherently skewed towards very large parties. It's a sop to the LDs because it makes the system fairer for them by turning it into a tripartite system

"there is good and bad on all sides and if possible I'd give 60% of my vote to one party and 40% to another! "

Aussieng - I agree...

I want to create my own political party so they'd all agree with me

bourbon, it's a fair point about figurehead/tone-setter I think. But it's not like GB was wildly popular and lots of people will now be thinking 'As, I wanted him to stay and now I feel all cheated' Much more likely that more ppl would have voted Labour had it been led by someone else IMO. So I just don't put as much weight on this issue as some people do I guess.

I think they could muster a Parliamentary majority for PR, just (assuming all Labour MPs were whipped into voting for it). But if it was a referendum, would it have to go to a parliamentary vote as well?

We'll have to agree to disagree on the hung parliament things Policywonk. I doubt many people allocated their vote in an actual attempt to achieve a hung parliament - if they had presumably the LibDem share would have been higher.

Ypu won't get Plaid or SNP voting for AV+ as it favours the large parties.They minght go for AV but most labour MPs won't STV will take years to implement,muti memeber constuencies,open or closed list could go on forever ,it will get completely mired in committee where MPs cannot be whipped so successfully

No time to read this thread. Just wanted to say the thought of a lib lab government with yet another unelected PM makes me feel literally sick. I really feel that labour have done enough to mess this country up and I cannot bear that there will be more of it.

Iain Dale points out this:
"How can you possibly go into coalition with a party whose leader you don't even know the identity of? What if a new Labour leader reneged on the terms of a coalition and called an immediate election on taking office? Have you thought about that? Well have you?"
which is a good point..