Marple Lib Dems

News and comments making Marple a better place to live, work and play Learn more

Several steps backwards

by Geoff Abell on 20 July, 2016

Lib-Dem-ballot-paper-Jack-Hynes

In the post-referendum world, where finance and security are more difficult, our neighbours are more hostile and politics is in turmoil (including the threat of Scotland leaving again), one small point has been overlooked.

We shall lose the only form of PR that the whole UK uses.

It seems to work well in Scotland where they also trust 16- and 17-year-olds to vote.   So why not here?

Put simply, it’s the vested interests of the ruling classes.

This is one of those rare things that the Lib Dems, the Greens and even UKIP agree on: minorities are underrepresented in parliament and in councils across the land due to this outdated, bias and undemocratic form of election.  The Conservatives dominate the Commons with 36.4% of the vote in 2015 and the Lords are not even elected at all.

Pluralistic government with 2 or more parties seems to work well in many countries, so why not here?  And, dare I say it, no one country can dominate the EU parliament and pass unpopular legislation.

According to Unlock Democracy, if the referendum had been fought on first-past-the-post basis with constituencies, Leave would have had 421 “seats” and Remain  just 229.  At least we got the voting system right on 23 June!

   2 Comments

2 Responses

  1. Don Leeming says:

    Spot on with your PR comments not so sure about 16&17
    year old`s Would like to add how can we say we have DEMOCRACY when a party receive 4 Million votes and 1 seat
    and one gets 13 Million votes and 330 seats approx.
    Doesn`t seem very democratic to me

    • Geoff Abell says:

      Thanks for your comments Don. There is support for PR from people who support many parties, just not (at the moment) the political will to make a change.
      As to 16- and 17-year-olds, I can see arguments on both sides. I merely mentioned that Scotland has allowed this group a vote recently. And there was considerable resistance to lowering the age from 21 to 18, but that’s all forgotten now.

Leave a Reply to Don Leeming

You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>