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UK Election Arcana, Explained By Software
An anonymous reader writes "For the first time in 35 years the UK government is looking to be at risk of getting a hung or coalition government. (The most recent previous hung parliaments were in 1974 and 1929.) The voting rules are somewhat arcane and the votes this time are such that there are many strange possible outcomes and a surprisingly large number of permutations of coalitions that could be formed and political strategies that may go into their forming. There are at least 60 permutations, some more politically plausible than others. Adam Back wrote some software to work out the permutations, and lists some of the arcane factors affecting the outcome. If Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown chose to, it would appear even that he could simply refuse to resign, ostensibly trying to form a coalition indefinitely, maybe even forcing the Queen to dismiss the current government, which last happened in 1834 under King William IV."
1/ The conservatives go it alone, and try to run a minority government with occasional help from the Northern Ireland parties they are allied with, and possiby the liberal democrats on some issues. This is unlikely to last long to be honest
2/ The conservatives and Liberal democrats do a deal, and make a joint platform. This is the only one that has got any possiblity of lasting. The tricky part is as the 3rd Party the Liberal Democrats want some form of proportial representation (which would double their seats in parlament). The conservatives don't want that at all. They like the current system. I don't know what is going to happen here. I guess the Lib Dems will blink "for the good of the coutry", and a deal will be done.
3/ Labour and the liberal democrats do a deal, this does not give them a majority though, so they will need the help of again ulster parties (different NI parties are alligned to each of the mainland parties). and the welsh/scottish natioanlist parties. This will probably fragment after a while too. This grouping is possible as they limp along for a while, and would bring in some form of proportional representation or other electoral reform and eventually we have an early new election.
Some of the more outlandish things like Gordon brown not resigning if there was a viable alternative is just silly. He *could* do it and it would be a mess if he did, but it would destroy most of the support for his party for years to come. You have to be gracious in defeat in these things if you want to bounce back.
I suppose there is
4/ They just call a new election, as well, but that is not going to be popular with the public and noone really has the cash to fight it (particularly the liberal democrats, who have the most to lose from a new election).
TFA is wrong - the most recent hung parliament was 1997 (before the election that year). Second most recent was 1977.
Full details in http://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons/lib/research/briefings/snpc-04951.pdf
1. Brown can't refuse to resign indefinitely -- there is always a confidence motion after the Throne Speech at the beginning of parliament, which is scheduled for the 25th. If he can't put together a majority vote in parliament then he will be gone then. So it'll be over in at most two more weeks, although it's unlikely to take that long. We'll probably know what's going on in the next couple days.
2. There are a bunch of tiny regional parties, but some of them are closely bound to one of the big players (SDLP is effectively Labour, Alliance is LibDem, DUP is Conservative), so there's really fewer options. In particular, if you consider a Labour/LibDem/Green/DSLP/Alliance combo they STILL wouldn't have a majority. Neither would Conservative/DUP.
In that scenario, the balance of power on every vote would come down to the nationalist parties: SNP (Scotland), Plaid Cymru (Wales), and Sinn Fein (Northern Ireland). [Note: Sinn Fein MPs make a point of *NOT* attending Parliament as a political statement, but if they thought they could control the balance of power they could always change that!] This would be completely unworkable and everybody knows it.
There's really only three options on the table right now:
The way the British do it -is- a reasonable commonsense system and it lets -everyone- more or less have their voices heard.
Oh, bollocks.
If I remember correctly, the UKIP got about twice as many votes as the SNP and the BNP got about the same number of votes as the SNP, yet the SNP got six seats and the UKIP and BNP didn't get any. The British government is determined primarily by the votes of a million or so voters in central England, because most of the rest of the country is a safe seat for one of the three main parties... consequently the main parties crap on the core supporters while they all fight over those few voters who can determine the outcome.
It's an abysmal system and it's hard to see how you could create something worse if you really want to to 'let everyone have their voices heard'. Where I used to live my vote was utterly irrelevant because the Tory MP had such a large majority that they would get elected regardless of who I voted for.
You may be right that the US system is even worse, but the idea that the British system 'lets everyone have their voices heard' is simply absurd. That's precisely what it's designed to _NOT_ do.
Bollocks. The Liberal Democrats got 25% of the vote but only 8% of the seats. How is that common sense? Due to constituency boundary changes their share of the vote went up but the number of seats they have actually went down. The system we have is crap and needs to change.
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It's not arcane but it is a bit outdated and arguably unfair in the sense the Lib Dems had nearly as many votes as Labour but a fraction of the seats.
If you look at the numnbers, they have the following number of seats:
con: 306
labour 258
lib dem 57.
It sounds like the conservatives trashed the lib dems but that's not really the case.
If you look at the actual votes it goes like this:
con: 10,706,647
labour: 8,604,358
Liberal Democrat 6,827,938
While I don't want Labour back in power if they do form a coalition I don't think it's that bad of a deal. More people did get what the party they voted for and Labout and Lib Dems do actually have more in common.
I think the system needs tweaking to reflect the portion of votes that each party received. Should Lib Dems have such little power (assuming no coalitions) compared to Labour when nearly as many people picked them? Arguably all systems are like this when you group a whole nation's total votes but the UK is small enough, imo, that perhaps it should. You can't really say different blocks within London, for example, are so different that we should leave things as is.
For those not trained in the intricacies of the Westminster system, while it is true that Gordon Brown could refuse to resign, that's not quite the way it would happen. Gordon Brown, as the incumbent PM, has first dibs under the Westminster system to form a new ministry. Because, in the Westminster system, a country is never without a government, Brown's Labour party is still technically the government and still advises the Queen. Thus he could go to the Palace and advise the Queen that he is still capable of heading a government. Now, theoretically, the Queen could use her Reserve Powers to dismiss the PM, but such a thing has not been done in a very long. The normal constitutional procedure would be for the Queen to accept the advice of Her Prime Minister and Labour again would form the government, despite having less seats than the Conservatives, and no configuration of coalitions (there aren't enough Liberal Democrats, SNP and other groups who tend towards left-of-centre to add up to a majority in the House of Commons).
Now what happens at that point is entirely up to the Opposition. Immediately upon forming a new government, there is the Queen's Speech (or, as it's referred to in the Commonwealth the Speech from the Throne), which is a confidence motion. The Conservatives and whoever else they allied with would have the votes to topple the government. A vote of no confidence in the Westminster is instant death for a government. At that point, Brown would cease to hold the constitutional monopoly on advising the Queen, and she would have the choice of either calling a new election or asking someone else to form government.
However, political realities being what they are, if the Conservatives and the LibDems form a coalition, it's almost certain that Brown will resign.
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The problem both Labor and the Conservatives have with PR, is that it would lead to coalition governments. This is easy to see. The Liberals had 23% of the last vote, the Conservatives 36%, and Labor 29%. This is more or less the share of the popular vote that the three parties have had for the last 30+ years.
You can see that if each party has the same number of seats as they have percentage of the votes, then no party is generally going to have a total majority over the other two. You will just about always have a situation, like in Holland, where the third party is in every government, sometimes in coalition with Labor and sometimes with Conservatives.
The reason why both of the two larger parties do not want this, is that they represent essentially minority interests. The Conservative Party historically represents inherited wealth and also the rural areas. Which are dominated by large landowners. The Labor party represents big cities, the industrial workforce and the public sector trade unions. And of course the large welfare population of dependents. Both are ready and eager to impose heavy costs on the country as a whole, as long as they get some, often fairly small, percentage of those costs for their own interest groups. This tendency, which is a form of looting, gets more extreme with the second and especially the third term of any government. In the first term of any government, it tends to behave responsibly. The first Blair term, for instance, was marked by restraint in public spending and no deals with the public sector unions.
The second and third terms have seen enormous public spending, mostly on public sector union wages, which has been marketed as 'investing in our great public services'. This has imposed costs on the country which dwarf the benefits to the recipients of the benefits, but no-one cares what it costs the country, as long as they are doing better.
The Conservatives are no better. We can expect something similar in the second and third terms of any Conservative government. The interesting difference about this Labor government has been its approach to the finance sector, which is referred to in the UK as 'the City'. This Labor government has been much closer to the City than any previous one.
You can see that this pattern of behavior will be eliminated by coalition governments. The problem is, in your first term you generally govern for the country, the better to get a second term. When in the second or third term you move to payoff time, and start the outrageous rewarding of your interest group, if its a coalition government, the other partner will just say no, force an election, and then move into coalition with the other large party. It will be game over.
The sheer rage that the idea of proportional representation arouses in the hearts of Conservative Party stalwarts is due to this. They are seeing the prospect of the second and third term troughs being smashed before their eyes. No more feasting. The whole rationale of the parties goes.
What happens with coalition government, on say the Dutch lines, is that it replaces the focus on who is in power, with a focus on what the program is going to be, what the policies are. In the UK at the moment all anyone cares about is who is in power, because whoever it is, can hand out the spoils. Once you cannot do this any more, you have to focus on governing for the country. Now that is not what either of the two large parties want to do, at least, no more than they absolutely have to.
And this is why far more of the UK wants PR than anyone in either of the two big parties will admit. It is not just the 25% that vote Liberal. It is also those who routinely switch from one party to the other, to give the other guys a chance.
If you think about it, in the situation I have described, what does the rational voter do? He/she is confronted with a two party system in which the second and third terms of any government are going to feature irresponsible looting of a sort mos
Yes, no countries anywhere successfully use a proportional representation system
The very obvious problem is that his vote for someone else didn't translate into any increased representation for his minority views. This is called the "wasted vote" problem and is one reason why FPTP voting systems suffer from lower turnout than do proportional systems. In a PR system, 10% of the vote for a particular party nets you 10% of the seats. In FTFP, 10% of the votes gives you 0% of the seats.
Works well in Australia. For the minor parties its a good place to start. The lower house is more about local issues, whereas the senate is about larger issues that dont necessarily have enough local interest to get a seat in the lower house but enough so that they can have a seat in the upper house. For the major parties, people who are on the fence often vote one of the major parties in the lower house and for the other one in the upper house so that there is no complete control.
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Works well in Australia. ... The lower house is more about local issues, whereas the senate is about larger issues that dont necessarily have enough local interest to get a seat in the lower house but enough so that they can have a seat in the upper house.
With all due respect to my compatriot that is a very strange characterisation of the Australian political system. The lower house was always intended to be about inter- and intra-national issues (we are a federation of states), whereas the upper house was intended to represent the interests of the states as a house of review. This is why upper house members are elected (proportionally) on a per state basis. The lower house members being elected on a seat-by-seat representative basis.
That was, historically, the theory, however the fact of party politics means that the Senate (upper house) reflects the interests of the party rather than the state (except perhaps for Queensland where the majority conservative party is the minority partner in federal conservative govts). In effect the lower house is the house of government dominated by the major parties, while the upper functions primarily as a house of review. "Local issues" are handled by state and local government.
It is true, it does work well, if not as designed. Because of the representative nature of the lower house, the two major parties are favoured (even in the face of preferential voting), giving government a measure stability lacking from systems which have proportional representation (PR) in both houses. Whereas the semi-PR nature (ie PR on state-by-state basis), better reflects the diversity of the electorate, giving minor parties a review role. IMO it could be improved by making the upper house PR on a national basis, but the obstacles to achieving that are probably insurmountable.
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Well, does 18 of 20 top positions on the UN Human Development Index list count for anything? (Oh, and the US is not successful as a country... actually it is quite far down the list these days.)
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Belgium is interesting - it has not had a government *at all* for about two years as far as I can tell. The country is a union of Flemish and French and that union has failed, big time leading to current situation. I was there last week, however, and despite this things seems to be OK there - dustbins emptied, waffles eaten, mussels cooked, that sort of thing...