May 7th The Lottery Election Result
WHY WE SHOULD ALL GET VERY ANGRY ON MAY 8TH
A huge number of people are going to wake up on May 8th and shout "that's not fair" at our TVs and radios. More than ever before, a vast proportion of the population are going to feel the electoral system has let them down. I'm hoping the coming election is going to sound the death knell for our outdated first past the post (FPTP) electoral system. It's a system that only worked well when there were two very dominant parties. Even then, it was unfair to the third party (the lovely Lib Dems). Now with the rise of UKIP and the Greens, May 8th will bring the most outrageous result possible.
It is a distinct possibility that if you add up the votes of UKIP, the Greens and the LibDems on May 8th together, they will be greater than the winning party's vote but with one tenth of the MPs between them. Add to that the issues over safe seats (what's the point in voting) and the ridiculous efforts and expense parties put into the relatively small number of marginal seats and you start to question why this system manages to hang on.
Who benefits from first past the post? This time, if the current polls are correct, the biggest winners could be the Scottish Nationalists. Because of the concentration of their vote, they could be the 6th largest party by vote and the 3rd largest by seats. Labour always benefit strongly. At the coming election they could be the second largest party by vote and the largest party by seats. Labour talk about a "35% strategy" because that could give them a small working majority of say 335 seats. 35% should give them 227 seats.
While the Conservatives don't benefit as much as Labour, they still need far fewer votes per seat than the smaller parties. At the 2010 election they got 36% of the vote and 47% of the MPs. When Tories talk about English votes for English laws they mean Tory votes for English laws. The FPTP system gives them an unfair advantage in England where less than 40% of the vote can give them a big majority of English MPs. Where powers have been devolved elsewhere within the UK there has been a proportional voting system. No mention of that in Conservative proposals.
So who loses the most out of FPTP? At this election, again if the current polls are correct, it will be UKIP. They could get 15% of the vote and maybe two or three seats. A fair system would give them 97 MPs! (Don't get me wrong, I don't want there to be a lot of UKIP MPs but it should be the electorate not the electoral system that decides how many MPs they get.)
Also likely to do particularly badly are the Greens who could get 6% of the vote and maybe one or two MPs instead of the 39 seats they should get under a fair system. And of course the LibDems do badly in the first past the post system. At the last election we got 23% of the vote (which should give 150 MPs) and with 57 going to Westminster less than 9% of the MPs. Whatever the result this time, it will not be fair in terms of representation.
The two main reasons given by its supporters for maintaining FPTP have both been proved wrong by recent events. Decisive results? Not any more, as the rise of the smaller parties means that hung parliaments are likely for the foreseeable future. Coalitions mean weak government? The current coalition has decisively dismissed this argument with a solid legislative programme over the five years of government.
Of course there is a third reason they don't give for maintaining FPTP. It's in the interests of Labour and the Conservatives to maintain an unfair system that keeps them alternating in power. Same old politicians! We already have an electorate very disillusioned with politics and politicians. On May 8th about a third of those who voted will wake up very angry. There will also be supporters of the parties that gain from FPTP who are uncomfortable about the democratic deficit that the result represents. The answer is to change the system. Vote Lib Dem on May 7th. We might not win an outright majority but every vote for us adds to the weight of our arguments. And be prepared to make a big noise on May 8th. Let the first communication your newly elected MP receives be one that rejects the system that elected them.
If you're interested in electoral reform then a good starting point is to join the Lib Dems. If you're more interested in this campaign than the party, then try the Electoral Reform Society. If you're interested in this subject in detail then this review by Professor John Curtice for the Electoral Reform Society goes into more detail on the madness of our current electoral system.
My next blog on this subject will cover the Single Transferable Voting system (STV), The Lib Dem answer to this part of our broken political system.