The weird thing about british politics right now is that for all the fuss over e-mails, calls for brown to resign, resignations, leadership questions, etc, there's basically no-one opposing Labor on policy
If the policy is okay, what's the problem? Does Cameron really think Brown should resign over an e-mail/lost thumb-drive? He seems to suggest it with any excuse, but it seems to be all he can suggest

The fuss is actually about "Brown the Inert". Why "the Inert"?
1) He didn't cause the crash, but his attempts to fix it didn't work and when it was realised they weren't working he did nothing, absolutely nothing to fix it.

2) When MPs were found to be ripping off their expenses claims, some to the tune of thousands of pounds a year, and when some of the worst offenders turned out to be his friends in the Cabinet, he did nothing, except talk. The more he talked rather than act, the more anger and discontent he caused in the general public (the voters).

Labours popularity dropped like a rock. Then the very people he hadn't fired (rightly) turned on him "for the good of the Party" (and themselves of course) and they resigned from the Cabinet at the worst possible time for Gordon hoping to spark a leadership election. Gordon countered by say that if he went he'd "go to the country" (call a General Election) and if he did that *now* most Labour MPs would lose their jobs <gulp!>. That threat, more than anything else, is what saved him.

So he survived the coup and has now replaced the rebels with his own sycophants. His problem now is that at the next General Election Labour is still going to get a good kicking and most of their MPs will be out on their arses... unless the voting system is changed.

He has the power to do that (in theory anyway) and why wouldn't he. The Lib-Dems have wanted PR for decades - it's the only way they'll get any real power - so they'll support such a move. If the electoral system is changed, a lot more Labour MPs will survive.

Full blown proportional representation is special With PR, each party will be given a representative number of MPs and THE PARTY gets to pick which of their candidates will be chosen. Gordon, of course, will choose his friends rather than enemies and rebels. He will therefore remain leader of the party, surrounded by friends and swinging a lot of power in what will almost certainly be, for ever more, a hung Parliament.

Why "hung Parliament"? because under PR nobody gets a majority, it all becomes wheeler dealing and influence and deals done behind closed doors.

PR == Power to the weak but power crazed.

That's not really unique to British politics. In America politicians personal lives can completely cloud their actual positions on issues.

The dirty truth is that the only reason Barack Obama was even elected to the Senate in 2004 was because his otherwise ideal Republican opponent Jack Ryan dropped out of the race due to a sex scandal. Not even a sex scandal really, he "just" took his by then ex-wife to sex clubs with intent to do it in public, allegedly. Obama won in a large part because he had months between when Ryan dropped out and when that nutjob Alan Keyes replaced him to campaign unopposed. I know this firsthand because I live in Illinois.

As to changing the system, anything besides a winner-take-all system doesn't really seem like an election to me. Runoffs seems fine, but proportional elections look to me like second guessing the people and needlessly clogging up government. Why not have two big tent parties like in America that are de facto coalitions?

But what do I know?

> 1) He didn't cause the crash, but his attempts to fix it didn't work
> and when it was realised they weren't working he did nothing,
> absolutely nothing to fix it.
From my point it view it seems more like America were reactionary and bought billions of sub-prime mortgages from the banks (and here in Aus everyone got $1000-2000 /cash/), while in England they started treating the credit-crisis instead by buying shares in the banks, which is a much better investment for the taxpayer than buying bad mortgages

You can't measure what the difference would be if they had done differently, but the fact buying shares and quantitative easing became the way most exposed countries handled the crisis should say something I think

Besides if that's a reason to vote Conservative I don't see how, because they don't seem to have taken a stand on anything solid about how it was handled


> 2) When MPs were found to be ripping off their expenses
> claims, some to the tune of thousands of pounds a year, and
> when some of the worst offenders turned out to be his friends in
> the Cabinet, he did nothing, except talk.
I'm not sure what you mean by act, but you can't expect the government to kick out some of the people in the most important positions for the sake of letting the public see some drama.
Some Labor /and Conservative/ MPs were abusing (not breaking) the rules, Cameron is talking about integrity/honesty without doing anything definite about it too


And really it seems like for all the "coups" and "scandals" there's a total lack of actual policy debate. Will people vote conservatives in because they think they're just nicer people than Labor? Seems like a bad reason, and it's baseless too

@scepticka: The benefit of 1st-past-the-post (and AV) is that the electee REPRESENTS a specific set of electors and are therefore ACCOUNTABLE in a way in which PR simply doesn't allow. This accountability is the best thing about British democracy as far as I see it. The problem is that people vote for parties not for individuals - if more people voted for their MP rather than the PM we would see MP's doing their job of representing their constituents (rather than toeing the party line / trying to move up the ladder).

I don't like PR because of the greater instability of coalitions, the necessity of vast compromises to put them together and maintain them (which reduces the effectiveness of a government's agenda), plus the reduction in accountability. Moreover, with PR the electees ought to consider what's best for the country, not their specific area so we have less local issues/opinions being raised at a national level. Even with the Scottish 50-50 system you propose we find problems of PR and reduction in accountability. As has already been mentioned, party lists just allow the people who control the party to choose your representatives. Why not go back to the days when Oxford and Cambridge Universities elected their own MPs? This was often seen as a way to put people into power who couldn't get voted in normally (or had been booted out and wanted back in). It was right that we eliminated this, not because it gave graduates of these universities two votes, but because it elected representatives who were much less acountable and were chosen by the "in-crowd".

Kestas - Cameron is doing something about the MPs who are taking the mickey with the system - trust me, I know. The Tory scrutiny panel will report back in about 2 weeks, perhaps slightly longer, and a significant amount of money will be paid back. If MPs don't agree, they will lose the Whip and will not stand at the next election.

As for GB, I have to laugh. If you want to see why we want an election, watch William Hague's speech yesterday in Parliament on the dissolution - hilarious and deeply cutting.

STV on multi-member consituentcies is the best answer, but it is difficult to set up correctly. The problem with the current system is that the voters in about 2/3rds of the constituencies don't really matter becuase they are safe Labour or Conservative seats - it's the floaters in the marginals that decide the election, without fail. Fewer, larger constituencies electing (say) 5MPs in some kind of proportion would work. Single issue candidates could run (and win), unpopular MPs could be voted out by selecting the other party candidates ahead of them, and smaller parties wouldn't be a wasted vote - vote for them first, and then your next preferred option. It also allows the 'anyone but them' vote (for example in the Euros I could have then gone Green, Lib, Con, Lab... to ensure my vote would count against, say, the BNP). It retains a degree of local accountability, and alos gives you access to a wider range of political options. Realistically, this would mean an area of safe seats would split something like 3:1:1, whereas the marginal areas could give 2:2:1 (or 2:1:1:1).

I tend to agree with cgwhite, that Cameron has responded more decisively to the expenses issue.

However, unfortunately, we elect MPs (in parties) not PMs. I doubt very much all the people shouting for an election now wanted one in 1990...

@ Kestasjk: The Tories announced yesterday that they will bring in 10% across the board cuts to public spending... It's almost enough to make me think they want to throw the next election away!

@ Speaker. Inert? The recessions over mate! Have you not been reading the news? Brown's actions in bailiong out the banking system saved it from collapse last autumn, and he pulled the G20 together in a way that noone else even attempted.
Also, AV is not the kind of PR you talk describe... If anything it is thought to be less proportional than the current system!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8094729.stm

Let's see what this unexpected economic bounce does to Labour's reelection chances.

This proves yet again that Cameron reads situations the wrong way and makes the wrong calls... Demanding a 10% cut in publuic spending as the economy grows six months ahead of the most optimistic forecast!

cgwhite, I have a quick question for you: The Tories now control 71 of the 81 (or something like that) seats in the Kent County Council. OK, I know Kent is basically Tory-Central, but was this better than expected?

And I have one comment about the electoral system: as long as it's fair and doesn't ensure a hung parliament (like Germany is pretty much destined to have) then I'm not really too fussed. I like the current system, but that's mostly because it stops the Lib Dems getting any real power...

Oh, and Submariner, you seem to conveniently have left out that Labour will cut spending by 7% in many areas. So really, there's not much difference, and if the Conservatives get in then perhaps they won't pursue the reckless policy that Brown has since 1997 of borrowing a lot more money than the country can afford to. His foolish economic policy is the reason the Conservatives would have to make those spending cuts.

@ Captain. I agree totally that Labour should have been more honest about the amount of taxation needed. What I also find confusing is that the income tax cut announced two years ago has been allowed to kick in this April, giving me an extra lump of money, just when the government needs it more than I do!#

That said, the pledge to never raise income tax was central to Labour winning three terms, and you have to remember that prior to 1997, it had never been elected for two full terms in office before.

@captain dave - Frankly, I have no idea - I don't know what the predicted result was.

EDIT - just checked on their website - god yes, it was a huge gain of 19 seats directly from Labour, though we lost two apparently. See here:
http://www.kent.gov.uk/Kcc.eGov.Elections.Public.Site/CountyPage.aspx

To both Submariner and Captain Dave's discussion about taxation, it's not my speciality, but you seem to have come to a reasonable agreement between you both. I'd probably sign up to that analysis as well, though the tory policies need to be clarified a little. It's still too far away from an election though.

PS - these were the results from my neck of the woods: http://www.hillingdon.gov.uk/media/pdf/k/2/LRODeclaration.pdf

About what I expected for the tories, though the surprise was UKIP beating Labour into third place was a shock, as was the rise of the BNP and the no-show from the Lib Dems.

In terms of voting systems, I found it interesting that only one person on the BBC coverage of teh results raised the fact that the BNP would not have won any seats under the old First Past The Post way of electing Euro-MPs. In this election it would probably have meant the Conservatives and SNP as the only parties winning seats.

Would anyone have found that preferable?

On the taxation question, Labout probably proposes 7% less spending growth, which leaves the Conservatives with 3% cuts.

Do you still want to see 3% fewer police officers?

I think there are plenty of ways to cut costs without reducing the numbers of police officers; my Dad works for the Met, so you're not going to get around that one so easily! Or perhaps actually allowing police officers to get out on the streets and arrest criminals, rather than having to spend hours filling out paperwork would do the trick? If you're not happy with that statement, try reading 'Wasting Police Time' and you'll have your opinion very swiftly altered!

I think we need a system that makes MPs and MEPs accountable, in the north east the labour vote dropped 9% (or something like that) but the same three MEPs were elected. The euro system also resulted in 4million votes returning 25 topry MEPs and 1.2million votes returning 2 MEPs.

The solution isn't difficult. Hold general elections in exactly the same way as we do now and use that to rank the party's candidates. If the sunderland labour Guy polls 23% of the electorate (not the vote) then he would be ranked above the labour guy in huntington that secured 3% of the electorate.

Then use the D'hondt system (the euro sytem) to allocate seats on a National basis.

The fairness of the system is what matters not the predicted result. If this means more BNP MPs get elected then so be it, if that is what people want that is democracy. The arguement about weak government and the smaller parties weilding undue power are spurious. MPs will have to engage in a more consensus building form of government but that may be an improvemnet on the yah-boo politics of today.

As for smaller parties weilding too much power does anyone believe that the Tories would form an alliance with the BNP to form a government?

*1.2 million votes returning 2 green MEPs

Wouldn't proportional Representation essentially lead to permanent LibDem dominance?

Maybe PR would lead to an increased representation of LibDems, and more BNP members and more independants, but that isn't an arguement against PR, it's an arguement against democracy. Let the people have what the people vote for - at the last general election UKIP had 600,000+ votes with no MPs and the SNP had 250,000+ votes with 9 MPs. That isn't democracy.

Ah, but it's a trade off with regard to strong governments

Maniac - pure PR doesn't work for that very reason - regional/local parties would have no chance of gaining seats. The SNP got 9 seats just standing in Scotland, whereas UKIP got their votes in the whole UK - as Scotland has roughly 5 million people, and the UK, the SNP are relatively 5 times as popular as UKIP on your figues (actually they polled 400,000+ making them 8 times relatively more popular)

Some sort of AV/STV system would be more democratic

Sorry to explain - SNP 400k votes/5 mill pop = 0.08 votes per head, UKIP, 600k/60 mill = 0.01 votes per head

@ Hamilton. It hasn;t led to total Lib Dem dominance in the Scottish Parliament as they are in opposition now. They would finally get their hands tainted with being in power.

Though of course the Lib Dems argue that polls show 58% of people would vote KLib Dem as their first choice if they thought they stood a chance of winning... As they dont under the current arrangement, they get around 19% of the vote :)

@Cgwhite - it's easy to say the trade of is worth it when you are on the current system benefits your party. Denying democracy to people out of political expediancy shouldn't even be considered in the 21st century. I would imagine similar arguements were used to deny working men a nd women the vote.

@Pete - The SNP would've acheived 1 more seat at the last general election if seats were allocated proportionatly. Also, if the SNP stood in all regions of the UK some exiled scots would have the opportunity to vote for them knowing their vote wouldn't be wasted.

@LibDem dominance arguement, if LibDems are in a power sharing government that fails the people their vote will shrink over time as surely as Labour and Tories does.

Democracy is not denied simply because you don't like the way the votes are counted. First past the post is a legitimate democratic system.

What you really need is to get rid of the LibDems, UKIP, the BNP, and the Greens and have a two-party system like most firs past the post countries do.

@Maniac - FPTP doesn't benefit the Tories! In fact, there is an inbuilt bias towards Labour. If the Tories and Labour both got the same proportion of the vote, Labour would win more seats.

Try it out here at the electoral calculator at UK Polling Report. If Tories and Labour both polled 37% of the vote, and Lib Dems 15%, Labour would get 336 seats, Tories 254 and Labour would have a majority of 22.
http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/swing-calculator

FPTP is a strong system - you can boot a party out, and there is a strong constituency link. None of the other systems have such positive returns.

@ Hamilton. In practice we do have a two party system. Only Labour and the Tories have a real chance of winning an election. If you support democracy how can you ever advocate the removal of political parties? That's the reason I get angry when people physically molest parties like the BNP, not because I support them but because it is hypocritical to victimise ANY party in a democratic system.

@cgwhite - As you may know I'm a traditional Labour voter, and I believe that FPTP benefits Tory and Labour. But that doesn't stop me believing in PR. If you had read my other posts you would have seen that I had suggested a PR system that retained an element of the constituancy link. In short elections are held the same way as they are now but then a 'party list' is derived from placing individual candiates in order of the % of the electorate that they secure in their area. That list is then used as the basis of a PR system, (the D'hondt or similar) to apportion seats.

I don't subscribe to the arguement that PR will greatly affect voter turnout, but a labour voter in Huntington would at least know that his vote counted towards the number of Labour MPs elected. Likewise tory voters in Cannock (oops strike Cannock), Sunderland (oops Strike Sunderland) Wales (oh no, strike that aswell) anywhere that Labour is strong that I can't think of at the moment :)

Cgwhite has correctly pointed out that Labour and Tories could get 37% of the vote each but labour would get 82 MPs more, yet he still argues that FPTP is a good system!

Noticed this story on the BBC just now:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8099408.stm

Interesting contrast to some of the opinions expressed here, and from a pretty credible source

Maniac- and it is, you cannot govern with a proportional parliament.

Let's put it this way: The last government to have a majority of the vote was before WW2, so in a proportional or near-proportional system, there would only ever be tiny majorities, and more likely no majority at all.

The result of this is that for every vote, the government needs support from the opposite side of the house. This will cause deals like received for the DUP on the 42 day detention. This is not a good idea.

Also, with regard to the recession or possible lack of it- Brown is spending 10% of GDP (annually) on stimulus etc.etc. The gain from this cannot be sustained after that spend is cut, because there is no reason to suppose it would be. That means that you should really see a 10% rise in GDP to compensate the cost, and even then it is only neutral in value. This clearly hasn't happened, so the money must have been largely wasted.

@TGM - I fully understand the arguement about how proportionality elected governments may end up with no majority and this could lead to minor parties having an undue influence on some policies. I could argue that FPTP has lead to huge majorities that have resulted in the Poll Tax and the war in Iraq. Do you think either of these would've been passed under a PR system?

However, it isn't for the political classes to say 'we want FPTP because it leads to strong government' or for others to say 'we want PR becuase it leads to consensus politics'. A democracy is a government of the people for the people and our wishes should be expressed and heard and acted upon. If that leads to things I don't like, maybe removing us from the EU, or bringing back hanging, or the BNP getting elected, then so be it. I think we should be trusted to elect our representatives proportionality and I think we can rely on them to make it work.

The longer true democracy is denied to voters the more likely it is that we shall see conflict and people taking direct action. Just look at the history of the suffergettes for example. Many many people are now voting UKIP or Green or BNP at general elections even though they know they haven't a hope in hell of being elected under the curreent system. If we deny these people a voice because we think that the benefits of having a 'strong' Labour or 'strong' Tory government outweigh giving people a fair vote then we will reap a worldwind.

I'm not saying get rid of them legally, but to stop supporting them.

And any system that results in the increase in representation of nutcases is a bad system.