Proportional representation
Right now there is, to put it both mildly and clichédly, a groundswell of public opinion in favour of proportional representation for the UK. Up till election day, this was linked to the phantom rise of the Lib Dems: partly fuelling it and partly being fuelled by it. Now, with the speculation around the possible makeup of the next government and the various demands that potential coalition factions are discussion, it’s a hot topic once again.
So. Proportional representation, PR. By and large, I’ve always been pretty firmly in favour of it, for two simple reasons:
- It would make our present grossly unfair system less grossly unfair.
- The usual objections to it are mostly bollocks.
[editor's note: for some reason, WordPress has deleted the remainder of this formerly long and waffly entry]
Advertisement
Personally, I don’t think it would be clever to move from the FPTP system straight into an entirely proportional representative system, and it isn’t the only option available to us either. There are many different options available in an electoral reform and we need to look at how well they work for other countries.
One of my best friends is Australian and she is in great favour of them system they have there where they rank all of the candidates. She did say some people don’t understand it and just put a tick for who they want or forget to fill it in for every one of the candidates but overall it works very well. “They just keep counting until someone wins”.
Personally, I am in favour of PR. I very much agree with your sentiment of a pool of people for a region like with the MEPs where there is more stability to who is representing you and you can go to the person who best represents your views.
How things pan out from this hung parliament situation will certainly have an effect on how I feel about PR – I can understand Labour supporters feeling a little peeved at a Con-Lib majority when they got so many more seats than the Lib Dems (though not very many more votes).
I just can’t condone a system though, where one party gets 80% of the votes of another one but only 20% the number of seats (LibDem-Labour compaison) and something has to change.
PinkBatgirl
10 May, 2010 at 13:34
The main fear with PR is the fear of change. The current post-election coalition-forming horse-trading would likely not be that common once PR is well established. With more smaller parties winning seats, we would likely see minority governments, where cross-party support is sought on a bill-by-bill basis (it’s difficult to build stable long-lasting rainbow coalitions).
I think keeping a local representative is important, and that’s why some electoral systems (e.g. the Scottish Parliament) use both a FPTP system and the Additional Member System, where you get your local representative plus a number of regional “top up” representatives to balance representation with the share of the vote (normally via the d’Hondt system).
Either way, if the Lib Dems do win support for PR, it’s important to know what form that will take before celebrations begin; there are many types, and some are little better than what we have now.
Chris Warren
10 May, 2010 at 15:11
I agree with Chris!
From what I’m hearing this morning, the tories have offered AV, which I think is barely better than FPTP and it certainly a very long way from PR of any kind.
PinkBatgirl
11 May, 2010 at 07:28
[...] while ago I wrote a long, boring and waffly post about proportional representation. For reasons best known to the imps that inhabit WordPress’s servers, when I updated my [...]
Proportional representation, take 2 « remnants of remnants
12 April, 2011 at 19:49