The Guardian has reported today that:
MPs have voted for proprtional representation [PR]. The Commons voted to give Sarah Olney leave to bring in her PR bill by 138 votes to 136.
This will have no practical impact. (See 3pm.) A 10-minute rule bill is a type of private member's bill but, even though after the vote was read out the deputy Speaker made a point of asking what day was set aside for the second reading (Friday 24 January), no time will be allocated for the bill that day, and so after today it will vanish into the parliamentary ether. Asking for the date of the second reading is an empty ritual.
But, symbolically, this is a victory for electoral reform campaigners.
And the result may be seen as further evidence that there is significant support for PR in the parliamentary Labour party.
They go on to note that Starmer has no interest in this issue. The country has, though. PR's day will come.
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PR will bring in many more MPs from the Reform / Right than from the Green / Left, so you should be careful what you wish for!
I am a democrat
me too!
So am I? The far right danger lies in NOT having PR.
So am I? The far right danger lies in NOT having PR.
If what you wish for is the permanence of FPTP, you should be a great deal more careful; because you can see what that has produced in Britain; which is not only injudicious, but unedifying.
PR will bring roughly the amount of Reform MPs as is their percentage at the GE. The likelihood of them getting an absolute majority would be practically negligent. However, with the FPTP, weak Labour and Tory parties as now, the left divided, low turnout, Trump administration favouring the Reform and far-right tycoons as Musk with their own agendas financing them, there is a real possibility the Reform can get to an absolute majority in the HoC on not more than 25 per cent of vote.
With the PR we’d also finally all be equal. Every vote would count – literally, not just the votes in marginals as now with the FPTP.
A ray of light in the gloom, agreed.
A good result, though sadly not likely to go further.
The breakdown by party is interesting:
All voting Yes: LD 62, Green 4, Plaid 4, TUV 1
All voting against: Con 78, DUP 4, UUP 1
Mixed: Lab 59-50, Reform 3-1
(Independents 4-1, the 1 being a NI unionist)
A good turnout from the progressive parties as one might expect;
2/3 of Conservative MPs voted, but only 27% of Lab MPs.
Perhaps the payroll vote (all those with government roles) were told not to vote?
I think the last is likely
But this is encouraging
I too want some sort of PR. But it would be better coming into effect after billionaire funding of political parties has been forbidden, indeed the control of ALL funding of parties has been regulated properly. Those of us wanting proper democracy must also be pragmatic in getting to it. Block the X-idiot.
I am shocked but not surprised that this kind of event is common practice in the seat of government. That a white paper, regardless of its origin, can pass the first reading then vanish without trace as a matter of custom and practice, is the stuff of dystopian society. There is no democracy in the U.K..
The Tory government effectively rigged the 2011 voting referendum by offering voters only two choices, FPTP and AV, both of which give the same anti-democratic results, and then compounded the felony by claiming that the public wanted FPTP to remain. The whole sorry episode is described well in Wikipedia. So since this government is so clearly wedded to FPTP there is little chance that PR will ever be allowed to become law. Ironically, the voting referendum used proportional representation to ensure that PR would never see the light of day. Likewise the Brexit and Scottish Independence referendums. One must ask why, when PR was so anathema to the government, it was used to bring about results the government so desperately wanted. The Scottish Independence referendum offers a clue. Why would a government risk the effective destruction of the UK with a PR vote when polls showed a knife-edged situation? The only rational explanation is that there was in fact no risk. Ergo the result must have been predetermined. And if so can any voting in the UK be trusted? Conspiracy theory nonsense? Maybe but what other explanation so perfectly fits the facts?