Right listen up as this is a serious post about the election on May 5th where we have a chance to change British politics, the first real shake up for over a hundred years.
First of all I do not want to hear, ‘Well I voted Labour and then the Libs get into power” or ‘There all the same” or ‘There’s no point in voting as the Tories always get in round me” Voting does make a difference and it should be law like it is in several other countries and the Libs did not come last, and the Tories did not win, they formed a government which is asked by the Head of State, in this case the Queen asked Cameron to form her Government, and as Cameron had the most seats she by our very constitution asked him first. If he had failed, then she would have asked Brown, and if he failed then she could have picked, or forced the country to go to the polls again (we do for all our DIY needs)
So lets start with the basics. I love politics, and encourage people to vote. For all those who didn’t bother you could have voted Labour into power but you decided that the Tories win in your town so you weren’t going to bother. The funny fact is, that your town with a population of 60,000 only had 18,000 voters and 9,000 voted for Tory. But the town has 32,000 voters in the labour camp who decided that the Tories would win, so didn’t vote. The point is that every vote counts, and it does.
So History lesson and education lesson of how our current voting system works. the first piece of information you need to know is you do not vote for a party to run the country as we live in a Parliamentarian System. This means that all the towns and villages are broken up into areas called constituencies and people stand in those areas hoping to be elected to voice the local town folks opinions in the house. It just so happens that we need to have a body of people to head up the Government and that pleasure is normally the party who wins the most sits. This is the system called first past the post and does work and did when you had a handful of constituencies, and only 2 parties with minimum people voting. The main point about first past the post is that the losers can win. Labour achieved this in 2005. Let me explain.
Lets say for argument sake that all people voted… We have 10 towns, and to win power to form a government you need to win six of the seats. However some of the towns have different populations but are still worth one seat. This is like Labour and Conservatives. The Labour camp have a strong hold on those larger areas, like Manchester and Liverpool where the Tories have safe seats in tiny small areas in Kent and the other home counties. Where the Libs have safe seats in really large constituencies like Cornwall and Scotland, there are basically one seat. The balance is uneven, as each area is not spilt up equally. But at the end of the day the MP’s fight for what they believe in and it’s the back benches that can turn against the government even if it’s against their own party. So if you like Labour, but hate the Tories then you should read the papers again, and look at the numbers on Votes, as the Tories are purposing laws and bills but the whole house votes on the outcome. This could mean that the party you follow vote on the side of the Tories as well because they has an MP believe that cut or bill will help the country.
But I once again go away from the point. The one the election works at the moment is this….the Election begins and the red team win their first seat with 7,000 votes, and then their second seat with 10,000 votes and a 3rd with 12,000. It looks like it may be a run away victory like in 1997, but the blues score a sit by winning in their local election with 3,000, and a 2nd seat with 7,000. And so it goes on until by the end of the night the reds have 56,000 votes across our country and the blues have 33,000 votes. The trouble is the Blues win the election has they have won more seats and form a government. But wait a minute they have not won the majority of the voters but they still get in to run the country. So from this you have tactical voting and people saying it doesn’t make a difference. Well true maybe if you vote Labour then overall no difference would be made in the government, but you may end up with a Labour MP who can argue his party points and vote against the government, but no wait you didn’t bother voting because you knew the blues would win and now we have a BNP member for our town, great.
So how can we prevent this. It’s easy we do AV or PR. For this I will have to explain it to you in simple terms but please look it up as it is more complex than what I am about to detail as both systems are tricky and both will in our two party system lead us with more coalitions. Personally I’m all for them, other contraries cope, if you don’t count Belgium but there showing the world you can run a country without anyone in charge. So what is AV.
Basically it is Alternative Voting. On poll day rather than voting for one candidate, you vote several times. Almost in preference of who you would like in power. So you may put a 1 against the Red, as his your favourite candidate and 2 against a yellow, 3 against green, all the way down to the last one. Then in rounds people get knocked out. So in round one you have to get 60% of the votes, and at least 20% to stay in the running. On round one, no one gets 60% but the Blues and Purples score below the 20% needed, so people who voted for them, now have their second option counted towards the results in the first round, which could see a winner. If not then which ever candidate got knocked out in round 2, the people who voted for them would then have there second or 3rd option counted. So If I had voted Purple 1st and Yellow 2nd, My 2nd preference would now be counted in the second round. This goes on until a clear winner is found. There are pros and cons to this system, the biggest Con is it is the same system that saw Milliband become leader of the opposition, so it is not always a good measurement of taste.
The other method is PR. Which is basically proportional representation. Which does what it says on the tIn. It’s a bit like the American College system. So back in 2005 Liberals would have won a lot more seats, as proportionally more people voted for them. If we go back to our small town, proportionally the reds should have won.
Therefore I ask you to read up on the different voting methods, and what the Government is asking us to vote on. We need a shake up in our system, and we need it to be fairer first past the post really does not work. Maybe with other elections, but when you are voting on who runs country (while that is not suppose to be what we think when marking the paper) an alternative system should be used. It’s either that or we vote for a president to run the country, and do away with the Queen, but that may be a different blog for another day.
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