We don’t actually vote for a party but a local chap or chappess under an antiquated system called ‘first past the post’ with which most of you will be familiar if you ever watch horse racing on television or athletics. In these and other sports (is horse racing a sport?) whoever passes the winning post soonest after the starting pistol has been fired has won the race. That makes sense of course if you are racing your horse against other horses or yourself against other athletes. But to the way of thinking of some of us — and that obviously includes me — it makes no sense whatsoever if you are trying to put in place a parliament which broadly represents the mood of the country.
This is where I might get a little muddled if I’m not careful but you need not: the parliament is made of all those who win the election in their constituency, that is who metaphorically care ‘first past the post’. So if A wins 10 votes, B wins 9 votes and C wins 3 votes, A is elected to parliament. More realistically if A wins 10,002 votes, B wins 10,001 and C (usually a Lib Dem) wins 3 votes, A is elected. He might have won only 1 vote more than B, but that’s first past the post. And it is a shite system. Complete cack.
I’m rather stupidly talking about a system with which you might all be familiar, although the chances are that you live in a country which long ago left the 17th century and has adopted a system of proportional representation. But it is often worthwhile going back to basics, especially if, like me, you are trying to demonstrate quite how unfair a long-accepted process is.
Under our system — the first past the post system — if the party to which A belongs sees its more of its candidates win in more constituencies than the party to which B belongs, it will have the most members of parliament and can form the government. That is true whether or not its candidates beat their opponents hollow or whether in each constituency each A candidate won merely 1 vote more than B. That is, of course, theoretical, but it does highlight the basic flaw in the whole system.
Here in Britain we have 650 odd constituencies. It is theoretically possible (though this would never happen) that in each constituency the candidate belonging to party A could win just 1 vote more than the candidate belonging to party B. So, overall, the A party candidates would win a national total of (650 x 10,002) 6,501,300 votes and, overall, the B party candidates would win ‘just’ (650 x 10,001) 6,500,650 votes — just 650 fewer votes. That means the parliament would be made up of 650 A party candidates and no B party candidates, even though overall the A party was supported by just 650 more voters out of a total of 13,001,950. That is just 0.005% of the total number of voters.
OK, these are hypothetical figures and the reality is very different, but crucially and importantly the principles underpinning them still stand. And party A would have complete freedom to bring in what ever laws it wanted and there would be fuck all party B could do about it.
Party A might, for example, have stood on a manifesto that ‘as times are hard, couples can have only two children and if a third child is born to a couple, it will be killed at birth. (NB If you think that is far too way out an example, a similar principle existed in China until about 40 years ago. To stem overpopulation because of then scant resources, couples were only allowed to have one child. Because male children were economically ‘more valuable’, female babies were somehow discarded at birth. The upshot was, of course, that for many years China began to have far fewer women than men. In practice it wasn’t quite as simple, and there were ways to get around the policy, but broadly that is what was happening.)
So — in theory — party A could bring in a law ensuring that all third children born were killed at birth even though just under half of all voters might be dead against it.
But I think by now you get my point. In sum: first past the post has never, does never and will never help to elect a parliament which is in any way representative of what the a country’s voters want. But it is what we are still stuck with here in Britain.
. . .
That aside, of course, things are looking really, really dire. Although several parties are putting up candidates, the choice is still between a moron on one side and an idiot on the other. And this isn’t just me sounding off: Britain — what’s the cliche? ‘The cradle of democracy’ — really is faced with Hobson’s choice. And the country really does
I have place several bets with Ladbrokes and hope and pray we will get a hung parliament. The problem with that, though, is that hung parliaments are trouble. If it did come about — which I’m bloody hoping for! — this country is faced with weeks, possibly months, of horse trading as the parties try to get together to form a coalition government.
If the Tories don’t get a majority — and here’s hoping they don’t, did you get that? — they are right out of the window as no-one, not even the tarts from the DUP would choose to get into bed with them. The next alternative would be a Labour/Lib Dem/SNP coalition or, at least, attempts to form one.
The hurdle that venture would have to overcome is that Labour, which would have by far the most MPs elected and would thus insist it is the senior party in any coalition, is lead by the idiot (or moron — I’ve lost track) and the Lib Dems and SNP would refuse point-blank to have him as PM. So if Labour did want to get into government as part of the coalition they would have to ditch that leader. And would that happen without a hitch? Is the Pope getting married next week?
There would be chaos, chaos, chaos — and this is what I am hoping for! Christ, things are bad here in ‘the cradle of democracy’, which come to think of it is not Britain but Greece. Britain had the ‘mother of all parliaments’. Sorry about that, but I can’t be arsed to correct the reference above, so (it’s time for the Champions League football on television) go hang. If, later, I have time and the inclination, I shall correct it. if not, still go hang.
