Time to Reform the Election Shambles
Time to Reform the Election Shambles
It was an Election Night that ended as it started – in shambles.
Britain likes to characterise itself as the Greatest Democracy in the World, and the UK parliament as the Mother of All Parliaments.
And yet one of the most marked political trends of recent years has been the increasing public disillusionment with the political parties which climaxed in last year’s expenses scandal.
This will not have been helped by the mess that so many Returning Officers made of the polls. The turnout was not especially high, much lower than many pundits predicted and yet there were very long queues at many polling stations, some of which did not have enough ballot papers, several thousand people were turned away denied their democratic right to vote, and some Counts, did not have enough tables to cater for the ballot papers.
This from a country which prides itself on lecturing others on how to conduct elections.
Remarkably, sleaze and expenses did not really figure during the campaign which was dominated by the TV debates which saw the emergence of Nick Clegg as a serious alternative to Brown and Cameron.
This was a curious and very British phenomenon. In most places in the world economic meltdown plus public disillusionment with established parties equals the rise of extremism.
So whilst the Greeks were manifesting their distaste for public spending cuts by taking to the streets and attacking the police, the Brits were falling for Clegg’s boyish manner and winning smile.
For a time the Liberal Democrats even looked as if they might gain the highest number of votes and a most bizarre political revolution was underway. But Clegg is no Che Guevara and his answers to our current problems are not that much different from the other two.
And it was almost as if the nation collectively remembered that the Lib Dems is not a new party, it is one of the two oldest parties, having evolved from the Whig party founded in 1678. In recent times the Liberals have performed well in local elections, gaining a reputation for community focused, parish pump activism coupled with a ruthless pursuit of power.
It is not, however a new party, and, increasingly, was not seen as a viable alternative which is why it failed to make any headway at the polls.
Notwithstanding the Liberals’ failure to gain any significant ground we are still left we are still left with a hung parliament – and this, according to most pundits is a disaster which will destroy our economy.
This, of course, is the biggest nonsense of all. Britain is only one of four European states which has a majority government, one of the others, incidentally being Greece. The only reason why we have “majorities” is not because any party ever commands one, it’s because of our ridiculous and manifestly unfair first-past-the-post voting system.
In other states once an election is complete leaders of the various parties will hold talks to see if they can agree on policy and the personnel who will form a government.
It is the sort of process that you would expect mature and sensible politicians to be perfectly capable of under-going.
The governments that emerge from this process represent a wide spectrum of voters and have an obvious mandate to govern. Across the world this is the norm.
Northern Ireland is perhaps not the best example of good governance emerging from a PR system, but we’re just at the beginning of our democratic journey and our institutions will take time to bed down. At least nobody can complain that it doesn’t produce a fair representation at Stormont, contrast the Westminster elections where the allocation of seats does not match the percentage votes secured.
For example the SDLP secured 17% of the vote and won three seats. They will regard this as a triumph. In contrast the Ulster Unionists secured a tiny fraction less, won no seats and have therefore been wiped out at Westminster. The Unionist’s dalliance with the Conservatives has been a failure, the party is in disarray – and unionist unity now seems inevitable.
It is obvious that if their vote had been reflected in the number of seats secured the Unionists too would have been content with their performance and enjoying their alliance with the Tories.
Restoring confidence in politicians and the political system has to start with ensuring that when we vote the results reflect the peoples’ wishes. The starting point for restoring public confidence has to be the root and branch reform of the voting system itself.
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