To PR or not to PR that is the question.....

[R1Geezer]

Ok let's just assume for a minute we had PR now I know the lib dems would love it but also the other minor parties would do well. Now on the last general election figures we'd have 4 BNP MP's and 14 UKIP. Now from experience I know how much liberals and lefties hate any opposing views so is it a price worth paying? Incedentally the libedems would have 145 seats.

[jno]

actually, lefties are quite in favour of representative democracy. Plus: you get a parliament more representative of the people. Minus: if the people are hopelessly divided, so is the parliament, and theings may take a while to get done.

[Old_Geezer]

Since no one can serve 2 masters, political parties is an anathema to democracy, since the alleged representative has to consider their position in the party as well as their constituents views and only one (at best) can take priority. So any system that makes things more difficult to remove parties is anti democracy and unrepresentative. Let local people decide who their representative should be in the national forum.

[jake-the-peg]

Personally I think it'd probably be a good thing.

I know you'd give the extremeists what Margaret Thatcher called the Oxygen of publicity but when she tried to deny Gerry Adam's it we had the ridiculous scenario of actors voicing Sinn Fein spokesmen.

I think the moral of that story is that British Democracy is best at ignoring idiots much as Nick Griffin is now firmly out of the News since his MEP election.

The result would be a coalition government - we know that these have a history of not working in the current system because the two parties play politics looking for a chance to get an absolute majority all the time.

If they had less hope of achieving this there would be more incentive for governments to be more colaborative generally.

Trouble is if it didn't work it might be a hard change to reverse

[New Judge]

When considering the question of PR it is, in my view, important to remember what the electorate is voting for.

They SHOULD be choosing an MP who will represent their interests in Parliament. This member SHOULD be free to vote according to their wishes on a wide range of issues. These may or may not accord with the “party line”.

Of course the parties do not like this idea. They prefer to field a list of candidates of varying mediocrity (their ineptitude being inversely proportional to the marginality of the seats) who will simply toe the party line under control of the whips.

PR usually means that everybody gets what nobody particularly wants. Far from enhancing democracy PR is more likely to enhance the power of the parties and it is party politics which has robbed the electorate of proper control over its MPs.

[jake-the-peg]

Well you're entitled to your opinion NJ but I suggest that a house of commons where everybody had a free vote would never achieve anything.

How could you have a legislative program when you've no idea about your chances of getting a law through.

Now you might say in that case we ought to have a vote for the Prime Minister and - you'd have a point

Of course that'd give you the US situation where you could have a lame duck PM with a house dominated by the other party

I really don't think there's a single right answer to this one - you can see a number of different models around the world and all have some draw-backs

[modeller]

There are problems with a coalition government. A small party can prevent vital action being taken and sometimes force the government to pass a bill that no else wants.
In Israel the small religious party has prevented a peaceful settlement with the Palestinians. In Germany they can not get the finance bill passed. In California they voted to cut taxes by so much the state went bankrupt. Their are problems with our system but it has given us strong governments for most of the last century.
The only time we had a coalition was when the Liberals joined Labour under Calaghan and what a disaster that turned out to be.
As a Danish MP said to me PR sounds fair but it doesn't b****y work.