10 May, 2010

You're witnessing "tail wagging the dog" politics

PR leads to hung parliaments, horse trading and fringe interests getting undue authority. That is what we are seeing at the moment.

We are in the middle of an economic crisis and a major conflict, we have a society overly dependent on borrowing and on welfare yet what is the so called "deal breaker"? A change to the voting system.

The only party which has a long standing commitment to change the voting system is the Lib Dems and they lost seats at the General Election. The voters spoke and they said that voting reform was not their top priority, yet it has now become centre stage in the negotiations.

This is a classic example of one of the main floors with PR.

6 comments:

Adam said...

Is "floors" an intentional pun? Or did you mean "flaws"? :-)

Jimmy said...

I'm glad to know that FPTP does not lead to hung parliaments.

This is a classic example of what happens when you supress 15-25% of the electorate for 30 years - they demand a fair number of seats in parliament - however uncomfortable that might make our two-party dictatorship.

Accept a fair voting system and get on with solving the rest of the problems with the first government that reflects the views of over 50% of the population since the war.

Excalibur said...

PR simply doesn't work. Italian politics over the last 30 years is a prime example of everything that's wrong with it.

Jimmy said...

FPTP doesn't work either. 13 years of Labour rule is a prime example of everything that's wrong with it.

If stability is all you want let's use the Chinese system.

Alex Hens said...

I thought this post from Stephen Fry summed it up very well. http://www.stephenfry.com/2010/05/09/stalemate-pr-and-pr-ice-cream-bananas-and-fudge/single-page/


And I hope you don't really think (not deep down) that the drop in the Lib Dem seat count was anything other than a demonstration of how the Conservative backing mass media can so heavily skew true democracy?

Hell - even one of your own, Michael Portillo, is everywhere explaining why PR actually has to be the only fair and democratically right approach.

Appreciate the party machine wouldn't allow you to think, or at least say, any different, but I do hope the reality that Mr Fry foresees doesn't come to fruition - and I hope that deep down you recognise why that is.

Excalibur said...

The people have spoken - the only party proposing PR as an option polled only 23% of the vote. Enough said.