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No-one Won

by James Ogley on May 7th, 2010

It’s a hung parliament.  You already knew that of course.  I’ve not slept very much.  You may not already know – or indeed care about – that.

Anyway.  What the results show is that this country desperately needs electoral reform.

The Liberal Democrats had a great showing though you wouldn’t know if from the make-up of the Commons.  The share of the vote for the Liberal Democrats went up – and the share of seats went down.

Can you work that out?

If you were a dictator, attempting to create a faux democracy that gave people the impression of having a say while ensuring tat the majority voice is not heard, you’d still probably come up with a fairer system than the UK.

Yesterday, thousands of people were disenfranchised completely by an inability to properly administer the polling stations, some stations ran out of ballot papers, postal ballots went missing and it is even alleged that in Lancashire, a 14 year old boy managed to vote.

So, Nick Clegg has made his position clear – he believes that the Tories ought to be allowed to form a government on the basis that they have the most seats and the most votes.  He also said that they should govern in the national interest.  That means electoral reform.  It cannot be right that a party wins over 1/5 of the votes cast yet only takes 1/12 of the seats in the Commons.

Digby Jones on BBC Radio 5Live just described Nick Clegg as Statesmanlike and pointed out that he’s proving to be that rarest commodity: A politician who keeps his word.

Some people warn that a move to Proportional Representation means an end to stable government.  Government isn’t looking especially stable this morning – a PR-based system would have meant that we went into the election knowing it would be coalition government the next day and would be set up to cope with it.

Some others warn that PR would allow extremist parties like the BNP into parliament.  The thing is that experience shows that where the BNP are elected, they are not re-elected.  Putting them into a position to actually do something shows the electorate how moribund, odious and pointless they are.

No-one won and maybe that’s okay.  Maybe it points the way to a system in future that ensures that no-one ever wins except that the majority of the people want them to.

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8 Comments
  1. Nick D permalink

    Personally, I’m quite looking forward to seeing what happens over the next few days. It makes things a bit more interesting, for a change.

    I don’t, however, relish the thought of having to turn out and vote again in a few weeks time!

  2. Matt permalink

    Although I agree that our electoral system is unfair – it is not fair to say that no one has won – the worse part now is that a party that has won (arguably unfairly) the most seats it is unable to attempt to form a new government.

    My vote this year (and the previous election) has been for the same person (don’t get me started – I have a problem with party based politics where you are unable to recall a MP for breaching a pledge that they have made because the party policy changes) – and I am happy that they have retained their seat (you are too!).

    I think http://bottleneck.org/site/News/General/112 raises some interesting points – I like the argument but I haven’t had time to think about it enough yet.

    All of the parties went in to this election knowing the strengths and weaknesses of FPTP voting – did they sufficiently engage their supports to obtain the outcome they needed to make the changes they promised – apparently not.

    The biggest problem now (especially the younger electorate) is that they expect (rightly) that their vote will make a difference. Party politics do not allow this to happen as the X-Line whips force MP’s to follow like sheep – MP’s join a party for a reason (the same reason you joined the LibDems) – but that should not mean that they (or you) have to agree with all of the policies that the party put forward – I agree with most of what the LibDems say (CGT and the speed in which Debt <- yes debt not deficit – reduction should take place are my biggest bug bears).

    PR will allow a more diverse House but until a move towards consensus politics is reached – free votes of every major policy issue – with an evidence base to support it – our politics will never change.

  3. Nick D permalink

    Why not just make all parties submit a list of potential MPs, in order of preference – so presumably, the party leader at the top, potential chancellor second, then foreign secretary etc. Then using the national vote share, give each party that percentage of MPs in Parliament. So, currently, give the Tories 36% of the MPs (that’s 234 MPs), Labour 29% (189 MPs) and LibDems 23% (150 MPs).

    Surely that’s about as fair as you can get?

    It would, however, almost certainly end in permanent coalition or minority governments, but maybe that wont end up being SUCH a bad thing…

  4. James Ogley permalink

    Nick, that’s the basic version of proportional representation. Coalition at its best engenders co-operation and minority government avoids arrogance and repression of minorities.

  5. Rules of the game permalink

    Those were the rules of the game and your candidate lost.
    Exitement before the polls? No room for crying Cry afterwords.

  6. James Ogley permalink

    No-one’s disputing that the result is what it is and that those are the rules.

    What it makes clear is what we said before that the rules are broken.

    They need to be fixed before the next election.

  7. Pintofsimilar permalink

    “It cannot be right that a party wins over 1/5 of the votes cast yet only takes 1/12 of the seats in the Commons.”

    Equally it cannot be right that the main party with the least support in either terms of votes or MP’s is put into the hotseat for a coalition. How many members of cabinet does the least popular party want? This isn’t democracy. And this is how every election will end up if Clegg gets his PR- dirty deals behind closed doors, with unpopular parties acting as king makers, foisting unwanted policies on the people .

  8. Neil permalink

    The voting system is indeed broken, you are right. Not sure I’d go for full-blown PR myself. Although I agree with freedom of speech, not sure how happy people would be if the BNP got a seat just because they had enough voteshare. Maybe I misunderstand PR though! But it does demonstrate why a technically fairer system is not necessarily the best.

    However, hats off to Cameron and Clegg for being grown-ups over this. I’m really impressed with them both, the parties have both sacrificed more than they wanted, plus tied themselves in for 5 years if I’ve read it right, although I think there might be a “vote of no confidence” option now. And as for Mr Brown, his resignation speach was probably his best to date Smile

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