BristolUK

Oh I noticed the stuff about the party with the most votes. Why are you ignoring the point about the party that got the greater number of increased votes losing seats? That's the issue you seem incapable of addressing.

The number of seats is not represented by the number of votes. You're simplifying it with garbage about whingeing losers.

BristolUK

Otherwise known as compromise. Heard of that?

BuckinghamshireBoy

I had only skip-read the article that you posted the link to last evening, but have just had a deeper look. There's some well thought through points:
But that one will just re-ignite the spear/rock chucking gloaters, so best move on. Oh look, they're in already...

Moving on.
That's good.

But would "the second party" buy in? Until they do, then the electoral system is destined to remain flawed, imo.

I'll have another read of the article tomorrow.

@GeniB it's never too late...

Lion in Winter

a) I need you to substantiate your first statement

b) No, my objections are as previously stated, several times. Have another read.

GeniB

As Labour hasn't been in power long enough or with enough security at any one time, I doubt they ever had the confidence to want to implement it.. We are a one party country now .No real opposition .Nothing will change unless the people change it ..Thats what the establishment most fears .We do have the power to do it. But no leader and no direction to go in.other than the one chosen for us. I would love to have an answer to this The establishment thrives on the old divide and rule theory. Look how well it worked for them in Brexit.

Boiler

But the Establishment failed with Brexit, so sort of defeats your case.

carcajou

The problem here remains that radical posters are still in denial about the causes of the election defeat. They do not want to have to undergo any sort of introspection, or adjust policies to suit a larger number of people . . . and admitting what happened, means to also admit their read of the landscape was wrong almost to an astonishing degree and they feel they are too smart to have been that wrong. So, therefore, they want to make the argument that Labour and the New Democrats didn't "lose," they were just unfairly held back by an unfair system. They hope to achieve their intended result by manipulating election rules instead.

I think several of us predicted this back before the election, when certain posters were barracking on about hung parliaments when the polls all showed anything but.

KJMW

Over my head, not at all. For example it wasn't debated after the last election. Sure, by some contributors to sites like this but that is just whinging!!! In fact it hasn't been seriously discussed anywhere for a long time.

carcajou

I'm sorry, what are the anomalous results?

There is only one leader in the last 50 years who has led the Labour Party to victory. Yet, bizarrely, instead of being revered, that leader is reviled and ostracized by party faithful.

Nor were those victories flukes. They were smashing landslides that resulted in huge majorities greater than anything the Tories have ever gotten in the modern era. When was the last time the Conservatives won multiple general elections with 400+ seats? During Blair's three wins they never even broke through 200.

The template for big Labour wins is there, and has proven durable over multiple elections. Why isn't that template ever copied? Every other major political party in the West takes a winning formula and at least tries to replicate it. Sometimes I think UK Labour is actually trying to lose.

It would actually be stupid of the left to change the current system, since Blair proved that Labour can compete in more of the country than the Tories can.

Labour does not need to change the rules to win (since, really, that is what this thread is about). It needs to tailor its policies to a big tent of the electorate, choose a leader with broad cross-party appeal (such people should be viewed as electoral assets, instead of how they are viewed now, as weaknesses to be treated with suspicion), and take the spotlight away from the radicals - by making the party climate so hostile to extremist strains of thought that those people just leave, preferably to the Liberal Democrats. They can go there, hopefully as loudly and publicly as possible, and strangle that party's growth.

Carcajou's three-step plan for a viable UK Labour Party that can actually hold government more than once a half-century. You're welcome.

jimenato

Why are you talking abut the labour party?

jimenato

It is continuously debated - look up The Electoral Reform Society


It is debated to the extent that a referendum on the subject was held on the issue in 2011.

materialcontroller

I've never been a fan of PR or the compromises that it entails. Calls for it to be introduced seem to be a familiar refrain these days from people who insist that losers in FPTP votes are somehow entitled to something.

robin1234

Looking at those good results the SNP gets, vs. what the LibDems get, makes me think all LibDem voters should put their heads together and move to one region of the country, they’d get 40 or 50 seats.

SW of a line between IoW and Gloucester, for instance?

Watchpost

Proportional representation is government by a body that is representative of the electorate.

First past the post is government by the winners of a competition.

The British people like it that way. Why should they protest? They were given the opportunity to have PR in a referendum in 2011, and they voted overwhelmingly against (two-thirds to one-third).

Competition is deeply rooted in the British psyche. The concept of government by consensus is an anathema.

robin1234

What about the party list system, as in Israel? As I understand it, it would mean the end of geographically based constituencies. That would be a major change. Also, there are incentives for parties to successively split, so you end up with too many parties.

I realize that Israel has some serious issues to deal with in terms of forming effective administrations, and then governing effectively, but it’s not clear to what extent those are Israel-specific problems, or weaknesses in the party-list system..