What is this, the 18th Century? I thought every borough had the same population nowadays.
News: Breaking stories & updates - The Telegraph gives a good explanation of the Labour bias. In particular:
In the U.S., we have a census every ten years, following which* all the state legislatures reapportion the legislative districts (both state and for the House of Representatives) to equalize their population if necessary. How often is this done in the UK? Is there a regular schedule, or is it done whenever Parliament decides it needs doing?
*And occasionally more often – I’m sure you all caught the furor a couple of years ago when the Republican-controlled Texas state legislature took the unprecedented step of redistricting a second time in a decade, and Democratic members tried (unsuccessfully) to block it by fleeing the state so there wouldn’t be a quorum.
It’s not decided directly by politicians, but by the independent Boundaries Commission. (Gerrymandering by American-style redistricting is illegal.) As far as I’m aware, there’s no fixed timeframe for when it’s done, but rather the commission identifies situations where changes are needed. This time around, they’ve been busy completely redrawing the Scottish setup. And they don’t need to wait for a census, nor would it give them the information needed: it wouldn’t identify the numbers eligible to vote. The electoral register gives more up-to-date figures, and is specific enough for local government boundaries to also be established (which narrow down to each few hundred electors).
Minor quibble: The Torygraph may consider a loss of 2% over 20 years to be “massive”. I do not.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/2288292.stm
Edinburgh has gained 2.9% in only five years!
“The effects have been immense. The size of electorates in Labour-held seats in big cities and the North has fallen while in Conservative-held suburban, rural and southern seats they have risen. One of the safest Labour seats, Easington, has an electorate of 62,000 while one of the Tories’ safest seats, Surrey East, has more than 75,000.”
Methinks they are just preparing their excuses for not doing well on Thursday. With such a nice man as Michael Howard in charge, there must be **some **reason why nobody will vote for them, surely?
He should snap up the Jewish vote.
Back to the question. If the UK had a referendum on PR, would it pass (needing more than 50% of the voets cast)? I say no.
What say you?
I say yes. After all, the last time a part of the UK was offered this option we voted for it pretty overwhelmingly.
If that was Scotland (only guessing here, I’m afraid not having lived in Britain for nearly 20 years), does that mean very much, given a) its separate national identity and b) that it typically votes differently from England in matters of general UK-wide interest, like General Elections?
You refer to Tories a lot. Are you a Socialist?
I don’t see why it would. I cannot see how anybody could defend the ridiculous system we have at present. Of course, YMMV and all that.
Even the Tories call themselves that these days. I gave up labelling myself a long time ago, but yes, I suppose I am a socialist.
People arguing against PR on the basis that a middle-of-the-road third party like the LibDems might hold a balance of power are missing the point. To govern you need a majority in the Commons, and at present you can get a majority in the Commons with a distinct minority of the popular vote (as Thatcher proved). If a third party has a balance of power, that means that neither major party has a majority. That can happen with the present system, though it’s less likely to, because the present system benefits the largest party out of proprtion to its actual vote.
So a campaign for PR should emphasise that it is about majority rule, i.e. a majority of the voters is required to rule at Westminster, while the present system often leads to minority rule, i.e. a minority of votes leading to a majority at Westminster.
Beautifully put!
It would also answer the concerns GorillaMan has expressed about the (slight) differences in constituency sizes over the UK.
I tend to think that it would pass, perhaps because I imagine that those who ignore such mattters might not bother to vote, whereas those with strong views would bother.
Is it not the case with PR that it is very hard to get things done at the governmental level due to a cacophony of conflicting viewpoints? Sorry if this is a rudimentary point, but its relevant to what some people (although not me) perceive as the biggest weakness of Blair’s government; that they just haven’t done anything substantial with their crushingly large majority. Imagine the sheer stasis of having a PR house of commons!
The ‘normality’ of majority rule in the commons is something of a myth. A third of the 20th century was spent under minority or coalition governments.
PR has been used in many parliamentary systems, including Ireland, Israel, New Zealand, and the Australian state of Tasmania. It becomes often necessary to form a coalition to govern, but the coalitions often prove very stable, provided that the party system itself is stable. Since the party system in the UK has been pretty stable for the last 100 years, there’s no reason that it wouldn’t continue that way. If Labour can’t win a majority, why wouldn’t a Lib-Lab coalition last until the next election? Boith sides would want it to work reasonably well, to stop the Tories getting in at the next election.
My imagination and my intuition - coupled with my reading skills - tell me that those pro-PR live in Scotalnd, Wales, and to a lesser degree Needle Eedle, while those anti-it live in England (yes, even that monstrously large number of expat Scots tend to change their minds as they go doon sooth).
And I think, guinnog (Guinness-eggnog?), that you’re falling into the trap of overestimating the hwyl (hope I’ve spelled that right) of the boyos and the jocks and underestimated the spirit of the Anglos (or Norman-Celts like me, for that matter).
The important thing for all this (very foundational and very significant) ethnic identification stuff is how one self-identifies.
The idea of greater spirit or fervour somehow being possessed by the Welsh and Scots, given that it cannot be genetic (I hope we’re agreed), must come down to historico-social factors. And frankly I think they’re misestimated - as outlined above.
Sorry for the digression, but such wisdom needs its outlet!
Just for the record, I’m pretty sure that moving to Wales from England 3 years ago didn’t change my views on PR.
Nice in theory, until no one gets a clear majority (very hard with PR) and you get the hard left or right end up holding vastly disproportionate power in coalition governments. I think our system works well enough.
Where’s the evidence that that would happen? The British electorate is firmly rooted in the centre, I don’t see how a new voting system would change that. We’re not Israel…
Another of my theories bites the dust…