No PR or the BNP will get seats

[Cammelia]

!!

Countries do tend to swing to the right with the advent of PR. This is particularly dangerous is Britain as we have a 70/30 left bias and the Conservatives are the only right wing option.

I'm going to start a progressive right wing party to fill the void. Who wants to join me .

I shall carry on in good right-wing tradition by having non-doms (me) pay a key role.

To be fair, claig, the Le Pen thing was a bit of a freak of the French voting system, they have mulitple ballots to elect the president and he ended up being the only other one left in. But otherwise, yeah, true.

What policies would a progressive right-wing party have, frakked? Socially liberal but financially conservative?

This is interesting, examples of what would have happened under various PR systems.

Anyone know, does any country actually use pure PR?

Blimey, flowerybeanbag, someone spent a lot of time working all that out!

I know! Isn't it marvellous what you can find on t'internet? Highlights the reduced need to do one's own research on a subject - someone else has always done it already...

NZ has mixed member PR
I did essays on it prior to it coming in while at uni there

Europe has shown how to deal with far right parties.

Let them be elected then let them fail spectacularly.

Austria - Haider was perhaps successful but after his death there were a LOT of allegations came out about him.

Germany - Far Right coalition government in Hamburg fell apart after the "law and order" party leader was caught taking cocaine and partying all night with prostitutes.

The problem with these parties is that they are often headed by megalomaniac who shoot themselves in the foot when given a tiny bit of power.

The 5% rule works very well and if a party gets more than 5% then it should be represented in parliament, no matter how distasteful we find them.

To say that the Nazi party would get into power if they got 5% is absolutely ridiculous, for the simple reason that they are banned in Germany. And any party spouting Nazi paroles would be too.

PR is exactly the reason the BNP have MEPs. Definitely a reason not to vote yes for PR in a referendum.

But you can have PR with the prerequisite of a 5-10% rule. Eliminate the lunatic fringe easily.

Exactly Winky.

And if they get in with slightly more than 5%, then let them in.

That is what is called democracy.

Let them in, most extremist parties are absolutely HOPELESS at governing. They truly truly are.

They do not often keep their seats for a second period.

BUT with PR parties like the Green Party would have a fairer chance. And they would introduce ideas and policies that would benefit the country.

Flowerbean that is pretty much what I worked it out to be.

In terms of the BNP thing it has all been said really. There is the possibility of a threshold system and the simple fact that there are nasty folks out there and if we want a democracy we have to accept that they are citizens too and have a vote. If the BNP got a significant majority then Britain really would be broken and it would be nothing to do with the voting system. Similarly if a predominantly black and Asian neighbourhood got a BNP MP then whose fault would it be? It would hardly be the system's fault unless the LibDems-Cons are planning on a return to an electoral system where not only voting education (as DF argued against in her infamous thread) for minorities are stopped but also where it is illegal for minorities to vote. If they don't do that and a BNP candidate got in as described then it would be the fault of the people in that region for not bloody voting.

the BNP got 6.2% at the European Parliament Election. 10% is perfectly plausible too.

Well, you know what if the people want them in, revolting though they are, what we are supposed to say? You can't speak because we don't agree?

BNP have nothing now in the UK. No council seats. Why is that? People know they are clowns after a term.

They don't worry me. I think the British people are an amazingly tolerant lot generally but the majority just won't stand for racist bull.

Are there any other parties that should be shut up?

I think that if we had a proper, decent system of voting that held MPs directly accountable there would be an awful lot fewer votes for extremists.

It's always said people voted BNP because they felt desperate....you'd have to, wouldn't you?

Pretty much, heathen!

Right wing economic policy but a certain amount of welfare support and social liberalism. An economically pragmatic centrist party?

I haven't really thought about it. It just sounded like a good idea (in my head) given that I consider myself fairly right-wing but see why we need a welfare state, am fairly socially liberal and economically conservative., pro-Europe but not a doormat... It depends how you define right-wing across a whole range of things really.

I only invented it because I took the voteforpolicies test and it told me I was pretty much split down the middle!

FrakkedUpTheElection, it also depends how you define progressive

YEs, and neither will any other small party.

Very true! The Conservatives are for keeping the status quo (essentially) and not supporting people towards change then I'm for change and enabling people to make positive changes.

Lyndon Johnson has one of my all time favourite quotes:

"You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, ?you are free to compete with all the others,? and still justly believe that you have been completely fair. Thus it is not enough just to open the gates of opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates. This is the next and the more profound stage of the battle for civil rights. We seek not just freedom but opportunity. We seek not just legal equity but human ability, not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result."

In many ways I don't consider the 'welfare state' to be truly progressive as it doesn't provide an incentive for people to change or the tools for them to change things for themselves and I think there are a lot of things the government does need to do for people that they don't do yet. Does that make sense?

The BNP stops PR, how does that make sense.