UK Election Arcana, Explained By Software 568
An anonymous reader writes "For the first time in 35 years the UK government is looking to be at risk of getting a hung or coalition government. (The most recent previous hung parliaments were in 1974 and 1929.) The voting rules are somewhat arcane and the votes this time are such that there are many strange possible outcomes and a surprisingly large number of permutations of coalitions that could be formed and political strategies that may go into their forming. There are at least 60 permutations, some more politically plausible than others. Adam Back wrote some software to work out the permutations, and lists some of the arcane factors affecting the outcome. If Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown chose to, it would appear even that he could simply refuse to resign, ostensibly trying to form a coalition indefinitely, maybe even forcing the Queen to dismiss the current government, which last happened in 1834 under King William IV."
Hmm (Score:5, Informative)
1/ The conservatives go it alone, and try to run a minority government with occasional help from the Northern Ireland parties they are allied with, and possiby the liberal democrats on some issues. This is unlikely to last long to be honest
2/ The conservatives and Liberal democrats do a deal, and make a joint platform. This is the only one that has got any possiblity of lasting. The tricky part is as the 3rd Party the Liberal Democrats want some form of proportial representation (which would double their seats in parlament). The conservatives don't want that at all. They like the current system. I don't know what is going to happen here. I guess the Lib Dems will blink "for the good of the coutry", and a deal will be done.
3/ Labour and the liberal democrats do a deal, this does not give them a majority though, so they will need the help of again ulster parties (different NI parties are alligned to each of the mainland parties). and the welsh/scottish natioanlist parties. This will probably fragment after a while too. This grouping is possible as they limp along for a while, and would bring in some form of proportional representation or other electoral reform and eventually we have an early new election.
Some of the more outlandish things like Gordon brown not resigning if there was a viable alternative is just silly. He *could* do it and it would be a mess if he did, but it would destroy most of the support for his party for years to come. You have to be gracious in defeat in these things if you want to bounce back.
I suppose there is
4/ They just call a new election, as well, but that is not going to be popular with the public and noone really has the cash to fight it (particularly the liberal democrats, who have the most to lose from a new election).
Re:Silly Brits (Score:2, Informative)
Shouldn't -everyone- have at least one MP/representative of their chosen political ideology in government? The UK system makes this possible, the US system does not.
TFA is wrong (Score:5, Informative)
TFA is wrong - the most recent hung parliament was 1997 (before the election that year). Second most recent was 1977.
Full details in http://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons/lib/research/briefings/snpc-04951.pdf [parliament.uk]
Two misconceptions here (Score:3, Informative)
1. Brown can't refuse to resign indefinitely -- there is always a confidence motion after the Throne Speech at the beginning of parliament, which is scheduled for the 25th. If he can't put together a majority vote in parliament then he will be gone then. So it'll be over in at most two more weeks, although it's unlikely to take that long. We'll probably know what's going on in the next couple days.
2. There are a bunch of tiny regional parties, but some of them are closely bound to one of the big players (SDLP is effectively Labour, Alliance is LibDem, DUP is Conservative), so there's really fewer options. In particular, if you consider a Labour/LibDem/Green/DSLP/Alliance combo they STILL wouldn't have a majority. Neither would Conservative/DUP.
In that scenario, the balance of power on every vote would come down to the nationalist parties: SNP (Scotland), Plaid Cymru (Wales), and Sinn Fein (Northern Ireland). [Note: Sinn Fein MPs make a point of *NOT* attending Parliament as a political statement, but if they thought they could control the balance of power they could always change that!] This would be completely unworkable and everybody knows it.
There's really only three options on the table right now:
Re:Silly Brits (Score:5, Informative)
The way the British do it -is- a reasonable commonsense system and it lets -everyone- more or less have their voices heard.
Oh, bollocks.
If I remember correctly, the UKIP got about twice as many votes as the SNP and the BNP got about the same number of votes as the SNP, yet the SNP got six seats and the UKIP and BNP didn't get any. The British government is determined primarily by the votes of a million or so voters in central England, because most of the rest of the country is a safe seat for one of the three main parties... consequently the main parties crap on the core supporters while they all fight over those few voters who can determine the outcome.
It's an abysmal system and it's hard to see how you could create something worse if you really want to to 'let everyone have their voices heard'. Where I used to live my vote was utterly irrelevant because the Tory MP had such a large majority that they would get elected regardless of who I voted for.
You may be right that the US system is even worse, but the idea that the British system 'lets everyone have their voices heard' is simply absurd. That's precisely what it's designed to _NOT_ do.
Re:Silly Brits (Score:4, Informative)
Re:More than 2 parties (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Arcane? (Score:5, Informative)
If you look at the numnbers, they have the following number of seats:
con: 306
labour 258
lib dem 57.
It sounds like the conservatives trashed the lib dems but that's not really the case.
If you look at the actual votes it goes like this:
con: 10,706,647
labour: 8,604,358
Liberal Democrat 6,827,938
While I don't want Labour back in power if they do form a coalition I don't think it's that bad of a deal. More people did get what the party they voted for and Labout and Lib Dems do actually have more in common.
I think the system needs tweaking to reflect the portion of votes that each party received. Should Lib Dems have such little power (assuming no coalitions) compared to Labour when nearly as many people picked them? Arguably all systems are like this when you group a whole nation's total votes but the UK is small enough, imo, that perhaps it should. You can't really say different blocks within London, for example, are so different that we should leave things as is.
Re:TFA is wrong (Score:3, Informative)
They occurred in a different way though. In those cases the government started with a very slim majority, but lost that majority due to losing by-elections and defections.
Um... (Score:5, Informative)
For those not trained in the intricacies of the Westminster system, while it is true that Gordon Brown could refuse to resign, that's not quite the way it would happen. Gordon Brown, as the incumbent PM, has first dibs under the Westminster system to form a new ministry. Because, in the Westminster system, a country is never without a government, Brown's Labour party is still technically the government and still advises the Queen. Thus he could go to the Palace and advise the Queen that he is still capable of heading a government. Now, theoretically, the Queen could use her Reserve Powers to dismiss the PM, but such a thing has not been done in a very long. The normal constitutional procedure would be for the Queen to accept the advice of Her Prime Minister and Labour again would form the government, despite having less seats than the Conservatives, and no configuration of coalitions (there aren't enough Liberal Democrats, SNP and other groups who tend towards left-of-centre to add up to a majority in the House of Commons).
Now what happens at that point is entirely up to the Opposition. Immediately upon forming a new government, there is the Queen's Speech (or, as it's referred to in the Commonwealth the Speech from the Throne), which is a confidence motion. The Conservatives and whoever else they allied with would have the votes to topple the government. A vote of no confidence in the Westminster is instant death for a government. At that point, Brown would cease to hold the constitutional monopoly on advising the Queen, and she would have the choice of either calling a new election or asking someone else to form government.
However, political realities being what they are, if the Conservatives and the LibDems form a coalition, it's almost certain that Brown will resign.
The problem both parties have with PR (Score:5, Informative)
The problem both Labor and the Conservatives have with PR, is that it would lead to coalition governments. This is easy to see. The Liberals had 23% of the last vote, the Conservatives 36%, and Labor 29%. This is more or less the share of the popular vote that the three parties have had for the last 30+ years.
You can see that if each party has the same number of seats as they have percentage of the votes, then no party is generally going to have a total majority over the other two. You will just about always have a situation, like in Holland, where the third party is in every government, sometimes in coalition with Labor and sometimes with Conservatives.
The reason why both of the two larger parties do not want this, is that they represent essentially minority interests. The Conservative Party historically represents inherited wealth and also the rural areas. Which are dominated by large landowners. The Labor party represents big cities, the industrial workforce and the public sector trade unions. And of course the large welfare population of dependents. Both are ready and eager to impose heavy costs on the country as a whole, as long as they get some, often fairly small, percentage of those costs for their own interest groups. This tendency, which is a form of looting, gets more extreme with the second and especially the third term of any government. In the first term of any government, it tends to behave responsibly. The first Blair term, for instance, was marked by restraint in public spending and no deals with the public sector unions.
The second and third terms have seen enormous public spending, mostly on public sector union wages, which has been marketed as 'investing in our great public services'. This has imposed costs on the country which dwarf the benefits to the recipients of the benefits, but no-one cares what it costs the country, as long as they are doing better.
The Conservatives are no better. We can expect something similar in the second and third terms of any Conservative government. The interesting difference about this Labor government has been its approach to the finance sector, which is referred to in the UK as 'the City'. This Labor government has been much closer to the City than any previous one.
You can see that this pattern of behavior will be eliminated by coalition governments. The problem is, in your first term you generally govern for the country, the better to get a second term. When in the second or third term you move to payoff time, and start the outrageous rewarding of your interest group, if its a coalition government, the other partner will just say no, force an election, and then move into coalition with the other large party. It will be game over.
The sheer rage that the idea of proportional representation arouses in the hearts of Conservative Party stalwarts is due to this. They are seeing the prospect of the second and third term troughs being smashed before their eyes. No more feasting. The whole rationale of the parties goes.
What happens with coalition government, on say the Dutch lines, is that it replaces the focus on who is in power, with a focus on what the program is going to be, what the policies are. In the UK at the moment all anyone cares about is who is in power, because whoever it is, can hand out the spoils. Once you cannot do this any more, you have to focus on governing for the country. Now that is not what either of the two large parties want to do, at least, no more than they absolutely have to.
And this is why far more of the UK wants PR than anyone in either of the two big parties will admit. It is not just the 25% that vote Liberal. It is also those who routinely switch from one party to the other, to give the other guys a chance.
If you think about it, in the situation I have described, what does the rational voter do? He/she is confronted with a two party system in which the second and third terms of any government are going to feature irresponsible looting of a sort mos
Re:Silly Brits (Score:3, Informative)
In the UK each region elects an MP and then the MPs vote in a government
Not quite true. The MPs don't vote in a government ever, the Queen invites someone to form a government (typically the leader of the party with the majority). The MPs can hold a vote of no confidence in the current government and force an election, but they don't vote to form one. All members of the government are appointed by the Prime Minister, and must be MPs, but they may be either Commoners or Lords (in a few cases, people have been given peerages to allow them to hold government office, but it's quite rare. Lord Mandleson of the Sith is the latest example).
A government does not always require a majority. Currently, we have a minority Labour government, until either there is a Parliamentary vote of no confidence in Gordon Brown or the Queen invites someone else to form a government. This is what happened in 1974, after a couple of by-elections, but it didn't last very long.
Re:Silly Brits (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Almost no difference...just more efficient (Score:2, Informative)
The electoral college in the US was built out of a representation of the state's not the people. That may provide a separate but distinct difference between he two systems.
You see, each state in the US was a separate and sovereign country that agreed to surrender certain portions of their sovereignty to the federal government. Most of this was in the form relating to state affairs (state as in foreign affairs) and in relations between the states. Originally, the people elected representative that sat in the house, the states appointed two senators who sat in the senate and they agreed by vote to a president who had some powers of direction. This way, the needs of the people, the state and the union would be represented and balanced out. Now, even today, there is no constitutional requirement for the people to vote on a president. The choosing of electors in the college is solely left to the states to decide on their own.
So it isn't really the representatives that vote on a prime minister in the US system. it's the states themselves who do it. Of course the state government can be seen as representative of the people within the state, but outside of the state's laws, they have no obligation to listen to the people of the state. But the original intent was to allow the states an effective way to agree on a figure head that could be presented to foreign powers and direct congress to some degree.
Now this has been changed a little in modern times but it's still very similar in retrospect despite the misinformation and flagrant abuse of positions out there. The constitutional amendment that made the president and vice president a party ticket instead of a run off between the electors still allows the requirement that one official has to be from another state or their state's electoral votes do not count. So clearly, even with the constitutional amendment, it wasn't intended to change from being a representative of the several states. This modern idea that the president is supposed to be over the people is somewhat misplaced making it nothing like parliament even though they act like it.
Re:Silly Brits (Score:4, Informative)
The very obvious problem is that his vote for someone else didn't translate into any increased representation for his minority views. This is called the "wasted vote [wikipedia.org]" problem and is one reason why FPTP voting systems suffer from lower turnout than do proportional systems. In a PR system, 10% of the vote for a particular party nets you 10% of the seats. In FTFP, 10% of the votes gives you 0% of the seats.
Re:TFA is wrong (Score:3, Informative)
That is not the only place the TFA is wrong. Here are just a few of the other places that were incorrect:
1) Labour are not socialists.
2) There is nothing indefinite about it. The Queen makes a speech at the end of May, which is then voted on in parliament. If the vote fails, it's game-over for the proposed government.
3) You don't need a majority to form a government, you just need to survive votes of no-confidence.
In other words, the most likely outcome is a Lib-Lab minority government, with the Greens, SDLP, Alliance, SNP & PC supporting them on votes of no confidence and on a per-issue basis. BTW said 'minority' government will have over 50% of the popular vote.
Re:Silly Brits (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Silly Brits (Score:3, Informative)
New Zealand used to have the silly British system but ditched it in favour of the Mixed Member Proportional, which, despite being proportional, still provides for local representation. There have been 3 or 4 elections under MMP in NZ and the system remains fairly popular.
Re:Silly Brits (Score:3, Informative)
Governments exist because a majority of MPs back a given government. The Westminster system didn't evolve full-blown political parties until near the end of the 18th century. Previous to that, the Whigs and Tories, while in some ways being ideological centers of gravity, did not exist as definite parties with a singular hierarchical structure. Even with the evolution of political parties, the development of the party system didn't happen for a few more decades, along with the tradition that Ministers were selected from Parliament, which was itself later modified so that most Ministers came from the House of Commons. So while, for all intents are purposes you right, technically the British constitution could envision a situation where a government formed that wasn't simply the government with the majority of seats in the House. The UK has had two National Governments that were essentially formed by all parties, during WWI and WWII, when events were sufficiently dire that the need for a unified Parliament was clear. In a way this shows the malleability of the Westminster System, that a lot of its functional aspects are modifiable at need.
Re:Silly Brits (Score:5, Informative)
Works well in Australia. ... The lower house is more about local issues, whereas the senate is about larger issues that dont necessarily have enough local interest to get a seat in the lower house but enough so that they can have a seat in the upper house.
With all due respect to my compatriot that is a very strange characterisation of the Australian political system. The lower house was always intended to be about inter- and intra-national issues (we are a federation of states), whereas the upper house was intended to represent the interests of the states as a house of review. This is why upper house members are elected (proportionally) on a per state basis. The lower house members being elected on a seat-by-seat representative basis.
That was, historically, the theory, however the fact of party politics means that the Senate (upper house) reflects the interests of the party rather than the state (except perhaps for Queensland where the majority conservative party is the minority partner in federal conservative govts). In effect the lower house is the house of government dominated by the major parties, while the upper functions primarily as a house of review. "Local issues" are handled by state and local government.
It is true, it does work well, if not as designed. Because of the representative nature of the lower house, the two major parties are favoured (even in the face of preferential voting), giving government a measure stability lacking from systems which have proportional representation (PR) in both houses. Whereas the semi-PR nature (ie PR on state-by-state basis), better reflects the diversity of the electorate, giving minor parties a review role. IMO it could be improved by making the upper house PR on a national basis, but the obstacles to achieving that are probably insurmountable.
Re:Silly Brits (Score:2, Informative)
Indian elections, like the British, are based on first past the post. However, as India is diverse, this leads to regional http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recognised_political_parties_in_India [slashdot.org]" > parties . Even most "national" parties are present and represent quite narrowly. As a result, coalitions are built and reform to ensure a national government. This results in coalition partners having an outsized say in governance and in slower change ("common minimum program") and extremism pandering to narrow political (caste, linguistic) constituencies. The nature of coalition building means that at the highest, there is a loss of accountability and stability.
I wonder if a proportional system would be fairer in that it would result in broader base, nationally (parties running a good second everywhere would be rewarded) and perhaps in less extremism, as "our people" in charge gets defined more narrowly
The Indian provincial elections of 1937 led to Muslim parties coming in second in most places in mostly FPTP system, and hence not being part of those governments. One could make a case that this concern (of being ignored and swamped in a FPTP system) led to demands for a separate muslim country and hence towards the partition of India, (creation of Pakistan) and the associated genocide.
Re:I see Belgium on that list (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I am an American living in the U.K. (Score:2, Informative)
All I've heard are vague notions of "strong government", but when I ask what that actually means, and why it would be a good thing, I haven't heard an answer at all.
Perhaps you should cast your net wider: there are at least 6,827,938 of us who would agree with you.
S.
Re:Risk? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Silly Brits (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Silly Brits (Score:1, Informative)
Actually Labour and Conservatives are closer to each other than they are to the LibDems. On paper Labour is Left, the LibDems Centre and the Tories are to the Right. However under 13 years of New Labour, Blair and Brown have moved the Labour party further to the right, such that they are really as far to the right as the Tories on most issues.
It's true to say that most Labour voters are not as far to the right as the party but that's another issue.
On paper PR would reduce the Labour seat count, possibly increase the Tory seat count and drastically increase the seat count of the LibDems and the various smaller parties. Given the electoral reform has been a LibDem top issue for most of the history of the the UK parliament, certainly the past 200 years, you can expect to demand it in a coalition. Hence the delicate negotiations at the moment as the Tories as they are dead against electoral reform - to be honest most senior Tories probably think if you aren't a right thinking country gent with a decent sized estate you shouldn't be allowed to vote anyway....
Re:Silly Brits (Score:3, Informative)
The reason the Liberal Democrats lost seats is because their support geographically was diminished. They may have had more voters overall, but those voters were more concentrated in fewer districts than had been the case earlier.
That sounds like a pretty fair system where it encourages those who would try to run the country to consider problems for the country as a whole and not to just a few places where the voters are concentrated.
Please look again, as in fact it does the opposite.
The Labour and Tory votes are concentrated in small areas (rich and poor respectively), hence they get lots of seats. Whereas the Lib Dem vote is spread across the entire country and thus they don't get many seats.
Note also that the Tories don't get many votes in entire nations (Scotland), as opposed to the Lib Dems.
Re:I see Belgium on that list (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I see Belgium on that list (Score:3, Informative)
Actually Belgium did have a government until quite recently. But you seem to be confusing the presence of a government with the provision of government services - most of which are provided at local "commune" level anyway. And it would be nice if the absence of a government meant you could stop paying taxes and dealing with idiotic bureacrats, but sadly it doesn't.
Yes, visiting for a few days as a tourist really gives you a much truer perspective on the place compared to someone who lived there for four years. Wanker.
Re:Silly Brits (Score:3, Informative)
Their seats in the House of Commons went from 62 to 57. Their vote share *increased* from 22.1% to 23%. First past the post voting does funny things.
Re:Silly Brits (Score:3, Informative)
*pfft* *snerk* HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Oh, man, that was good. Pull the other one, it's got bells on. Here's a map of the Illinois 4th Congressional District. [wikipedia.org] Tell me again about how our electoral boundaries follow geo-political boundaries.
Bullshit. (Score:1, Informative)
The ability to dissolve government is very powerful POLITICAL power. and exists as a check on the power of the Government to decide that it no longer wants to be a democracy. The deal, that you so badly mis-characterised is that the Queen can use that power any time she deems too, but if she did so without good cause then the country would be mightily pissed off with her. It's a fear-fear thing, the Government is in fear that the Queen will dissolve it if it overreaches and the Queen is in fear that the country will kick her out if she overreaches. Believe me - if a majority coalition was agreed upon that did not involve labour, and Gordon Brown refused to resign then the people would expect her to dissolve Government.
Whilst Oprah might want to be a queen, she most definitely is not. The Queen earns the UK a ton of money each year in tourism revenue. Oprah does not. The Queen is famously neutral (publicly) on politics as long as everyone follows the rules. Oprah wasn't able to achieve this (she let her guard down by campaigning for Obama).
No system is perfect, but the UK's is pretty good. I think it would be better if it introduced single transferable vote instead of first past the post, as that would eliminate the concept of a wasted vote (at the local level). It would result in more hung governments as more parties would gain seats, and some would say that's a problem. Personally I believe that all good government is a form of negotiated compromise anyway. It's the whack-jobs of the World with unlimited mandates that you've got to beware of. But I digress. My point is that your choice of words, "ugly hack, patch, workaround" suggest two things. Firstly that you're a coder, and secondly that you'd like to see the whole UK governmental system thrown away and redesigned from scratch in a waterfall manner. Various countries have tried that in the past (Russia, China etc) and they ended up with communism. I'll stick to the agile principles thanks.
BTW, don't call my Queen a bitch you wanker, I bet your code sucks worse than your arguments.
Re:Silly Brits (Score:3, Informative)
The electoral college is not the primary means by which the two-party system is enforced. The primary means by which the two-party system is enforced is using majority-runoff or plurality elections for most purpose plus having independently elected executives (both at the state and federal levels) rather than a parliamentary system.
The electoral college on top of that reinforces it a bit in terms of the federal executive, but its a small effect compared to the more basic ones -- switching to a direct election (by either majority-runoff or plurality) for the President and Vice President, either separately or on a single ballot, wouldn't do much to weaken the two-party system.
A parliamentary system (while still retaining majority-runoff and plurality for most elections) would still weakly promote two-party dynamics in most individual elections, but would make it more practical for the dominant parties to vary between regions rather than being two dominant national parties (the combination of that with national media would mean that minor parties would gain more mindshare even where they weren't currently electorally competitive, which would make which parties were competitive in which regions somewhat fluid.)
Using a ranked-preference-based voting system that avoided the structural disincentives to supporting third parties (with or without moving to a parliamentary system) would probably do the most to end duopoly, particularly if, for legislative elections, a system which tended to produce roughly proportional outcomes were adopted (this wouldn't have to ge a party-list system, you could just have Single Transferable Vote with, say, 5 member districts.)
Re:Silly Brits (Score:3, Informative)
Any system with single-member districts assigned simply by the vote winner (whether by simple majority with a runoff to settle ambiguous results, or plurality, or any other system that just looks at the first-place votes ) from the ballots in that district will have the possibility of doing things like that.
You have to have a more sophisticated voting system that produces proportional results to do that. Straight party list proportional systems are one alternative, but they have the defect that while they produce results that are proportional by party, they reduce the direct accountability of individual elected officials to the general electorate. Systems that produce fairly proportional results from ranked ballots among individual candidates in multimember districts (e.g., Single Transferable Vote) are another tool; with any reasonable district size they are less capable of perfect party proportionality than party list systems, but they can provide reasonable proportionality with the much the same kind of direct accountability to the general electorate that you have in single-member district, first-past-the-post type of elections.