I celebrate this historic win in Slovenia:
Political newcomer liberal Robert Golob has defeated Slovenia's three-time prime minister, populist conservative Janez Janša, in elections in a country split by bitter political divisions over the rule of law.
Golob's Freedom Movement (GS), which he launched only in January, has built on anger with Janša's regime in the former Yugoslav state.
The opposition accuses Janša of having tried to undermine democratic institutions and press freedoms since he returned to power in 2020.
With almost all the votes counted on Sunday in the country of around two million people, GS stood at 34.5% of the vote compared with 23.6% for Janša's Slovenian Democratic party.
If the third paragraph sounds familiar that is because I think it should.
This is what proportional representation can do, of course.
If only we could build the same confidence for a green / socially liberal alliance here.
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Bad typo in the title of the post. ‘That’ should be ‘what’.
Thanks
Changed
The main (tiresome and myopic) reason rolled out as a defence of FPTP in the UK is that it does a brilliant job of keeping the lunatics out of Parliament. After the Brexit referendum, years of ERG unicornist ramblings and Boris’ ‘failing upwards’ ascent, I think we can safely say that reason has been proven null and void.
What the defenders of this particular anachronism conveniently forget is that it also frequently delivers an elected dictatorship with no popular mandate, and hence no legitimacy.
Politics has to be about consensus. The is no real consensus with FPTP.
“keeping lunatics out” might have been true “once upon a time”. Now, FPTP guarantees extremists because internal Party democracy selects extremist candidates and FPTP “game theory” says it is almost impossible to break a two party system. We are destined to lurch to extremes on a regular basis unless we change.
To some extent FPTP does keep lunatics out of Parliament, or maybe it would be more accurate to say that it keeps lunatic parties out of Parliament, but that is only because such parties tend to be too small to be able to be able to muster a majority in any particular constituency. As soon as that ceases to be the case then the lunatic party can, as we have seen, win power.
If we had had proportional representation in the UK we would probably have had some UKIP MPs for decades and the more lunatic Tories would have probably joined them. However the Tories would not have proposed a Brexit referendum from fear of splitting their party as the party would already have been effectively split. So I don’t see it as a disadvantage of PR that it might return a few lunatics to Parliament. We could possibly have a Monster Raving Loony Party MP, but we would almost certainly have more than one Green MP.
Under PR the lunatic fringe gets a voice – but at least its a voice out in the open where it can be seen and that can watered down by consensus – or the opportunity is presented anyway. I’m quite happy for the BNP and UKIP to be out in the open.
The best way to deal to deal with those people like the BNP and UKIP is not have so much inequality in the first place isn’t it?
There is however STILL the problem with PR that undermines FPTP as well: Political Funding.
Political funding is where the lunacy in politics is because politics by definition should be about win/win, not win lose.
The lunatics who fund politics want everything their own way. This explains BREXIT and the Tory party since 2010. The impact of lunatic funding is just a much a threat to PR as to our present exhausted FPTP system and I’m not sure we are dealing with it at all.
Any ‘hidden hand’ in politics – in a process leading to sovereign rule – cannot be tolerated in my view in a proper democracy. It’s a nettle that has yet to be grasped simply because it is a short cut for the very wealthy to pervert democracy which should ruling on behalf of ALL.
Great result for Slovenia’s emergent environmental Freedom Party – 34% against 28% for Jansa. This means that green issues are coming up on the agenda fast now that awareness of impending climate disasters is growing. Let’s hope in the French Assembly elections in June Greens and the left under Melechon can also come up with a progressive coalition to counter Macron’s right-wing agenda.
If we got rid of FPTP in the UK I would vote Green. I will probably (tactically) vote Lib Dem in the local election. I am a member of the Labour Party.
Crazy, I know….. but that is what FPTP delivers.
I will be voting LD
I am not an LD
But that is the best option to get rid of a Tory I have
Absolutely Clive, FPTP is a crazy system, delivering crazy results. It has disenfranchised me my entire life in the UK; the only time my vote has ever got me an elected representative of any kind was the last elections to the European parliament. And then my MEP was gone thanks to the anti EU fanatics that FPTP has put into Westminster.
As PSR notes, so what if PR got some Ukip and Brexit party MP’s elected? Better them out in the open where we can take on their arguments than their takeover of the the Tories by stealth from inside so that we now have an extreme right wing ruling party run by the ERG fanatics.
And as you say Bernard, the Greens would have their fair share of MP’s. Given that green issues are now (always have been really) the most important of all political issues in that they cover the very future existence of our species, it is an utter disgrace that greens’ representation is prevented by the voting system.
Blair’s greatest failing as a PM wasn’t Iraq, or the PFI. It was his reneging on electoral reform. A disaster we’re all now paying for.
There aren’t many electoral systems that actually do what their supposed to do as advertised on the side of the tin can they come in – representative democracy.
Macron just won a second term with barely 15% of the possible voters.
On what looks like an even smaller turnout than previously – about a quarter – is that even quorate?
Looks like most French voters voted ‘non-of-the-above’.
Which is how I shall be voting in the next general election – though not so in locals coming up where there is a chance if getting somebody actually local and interested in local issues in, regardless of whatever party or not they belong to.
“On what looks like an even smaller turnout than previously – about a quarter – is that even quorate?”
Nonsense!
The absention was 28%, so the turn-out was 72%. Excluding spoilt ballots and blank votes, 65.8% of those on the electoral list voted for one or other of the two candidates. These are the official figures.
OK – many of those (me included) voted for someone else in the first round, but tht’s how a two-round system works, allowing you to vote for your preferred candidate in round one rather than feeling obliged to vote tactically from the start as in FPTP.
I do beg your pardon and apologise. I was watching with French people on their laptop live when they said he’d won with 25% turnout and then checked Reuters but saw that was the turnout at 10 am. Sorry.
I still believe a truly warts and all PR system would best represent all minorities. They would still be a minority amongst the elected.
Only such a easily replicable and transparent system across all these who wish democracy would be easily defensible by all.
The FPTP has outlived its usefulness in a globalised environment that easily captures both sides through sponsorship and lobby. It would be a lot harder for them with PR.
Thanks
Honourably done
Thanks DunGroanin – apology accepted! Sorry if I was a bit brutal, but I felt I couldn’t let that pass uncorrected.
On the substantive issue, we are in agreement for parliamentary/legislative elections, where I also believe a PR system would be a substantial improvement over both FPTP and the (slightly better) French two-round system.
But of course, this was a Presidential election in which PR has no meaning – unless you propose to tale a part of each candidate and stick them together to form a hybrid person! That said, I also think the President has far too much power in France, unlike in some other European countries where the role is much more discrete – most people ouside Germany can’t even name its President. But that’s another subject – one which the UK (or whatever remains of it) will need to consider carefully if ever the monarchy reaches the end of the road (hopefully).
Considering the antics of Johnson and his coagulation of incompetent’s I can’t agree that FPTP ensures that lunatics do not get into Parliament.
Until opposition parties form an alliance with the goal of changing the electoral system from FPTP then we are unlikely get PR for a long time