…shall be representative
It may seem like a trivial point, that elections should be representative – are they not already?
Well they may appear to be – but they’re not, really, in the UK. Boris Johnson’s government took power with less than one third of the electorate. So two-thirds of the electorate would have preferred not to have the Conservatives in power. But this is nothing in comparison to the take-over of the Conservative party by a group who are in many ways extremists, who slipped in under the banner of Getting Brexit Done. So very far from being representative of the electorate, the system we have has resulted in a wealthy, powerful and power-hungry minority taking control.
In this episode we trace the destructive effects of our system of First Past The Post, and explore some systems of Proportional Representation, and the benefits they bring.
Talking points:
- Democracy and Subsidiarity in the context of Biosphere and People, as sub-series of this podcast
- The current set-up in the UK: First Past the Post as a distortion field
- Destructive effects of First Past The Post
- Who does it serve?
- Politics is an accumulator: hinterland of previous laws
- Vulnerability to media manipulation: Rupert Murdoch
- Preferential lobbying: the need for limited and proportional party funding
- Proportional representation
- Why the political extremes should be included
- Varieties of proportional representation – Party List, Additional Member, Single Transferable Vote
- Electoral boundaries, gerrymandering and the need for extra-governmental boundary setting
- Analogy with voter registration
- Benefits of proportional representation – fairness, diversity, consensus
- Analysis of dysfunction in Italian politics as a counter-example
- Positive effects of Proportional Representation in Switzerland
Links:
Why do Italy’s governments keep collapsing? BBC Inquiry Podcast:
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-inquiry/id932499233?i=1000513494631
More and Less Represented: James Meek (2019) in the LRB on Leavers and Remainers:
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v41/n20/james-meek/the-dreamings-of-dominic-cummings
Electoral Reform Society on varieties of election system:
https://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/voting-systems/types-of-voting-system/
Make Votes Matter on 3 types of Proportional Representation:
https://www.makevotesmatter.org.uk/proportional-representation
Get proportional representation working in the UK:
https://www.makevotesmatter.org.uk/join-the-movement
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