Religion and Ethics Forum
General Category => Politics & Current Affairs => Topic started by: SqueakyVoice on September 22, 2022, 08:51:59 AM
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https://liveapp.inews.co.uk/2022/09/22/more-britons-want-to-scrap-first-past-the-post-elections-than-keep-the-status-quo/content.html
(The article is more nuanced than the headline.)
It is the first time more people (51%) have backed PR than first-past-the-post since the British Social Attitudes survey launched in 1983.
It still reads a bit like a binary choice, but at least it seems to be growing in the right direction.
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FPTP must go, but we must be careful what we replace it with: the list system is absolutely disastrous, more or less guaranteeing any party that puts up candidates at least one MP, so extreme, unrepresentative parties end up holding the balance of power. It also means that no-one has an MP of their own. Israel uses it, with disastrous results. Additional member is a crude cobbling together of fptp, which we want to get rid of, and the list, which is, as i say, even worse than fptp. What we need is single transferable vote.
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FPTP must go, but we must be careful what we replace it with: the list system is absolutely disastrous, more or less guaranteeing any party that puts up candidates at least one MP, so extreme, unrepresentative parties end up holding the balance of power. It also means that no-one has an MP of their own. Israel uses it, with disastrous results. Additional member is a crude cobbling together of fptp, which we want to get rid of, and the list, which is, as i say, even worse than fptp. What we need is single transferable vote.
Well how about a proportionally represented chamber to replace the Commons and an FPTP system to replace the Lords. The Commons would still generate most of the legislation but the Lords replacement would concentrate on representing their constituents. I would decouple the election of the new Lords people from general elections so that they don't have to follow the party line all the time. There would also have to be some accountability of the government to the New Lords and many other details that need to be worked out but, as a broad idea, I think it would work.
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Everyone can put forward their favourite system or, at least, the one that makes more sense to them.
However, if the choice of system is left to those who have been elected by the previous system, they can't help but introduce an unacceptable bias. Under Cameron, even though Clegg had obtained a referendum, no one really wanted the proposed AV system.