Archive for April, 2010

The Sun today published details of a YouGov poll that puts the Liberal Democrats on 33% ahead of both the Tories (32%) and Labour (26%). However, there has never been a better example of why our current First Past The Post system is both broken and inappropriate. If this poll prediction was realised in the General Election, it would still leave the Lib Dems massively behind in terms of the number of MPs in Westminster. According to the Sun:

Astonishingly, because of Britain’s voting system, Mr Brown would still remain in No10 after the election if people vote the same way. Despite lagging six points behind the Tories and seven behind the Lib Dems, Labour would get 243 Commons seats.

That is just one less than the Tories on 244. And Mr Clegg’s party would end up with just 134 seats.

Is this really a sustainable system for our government? FPTP only works properly for a two party system. Britain moved beyond that a long time ago, and support for the big two has been dwindling ever since. This ridiculous system would allow two parties with a combined total of 58% of the vote to gain 75% of the seats and leave the winning party miles behind in third place.

The primary defence of FPTP is that it provides ‘stable’ Governments. However, it is hard to see what would be stable about Labour staying in power having come third in a General Election, with just 26% of the vote and only staying there through a deal with the Lib Dems.

The referendum on an Alternative Vote system has been scrapped as part of the ‘Wash Up’ session at the end of Parliament. With it dies any hope of electoral reform in the near future.

The Tory slogan ‘vote for change’ doesn’t seem to apply to electoral reform though. The Tories, who are likely to form the next Government, are actually opposed to any change largely because they are one of the chief beneficiaries of the existing system.

Let’s hope that there are some senior Conservatives out there who can see beyond their narrow partisan interests and look at the broader health of politics in this country. Fewer people are voting, fewer people trust the main parties and fewer people trust the politicians. It’s time for some real change to shake up the system and restore politics to a calling for people of integrity, passion and belief. Only by giving the people the politicians they actually vote for, and not those just foisted on them by the main parties will we see any real change.