Actor Steve Coogan and presenter Carol Vorderman have backed Liberal Democrat pledges to reform how the UK’s general elections are run.
Labour are the ones to convince. LD doesn’t have the power to bring it to fruition.
There’s a solid chance Labour won’t get a majority and will rely on either confidence and supply, or a full coalition. There are very few precedents for a party going from as low as 202 seats at one election to a majority government at the next (it happened in 1945, but only because the last election in that case was 1935 and rather a lot had happened in between).
Labour have been very clear where they stand on electoral reform. If we’re going to get a change to the voting system, it will only be because Labour were forced into it by the Lib Dems in a hung parliament.
Labour is not going to fall into hung territory at the next GE. Sunak keeps making things worse on each week he is around. It keeps looking more and more like those double digit tory fears will come to fruition. I could easily see the Tory party collapse after the GE, which in turn could push LD to being the second main party in the UK. That would be interesting to watch the donors bail on the Tories. Cummings attempt to make a new party could exacerbate the Tory demise even more.
There’s
a solidno chance Labour won’t get a majorityFixed that for you.
Labour have a massive lead and are on track for a crushing landslide victory just by keeping their mouths shut. It’s a pity but such a win means they have no incentive to change the system. It’ll likely be a couple of elections down the road until the numbers get tight.
Didn’t they play this game when Nick Clegg ran the party? After which they gave up on it as soon as they entered into a coalition with the Tories?
LD have been asking for PR voting at least since the 70’s. They have never took it away from their manifesto AFAIK.
They could not get Cameron to accept it. There is a huge difference between negotiation and removal.@theinspectorst@feddit.uk answered this properly https://feddit.uk/comment/2961968Labour and Conservative are happy with FPTP because it is easy to bribe the small amount of people in the swing vote areas. The rest of the country gets ignored. Smaller parties cannot compete in the funds to do this.
Got a source for that? Here’s one that contradicts you: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/sep/24/keir-starmer-defies-call-for-changes-to-first-past-the-post-voting-system
Sorry everything I have heard is the to contrary of that. Do you have any source to indicate that?
Sorry but that’s bullshit.
https://www.thenational.scot/news/23486672.labour-mimic-tories-keir-starmer-rejects-election-reform/
No, they actually got a vote through for a referendum for the UK to adopt the AV+ alternative vote system system. It’s flawed, but I thought it was an improvement on first past the post and voted for it. Not enough other people agreed
There was never a need for a referendum, Parliament has the absolute authority to change how its elections are run.
They should have insisted it was part of the coalition agreement, but didn’t.
Like student loans, it was ultimately less important than being in power.
So the minority party, should have forced through a major constitutional change, which voters hadn’t voted for - in the name of democracy? And the idea of the referendum was bad.
Interesting take.
Well when you put it that way…
The reality though is that both Labour and the LibDems had electoral reform in their manifestos - see Labour’s 2010 manifesto here, page 92 - and as their votes combined were more than the Tories (approx 15 million, versus 10) you could argue that clearly that was the will of the people, and it should have at least been subject to a vote in the Commons.
Now that obviously didn’t happen, and I’m not even saying it would be a successful option in negotiation, but what did happen was that the LibDems thought - and Clegg has said this himself - that having governmental stability was more important. Even if that meant passing a lot of pretty nasty shit.
you could argue that clearly that was the will of the people, and it should have at least been subject to a vote in the Commons.
In my opinion The LD clearly thought it was the will of the people and persuaded the Tories to run the referendum to prove this and give the change political legitimacy
Unfortunately the Tories pushed hard against it “being too complicated” and “would result in more hung parliaments” and people bought that bullshit, and we ended up with another Tory government nobody wanted at the next election, which almost certainly wouldn’t have happened under AV.
The Coalition agreed on a referendum on AV as a compromise. The Lib Dems’ (and most electoral reform campaigners’) preferred voting system is Single Transferrable Vote, which is effectively AV but with multi-member constituencies instead of single-member. STV is used in the Republic of Ireland and delivers proportional results whilst maintaining the existence of geographic constituency links - generally considered two desirable features of a voting system (along with preferentialism, a feature AV and STV both have).
If we could have made the switch to AV then it would have been only a short step from there to STV a few years later. But the Tories campaigned heavily against it, and Labour were highly divided on electoral reform so were officially neutral but in practice a majority of Labour MPs backed the ‘no’ campaign. So the referendum failed.
@theinspectorst @i_am_not_a_robot @Syldon @jonne I support PR, but I am concerned about keeping a constituncy link so everybody has a named MP. A modified form of STV would seem to be the way, with ATV for by-elections.
Having larger constituencies of five mps keeps the link and also makes the mps compete with each other to provide support. The current system can lead to people who need help due to bad laws being forced to go to their MP, the minister who introduced it and is responsible for that law. They won’t get help it’ll be too embarrassing.
Also I see elsewhere someone complaining of lists of MPs. We already have that in safe seats! They just put one name of the list in each constituency. Have five MPs in each area is an inporvement.
@PamCrossland @theinspectorst @i_am_not_a_robot @Syldon @jonne
It can’t be proportional and the existing level of constitutional representation without going to over 2000 MPs. PR in a Parliamentary system wrecks one person one vote for one candidate in a constituency.
Be careful what you wish for.
STV has one person one vote, in a constituency, with the added benefit of allowing voters to express their vote in a preferential ranking and delivering a proportional outcome. That is what I wish for.
@theinspectorst @i_am_not_a_robot @Syldon @jonne @PamCrossland
Well not if there are multiple outcomes.
In the London Mayoral elections sufficient put their first choice as Lord Bucket and their second the future mayor. This was after a specific campaign to save Lord Bucket’s deposit and ‘defeat’ the right wing candidate.That’s perfectly fine, but two outcomes so not a single vote.
@simon_lucy @theinspectorst @i_am_not_a_robot @Syldon @jonne It’s called transferable for a reason. You get one vote, but if your candidate gets knocked out, it’s transfered until their next choice candidate until one candidate has 50%+1 . The transferable vote allows you to choose your preferences so we don’t continue with the ridiculous situation where somebody can get elected with only 20-30% of the vote, as happens in some places.
Randomised voting.
Keep the constituencies exactly as they are, and each election everyone votes the way they do now.
Then instead of counting the votes, we shuffle them and pick a random vote and do what it says.
In aggregate this is proportional across the country, and also means every voter remains important in the constituency, you never know if the person you piss off today might personally vote you out tomorrow.
It also eliminates career politicians. Even in a safe seat you probably won’t win three terms.
It’ll never get used anywhere but it’s fun to think about.
I’m all for random, Lords for a year for random picks over 55 years of age is very attractive.
@simon_lucy @theinspectorst @i_am_not_a_robot @Syldon @jonne This is why I said a modified form. For example, from the top of my head, either first place candidate gets first choice of sub-constituency, 2nd, gets second choice, etc. Or the winner gets a sub-constituency in the area where most voted for them, 2nd, is their first of the first seond best, etc.
It could be done if people would only put their heads together.
@PamCrossland @theinspectorst @i_am_not_a_robot @Syldon @jonne
That’s not electing to a parliament, what are these sub constituencies, how do votes in a particular area count, if they’re separate then why combine them?
@simon_lucy @theinspectorst @i_am_not_a_robot @Syldon @jonne Pecause an area overall would have a great deal of proportionatally. So a city like Manchester would have say six MPs, and a sub constituency would still allow for a named MP but likely to have one or more other getting elected for their party/independents.
We currently do NOT live in a democratic country.
@theinspectorst @i_am_not_a_robot @Syldon @jonne
Exactly, which is why I voted for it in 2011. It deserved to succeed, but the degree of apathy was high. People didn’t bother to get off their backsides to vote, and it was lost. A great pity in many ways. It was a Lib-Dem red line for joining the coalition, together with the raising of the income tax threshold. The Tories now pretend that was their idea. It wasn’t.AV+ was not a PR method and only offered minor benefits above FPTP. It would still lead to a concentration of power between the two main parties, but it would increase the overall number of seats gained by a centrist party.
AV+ suited the Tories (and Labour) only slightly less well than FPTP, but Lib Dems would have been a much bigger spare leg if it had gone through. For the Tories, it was a win-win result.
In other words, the LDs allowed themselves to make another compromise, being tempted with another minor power grab, and in doing so allowed themselves to be outplayed again, and didn’t even gain us the minor democratic benefits AV+ had to offer.
As for AV+ being a short leap to PR, I have doubts, even though I voted in favour of it. PR would be less beneficial than AV+ to the three main parties now, so why would the LDs try to push it through? Also the referendum would have been used as a weapon - “the people voted so we can’t change it” - just as has been done for election reform, the Scottish Referendum and Brexit since.
@theinspectorst @i_am_not_a_robot @Syldon @jonne
Neither are proportional. If STV was used as multimember then constituencies would have around quarter of a million voters instead of 90k and parties would get list candidates, either regional, national or UK wide and they wouldn’t be elected by anyone.
Things not talked about by PR promoters.
The Republic of Ireland has 39 multi-member constituencies electing 160 members in total (so an average of four per constituency). That achieves almost perfectly proportional results. They have no party lists - each party nominates multiple candidates and you can (for example) choose to rank the individual candidates in whatever order you prefer.
If you translate this into UK terms, it would be the equivalent of merging four neighbouring constituencies into one and then having that elect four MPs. There might be a handful of unusual cases where you choose to take a different approach for reasons of geographic common sense (for example, Orkney and Shetlands or the Isle of Wight would probably remain as they are) but for most parts of the country that hardly seems particularly egregious.
@theinspectorst @i_am_not_a_robot @Syldon @jonne
You can’t translate it into UK terms, there’s around 4M voters in Ireland, 41M in the UK across 4 countries with greater disparity in density of populations and geographical size.
The average size of constituencies is 73k, so you agree with me that the future size would be around 250k. How is that local representation to a National Parliament?
There would have to be party lists to fudge it into a general proportional result across the Union.
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You must be young.
The tactics that were played out with Brexit, all the false adverts and claims were first played out with the Voting Reform.
There were things like
This child needs a ventilator, not a different form of voting
And
This soldier needs a bullet proof vest, not a different form of voting
They were literally claiming that if you voted for AV, then you are killing babies and our military.
I’m not, but I don’t live in the UK.
Then it seems odd that you would make those claims. We had a referendum, and the No2AV group did some awful billboards. It’s no surprise that the group went on to repeat the same crap about the EU.
Here is a link to complaints at the time about the distasteful adverts.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/feb/25/no-to-alternative-vote-baby-ad
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One of the most fascinating stats coming out of that period is that, with the Lib Dems having only 9% of the MPs in Parliament, Clegg still delivered 70% of the Lib Dem manifesto including all four of the ‘priority’ policies promoted on the front cover of the manifesto. They also achieved other good things that weren’t even in the manifesto, like Lynne Featherstone’s same-sex marriage legislation.
Cameron by contrast, with 47% of the MPs, failed to deliver many of his signature manifesto promises such as abolishing the Human Rights Act, reducing net immigration to the tens of thousands, introducing the Snoopers Charter, etc.
Objectively, Clegg’s 57 MPs were a pretty effective parliamentary unit, and yet it’s fascinating how the Tory media helped shape a narrative that it was the Lib Dems who were facilitating a Tory government and not the other way around. I remember in 2010 after the coalition agreement was first published, a lot of the discussion was about how successful the Lib Dems had been - it’s interesting how that perception evolved after five years of the media hammering voters with a different message.
@theinspectorst @i_am_not_a_robot @Syldon @jonne
Yes. Clegg has been much maligned for going into the coalition, and it was a gamble, but one he had to take. If he had failed to take the opportunity when offered, the Lib-Dems would have been sneered at for ever more and dismissed as not being a serious Party. He was right to do it, and the ignorant blinkered electorate treated the Lib-Dems disgracefully in 2015. That is my view.
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@kux @i_am_not_a_robot @Syldon @jonne @theinspectorst
Bull-crap frankly.
@theinspectorst @i_am_not_a_robot @Syldon @jonne @kennethb Cameron did manage to commit the UK to allowing a minority of the electorate (37%) to force the UK to leave the EU.
Not during the Coalition years - that came after the Tories won a majority in 2015. The difference between the 2010-15 and the post-2015 government is perfect evidence of the outsized role that the Lib Dems had in government.
They held the balance of power and could’ve made it the core demand of entering the coalition. I do take the point that there was a referendum about it, I forgot that happened.
@jonne
They were very much the Junior partner & wholly nonsensical & unrealistic expectations never help. They did a terrific job of holding back the worst excesses of the Tories for 5 years. We saw what happened when their restraining hand was no longer on the tiller. They were entitled to expect some respect & understanding & support from the electorate, but the electorate were too stupid and/or uninformed to realise what was actually happening & had actually happened in that 5 years.
Jfc, the fact that anyone still believes we can vote our problems away is beyond depressing…
Voting for the third and smaller of the puppets is still voting for a puppet. They all still serve capitalism, not people, they all still want to maintain the status quo, not bring actual change. The illusion of choice is just another distraction by those in power to keep themselves there.
Continuing to play within the rules written by and in defence of the system will only ever result in us staying under the boot that is said system, that’s a fact that is never going to change, the sooner people realise this, the sooner we can move towards actual change (where society is designed by and for all of its members, not by and for the rich).
So - what exactly are you proposing? Don’t be shy
You do realise that PR works and produce a much wider parliament in other countries? Look at Scandinavian countries? Would you call them capitalist hell-holes with their free healthcare, free schooling, generous pensions and social care?
Yeah I know but I’m still going to vote for them. Greens stand no chance and Starmer is a prick whose Labour stance is barely even diet Tory any more he’s sucked so much conservative dick. At least the LibDems aren’t transphobic and want to rejoin the EU.
And yes, I am a millenial who was sorely disappointed by voting for them back in the day, but I’ve been far, far more disappointed by Labour in recent years since they fucked over Corbyn.
I don’t expect anything to change by voting, the world is still irreparably fucked and climate collapse is imminent, but it’s nice to have the illusion of choice.
I didn’t think I’d love long enough to see the UK leave the EU but it happened… I’ll be long dead before the king maker here (Labour) supports PR. They’re the issue here, Tories were never going to agree Labour might have had a chance to push it through with support from Greens and LD but they choose to support the Tory policy instead. 🥹
I don’t think there’s many millennials that would vote LD now
I would. I live in the south west, where the Lib Dems have traditionally been strong and Labour typically won’t even acknowledge that we exist. There’s a perception here that Labour only care about the cities and the Red Wall. The Lib Dems, for all their faults, have an active presence and a much deeper awareness of the issues that affect the south west, and are therefore a much more viable option to vote for if we want to oust a Tory.
Same here, although I grew up in Cheshire & now live in London… Even within the cities, Labours local policies seem very copy paste when what people want in (eg.) Westminster is going to be different to what they want in Hounslow, which will be different to what people want in Dagenham.
Lib Dems seem to have a far better understanding of their constituencies/local areas than either of the major two parties (there are some good Labour MPs and slightly fewer good Tory MPs, but as a percentage they’re way lower), eg what Tim Farron is up to now in parliament, every speech is standing up for his constituency rather than hiding away in a large party letting the frontbenchers do the talking.
I think this is why the Lib Dems do so well in by-elections but struggle at general elections. When they’re only fighting one election, they can put all that local knowledge to good use and make a really tailored campaign that resonates with the electorate in that constituency. But in a general election, it’s much harder to put across a broad, national-level campaign, but that’s what general election campaigning has to be, because you have to speak to the whole country not just a small subset of it.
It’s a shame, because I actually think they’re a very under-appreciated option. They’ve struggled with their branding after the coalition, and I think to an extent it was unfair given that they were very much the junior partner in the coalition and didn’t have as much power as people think they did.
Why not? Labour are the party that introduced tuition fees in the first place.
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
Actor Steve Coogan and presenter Carol Vorderman have backed Liberal Democrat pledges to reform how the UK’s general elections are run.
The Lib Dems have long called for first past the post (FPTP) to be replaced with proportional representation (PR).
By contrast, PR is the idea that parties’ seats in parliament should be allocated so that they are in proportion to the number of votes cast.
Versions of proportional representation are already used to elect representatives in the regional legislatures of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
Coogan, who in the past has supported Labour and appeared in the party’s election material, said he plans to vote for Lib Dem candidate in Lewes, James MacCleary in a bid to oust Conservative MP Maria Caulfield.
And when they finally decide to call time on so many years of shambles and sleaze, the Liberal Democrats will be ready," he said.
The original article contains 403 words, the summary contains 147 words. Saved 64%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
