A guest post by Joan Grant, a member of KUWG expressing personal views. Internet search-term-friendly title by Dude Swheatie. Joan's original title appears below
Be careful what you wish for, or Nigel was right
I
thought it was ironic that both Nigel Farage and Natalie Bennett were
“pissed off” for want of a better word, by the election result.
They made strange bed fellows calling for reform of the electoral
system. One has to say that Farage had more to moan about than
Bennett. UKIP got 4 million votes and yet just one MP. [Editor's note: The electoral system under which the UK currently operates as it has done for centuries is generally known as 'first past the post'.]
The
Electoral Reform Societyi
have produced a very interesting report which shows how many seats
each party would have got had the election been held under a
proportional representation scheme.(1) There are a number of different
versions of PR. The report looked at them all. Their preferred system
is the Single Transferrable Vote system.
Had
the election been held under this system, the result would have been
the hung parliament that all the polls predicted. The Tories would
still be the biggest party but with 276 seats as opposed to the 331
they have got. Labour would be about the same but it only have 40
fewer seats rather than 99, which it is now.
The
Lib Dem would have got 26 seats rather than a mere 8. That would have
been fairly respectable and Nick Clegg might well have stayed on as
party leader. The SNP would have done well, but not as well. They
would have got 34 seats.
The
Greens would have got 3 seats which better reflects the overall
support that they got.
But
it is UKIP who would have been the biggest winners. They would have
got 54 seats. Yes, you read that right. 54 seats. I think it is fair
to say that would have been a quite astonishing result. That would
have been the earthquake that Nigel Farage keeps harping on about.
UKIP
would have held the balance of power. There would have been a
coalition. Nigel Farage would now be Deputy Prime Minister. There
might be two or three UKIP ministers.
I am really not sure which is
worse: an electoral system that does not properly reflect the votes
cast or the thought of Nigel Farage as Deputy Prime Minister.
Whichever way you cut it, Nigel Farage was right about the level of
support for UKIP. Only time will tell if their support will rise or
fall over the next few years.
Note
(1) http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/sites/default/files/files/publication/2015%20General%20Election%20Report%20web.pdf [accessed 25 June 2015]
i
The 2015 General Election, A voting system in Crisis by jess Garland
and Chris Terry. May 2015 (Electoral Reform Society)
A problem with going by numbers of actual votes is that it does not recognise the phenomenon of tactical voting and how the dread of a further five years of Conservate rule turned would-have-been Green Party voters into voting and even canvassing for the Labour Party. (I 'declare an interest' here in that I have been a Green Party member for nearly ten years now.)
ReplyDeleteOther problems include the amount of BBC coverage given to spelling out what the parties had to say in their policies. One interpretation of the amount of BBC coverage UKIP got as opposed to what the Green Party got was that 'good television' does not necessarily mean spelling out what the parties have to say and can be dominated by 'personality politics.
And what about those too pissed off to even register to vote?
Dude Swheatie