UK and the System of PR for General Elections

UK and the System of PR for General Elections

In our current system, First-Past-The-Post (FPTP), there are only two

parties capable of being elected into government, the Labour and

Conservative parties, perhaps including the Liberal Democrats as a

potentially influential party. In our 'democratic' society, if you do

not vote for one of these three parties, your vote has been wasted.

There are only about 250 seats in the House of Commons that regularly

veer between parties out of the 650 available, therefore, for a Labour

voter in Malvern or a Conservative voter in Ebber Vale your vote has

essentially been wasted, either you move to a different constituency

or you change parties, otherwise your vote will effectively not count.

This raises the question whether a fairer proportional representation

system would lead to a fairer government, but as past examples such as

the Weimar Republic have shown, proportional representation also holds

problems. The result of smaller parties gaining seats is that in order

to gain a majority the larger parties must form a coalition government

with the smaller who then gain a disproportionate say in government as

the larger party needs their support to get legislation through.

No government since World War II has been elected on more than 50% of

the vote, even the recent 'landslide' victory of Tony Blair's New

Labour won with only 41.9% of the vote. This shows that the smaller

parties would most certainly be necessary for a successful government

in Britain. Therefore, although proportional representation has

benefits such as giving a truer reflection of the vote, it can also

have undesirable character...

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them

Overall, I believe that the UK should reform its electoral system, but

I think it should adopt the Jenkins Commission and AV+. The

Independent Commission would have considered all types of reform,

looked at the UK's political history, and produced a system that would

best suit it.

Although FPTP is not the uniquely British idiocy that it is sometimes

portrayed as, it is used in 62 countries, covering more than half the

world's electors, it has many faults, and I feel it allows the

government to become too powerful with large majorities. I also feel

that because of the UK's political history, coalition governments

would not be seen as strong governments. Although AV+ may sometimes

produce coalitions it is least likely than any other system to do so

and it does allow for single-party governments.