UK Election 2015 (part II)

[kabayiri]

Have these people forgotten that there was a referendum on changing it in 2011, and the result was a comprehensive vote to stay with the current system ?

That suggests to me that the country doesn't think the current system is too broken.

Everyone can agree that something is broken, but they may not agree on a replacement if it disadvantages them in some way.

The current system worked pretty well in maintaining a 2 party system. Bring in more parties and the cracks begin to show.

 

[matthewr]

Twitter.

I suppose that's all they've got left to do.

Yes! It's the same with that new fangled Televisualbox as well.

 

[SteveG]

The SNP currently have fewer votes than the Liberal Democrats but nine times more seats. Democratic? I don't think so!

Slightly fewer votes despite standing in less than 10% of the seats.

 

[KC Cantiaci]

I cannot help but notice throughout this thread that a number of posters are suggesting that the electoral system is "broken", and needs changing. It's possible that this cry will be taken up more generally, although I don't think there will be many clamouring for it from within the House of Commons.

The last time this happened was I think after the 1974 election, when the Liberals under Jeremy Thorpe polled nearly 20 percent of the vote but only ended up with 14 MPs. This caused a hell of a fuss, and meant that changing the system entered the Liberal manifesto, where it remains, AFAIK. We now have yesterday's result, which inolves one party polling 13 percent of the vote with 1 MP, and another polling 3.8 percent of the vote, also with 1 MP.

I think it was Churchill who said that FPTP was the worst possible system, apart from all the others. It certainly has failings, but these are mitigated where there are relatively few parties (ideally, less than three). With more parties gaining popular traction in spite of the system, the failings become less tolerable.

Everyone with an opinion assumes that PR is the answer. But here in the UK, we like having MPs with a constituency link, and this makes any form of PR unnacceptable, not to mention over-complicated, and ultimately undemocratic, as the machinations required to form a government, far from enhancing representation, invariably amount to a conspiracy against the electorate.

I therefore think we should adopt the Henderson method.

I think FPTP was a good solution back in the day when there were less people, much slower communications and less technology. Constitutional representation for areas was a valuable part as the make up of the country was very different. But in today's world of globalisation, fast comms and technology with people being more specific as to their views, it's showing itself as outdated. How can the SNP get 1.45m votes (4.7%) that transforms into 56 seats (8.6% of parliament) whereas UKIP get 3.87m (12.6%) votes, which is over 2.66 times more, yet just get 1 solitary seat (0.15% of parliament)? This is undemocratic surely.

I also believe a PR based system would mean less/no disenfranchisement and less tactical voting. Another positive aspect is that the parties could put their best representatives into parliament as opposed to the ones that happen to be in safe seats. If you look at what's happened today, some of the big hitters have fallen by the wayside so it seems like we're losing some of the top men and women from the HoC.

 

[tqineil]

Tricky first test for Cameron comes tomorrow when his favourite team, Aston Villa, play his favourite team, West Ham

 

[KC Cantiaci]

I'm all for a different approach in different parts of the UK to address different needs. For example, the pressing concern in London/SE is to build a lot more houses, relaxing the planning constraints.

As it stands at the moment, net subsidy to Scotland is about £14.6bn per annum. If that were to end overnight there would have to be something like 15p in the pound increase on income tax rates up there. This is not going to fly obviously. As long as oil stays below $100bbl the situation is unlikely to improve significantly.

Set against that £14.6bn, things like free University education and free prescriptions is just a redirection of the net subsidy.

You say it won't fly but I thought the SNP want it? If they had independence, this is what they would have faced without support of the rUK. Like I said, the SNP have the best of both worlds at the moment. The only way to put an end the seemingly never ending question of Scotland going independent would be for the SNP to try and run their own economy and see how they do. It's a safer option for the people of Scotland than full independence.

 

[Helmut]

Tricky first test for Cameron comes tomorrow when his favourite team, Aston Villa, play his favourite team, West Ham

Russel Brand to the rescue!

 

[davidge]

Have these people forgotten that there was a referendum on changing it in 2011, and the result was a comprehensive vote to stay with the current system ?

That suggests to me that the country doesn't think the current system is too broken.

What we were offered was AV (which reallocates votes within a seat until someone reaches 50%) and not PR (in which the MPs are 'voted in' in accordance with the % vote their party achieved) as the Conservatives did not want to lose out and for some reason the LibDems went along with this (a decision they may now be regretting).

To quote the Electoral Reform Society:
"AV is not proportional representation and in certain electoral conditions, such as landslides, can produce a more disproportional result than First Past the Post (FPTP)"

It is no wonder it was rejected as it was really only slightly better than FPTP whilst being more complicated to understand when voting.

 

[Jo Sharp]

Possibly yes... and to get on my hobby horse it fills me with hate and anguish to think that a majority of people are so greedy and selfish that they would see food banks expand, more people made homeless, people in such financial jeopardy as to top themselves, the NHS cut back to the bone etc.... rather than maybe pay an extra tenner a week in taxes for the good of ALL the UK's people. "I'm alright Jack. fcuk you" is the new national mantra, first formulated by Thatcher who is probably celebrating down in hell with her new apprentice satan...

Strange, as the tories will spend 8bn more on the NHS than labour had planned. The NHS has never been under threat of cuts; that is just labour spin. Tory govts have always increased health spending in real terms.

 

[Tony L]

The Conservatives will never vote against a system that enables them a total dictatorship with a little over a third of the vote. In this election they got 36% of the vote share vs. Labour's 30%, i.e just six percent is the deciding amount, and around two thirds of people voted against each party (i.e. neither deserves outright control). This is not a democracy in any credible sense of the word and we now get to suffer a five year Bullingdon Club tyranny because, for some reason that entirely escapes me, one third of a two third turnout (i.e. about 18-20% of people) actually wanted it. A truly preposterous and inequitable system!

 

[doctorf]

The NHS is fvcked and I suspect it will make very little difference which party runs the show.
The Red boys chuck money at it and the Blue boys think they can control it by micro-management and spin. In the absence of unlimited clinicians in the UK it can only get worse.

 

[matthewr]

Strange, as the tories will spend 8bn more on the NHS than labour had planned.

Because the Tories were able to use a Magic Money Tree to produce the £8bn and if Labour had tried that we would never have heard the end of it.

But the issue of the NHS is not really the funding, it's the "reforms". You know like they promised not to do last time but did anyway only for it to be so ****ed up they had to sack the guy responsible and do something else. And allowing access to the NHS to private sector, predominantly US, healthcare companies

 

[wacko]

The Conservatives will never vote against a system that enables them a total dictatorship with a little over a third of the vote. In this election they got 36% of the vote share vs. Labour's 30%, i.e just six percent is the deciding amount, and around two thirds of people voted against each party (i.e. neither deserves outright control). This is not a democracy in any credible sense of the word and we now need to suffer a five year Bullingdon Club tyranny because, for some reason that entirely escapes me, one third of a two third turnout (i.e. about 18-20% of people) actually wanted it. A truly preposterous and inequitable system!

Perhaps but PR (depending on how it is implemented) could have delivered a result where the Conservatives would now need UKIP to form a Government.

 

[Tony L]

Because the Tories were able to use a Magic Money Tree to produce the £8bn and if Labour had tried that we would never have heard the end of it.

At lest we get to see the twunts' magic money tree now. Oh, wait...

 

[SteveG]

Perhaps but PR (depending on how it is implemented) could have delivered a result where the Conservatives would now need UKIP to form a Government.

I'm not a Tory voter, but I'd rather have a Tory majority under FPTP than a Tory/UKIP coalition under PR.

 

[Tony L]

I'm not a Tory voter, but I'd rather have a Tory majority under FPTP than a Tory/UKIP coalition under PR.

The Tory and UKIP vote share would still be below 50%, just. It would have resulted in a safer situation for the country as a whole than we are in now. It would also have been fair and legitimate. The current situation is anything but.

 

[stephen bennett]

Expect 'free' schools to be sold off one by one - we'll end up like Sweden - who appear to have realised they were a really bad idea.

So it seems that those punishing the Lib Dems and Labour in Scotland have let the Tories in. I live in a small island of red in a sea of blue - can someone airlift me some Marx?

This is really the worst outcome IMHO - I thought another right wing coalition or contested left coalition was going to be bad, but unfettered Toryism - well, not sure I can use any other smiley than..

Question though - will the Tories be able to get a EU referendum through? Will pro - EU Tories vote against? It's a slim majority and likely to be slimmer in two years.

Stephen

 

[Mark EJ]

I think FPTP was a good solution back in the day when there were less people, much slower communications and less technology. Constitutional representation for areas was a valuable part as the make up of the country was very different. But in today's world of globalisation, fast comms and technology with people being more specific as to their views, it's showing itself as outdated. How can the SNP get 1.45m votes (4.7%) that transforms into 56 seats (8.6% of parliament) whereas UKIP get 3.87m (12.6%) votes, which is over 2.66 times more, yet just get 1 solitary seat (0.15% of parliament)? This is undemocratic surely.

I also believe a PR based system would mean less/no disenfranchisement and less tactical voting. Another positive aspect is that the parties could put their best representatives into parliament as opposed to the ones that happen to be in safe seats. If you look at what's happened today, some of the big hitters have fallen by the wayside so it seems like we're losing some of the top men and women from the HoC.

I agree heartily with much of that, but disagree that PR is the answer. Indeed, this discussion tends to revolve around a FTPT vs. PR axis, and it doesn't have to -- there are alternatives to 'pure' FPTP which fix many of its problems without resorting to PR, which is simply a horse-traders' charter and often ends up serving nobody well except the politicians themselves, and could well be part of what that Welsh woman would call "prrrawgrrrairsssiff"... (decode: "hard left").

I am about to start a separate thread on the 'Henderson Method' for consideration. No doubt I will be called a stinking wacist, etc.

 

[SteveG]

So it seems that those punishing the Lib Dems and Labour in Scotland have let the Tories in.

Add 50 seats to what Labour got and they're still 50 short of the Tories, so it's little to do with what happened in Scotland. Instead it appears to have been a more general rejection of Labour as a party. Perhaps if there was a credible socialist alternative to Labour in England we might have seen the Labour party rejected even further than it was. Although interestingly I was listing to a few labour commentators today who appeared to be putting the problem down to Labour having moved too far to the left under Milliband.

The LibDems got what the deserved for selling out those who voted for them in 2010 so only have themselves to blame.

 

[Blzebub]

The NHS is fvcked and I suspect it will make very little difference which party runs the show.
The Red boys chuck money at it and the Blue boys think they can control it by micro-management and spin. In the absence of unlimited clinicians in the UK it can only get worse.

They both chuck money at it, in equal amounts. The problem is there aren't enough doctors, and a sizeable percentage of home-grown ones have gone to Oz to get away from the disastrous "Modernising Medical Careers".