Quizzes & Puzzles1 min ago
Election Predictions
650 seats, 326 is a win. My prediction is:-
Conservative 102
Labour 418
LibDem 82
SNP 20
Reform 5
Others 23
I am probably massively wrong. What is your prediction ?
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Labour got 10.2 million votes in 2019 (32.1% of the vote)... and got one of the worst results in its history. Last night it got about 33.9% of the vote and has one of the biggest majorities in its history!
this makes no sense. our voting system does not give every vote equal value. we should not allow this ludicrous system to continue. it is a joke and our country would be better served by PR
PR produces coalitions. i think it makes sense for groups which actually represent the desires of voters to make compromises. i think that is much more democratic than what we have now. Labour have one third of the vote and two thirds of the seats in parliament!! call it what you want that isn't democracy. it is minority rule.
Paralysis is sometimes preferable to the plague of boils we've endured these past years.
Something different has to be tried and the purely self-interested will just have to regroup for the fight back, relying for the moment on the cushy wee directorships they've been lining up for themselves to get by.
Any sort of system has strengths and weaknesses. Any sort of PR system has major weaknesses related to likely outcomes.
First is the almost neverending series of hung parliaments and coalitions (and much time negotiating them) and we've all had experience of how bad those are.
Next is the fact that without a single group with majority control it is difficult to get needed legislation through in order to enact the desired solutions, since oppositions like to oppose even if they know the intended actions are worth trying.
Governments of PR are likely to mostly be middle of the road ones, bumbling on with the same so so policies without any enthusiasm (or ability) to try something drastic. It is all weakness and ineffectual.
Whatever the issues with FPTP the resulting parliament can, if desired, get things done.
And if a minor party wants to be better represented then it knows what it has to do, and that is to reflect the actual views of the constituents in the constituencies where they are standing, to the level where they are first choice for that area.
"PR produces coalitions. i think it makes sense for groups which actually represent the desires of voters to make compromises."
If yesterday’s election had been held under PR, the number of seats held by each party would be as follows:
Lab: 221
Cons: 156
Ref: 91
LD: 78
Green: 46
SNP: 20
Others: 38
How on Earth could the country be governed with a Parliament of that composition? Who would the Monarch invite to form a government? Who would be in that government?
Almost every major policy decision would be thwarted by opposition. There is no realistic combination of the parties which would see the 326 votes needed to secure a Parliamentary majority. There would be endless bickering and arguing and anything which did eventually pass muster would be hopelessly watered down in the name of “compromise”. The HoCs would be in a permanent "hung" state with no realistic government and no stable opposition.
To get an idea of what PR can do, look no further than Italy. Since 1945 that country has had 69 governments, with an average duration of a little over 13 months. The Economist’s “Democracy Index” lists it as a “flawed democracy” noting that “…a high degree of fragmentation and instability, leading to often short-lived coalition governments, is characteristic of Italian politics….”
So it would be in the UK. Just looking at the top five parties in the above table, it is inconceivable that any three of them (which would be necessary for a Parliamentary majority) would form a regular consensus on major policy issues. There would be constant negotiations between them and the 58 remainder to get the simplest of measures through The House.
In the last 100 years there have been four hung Parliaments in this country and none of them fared well. The first, in 1929, resulted in the Liberal Party holding the balance of power and Parliament was virtually castrated. It lasted two years and resulted in the formation of a “National Government” which was a Coalition of Labour, Tory and some Liberal MPs. The next, in 1974, lasted just eight months. The third, in 2010, resulted in a wretched Coalition. It took a week before The Queen was able to invite Mr Cameron to form a government and for the following five years, everybody got what virtually nobody wanted. The last, in 2017, was the result of Mrs May’s decision to go to the country to secure a larger majority in the midst of the Brexit debacle. It resulted in the “confidence & supply” agreement with the DUP’s ten MPs.
IF PR was to be introduced the UK Parliament would be in a permanently “hung” state. As you might imagine, I don’t like the result of the General Election one bit. But it has provided for a stable government which is unlikely to be distracted from its aims by Parliamentary bickering.
Instead of considering a system which would almost certainly lead to permanent Parliamentary castration, the electorate simply needs to be educated in the benefits of FPTP and that a contest where there are more than two participants will always produce more losers than winners.
