Torquemada 1420 wrote: ↑Sat Jun 25, 2022 2:04 pm
Mahoney wrote: ↑Sat Jun 25, 2022 12:57 pm
I don’t know what’s wrong with multiple transferable voting in a constituency; unlike PR it wouldn’t mean the BNP getting seats on 5% support, but it would make a new non-extreme party (or independent candidates) far more viable, and would save us from having to vote tactically.
I don't see why the BNP should not have 5% of seats if
- 5% of voters polled that way
- and the party is not breaking any laws
FWIW, the Tories are hardly that many steps removed from the BNP anyway.
I agree it's probable a lot of mess could've been avoided if the BNP and then UKIP had seats in Westminster, and made all their arguments over years through the 2000s and 2010s. Rather than holding the 2016 referendum and not even discussing the issues at any length or depth beforehand. There's a BNP election broadcast from the late 90s on Youtube, that's more or less the Tory platform now.
Any electoral system balances accountability (directly electing the MP) and proportionality (MPs in proportion to the votes). The two are in tension like a seesaw, less of one means more of the other. Some people (guessing Mahoney among them) value the direct accountability more. But a lot of the accountability disappears from FPTP when the reality is factored in: candidate selection by parties (candidate lists often dictated from the centre), safe seats, voter apathy so deep they're unaware who their MP even is.
Constituencies are deeply entrenched in the UK's political culture. I think the Scottish parliament elections would be a good model for UK general elections. Half the seats would remain constituency FPTP seats, the other half would be elected from a regional PR list. There's some advantages to the PR seats being regional, tying them to a smaller area means you could use the existing recall mechanism to exercise some accountability over them (but it's a seesaw so you lose some proportionality). It also doesn't create a constitutional problem a pure PR system would, which would turn Westminster into an even more English parliament, because Scotland/Wales/NI could be given a larger allocation of regional PR list seats to maintain their representation.
The UK's electoral system wasn't supposed to accommodate the amount of parties that are winning seats now. If nothing changes there's going to be some of the things which can be disadvantages of PR (many parties and coalitions), but in a FPTP system where parties have power potentially wildly disproportionate to their strength (DUP) and even stable coalitions are likely to see the weaker party punished (Lib Dems).