Brown To Seek the Support of the Lib Dems

[kopite]

I`m pretty clueless when it comes to politics but have been watching the Election with great interest.

I have a question though. THe lib dems really want proportional represenation which from what I can gather means whoever gets the most votes should be in power so in the case of this election that would be the tories.

If lib dems do now form a coalition with labour and whoever else will get into bed with them that isnt that making a mockery of it all by letting the party with the lower vote stay in power?

[Lucio]

I'm not happy about this news in the slightest, whilst that idiot Brown was still "in charge" we had a chance of a government that'd at least represent a majority of the people, now we're faced with the spectre of another 5 years listening to Labour's crappy politics...

[Saracen]

....

I have a question though. THe lib dems really want proportional represenation which from what I can gather means whoever gets the most votes should be in power so in the case of this election that would be the tories.
....

Not really, no.

Firstly, whatever we get won't be true PR. It'll be something more proportional than we have now, though. Probably.

Second, there's about half a dozen (at least) voting systems that are usually grouped together as "PR" and a critical issue would be which one? They all have strengths, and they all have weaknesses.

Then, to get legitimacy, surely we the people need to approve the new system? So, are we going to be given a choice, or a conjuring trick, you know, pick a card, any card? If we get offered one alternative system, then someone has already stacked the deck.

But .... if we get offered a choice, then the inference is that the electorate are going to have to try to get their brains round the implications of AV (alternate vote), AV+ (a modified form of AV, with a regional topslice), STV (Single Transferable Vote), and so on. Good luck with that. When you can;t get many of the population to take in enough about politics to even know who Nick Clegg is, let alone what his party actually stand for, good luck trying to educate people and the intricacies of the voting system.

Yet, if we don't give them the choice, it's going to be decided by politicians, each of who, is likely to be putting narrow party self-interest above all else. After all, if this system rather than that gives one party an advantage (and nearly all systems have that implication), then you're asking a proportion of the party disadvantaged to vote for their own redundancy if they back that system? Turkeys and Christmas, anyone?

What the true PR principle means is that a party gets the proportion of power, in the form of seats in the Commons, that they got as a proportion of the vote. 36.1% vote Tory, they get 36.1% of the 650 seats on offer. Labour get 29% of the vote, they get 29% of seats. This time, the vote would end up wit the Tories as the largest single party, so they're in the driving seat, if you like, but they can only go where they can get enough agreement to go.

To be sure to be able to do anything, they need to be able to carry the vote, which means other parties either voting with them, or at least abstaining, on an issue by issue basis. Sometimes, that'll be easy. Other times, it'll be impossible, and the minority "government" will have to accept it just can't do that. And on yet other occasions, they'll only be able to get "this" is they give enough other parties a fair "price" to agree to it.

The upside, therefore, is that the principle is that the make-up of the Commons reflects the proportions of views in the country, but the downside is that it curtails what government can do, slows everything down to back-room horse-trading (like we're seeing at the moment over who forms the coalition), and we the people will not get to know what the price paid for support on a given issue actually was.

Of course, not being able to drive through promises might mean that manifesto commitments won;t happen, and it certainly gives any party a good excuse for why what they promised never materialised (not that Labour seem to need one for broken promises so far). On the other hand, "decisive" government and whopping majorities aren't always a goods thing. Would we have gone to war in Iraq under a PR system? With the well-known view of the LibDems, if their seats in the Commons had been in proportion to their percentage of the vote, it's hard to see how that war could have happened .... or not with us involved, anyway.


As is so often the case, there are good things about PR and bad things. Once you decide precisely what flavour and form of PR you mean, that is.

[Dingo]

Labour always F'''' up, shame the majority of the population hadn't thought so until now!!

[peterb]

Labour always F'''' up, shame the majority of the population hadn't thought so until now!!

Except that the majority of the people didn't think so (in previous elections) - Labour won on FPTP (as have the Conservatives in previous elections)