You’d think a government about to get slaughtered under FPTP might look more closely at starting a process of political change that may win them back a few seats in the election after that.

@1: “You’d think a government about to get slaughtered under FPTP might look more closely at starting a process of political change that may win them back a few seats in the election after that.”

What likely inhibits Labour and the Conservative Parties from supporting a switch to some preferential or proportional voting system (eg as in Germany) is that the change would probably mean that all future governments in Britain would be coalition governments and, supposedly, we don’t like coalition governments.

The stability of governments in Germany since WW2 shows that proportional voting systems aren’t inevitably destabilising.

“Under the German electoral system, each voter casts two ballots in a Bundestag election. The elector’s first vote is cast for a candidate running to represent a particular district. The candidate who receives a plurality of votes becomes the district representative. Germany is divided into 328 electoral districts with roughly 180,000 voters in each district. Half of the Bundestag members are directly elected from these districts. The second ballot is cast for a particular political party. These second votes determine each party’s share of the popular vote.”
http://www.germanculture.com.ua/library/facts/bl_electoral_system.htm

I really don’t understand how people capable of producing a website as moronic as ‘Vote for Change’ have the brassneck to call other people ‘Neanderthals’.

@1

… and if Labour is “slaughtered” at the next election do you think President Cameron will continue the process? No me neither, so it is irrelevant.

Remember that Call-Me-Dave has his own plans for constitutional “reform”, and that is to take away some of our representation by cutting the number of MPs by 10% under FPTP. (hence each MP represents more people, and you get a smaller “proportion” of your MP than previously.)

Given the choice between Brown’s interest in PR or Cameron’s gerrymandering, I think I will stick with Brown.

Agree with Richard Blogger, we need a stronger move away from FPTP and into PR.

PR – the system designed to give the BNP and UKIP seats in parliment…

Is that the best you’ve got?

We’ve had PR in Euro elections since 1999 – but it was ten years and three elections until the BNP won any seats, Watchboy.

The last time I checked Irish equivalents of the BNP and UKIP aren’t present in the Irish parliament, which has PR too.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and propose that if you’re choosing a voting system based on whether it will benefit or penalise Party X, then you’re not really interested in democracy – in fact, you’re being actively anti-democratic. If the BNP or UKIP have sufficient support, then they deserve representation, whether you or I like it or not. Democratic representation should not be restricted only to people I agree with.

8 – an extremist nationalist party in the Dail? Hmm. I wonder if there might be one. Sinn Fein perhaps?

John,

I am only going on the vote share – to get one of the seats in parliment under true PR you need only a tiny share of the vote. Ireland has Single Transferable Vote in multimember constituencies, which is a different matter. PR is not the same as STV, AQ or anything else. And a referendum would have to give all these choices surely – after all, we can’t just select the current option and the one that suits us (here being whoever sets the question) as the alternative.

Sorry if I was flippant, but it produced a response of the type I expected. And allowed me to raise one of my general concerns with this sort of campaign – the tendency to assume it is a binary choice between sticking with what we’ve got or opting for one alternative which will be selected by someone, somewhere.

Second largest party in Northern Ireland that you may not agree with doesn’t make them extremist.

What is this “true PR”? I’m not a voting systems wonk myself, but I’ve seen them when they get going, and I know that there’s a plethora of different systems which give different results in various circumstances, all of which have some claim to proportionality, and none of which are simply called “PR”.

12 – it’s so much whether I agree with them, it’s more that in a Southern Irish context their views on nationalism are considered extreme. Which is probably why they are only the fifth largest part in the Dail, although their links with the IRA probably haven’t helped.

14 – *not* so much…

They are a legitimate political party and they represent a large swath of voters in Northern and to a far lesser extent, Southern Ireland.

16 – indeed they are. What’s your point?

My point is to counter balance the rather insidious nature of painting them out to be somehow in the same league as the BNP and UKIP.

Daneil at 12/16,

No-one said Sinn Fein are not legitimate. They are however extreme nationalists, at least equivalent to UKIP (if in different ways). Especially in the Republic of Ireland (southern Ireland is a geographical determinant, or the province of Munster) which is the context in which they were raised here. Try to keep up and don’t jump into defensive mode – no-one suggested UKIP or the BNP were not legitimate (whatever we may wish); my implication was that they may not be desirable in parliment.

18 – they’re certainly in the same league as UKIP. For example, they are by far the most eurosceptic of the Irish parties. Although they did poll much less well in the European elections than UKIP did, so perhaps they should be considered a more minor party. Which brings to…

Are in the same league as the BNP? Well they are both hard line nationalist parties with links to crime (organised crime for SF, disorganised crime for the BNP). Both are legitimate parties, and (since we are talking in the Irish context) provide a minority political viewpoint. If your argument is about marginalisation, the BNP have got two MEPS, and SF have got none in the RoI.

Yellow Badge w/Blood on:

See comment 8 and then see comment 10, pretty clear what is being inferred there, that is what I was responding to. Don’t take it any further than that, by building fake arguments I’m not pushing and attacking them.

Also, don’t fuck me off by saying things like ‘try to keep up’, you know that is cunty so save it for someone who won’t give it right back at you.

Tim:

I do not agree that SF are in the same league as UKIP at all and now you are pushing your own personal dislike of SF by making daft connections with the BNP and UKIP.

That’s your prerogative and that is why I got involved here.

22 – as UKIP? Why on earth not? Both are euro-sceptic minority nationalist parties. The main point of difference is that UKIP are so very much more successful in terms of share of the vote. Unless you are using a very particular meaning of ‘in the same league as’ I simply can’t understand your objection.

I couldn’t give much of a stuff about Sinn Fein, other than a sort of generalised dislike for extremist politics of all descriptions – my basic revulsion at seeing McGuinness chortling away with Ian Paisley is directed at both parties equally. But in the Irish context – which is, after all, what we’re talking about here, I’m not being anything other than purely descriptive.

Why do you think that it’s so offensive (or ridiculous if you prefer) to compare SF and UKIP?

I can understand why people who like SF would be offended by a comparison with the BNP, although I stand by my analogies above. But why two political parties with views that are broadly similar in style (albeit from two different perspectives) should not be compared at all seems very odd.

There seems to be a lot of conflation of different forms of nationalism going on here… There is a big difference between arguing for political independence (“home rule”), withdrawal from multi-national arrangements (“euro-scepticism” / “anti-globalisation”) and deporting immigrants and their descendants (“racism”). To wrap all three up under a single heading strikes me as simplistic to the point of obtuseness.

Why on earth not? Both are euro-sceptic minority nationalist parties.

http://www.sinnfein.ie/eu-affairs

“The Sinn Féin delegation has a policy of critical but constructive engagement with the EU. This means we decide to support or oppose the many and complex developments in the EU each on its own merits. We have supported EU and other Europe-wide measures that promote and enhance human rights, equality and the all-Ireland agenda. These measures are an example of the EU at its best, promoting a basic level of rights protection in all member states. But we have also never been afraid to stand up against EU measures that are damaging to Irish interests.”

Doesn’t sound anything like UKIP to me… And that’s without considering all their other policies, none of which seem to bear any similarity to those of UKIP (except in the most trivial sense that all parties claim to want to “improve” education, health, etc).

25 – of course they’re not identical. But SF is by far the most euro-sceptic party in an overwhelmingly pro-European political environment. The only party to oppose the Lisbon Treaty for example. And it is only relatively recently that they have changed their policy from one of outright withdrawal. As the Irish Times said

it is a little embarrassing that Sinn Féin should find itself sharing this consistently anti-EU stance with members of Éirígí and those other great lovers of Ireland and all things Irish, the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) and hard-line UK Tories.

But their main focus is of course in removing their country from a supra-national body of which they strongly disapprove for heavily nationalist reasons. UKIP’s that is. No, wait, Sinn Fein’s. Whatever.

The question was not, in any event, whether Sinn Fein were the same as UKIP. It was whether the Irish Parliament had any parties that were in the same league as UKIP (or the BNP). However you cut it, you’d be hard put to argue that SF don’t fit this category.