UK's System of Government

[cultcross]

When is the last Liberal Democrat to become a Prime Minister?

No liberal democrat in the party's form today has ever been Prime Minister, what's that got to do with anything? You were talking about representation in Parliament and 'moving towards' a two-party system - 'third' parties (i.e., not Labour or Conservatives) currently hold 103 seats in Parliament, 16% of the total, and an increase on the last election. Can you claim such representation in Congress in living memory? Across both houses of Congress, accordign to Wikipedia there are currently just 2 people who don't have a 'D' or an 'R' after their name.

Actually, when was the last time in the UK that a Prime Minister had a minority government and had to form a coalition to stay in power?

1945, under Churchill.

It's felt like every time recently that a Prime Minister has ruled, his (or her) party has held the majority in the House of Commons. But I could be remembering that wrong.

It is usual, elections are usually a lot more decisive here than in the US, the vote usually strongly favours one party nationwide (we have a lot more of what the US term 'swing' voters). However, a coalition government is at least possible at the next election. The Civil Service certainly beleive it is, and are reportedly making plans for the possiblity of a Labour/Lib Dem coalition govt.

Two points. One, Congress can override the President's veto with a 2/3 majority so, if it's an important, they can do it. But the idea is that Congress could make a rash decision and it's nice to have someone separate and impartial who could say whether or not the bill they pass is a good one.

So one man gets to decide whether the majority opinion of over 500 people is right or wrong based on his own whim? And then requires a supermajority to override that whim? And you're saying this is a more sensible and democratic system than ours?

Second, there are how things are done now and how things have to be done. MPs often break with their party if they think things are wrong, but they don't have to. If they don't, there's no real way to stop them (that's true in the states as well, but you need to control the House, the Senate, and the Presidency in order to do this and, with elections held so often, people can change things more directly much faster). That's the point of checks. It's nice to talk about how things do work, but there's also no reason why they might not work differently tomorrow.

I don't really understand your point here. A minute ago you said 'legislators vote as individuals, not as a party' and now you're worried about them voting as a party, so you need someone to tell them that's wrong? I don't get what you're saying here.

That's part of my point. The House of Lords is used as an argument for a check on power of Parliament, but there's no reason it has to be. Once again, Parliament could, one day, decide they don't want to listen to the House of Lords. There's nothing the House of Lords could do, is there? There's nothing limiting Parliament.

Well they have to invoke the Parliament Act to bypass the Lords' rejection of a bill, but no, officially there's nothing the Lords' can do to stop them doing it in the political sphere (Some of the Lords are involved in the judiciary, which will review the legality of the bill, but thats a different matter). So what? Their function (these days) is to serve as a long-serving advisory balance on election-obsessive politicians, not to replace the duly elected government.

This was most recently demonstrated in the 42-day detention debacle. The Lords rejected the bill and sent it back to the Commons where the Government accepted that it was defeated in its current form. Thus you have a situation where the ultimate power still lies with the majority verdict of a democratically elected Commons, not with 'vetos' of individuals, but there is still a balancing, advisory group, free from the pressures of re-election , who can say "Are you sure that's the best idea?".

Well, the Queen has official powers. She dissolves Parliament, she appoints the Prime Minister, she calls for elections. But she does exactly what the respective parties that actually make the decisions tell her to do. In theory, she could do otherwise as well (but, in this case, she'd probably just be ignored).

Well as someone's said already, she exists still by Parliament's grace, whatever the books say. A simple majority vote in Parliament could remove the monarchy forever, if they wanted to.The Queen's primary role in government (tehr than the ceremonial stuff) is similar to the Lords, in that she acts as an unofficial advisor to the PM - she has held regular private meetigns with every PM since she took the throne, and many have spoken at length of the invaluable nature of her advice.

Members of the House of Representatives are elected every 2 years. They are directly beholden to the people they have to represent and they have a much shorter time to abuse power. The President has 2 four year terms and has to stand for election at these times, not when it's politically best for him. Senators serve 6-year terms but about a 1/3 are up for reelection every 2 years.

So the legislature is held accountable every 2 years, not every 5 like the House of Commons.

Which is probably why your voter apathy is one of the highest in the Western world. Furthermore, repeated elections are not the best way, imho, to acheive a legislature who are actually interested in doing the job for the good of their area and country, rather than thinking about elections all the time. With terms of jsut 2 years, you've barely finished an election when you have to think about the next one. And politicians in the throws of electoral cycles don't tend to be the most switched on politicians when it comes to making tough but necessary decisions which may make them unpopular with funding sources.

The Presidency gets twice that time, but, if he's unpopular, he'll find it difficult to govern after 2 years if he doesn't have the support of the legislature (the President's actual role is much more limited than that of the Prime Minister, he's just able to exercise these duties with or without support of the legislature as a separately elected representative of the people).

While the PM, regardless fo his role, has no more voting power than Joe Bloggs MP from Aberforth West - I like that. However much in the public eye his decisions and his views are, he has the same vote as any other MP. His role is actually primarily a party one - he acts as a figurehead for the party in power. If he loses support, he tends to not just find it "harder to govern", he tends to lose his job.

 

[Goliath]

When is the last Liberal Democrat to become a Prime Minister?

Is that really a fair question? The Liberal Democrats are a pretty recent creation, as parties go: they've only existed since 1988. It took more than thirty years for Labour to break the mold of British politics, and displace the Liberals as one of the two major parties. It took them more than forty years before they formed their first majority.

What's more, it's entirely possible that the Lib Dems will remain a third party forever, and never form a government. That has been the fate of Canada's traditional third party, the NDP. And they've been around since 1961.

Actually, when was the last time in the UK that a Prime Minister had a minority government and had to form a coalition to stay in power? It's felt like every time recently that a Prime Minister has ruled, his (or her) party has held the majority in the House of Commons. But I could be remembering that wrong.

IIRC, the UK's last minority government was the Second Macdonald government, which governed between 1929 and 1931.

Before that, there was the First Macdonald government, in 1924.

And before that, there was the last Liberal government of the UK, under Asquith, which was in a minority from 1910 to 1915.

The British and Canadian experiences suggest to me that minority governments have been most likely to occur when the political culture and party system are in flux.

The recent minority governments in Canada have been the product of a major political-cultural shift, especially on the Right. The old Progressive Conservative party cracked up and was wiped out in the federal election of 1993. This was followed by ten years of internecine political warfare among right-wingers, until the PCs were finally absorbed by what is now the Conservative Party. Whether that new party will ever attract the support of a majority of Canadians remains to be seen.

In any case, if the weakness of third parties is conceived as a problem, then the roots of that problem lie, not in the parliamentary system per se, but in the electoral system. In Ireland, which has a British-style parliamentary system but a proportional electoral system, minority and coalition governments have been quite frequent. In fact, the current government of Ireland is supported by a parliamentary coalition composed of three parties--Fianna Fail, the Greens, and the Progressive Democrats.

One of the arguments against proportional representation is that it gives small third parties too much power, and over-represents their small constituencies. Under proportional representation, it's very easy for small parties to become parliamentary kingmakers, and for their leaders to serve in government more often than their popular support would seem to warrant.

The flip side, of course, is that non-proportional systems arguably give third parties too little power, exclude them from government entirely, and essentially disenfranchise their supporters.

Personally, I prefer proportional representation. But it's not a perfect solution, by any means.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

cultcross, the problem with internet debates is one person writes something, another person breaks it down into quotes, and the first person breaks their posts into even more quotes. Before you realize it, both sides are writing half page arguments and putting an insane amount of time into it.

In an effort to avoid doing that (since God knows I've done it way too many times before), I'm going to try and redirect my focus a little bit here. If there's something specific you want me to reply to, I will, but I'm going to avoid quoting anything.

Honestly, I admire the British system a lot. I think it's very fascinating. My biggest complaint with it specifically is the idea that things can be done without a framework. The House of Lords being given deference but no reason why people couldn't just ignore it (or Camelopard's mentioning of suspending the Canadian Parliament, which just made my skin crawl). To me, a government needs defined boundaries of what it can and can't do, rather than just exist by tradition (which feels way to much like late-Republican Rome where the idea of governing through deference and tradition broke down and people regularly flaunted what was supposed to be the Roman "constitution"). Another example would be World War II. Elections were flat out suspended, which is something unheard of in the United States (although there is a degree of deference and tradition that exists as an unwritten US constitution and that was broken when FDR ran for four terms, but the written one was quickly modified to account for that).

Aside from that, I have no problems with the British system of government. It works really well for Britain and, in general, Parliamentary systems work a lot better for most world governments than the US Presidential system does. But the system the US has does work for the US, which is where my original post was coming from (where there was talk about switching to a Parliamentary system to encourage more third party representation). One thing I do have a problem with governments with a large number of parties with significant representation is that, a lot of times, they can't govern. Italy would be a good example, where stability is an issue. I also think it's wrong to think that, even if a government is only made up of two parties, that those parties don't represent a broad group of interests that would be the same that a coalition of parties would support.

A minute ago you said 'legislators vote as individuals, not as a party' and now you're worried about them voting as a party, so you need someone to tell them that's wrong?

I'll try and clear that up. Even if people belong to a party, they vote based on the interests of the people who elected them. They represent them. In a multi-party system, it's more like people vote for the party that fits their views and the individual elected is supposed to support that party view. In the United States, people vote for a candidate that fits their views (ideally) and the candidate votes according to their shared views. He shares these views more with one party over the other, so he belongs to that party. But the same diversity of opinion and interests that could exist otherwise could exist here.

In the other instance, I was talking about the extreme where all party members in a Parliamentary system blindly followed party allegiances. Now, it's true that could (and does) happen in the situation I described (limiting individual diversity of opinion), but there's a built in counter to that. If he stops following the will of the people he's supposed to support, they can elect someone else.

I do think that Camelopard is right that the key issue here is actually electoral system. The problem I have with proportional representation (correct me if I'm wrong) is that it usually involves a list of candidates and shifts the vote from the individual to the party. The idea is that a certain percentage of votes means they get a certain percentage of candidates. I know parties are a part of the system, but I don't like the idea of making the system revolve around parties. That would completely remove the idea of someone running as an independent without party affiliation, for example.

 

[Verteron]

Personally I strongly agree with the posters in this thread who feel that our UK House of Commons does not have a suitably strong process of checks and balances given how it currently operates.

In most other countries that follow the Westminster-style system (for example, India) both the upper house of parliament and the President are elected by the people. This provides them with a popular mandate -- and mandates are important if you want to go around rejecting or amending legislation, something that is very important in the political process and not something that's adequately fulfilled by any of the other branches of the UK's government right now.

The Queen rightly has her hands tied because she's only there due to tradition. I certainly wouldn't want to give an unelected, non-appointed single person the actual right to reject legislation as she chose with no way for the public to reject her point of view, it's all very well having a President who can be ousted at the next election and/or overridden by a strongly opposed legislature, but a Monarch is an entirely different kettle of fish.

Likewise, our upper house, the House of Lords, is ineffectual and a practically a laughing stock, being full of appointed cronies from the past few governments, a handful of 'hereditary peers' who are normally the inbred idiot sons of the nobility, and bishops of the CoE, who represent a very small proportion of the UK's population who still attend the Church (there are now more regularly practicing Muslims in the UK than there are Christians). Using the Parliament Act, our government in the Commons can force through stalled legislation practically at its whim, and since the Lords lacks the 'power from the people' peers feel they have no right to really get their teeth in to bills other than to make minor suggestions and/or to play kickabout with various amendments for a few readings.

So how do we rectify this?

Very simply we need to alter one of these bodies (the Monarch, the Lords) to act as a more effective counterbalance and the only way to do this is to make one of them popularly elected.

Although I have Republican leanings myself, I can of course acknowledge the large amount of pomp and circumstance that the UK population attaches to the Monarchy and the amount of positive popular opinion towards them that continues (although this may be a reflection of how bad our politicians are in comparison) so I wouldn't touch the Monarch for the moment.

So, very simply, we need an elected House of Lords.

One way to approach Lords reform might to be to look at proportional representation in the upper house, leaving the lower house as it is, with FPTP, which would create a strong government with a clear governing majority much as we have now. The Upper House, primarily as a body that would amend and debate legislation may be less likely to vote along party lines and as a 'secondary' house may well be more inclined to simply pass non-contentious legislation by consensus rather than squabbling (which is occasionally useful in the commons), much as the Lords does now.

Basically, I'd hope to see less whipping.

One of the main problems of our HoC at the moment is that our executive (the Cabinet) drawn from the legislature (which is the way things work in a parliamentary system) can pretty much do whatever they want when they have a majority in the parliament, simply because our parties are so tightly whipped, anything they propose is likely to get pushed through by their majority, which is unrepresentative of the country as a whole (Labour has a large majority but only achieved something like 42% of the vote last time around).

Anyway this has turned in to a bit of a rant.

 

[Goliath]

The problem I have with proportional representation (correct me if I'm wrong) is that it usually involves a list of candidates and shifts the vote from the individual to the party. The idea is that a certain percentage of votes means they get a certain percentage of candidates. I know parties are a part of the system, but I don't like the idea of making the system revolve around parties. That would completely remove the idea of someone running as an independent without party affiliation, for example.

Sounds like what you want is the Single Transferable Vote system.

This is sometimes known as "British proportional representation," which is ironic, because it's been tried almost everywhere except Great Britain. As the article mentions, it's currently used for parliamentary elections in Ireland, Northern Ireland, and Malta, as well as for senatorial elections in Australia.

This is the system I would like to see used in Canada as well.

One way to approach Lords reform might to be to look at proportional representation in the upper house, leaving the lower house as it is, with FPTP, which would create a strong government with a clear governing majority much as we have now. The Upper House, primarily as a body that would amend and debate legislation may be less likely to vote along party lines and as a 'secondary' house may well be more inclined to simply pass non-contentious legislation by consensus rather than squabbling (which is occasionally useful in the commons), much as the Lords does now.

Which is the system they have in Australia.

I am always surprised at just how little people in Commonwealth countries seem to know about each other's parliamentary institutions, and how seldom we seem to study each other's constitutions when we consider making changes to our own.

(I don't mean you specifically, Verteron--for all I know you were inspired by the Australian example)

But as a bunch of different countries all using essentially the same system of government, I think we should talk to each other more about these things.

 

[Holdfast]

What does one want out of a Governmental System?

My own personal political leanings mean that I want a system that discourages change as much as possible, and encourages stability. I believe that countries have the opportunity to flourish best when largely left alone by their governments. If that's not possible, at least the level and nature of intervention should be kept constant, without major rapid changes.

Fortunately for me, most mature democracies like the UK and the USA have this sort of outcome. The USA achieves it overtly through concrete, prescribed checks and balances. The UK does it implicitly, through the power of the Commons in concert with the relative weakness of the Lords and the theoretically infinite but totally impractical power of the Monarch. It's a very delicately poised balance, but it generally works because a) while the Commons has vast power, it can't stop the other lot getting in soon enough, and they will then wield the same vast power; b) the Lords, though more of a constant presence, can't completely override the commons in the end and can merely advise; c) the Monarch can theoretically tell them all to fuck off, but in practice can't because of tradition. It's a giant game of Rock, Paper, Scissors.

Proportional Representation would lessen the effective power of the Commons, by creating the need for frequent unstable coalitions. Elected Lords would strengthen the Lords, by giving them more of a mandate. Abolishing the Queen would remove the final check on the lot of them. Sure, a new stable balance might emerge... but it also might not, and constitutional chaos could result. Better off with the current stable & safe system, I say.

Representative Democracy is really all about letting the general population feel they have enough of a say that they don't start a revolution, while not making them think about it much, which they also dislike. That's best achieved by stable governments and minimal constitutional upheaval, I'd say.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

Sounds like what you want is the Single Transferable Vote system.

This is sometimes known as "British proportional representation," which is ironic, because it's been tried almost everywhere except Great Britain. As the article mentions, it's currently used for parliamentary elections in Ireland, Northern Ireland, and Malta, as well as for senatorial elections in Australia.

This is the system I would like to see used in Canada as well.

That works. Not as simple and straight forward, though, which is a negative considering I come from the land of the Butterfly ballot fiasco.

What does one want out of a Governmental System?

My own personal political leanings mean that I want a system that discourages change as much as possible, and encourages stability. I believe that countries have the opportunity to flourish best when largely left alone by their governments. If that's not possible, at least the level and nature of intervention should be kept constant, without major rapid changes.

That's definitely what the US is designed for. It allows for slow gradual change without upsetting the minority.

Representative Democracy is really all about letting the general population feel they have enough of a say that they don't start a revolution, while not making them think about it much, which they also dislike. That's best achieved by stable governments and minimal constitutional upheaval, I'd say.

Well, I wouldn't use the same cynical argument you used there, but I do think it's about letting the general population have a say without the threat of a tyranny of the majority where they use democracy to oppress the minority.

 

[Ariadne]

I'll try and clear that up. Even if people belong to a party, they vote based on the interests of the people who elected them. They represent them. In a multi-party system, it's more like people vote for the party that fits their views and the individual elected is supposed to support that party view. In the United States, people vote for a candidate that fits their views (ideally) and the candidate votes according to their shared views. He shares these views more with one party over the other, so he belongs to that party. But the same diversity of opinion and interests that could exist otherwise could exist here.

In the other instance, I was talking about the extreme where all party members in a Parliamentary system blindly followed party allegiances. Now, it's true that could (and does) happen in the situation I described (limiting individual diversity of opinion), but there's a built in counter to that. If he stops following the will of the people he's supposed to support, they can elect someone else.

It seems to me like party allegiance is much less of a problem in the United States than it is elsewhere. That could be because of the two-party system (so it's accepted that people are going to disagree) or because of the separation between the executive and legislative branches (so the President is more separated from the congresspeople).

 

[Goliath]

Proportional Representation would lessen the effective power of the Commons, by creating the need for frequent unstable coalitions.

I'm not convinced of this. There's nothing inherently unstable about coalitions, and those who claim that there is have generally drawn their examples and evidence from political cultures that are quite different from Britain's.

The United Kingdom is not Italy or Israel. What's more, I see no signs that it's going to become something like Italy or Israel any time soon. In the most recent general election in the UK, almost 90 per cent of the votes cast went to just three major parties. Even under a system of strict PR, two of those three major parties could have formed a comfortable majority in the Commons: 57 per cent for Labour/Lib-Dem, or 54 per cent for Conservative/Lib-Dem--or even 67 per cent for a German-style Labour-Conservative "grand coalition."

In addition, every large political party is effectively a coalition. They can crack up just as easily as a combination of smaller parties--and historically, some coalitions have been stronger than single parties. It all depends on the circumstances.

As I mentioned in a previous post: one of Canada's oldest and most well-established political parties, the Progressive Conservatives, fell apart completely in the early 1990s. Its Western supporters defected to the Reform Party, its Quebec supporters defected to the Bloc Quebecois, and the remainder was annihilated in the federal election of 1993, winning just two seats.

Something similar almost happened to Labour, in Britain, with the creation of the SDP in 1981. Two more famous examples from 19th-century British history would be the breakup of the Conservative party over the issue of Protection, and the breakup of the Liberal party over the issue of Irish Home Rule.

Conversely, the UK spent the majority of the early 20th-century (26 out of 50 years) under minority governments, coalitions, and "national governments" of one sort or another.

It seems to me that, in British history, coalition government has been just as common and just as stable as its single-party counterpart.

 

[Verteron]

First on the topic of STV, I'm afraid I can't help but think it's just too confusing for the average person you'll likely meet in modern-day Britain

However, it does confer some advantages, I'll concede.

One way to approach Lords reform might to be to look at proportional representation in the upper house, leaving the lower house as it is, with FPTP, which would create a strong government with a clear governing majority much as we have now. The Upper House, primarily as a body that would amend and debate legislation may be less likely to vote along party lines and as a 'secondary' house may well be more inclined to simply pass non-contentious legislation by consensus rather than squabbling (which is occasionally useful in the commons), much as the Lords does now.

Which is the system they have in Australia.

Interesting, I do know a bit about Aus, although my impression was that Australia uses several hybrid voting systems in both the lower house and upper house to achieve different compositions, but not quite traditional FPTP or PR in either.

That said, it does seem like the governing party tends to achieve a simple majority in the lower house but not usually the upper house, which might be a good approximation of what I think could work here.

I shall have to read more about Australian government stability and checks and balances...

 

[cultcross]

Honestly, I admire the British system a lot. I think it's very fascinating. My biggest complaint with it specifically is the idea that things can be done without a framework. The House of Lords being given deference but no reason why people couldn't just ignore it (or Camelopard's mentioning of suspending the Canadian Parliament, which just made my skin crawl). To me, a government needs defined boundaries of what it can and can't do, rather than just exist by tradition (which feels way to much like late-Republican Rome where the idea of governing through deference and tradition broke down and people regularly flaunted what was supposed to be the Roman "constitution"). Another example would be World War II. Elections were flat out suspended, which is something unheard of in the United States (although there is a degree of deference and tradition that exists as an unwritten US constitution and that was broken when FDR ran for four terms, but the written one was quickly modified to account for that).

Aside from that, I have no problems with the British system of government. It works really well for Britain and, in general, Parliamentary systems work a lot better for most world governments than the US Presidential system does. But the system the US has does work for the US, which is where my original post was coming from (where there was talk about switching to a Parliamentary system to encourage more third party representation). One thing I do have a problem with governments with a large number of parties with significant representation is that, a lot of times, they can't govern. Italy would be a good example, where stability is an issue. I also think it's wrong to think that, even if a government is only made up of two parties, that those parties don't represent a broad group of interests that would be the same that a coalition of parties would support.

In an effort to avoid your accurately diagnosed 'quote breakdown syndrome' I'll try and reply to your general point, which as I understand it is basically that the UK government lacks legitimacy (I don't mean that quite as emotively as it sounds, but I can't think of a better word for it) because it is not prescribed on a piece of paper you can shove under the courts' noses what each aspect of it can and can't do. So theoretically, or 'as written', our government could change into a radical semi-dictatorship basically overnight.
I do see your point, from an American perspective. To Americans with the Constitution and a government that was come up with, from scratch, in one go (just about- forgetting amendments here), the concept of having a government as imprecisely defined as ours is probably difficult to fathom. But the British government wasn't made up one day and functioning in much the present day form 6 months later (to exaggerate the process a bit ) - it has evolved over centuries as an ongoing shift of power from monarchy to people, and what has resulted is a functioning, democratic, system, but one that has not been precisely defined 'on paper'.
The history of the UK is not one of tyrannical governments rising out of improperly defined freedoms, quite the opposite; it is one of democracy and freedom arising despite tyrannical monarchy and the well-established divine right of Kings. The King of England was once all powerful, and yet the British people took the power from him, bit by bit, and our current system evolved. The concept that the system is weak because of its ill defined legal basis doesn't tally with what that system has accomplished in history. When the word 'tradition' is used in British government, this is what is referred to - not a 'tradition' in the sense of turkey on Thanksgiving, but a 'tradition' in the sense of the historical precedents which have built a working government, and current governments and the civil service screw with it at their peril.

In the other instance, I was talking about the extreme where all party members in a Parliamentary system blindly followed party allegiances. Now, it's true that could (and does) happen in the situation I described (limiting individual diversity of opinion), but there's a built in counter to that. If he stops following the will of the people he's supposed to support, they can elect someone else.

Which is exactly the same as a Parliamentary, or indeed any democratic, system. Having the electiosn mroe frequently doesn't make it 'more democratic' it jsut makes it more... busy.

I do think that Camelopard is right that the key issue here is actually electoral system. The problem I have with proportional representation (correct me if I'm wrong) is that it usually involves a list of candidates and shifts the vote from the individual to the party. The idea is that a certain percentage of votes means they get a certain percentage of candidates. I know parties are a part of the system, but I don't like the idea of making the system revolve around parties. That would completely remove the idea of someone running as an independent without party affiliation, for example.

I agree, and I dislike proportioanl representation for a number of reasons, and this is one. Another is that it allows extremist parties which actually only hAve a small following to have a disproportional voice in government. Let's say the BNP picks up 1/8th of a seat through proportional representation. They only have 1/8th of a vote, but you can't have 1/8th of a person - so they get a full person contributing to parliamentary debate, 7/8ths of which weren't really elected.

Likewise, our upper house, the House of Lords, is ineffectual and a practically a laughing stock,

Recent events suggest otherwise. Twice in the last couple of years, the Lords have acted effectively as a block against civil liberty invasion by the Commons.

(there are now more regularly practicing Muslims in the UK than there are Christians).

Link for this? The number of declared 'Christians' in britain overwhelms the number of 'Muslims' by more than a factor of 10 - how did you discover how many of each are 'practicing'?

One of the main problems of our HoC at the moment is that our executive (the Cabinet) drawn from the legislature (which is the way things work in a parliamentary system) can pretty much do whatever they want when they have a majority in the parliament, simply because our parties are so tightly whipped, anything they propose is likely to get pushed through by their majority, which is unrepresentative of the country as a whole (Labour has a large majority but only achieved something like 42% of the vote last time around).

I actually hear what you're saying here, but you can't use the fact that people are too lazy to get off the sofa and go and vote as a means of attacking the majority government. True, their 'vote tally' represents a minority of the people, but to be frank, that's the peoples' own fault. If they don't want Labour in power, go and vote for somebody else. Otherwise, they have no right to complain when the government they weren't interested in being represented by does things they don't like. I didn't want Labour in power any more so I went and I crossed a box that wasn't Labour. I'm assuming from your post that you did the same. It's all that's required of Joe Taxpayer in the government system, and if someone can't even be bothered to do that, they shouldn't be surprised when the majority party doesn't represent their views.

 

[Ariadne]

First on the topic of STV, I'm afraid I can't help but think it's just too confusing for the average person you'll likely meet in modern-day Britain

Really? Rank your choices is too complicated? They don't have to understand the (not all that complicated either) counting process, just the voting process.

I agree, and I dislike proportioanl representation for a number of reasons, and this is one. Another is that it allows extremist parties which actually only hAve a small following to have a disproportional voice in government. Let's say the BNP picks up 1/8th of a seat through proportional representation. They only have 1/8th of a vote, but you can't have 1/8th of a person - so they get a full person contributing to parliamentary debate, 7/8ths of which weren't really elected.

When they proposed having PR in the Ontario legislature (a rare, once-in-a-decade-at-least one of what you'd call a ballot initiative - it was defeated), there was going to be a cutoff (I think at about 2%), so that any party that got a seat that way would have several.

 

[cultcross]

I agree, and I dislike proportioanl representation for a number of reasons, and this is one. Another is that it allows extremist parties which actually only hAve a small following to have a disproportional voice in government. Let's say the BNP picks up 1/8th of a seat through proportional representation. They only have 1/8th of a vote, but you can't have 1/8th of a person - so they get a full person contributing to parliamentary debate, 7/8ths of which weren't really elected.

When they proposed having PR in the Ontario legislature (a rare, once-in-a-decade-at-least one of what you'd call a ballot initiative - it was defeated), there was going to be a cutoff (I think at about 2%), so that any party that got a seat that way would have several.

Not a bad compromise, in terms of correcting that particular problem.

 

[Goliath]

First on the topic of STV, I'm afraid I can't help but think it's just too confusing for the average person you'll likely meet in modern-day Britain

Really? Rank your choices is too complicated? They don't have to understand the (not all that complicated either) counting process, just the voting process.

I read somewhere that when STV was introduced in Northern Ireland, the government launched a public-information program that used the following slogan: "Proportional Representation: It's as Easy as 1-2-3!"

Surely, if the Irish can do it, the British can do it too?

When they proposed having PR in the Ontario legislature (a rare, once-in-a-decade-at-least one of what you'd call a ballot initiative - it was defeated), there was going to be a cutoff (I think at about 2%), so that any party that got a seat that way would have several.

IIRC, that was first implemented in West Germany--a country with some experience of extremist parties.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

Cultcross, I'm not sure the exact word I'm thinking of either. Legitimacy doesn't quite work, since I think the House of Commons certainly has legitimacy. I guess what I think it lacks is restraint.

Part of the problem is that, yes, over time, Parliament has moved towards a more democratic institution and away from the oppressiveness of a monarch. But, at the same time, Parliament has acted in oppressive ways in the past.

One point would be a Bill of Attainder, where Parliament passes a law saying you are guilty (so there's no point of a trial). They used to be fairly common. They've been phased out because they seem to be strongly against Democracy. But Winston Churchill wanted them used against the Nazis instead of the Nuremberg trials and was only stopped because his allies wanted trials (well, Stalin wanted show trials, so that's not the greatest example of democracy, but the point is that something that should have died out a long time ago could be brought back simply because it was used in the past and does have a traditional backing). Legislatures, even with a popular mandate, can act wrongly sometimes.

 

[Sean Aaron]

Camilla doesn't seem to be anywhere near as disliked as she used to be - that was mostly backlash over the inexplicably popular and transparently self-serving Princess Diana. Charles, by rights, should be admired and liked as much as his dead ex-wife, based on the amount of charity work he does and money he gives - he just doesn't shout about it in the same way.

I admire Charles and his outspokenness and look forward to the day when he takes the crown. Camilla is also rightfully entitled to be his Queen whether the Diana cult likes it or not, but in deference to them appears to be unlikely to take that title.

With regard to PR and all that, I definitely think some proportional representation is a good thing, though agreed that %100 P.R. isn't desireable. The Scottish Parliment has a certain number of list seats and then constituent seats as well, which helps ensure local views are taken into account and not just party interests. They're talking about doing something similar in Israel because there's a good deal of dissatisfaction with the discussion of regional issues there.

Seems like a workable compromise.

 

[Sci]

I admire Charles and his outspokenness and look forward to the day when he takes the crown. Camilla is also rightfully entitled to be his Queen whether the Diana cult likes it or not, but in deference to them appears to be unlikely to take that title.

I agree that Camilla has the right to become Queen-consort, but -- and, mind you, this is just one American's POV on things, but -- it seems to me that Charles will really need to learn to stop expressing his opinions in public. The role of the Monarch is to be the living symbol of national unity, and that imposes a duty to be non-partisan -- to leave politics to the politicians.

 

[cultcross]

I admire Charles and his outspokenness and look forward to the day when he takes the crown. Camilla is also rightfully entitled to be his Queen whether the Diana cult likes it or not, but in deference to them appears to be unlikely to take that title.

I agree that Camilla has the right to become Queen-consort, but -- and, mind you, this is just one American's POV on things, but -- it seems to me that Charles will really need to learn to stop expressing his opinions in public. The role of the Monarch is to be the living symbol of national unity, and that imposes a duty to be non-partisan -- to leave politics to the politicians.

I agree. the job of monarch is not to mouth off about every topic that interests you - however much you may wish too. The Queen has remained popular through massive political shifts in this country because she has the good sense to keep her opinions to herself and her private meetings with the PM.
I don't necessarily think Charles has bad opinions, and as I've said, his charity and environmental work garner him a lot of respect from me, but he will need to keep his mouth shut about politics once that crown is on his head.

 

[The Squire of Gothos]

So the UK does have proportional representation?

Pained Response from a Liberal Democrat Voter: No.

Well it does, but not for the Westminister government.

The Northern Ireland Assembly and National Assembly for Wales both use the D'Hondt method and the Scottish Parliament uses Mixed member proportional representation.

 

[Sam_I_Am]

Actually Northern Ireland uses the Single Transferable Vote for elections to the Assembly, although the d'Hondt Method is used to apportion the Northern Ireland Executive between the various parties.

UK elections to the European Parliament also use proportional representation, and Scotland now elects its local counties through the Single Transferable Vote too.