The first past the post electoral system seems to survive in England purely by virtue of its utility to the powers that be. This voting system excludes challengers to the main parties, even though the main parties are struggling to garner 60% of the support of those who will vote in the forthcoming general election (and a minority of the electorate as a whole, once those who don’t vote are included).
There are all sorts of reasons to retain the traditional system, including inertia and the perceived need to represent specific areas in Parliament and not simply choose candidates from a party list.
I have a solution. Traditionally, in England there were the burgesses (knights who represented individual boroughs) and the knights of the shire, two per county, suggesting there is some traditional basis for regarding each county as a single multi-member constituency. I suggest we go with the knights of the shire concept, and regard each county, in its traditional borders, as a single constituency, electing an appropriate number of MPs to represent the English population therein. [Note: it is my view that only the English population should be represented and that therefore the number of MPs should reflect the indigenous population only.]
For example: Hampshire in its traditional borders included the Isle of Wight. The traditional county of Hampshire is represented by 18 or 19 MPs. As a single multi-member constituency electing, say, 18 MPs, the 18 could be chosen by proportional representation. For example, if the Conservatives got 50% of the vote in Hampshire, 9 Conservative MPs could be selected from the party list. That way, there is still a regional link: these are not simply MPs from a party list, but MPs with a link to Hampshire alone on a party list. We could also require that candidates show descent from a Hampshire family to ensure that Hampshire’s interests were properly represented.
Bringing back the other traditional counties, we can see that Middlesex would cover much of Greater London and be a single constituency. Yorkshire would be the greatest prize. In all these cases, the MPs would be chosen by proportional representation from a multi-member constituency in just the same way that Euro MPs are chosen by PR to represent a multi-member European constituency.
This would be superior to first past the post and to pure PR, because the regional link would still exist. A voter would be free to contact any of the county’s MPs or to contact the one who lived nearest to him.
The City of London with a small population would have at least 1 MP. Rutland as the English county with the smallest population would have at least 1MP. The traditional counties of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland would be represented in the same way.
This would lead to a opening up of politics — a genuine democratic renewal.
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Well actually there was a referendum on P.R. and the supporters of it (who included the deeply establishmentarian Lib Dems) lost that referendum.
As for returning to a system of two M.P.s per traditional county – well the people in Rutland (down the road from me) would be very pleased about that, people in Yorkshire rather less pleased. Of course if the big counties got more M.P.s than the small ones, we would be just about where we are now.
As for Mr Webb’s racist ranting (only the “indigenous English”, whatever that is supposed to mean, having the vote – and so on), well I will try to get used to it. Every one has a right to express their opinions – no matter how daft they are.
The 2011 referendum was on the question of whether to adopt an “alternative vote” system, and my understanding is that the new system, had it been adopted, would have been constituency-based and non-proportional.
Webb’s proposal is for a multi-member constituency system based on proportional voting, not for two-member constituencies.
In my view, to argue for indigeneity as a qualification for the franchise is not in and of itself racist, and even if it is, that tells us nothing about the merit of the idea.
Yes, AV was a preferential system and not a proportional one. Simply put, you can’t have proportional representation if you only elect one MP per one constituency. If we ever get another landslide general election result, then AV could well have increased the size of the landslide due to this preferential voting aspect. The AV system is like going into a forest and worrying about the health of the individual trees (ie whether or not an MP gets 50% or more of the votes in his or her seat) rather than the far more important health of parliament as a whole (the composition of it according to how people actually cast their votes). I suspect the reason why it was turned-down was because it WASN’T a proportional system and could possibly have made things worse with regard to the composition of parliament (for instance, it would have raised the bar to new parties entering parliament to 50% or more in a single seat so the Green Party’s single MP at the moment would probably never win).
An interesting proposal. I can see merit to it.
However attempting to define “indigenous” would be farcical and rather unpleasant. Paul Marks is Jewish by ancestry so would be excluded. I am 1/4 Scottish by ancestry so might be excluded from voting in an English county. In fact, if Scotland secedes I might find myself a man without a country. And so on.
The system of voting is one of the things that TPTB have not yet ruined. The fact that any challenger to the existing establishment has cross a high threshold is a valuable protection against other modes of government that are even worse than the awful people who currently in power. By the same token, people must be sufficiently discontented with the present lot.
This proposal doesn’t address what I see as the three major problems of democracy today:
1. The state and its politics are already way past their last-use-by date.
2. Democracy is inherently collectivist, and fails to empower the individual in any way.
3. All the main parties are statist, and have essentially the same policies – increase taxes, increase bureaucracy, increase meddling, lie to us and mislead us, destroy civil liberties and the common law.
I’ll repeat part of a comment I made a few weeks ago on another thread, which seems to me a pretty decent description of the problem:
‘However many parties there may appear to be, you have at best only three choices: vote for the ruling establishment, vote for an obvious loser like the Monster Raving Loonies, or don’t vote at all. (And they want to take away our right to do the last). So, after a while, democracies become in effect one party states; but one party states in which the ruling class can claim that “the people” have sanctioned their legitimacy. And so, like an absolute monarch, in their own minds they can do no wrong.’
Leaving aside the first and third of Neil Lock’s problems of democracy, with which I agree, and focussing purely on the electoral system, why not go the whole hog and introduce the Single Transferable Vote … which would use county boundaries in many cases?
STV preserves a constituency system (albeit much larger constituencies but in many cases no larger in populations than a US congressional seat), gives voters a choice of MP when they wish to raise issues, and has the added advantage of eliminating the party list.
In Ireland, which uses the system. there is a good amount of cross voting, which encourages election on merit and local work, gives an opportunity for strong independents, and reduces the influence of the party machine.
Some might sneer that this encourages parochialism, but then I am a paraochialist … keep things small and local as far as possible!
For information, Yorkshire was always three counties, as was Lincolnshire. Suffolk was two counties, and present day Cambridgeshire no less than four. How far do we go back? Perhaps to the days when many counties had detached parts? I don’t see any problem with city and borough constituencies which existed even in the time of the rotten boroughs.
STV, strictly speaking is a preferential rather than a proportional system, but usually yields a result pretty close to the party totals.
Yorkshire was not “always three counties”. It is to this day but one. What you are clumsily referring to is the three Ridings – which are something else. Lincolnshire – has always been one county. What you are referring to is the 3 Parts of Lincolnshire – and the fact that they had separate Quarter Sessions. This does not mean there are 3 counties in Lincolnshire. In fact, Lindsey where I live, is one of the 3 Parts and is itself divided into 3 Ridings… Sussex – always one county, not two. You are confusing administrative structures with the geographical counties.
A bunch of people voting on stuff is no different than a bunch of people ganging up and mugging me, I wave my genitals in the general direction of your discussions of which leg to break before handing me the crutches and calling it good.
The main issue I have with this proposal is that it makes use of party lists, which gives all the significant power to the major political parties. On the other hand, I suppose one of the benefits of a proportionate system would be the potential for minor parties to break the mould, so in that sense there is a democratic element.
I would favour applying a new system to the House of Lords rather than the House of Commons, but on the basis that you have the old system that Webb refers back to: two elected members from each county. This would be completely anti-proportional, but it would have the effect of balancing the Lords in favour of the rest of the country outside London and perhaps give the second chamber more of a provincial flavour.
I can’t see the PR system working here in the UK. I would rather go for the AV system with the following rules:
1 – Any candidate who achieves 50% or more after round 1 of votes should be elected straight away.
2 – A candidate who comes last after each round should be dropped out until the winning candidate gets to the 50% or more threshold.
3 – The public should rank the candidate on the voting ballot so for example, if there are 8 candidates, they should rank their preferences from 1-8.
4 – There should be no run-off between the top 2 candidates unless other candidates have been dropped out after each round.
I didn’t want to believe that ‘First Past The Post’ was out of date but with so many candidates contesting 650 seats, it has become more obvious that a fairer voting system needs to be brought in to accommodate this and I believe the AV system with these basic rules is the way forward.
One of the worst possible effects of having AV would have been if we had landlslides again. For instance, in the 1997 election such was the widespread contempt and hatred for the then Tory government that there was very strong anti-Tory tactical voting and as the Tories then had no competition to their ‘Right’ in the form of UKIP it would have led to them being even more crushed than they were under the Labour Party jugganault and an even more lop-sided parliament. This would have been because of the preferential voting nature of the system. Preferential voting isn’t good really as it means the results are formed by people’s acquiesence to the election of a candidate rather than their positive endorsement.
The best compromise if seen is weighted first post the post.
http://pubs.doc.ic.ac.uk/weighted-first-past-the-post/
Constituency boundaries and MP’s are retained as they are know. Only the weighting vote of an MP in the House of Common is proportional to the national vote won by the party he/she represents.
So, this is a 100% proportional system.
It can be tweaked so that only parties that don’t win a seat, get one MP with a weighted vote. With an arbitrary threshold of say 1% of national votes before representation is allowed.
The only downside is the fact that “super MP’s” will happen. But this is a small compromise, compared to the simplicity and fairness compared to other systems.
I favour AV for the Commons,PR for the Lords on a national list system,elected alongside and with equal power to the Commons,referenda on major issues,STV for local authorities, and people’s peers-let us each,alongside the locals,write in the name of someone we consider worthy of a term in the Upper House.Anyone getting 100,000 or more votes would be offered one.,
Just as a clarification I was talking of these counties as administrative entities.
Of course the county boroughs, now returned at least in part as unitary authorities, were also entirely separate administrative entities from their nominal counties.
I wish there would be more discussion of STV which retains the constituency system, albeit with far larger seats. For example, my home county of Shropshire, together with Telford, would be a five member seat with an electorate of around 350,000.
There are other systems which retain constituencies. My own favoured PR system is the one they have in Germany called the Mixed-Member Proportional whereby Germans get two votes each one of which is for their own constituency representative elected by first past the post and the other for a party list which is added-up by regions and then by the nationwide total so as to produce an overall proportional result. You have to obtain 5% of the national vote or 3 directly elected constituency representatives before being allowed to take your seats in the Bundestag.
I know it would take considerably longer to count the votes, I have always thought the most democratic electoral system is Borda Count.