I have no love for the DUP, and little affection for Conervative government. But I am not getting angry about the two parties involved entering into a confidence and supply agreement. This is part of our democracy. Such outcomes can happen.
But I am angry that we should end up with such a tawdry arrangement propping up a government that has been elected on a totally discredited electoral system. Let me be clear: I know the Tories won most votes at the last election. I know they got most seats. But let me also be clear, that's because of the electoral system that showed only too clearly its bias towards the two party system. And what has also been clear is that the system in question has not reflected the will of many people in this country for a very long time.
The Conservatives have not won a decent majority since the 1980s but have ruled. Labour managed a majority but it did not result in good government on all issues. If first past the post is meant to deliver strong government it does not work. And it does not deliver good coalitions either.
The DUP / Tory deal may be legitimate under our existing electoral system. But the system is rotten. It's to Labour's shame that it will not say so.
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What always strikes me is that in pushing their malevolence the Tories are happy to treat a majority of 10 as if it were 100. Tony Blair did the opposite, and the radical reform that people wanted and voted for in 1997 was never delivered.
I live in the Netherlands now where we have proper PR. It has its flaws but to my mind it is a million times better than FPTP.
The biggest strength of PR is that every vote matters.
The biggest weakness of FPTP is that elections are typically decided by swing voters in marginal seats. In many safe seats there is no point ever voting.
We have to move to PR in order to rejuvenate politics in the UK. FPTP is a straight jacket which ruins political discourse in the UK.
So happy to hear more and more people saying this. We need PR in the UK for the health of our democracy.
At least the £1bn appearing like a ‘deus ex machina’ to prop up the “Bung Parliament” proves very publically to the country, contrary to May’s dissembling reply to an angry nurse, that the Magic Money Tree does indeed exist!
Agreed
It ought to, but it won’t. The narrative will be sustained in the usual way: we need more cuts in order to make up the shortfall arising from the deal. And the people will buy it…
“If first past the post is meant to deliver strong government it does not work.”
It’s hard to think of a more inaccurate comment on the recent history of UK government. In our democracy, every one else would define a strong government as one able to rule, to stay in office. A weak government one that is unable to rule and is forced to go to the electorate. The last time that happened was October 1974.
You seem to have confused strong government with a government whose policies you agree with. Luckily the two are not the same.
Or perhaps, as you so often do, you started with your conclusion (you don’t like the current government) and then said things as if saying them made them true.
Do you really believe all you write or is it just ‘click bait’?
The facts as I stated them are correct
It is you who is offering dogma
And I am not interested in that
@ Brian Manning
Either you weren’t around at the time, or you’re suffering from amnesia, but those of us who were around at the time Edward Heath lost the February 1974 Election would, in my opinion, simply not recognise your description of Harold Wilson’s first 1974 Government.
Quite simply, my experience of the last 6 months of Heath’s disastrous premiership is that the UK has never been closer to really experiencing a revolution, not even by comparison with when people openly suggested such, at the time of the Poll Tax riots, a full 16 years later.
The idiocy of the 3-day week, and people shopping in shops by candlelight, and the sense that we were being ruled by a government that was treating decent people as “the enemy” (though when we really DID have a government under Thatcher that DID treat ordinary, dissenting voters as the enemy, the neo-liberal “me first” philosophy had blunted the nation’s opposition to such open governmental bias and ill-will), was straining the electorate’s patience close to breaking point.
Then in came Harold Wilson’s 3rd Administration, and within weeks – indeed, even days – something like industrial peace ensued, with the Social Contract, and there was a real sense that the country was back in safe, sensible hands, with society breathing a sort of collective sigh of relief. I really do have vivid memories of the almost miraculous sense of collective public relief that Heath was gone and Wilson, and his far more experienced and talented Cabinet were in charge, and able to govern.
And govern they did, despite being a minority government, conforming to what I ALWAYS ask for of a government – to govern wisely in the public interest, as the February to October 1974 Wilson Government undoubtedly did – carrying the can, and doing the heavy lifting (as did indeed the Wilson/Callaghan Government on October 1974 to May 1979) of dealing with the catastrophic mishandling of the economy and society of the Heath/Barber “dash for growth” idiocy – an idiocy carried out by an allegedly “strong” government delivered under FPTP.
Because I don’t want strong government, but wise government: under Heath we had strong but stupid government, where Wilson gave us allegedly weak, but undoubtedly wise government between February and October 1974.
If we want wise government to obtain more often, and for longer periods, FPTP must be dumped as a matter of urgency, and replaced by real PR, also as a matter of urgency, in the interests of producing a government that will have a greater chance of governing wisely and in the common good, because it will have had to listen more attentively in the process of coming into existence, rather than being the child of a few “lied to” swing voters in a few constituencies, as was the case with Cameron, who won a majority in 2015 because a mere 900 voters went one way, than rather than the other (see http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/ampp3d/general-election-results-just-900-5682492)
Hardly – as proved to be the case!! – a recipe for wise government.
The voice of someone who hasn’t had to vote for what they believe to be the least worst option, to block the worst option, at every general election.
FPTP is a total fudge, it is not fit for purpose. I very much disagree with UKIP, however in 2015 they got 3.8m votes and 1mp, the SNP got 1.4m votes and 56mps, the lib dems got 2.4m and 8mps.
I’m a democrat before anything else, and FPTP is not democratic.
Voter engagement, and politics has been under a cloud of discontent in this country for decades, this in many ways is due to people votes being tactical and or pointless.
It would take a real progressive government to scrap FPTP, Labour aren’t talking about it, I’m disappointed by this.
Of the last three UK elections, two have produced hung parliaments and one a government with a tiny majority. If by “strong” government you mean “one-party government with a large majority”, FPTP has a track record of *not* producing that. By contrast, if you take the 2010-15 Coalition government as an example of strong government then you must concede that coalition governments can be strong – in which case, the main argument against PR (that it would deliver permanent coalition governments) falls apart. PR is a no-brainer really. Sadly I don’t think we’re likely to get it as the next election will probably deliver a majority Labour government – possibly with a landslide majority – and as in 1997, there will be no incentive for Labour to change the electoral system. The Blair government, to its credit, did commission the Jenkins report which recommended the AV plus system (essentially a modified version of AV which delivers increased, although not fully, proportional representation). However this was never implemented, sadly.
Agreed re Jenkins
Nck Robinson challenged Michael Fallon on R4 this am, on the bung to the DUP and why other areas of the UK or come to that housing or the NHS should not be receiving the money. Farron responded with the language of ‘investment’, ‘prosperity’ and ‘infrastructure’. Precisely the approach that he and his austerity-driven government have been disparaging for years with their idiotic comments about magic money trees.
Should not be too difficult for the Opposition to expose the obvious contradictions here. Assuming they themselves have managed to discard the austerity mantra
I’m going to disagree here. I think a representative democracy where you send a person from your town to represent local interests in a national parliament is a pretty good idea. I think PR can hand too much power to smaller extreme parties can get their hands on power and end up king makers with minority views – I realised that this is what has happened now but it’s quite rare in our history.
The problem with our system is not fptp and I think that is a distraction – the problem with our system is a lack of accountability local representatives have towards their constituents. And of course the parachuting of company men into safe seats. A right to recall and an insistence of truly local representative would go quite a way to fixing many of our problems. Our democracy isn’t so bad when people are forced to play by the rules. However just like the City of London there is no one enforcing them and there for corruption reigns. I absolutely promise you that PR with no one enforcing rules would result in exactly the same levels of corruption.
So before we throw the baby out with the bath water let’s see about fixing the obvious problems that we already have.
But if we had seven member seats we would get local representatives – of people we might brake to which would make them accountable
I agree with the criticism of FPTP and would like to see some form of PR.
I honestly believe that FPTP is even more deeply corrosive to the political health of the country. The ‘winner takes all’ approach encourages confrontation, most vividly seen in the House of Commons where we seem to like to see MPs shouting at each other across the floor. It therefore encourages – and favours – processes and people who are adversarial rather than co-operative, who see every issue as a fight to be won rather than a problem to be jointly solved. In turn, it colours the way we have dealt with the EU over the years and perhaps partly explains why the UK always talks about ‘fighting’ the EU, why the harmonisation of standards and trade regulations are seen as loss of sovereignty rather than as a negotiated compromise.
Other EU countries see negotiation and compromise as part and parcel of how Governments are formed: being able to compromise and co-operate is an essential skill for politicians. It’s also one reason why the likes of Le Pen and other inflexible groups struggle to get much influence; compromise is not in their soul.
This doesn’t mean that EU politicians are not hard-headed and ruthless, but that the approach is more businesslike (literally) and less school debating club.
It’s not the type of democracy that needs debating, it’s whether democratic process should exist in the first place.
Take the BBC. Not a single board member has ever been elected by the licence payer yet the BBC still does a good job. Or take tax paying EU nationals working in the UK who do not have the vote in General Elections, but they still come here. Or the EU Commission who put the EU Parliament to shame with their wisdom.
We need less to be decided by democracy and perhaps more expert committees made up of people like yourself, Caroline Lucas and Anders Borg.
I think democracy is the bedrock
But the US system shows sometimes we have to trust those we elect to appoint others