Politics Thread!

[pogo]

2005: Labour get 35.2% of the vote, the Tories get 32.4%. Result: Labour majority

2010: the Tories get 36.1% of the vote, Labour get 29.0%. Result: hung parliament

Even with over twice the margin in votes in 2010 (7.1%) as Labour had in 2005 (2.8%) the Tories had fewer seats (almost 100 less) and could not get a majority. That was due to the bias and it has been that way for decades. The BBC summarised this in a graph: even when the Tories got most votes and seats in 2010 Labour found it easier to win seats.



The only exception is 2015. In this election when Labour and the Tories were close in the vote pollsters were predicting they would get a similar number of seats. The reason is the SNP grabbing all but one of Labour’s normally safe Scottish seats. Which of course makes it no easier for the Tories as the SNP are strongly opposed to them and would have supported Labour if Labour had enough seats. As it was the Tories did far better than expected and so needed less votes per MP.

[(o)(o)]

The ruling party was NOT backed by 75% of the electorate.

This is the least proportional result in British history.

FPTP needs to go. It's not authentic democracy.

[gravy]

One ray of sunshine I guese


http://www.theguardian.com/politics/201 ... -reshuffle

[gravy]

One ray of sunshine I guese


http://www.theguardian.com/politics/201 ... -reshuffle

[Cloudane]

We may be in danger of some degree of echo chambering in here (even though YY is typically quite 'disagreement heavy' I think we're mostly sort of left-leaning and anti-Tory), which is one of the criticisms being bandied about when it comes to people's handling of politics these days particularly with the advent of social media. A criticism I've also seen from the Right aimed at the Left is our tendency to use "politics of fear" i.e. scaremongering without substance.

So to play devil's advocate and counter my own theories on scrapping the Human Rights Act paving the way to capital punishment, page 73 of the Conservative Manifesto (available here) states:

We will scrap Labour's Human Rights Act and introduce
a British Bill of Rights which will restore common sense
to the application of human rights in the UK. The Bill
will remain faithful to the basic principles of human
rights, which we signed up to in the original European
Convention on Human Rights. It will protect basic rights,
like the right to a fair trial, and the right to life, which are
an essential part of a modern democratic society. But it will
reverse the mission creep that has meant human rights law
being used for more and more purposes, and often with
little regard for the rights of wider society. Among other
things the Bill will stop terrorists and other serious foreign
criminals who pose a threat to our society from using
spurious human rights arguments to prevent deportation.

Emphasis mine. So the right to life (i.e. no executions) sounds quite safe.

It'll still be interesting to see what the "other things" are though, how they'll deal with the Good Friday Agreement etc. It's difficult not to let the internal "scaremongerer" (i.e. natural leftie distrust for Tories) go wild on reading between lines.

[VNVObit]

The Good Friday agreement may be a stumbling block

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015 ... -agreement

unilateral changes would have an implication for the agreement and changes to it would require a referendum under Irish law.

[(o)(o)]

Public sector workers to require greater majority than the Conservative party achieved in general election to strike says newly appointed Business Secretary :

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-32702585

[pogo]

The ruling party was NOT backed by 75% of the electorate.

This is the least proportional result in British history.

FPTP needs to go. It's not authentic democracy.

Actually it’s a much fairer result than the last two elections:

* 2005: Labour get 35.2% of the vote, the Tories get 32.4%. Result: Labour majority
* 2010: the Tories get 36.1% of the vote, Labour get 29.0%. Result: hung parliament
* 2015: the Tories get 36.9% of the vote, Labour get 30.4%. Result: narrow Tory majority

The Tories needed a far larger vote margin than Labour had in 2005 to get a majority (so the system is still biased in Labour’s favour) but at least they were able to, unlike in 2010.

As for replacing FPTP we’ve had that debate, and vote, in 2011. It was rejected by a very wide and convincing margin, more than 2:1 against it.

[Little stoned kiwi]

A few people have juggled the numbers to see what the outcome would have looked like under New Zealand's Mixed Member Proportional system. There's a few about and each differ by a few seats, but should be roughly accurate.
They don't take Scotland, Ireland, and Wales as being individual entities into account (as New Zealand is one nation). And votes would have been cast differently under Proportional Representation system, making comparisons between outcomes of different systems using data from one mostly meaningless - FPTPs biggest criticism is it leads to an 'us vs. them' situation where voters feel they only have influence by choosing one of two candidates even if they prefer a third.

[gravy]

Wow!

http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2015/05/12/da ... PNFacebook

As for FPTP?

Things move on pogo, people might feel its had its time after the last election.

I wouldn't want to see UKIP have more than one seat but it's hard to justify their lack of parlimentary influence given the amount of votes they received.

[(o)(o)]

This is the least proportional result in British history.

Actually it’s a much fairer result than the last two elections:

How can the least proportional result in British history be fair?

I don't like UKIP but it cannot be right that it takes 26,000 votes to elect an MP from one party and almost four million to elect an MP from another. If you support democracy, you cannot support FPTP. Not now.

As for replacing FPTP we’ve had that debate, and vote, in 2011.

It wasn't a "debate". The public weren't offered choice. This is what the public was asked in 2011

At present, the UK uses the "first past the post" system to elect MPs to the House of Commons. Should the "alternative vote" system be used instead?

What should have been asked was :

[pogo]

This is the least proportional result in British history.

Actually it’s a much fairer result than the last two elections:

How can the least proportional result in British history be fair?

It was not least proportional for the two main parties – it was the fairest result for a long while. Smaller parties always get a raw deal in FPTP elections, but that’s a feature not a bug of the system: we don’t want e.g. UKIP or other extremists to have a permanent veto over government policy.

As for that other question, no, that is precisely the wrong way to do it, and then leave it up to politicians to come up with a system that suits them, rather than one that’s genuinely better.

[Purple Grapefruit]

Tories + Ukip = 325 seats
effectively a possible coalition overall majority (unless Sinn Fein are coaxed to come to parliament and everyone else joins together)

[pogo]

Yes, that confirms my own rough calculations. In a proportional system with the votes in this election UKIP and the Conservatives have a majority, even without the Lib Dems. Probably they would do even better as the UKIP vote was surely suppressed by tactical voting in all the seats they were never going to win.

It is even worse for the left if smaller parties are excluded. E.g. if there’s a 5% threshold as the Greens, SNP and PC would all be excluded by it. But even without that parties on the right do better out of a PR system.

[gravy]

What's wrong with the STV system?

You maintain a link between constituency and representation but parliament is a closer reflection of the will of the people.

And it's not some CRAZY NEW SYSTEM but one that works elsewhere pretty well. In fact we're a bit of an anomaly among western, economically potent nations:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past ... em.5B15.5D

FPTP does seem fundamentally at odds with democracy.