UK Election Arcana, Explained By Software 568
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by
timothy
from the ask-the-queen dept.
from the ask-the-queen dept.
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."
Re:Risk? (Score:4, Insightful)
Arcane? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Risk? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Silly Brits (Score:5, Insightful)
While the UK system may be broken, its a lot better than the system from across the ocean....
Re:Risk? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because everyone in this country is still hung up on class. The working class would never vote for tories, and the middle/upper class would never vote labour. And only crazy hippies vote libdem. our parents did it, as did our parents parents... Maybe we'll realise we're being left behind before its too late.
The people who voted for the Lib Dems are not "crazy hippes", they are people who want a change in the system and/or are sick of Labour. They certainly didn't vote for the Lib Dems so that they could cement conservative power though. If they opt for a coalition with the conservatives I suspect that most of their support will vanish.
what's wrong with minority government? (Score:2, Insightful)
A government which can't use its whip to push its Party's MPs into voting a particular way such that a majority vote is inevitable is the best sort of government.
After all, an MP is voted in by his constituents to represent his constituents, not his Party.
Re:Silly Brits (Score:5, Insightful)
The UK system is crap -- it's not as bad as the US system, but it's still pretty awful.
In many areas it's more-or-less irrelevant who you vote for -- the same party wins every year.
In other areas it's a contest between two of the biggest three parties, and not voting for one of those two is essentially wasting your vote; many people in these situations vote for the "less bad" of the two parties. (e.g. they might like party B, but 'know' that either A or C will win. A isn't as bad, so they vote A to try and stop C winning.)
The Liberal Democrats get a decent number of votes all across the country (23% this year) but don't get a fair number of seats in Parliament (9%). Labour got 29% of the vote and 40% of the seats, the Conservatives got 36% of the vote and 47% of the seats in Parliament. The smallest parties are even worse-off than the Lib Dems: the Greens got 1% of the vote this year, and for the first time got a single seat -- 0.15% of the seats! (results [bbc.co.uk].)
Re:More than 2 parties (Score:5, Insightful)
Looks like what we really need then is a hanged Murdoch rather than a hanged Parliament. If you guys could take care of that, we in the US would be ever so grateful.
Re:Arcane? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:If Labour doesn't get in... (Score:2, Insightful)
Erosion of civil liberties isn't a party political or, indeed, national issue. It's a constant battle - eternal vigilance and all that. But the 1984 references work best when talking about the UK.
Re:AV+ (Score:4, Insightful)
No, we need STV.
Don't worry about the BNP: they lost all their council seats in Barking & Dagenham, and were thrashed by Labour in Barking.
In any case, if a fair proportion of a constituency wants a particular representative then they should have that representative, no matter how much I disagree with their policies. They can argue about it in Parliament, and if their views are unpopular they won't make any difference (it's likely that almost all the other MPs will disagree).
Re:Silly Brits (Score:5, Insightful)
Better than the US though, a party could easily have 25% of the popular votes and no representation.
That's also possible in the UK. Each seat is contested on a first-past-the-post basis, and the winner typically has 30-40% of the vote. The remaining 60-70% are then discarded. If you get 25% in every constituency but another party gets 26% then you get no seats. It's even more fun than this, because it doesn't have to be the same other party; one other party could get 26% in 326 seats and 0% in the other 364. They would then have a majority of seats and control of Parliament, with only 13% of the popular vote, while the party with 25% of the popular vote had no representation at all.
There's a reason why electoral reform is the key issue for all of the smaller parties. One or other of the two major parties needs to get them on board to be able to form a government, but the price of doing so is likely to be a form of proportional representation for the next election (which, if we go by 1974's precedent, will be in a few months) and then neither Labour nor the Conservatives will be able to get a majority ever again. Even the 36% or so that the Conservatives got is probably a lot more than they'd get under PR - a lot of people voted Conservative because it meant not-Labour (just as a lot of people voted not-Conservative in the past), and would likely vote for a smaller party if their vote would actually be likely to affect the outcome.
Re:Silly Brits (Score:5, Insightful)
No, that's the wrong way to see it.
"Well, at least it's better than in bumfuckistan" is a justification for complacency. Don't wait for it to get worse, do some work and help make it better.
So are you trying to do something about it, or just complain about it online?
The grandparent is setting an excellent example here.
Re:Silly Brits (Score:5, Insightful)
Mod parent up. As much as it seems silly that the two losing parties still remain in power, it isn't when you think of it. If combined they still represent more votes (and thus a higher percentage of people's views), shouldn't they be the ones in power rather than a party that a majority of people didn't want?
This is pretty much what happened when Nader "spoiled" the vote for Gore in Florida back in 2000. Even if you discount the whole recount issue, if Nader hadn't been running most of his votes would have likely gone to Gore (both being liberals), and Gore would have easily won the state and the election. Similarly, if the UK were a 2-party system, the Labour and Lib Dems (which if I recall are both more similar to each other than the Conservatives) would be a single party and easily have won.
The benefits of having multiple parties is that no matter who "wins", without a clear majority the ruling coalition needs to be built on compromise. Whether it's Conservatives + Lib Dems, or Labour + Lib Dems, or one of the other permutations, the government can't go too far to one extreme. More importantly, minor parties are still needed to form a coalition, giving them a chance to make some of their views heard.
This can give new ideas—ideas that may be popular with the electorate but too risky/unknown to make traction with the main parties—a chance to be tested while still having a sort of buffer preventing them from being taken too far to quickly. Think, for example, the Pirate Party; major parties are too beholden to big corporate donations to advocate sensible copyright reform, yet that doesn't mean there shouldn't be advocates for it in the legislature.. Compare this to the US, where the two parties have been pretty stagnant for as long as anyone can remember, and new ideas are quickly shot down as "radical" from both sides
Re:Arcane? (Score:3, Insightful)
The article is wrong. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Silly Brits (Score:3, Insightful)
Please stop modding this disingenuous argument as 'Informative'.
The Scottish National Party (SNP) fielded 59 candidates in the Westminster parliamentary elections - one in every of the 59 Scottish constituencies.
The BNP fielded more than 300 candidates across the whole of Britain and UKIP fielded over 500 candidates. So UKIP stood in for nearly 10 times as many areas, but only got twice as many votes in its 500 areas as the SNP did in its 59.
Let's face facts. The BNP put its leader up in an East London constituency where it only narrowly lost last time around and where it had 12 local councillors voted in. The leader scraped home in 3rd place. All the BNP councillors were voted off. There is not a single constituency in the whole of the UK where the voters thought - 'yes, the BNP or UKIP candidate is the best one'.
The first-past-the-post may not be to your liking, but don't try to pull the bogus 'comparison with the SNP' trick.
Re:Silly Brits (Score:3, Insightful)
The police estimate was 2000 people in London, the BBC say 1000. I couldn't see from near the front, but apparently there were more people than could fit in Smith Square. The protest was organised with just two day's notice, and there were other protests in other cities. It was raining. There were lots of kinds of people -- some were students, but there were plenty of older people too. Nick Clegg came outside and spoke to the protesters -- a very good result, especially as he didn't know in advance it was happening. The protest was widely reported in the media, perhaps you'd like to hear Clegg's speech [bbc.co.uk].
Whatever you think of me or the protest, I think less of you for sitting at home and ranting on Slashdot. That doesn't achieve anything.
Re:Silly Brits (Score:5, Insightful)
At the very least it prevents one of the worst stupidities that can be found in British governments: The tendency to leave "poison pills" to their successor. Like the Tories did when they pressed through privatisation of the railway system at the last second with disastrous consequences for the quality of the railway system, or what Labour has recently done signing billion dollar IT contracts for useless projects that they knew the next government would want to cancel, intentionally negotiating contracts with huge penalties for cancellation.
Re:Arcane? (Score:3, Insightful)
The lords are actually chosen by the Prime Minister.
I believe you mean "purchased from".
Re:Silly Brits (Score:4, Insightful)
"but I would look at the electoral college and various senate problems as bigger problems than our current 2 party system."
Of course, most of those problems are directly related to the two-party system. In the case of the electoral college, it is the primary means by which the system is enforced, and most of our Senate shenanigans are a direct result. Serious reform of any one will result in changing all three.
I am an American living in the U.K. (Score:3, Insightful)
As an American living in the U.K., I can't for the life of me figure out why having no clear majority, necessitating that opposing viewpoints actually talk to each-other and compromise, could possibly even begin to be anything other than a very good thing. 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.
And parliament still looks a thousand times more sane than congress.
Re:Silly Brits (Score:5, Insightful)
The vast majority of britons looked at what the lib dems offered, said 'he looks nice but no thanks' and actually reduced their vote share - yet they could get cabinet seats.
Wrong. The Lib Dems got 23% of the vote, an INCREASE of 1%. Citation - BBC Full election results [bbc.co.uk].
They had a reduction in the number of seats. - more votes, less power.
It has to be a broken system that gives them less than 10% of the seats for almost a quarter of the vote. Especially when you consider that they increased their vote, yet decreased their number of MPs and that Labour got 29% (only 6 per cent more) of the vote somehow giving them 4 times as many seats. In fact both Labour and the Tories (Conservatives) got over 10% more power (seats) than their share of the vote.
Re:Two misconceptions here (Score:3, Insightful)
"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 is very unlikely; it would require them to swear fealty to the British Crown.
Re:Silly Brits (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:More than 2 parties (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Arcane? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's actually a rather elegant workaround in my opinion. The UK's monarch is the equivalent of a permanently disabled root account, she holds the notional power, but cannot wield it. Politicians are the sudoers.
Re:Silly Brits (Score:3, Insightful)
It is unlikely that Gordon Brown can remain as prime minister , he makes a better chancellor to be honest.
Yeah, he did a great job presiding over the economy last time, deregulating the banking sector because banks said they needed less regulation. That worked out brilliantly.
Re:I am an American living in the U.K. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Risk? (Score:3, Insightful)
Because everyone in this country is still hung up on class. The working class would never vote for tories, and the middle/upper class would never vote labour.
Sorry, but that is a ridiculously false statement. Are you actually naive / ill-informed enough to believe this, or were you shooting for a Funny?
The Sun solidly backed Cameron; if you think this was because Murdoch is cosy with the Tories you're right, but if you think it was ONLY due to this, despite the entire (mostly working-class) readership of the paper thinking all the while "WTF why are they backing the tories I hate them" you are in dreamland. Not even Murdoch can get away with wholly flying in the face of his readership's leanings. On the contrary, there is a decent chunk of working class (self employed White Van Man, etc) who are Thatcherite/Tory for various reasons: disagrees with the welfare state ("I'm a self made man who didn't need no handouts"), disagrees with Europe/immigration ("Cheapo Polish builders taking all my clients"), etc.
Meanwhile, look at the stereotype of the New-Labour-voting Islington dinner party brigade. (Upper) middle class to a tee. Do you really think Labour had the last 13 years in govt without any middle class votes whatsoever? Relying solely on that traditional unionised working class base which... um... hardly exists anymore, what with the decline in our manufacturing industries? More dreamland.
Your ludicrously simplistic class-based analysis is at best extremely dated (certainly pre-Blair, perhaps even pre-Thatcher), and quite probably was never really accurate. In an international forum like this where people who don't know better are liable to take you at face value, I feel it's almost irresponsible to trot out this utter nonsense with a straight face.
Re:Silly Brits (Score:3, Insightful)
This is pretty much what happened when Nader "spoiled" the vote for Gore in Florida back in 2000. Even if you discount the whole recount issue, if Nader hadn't been running most of his votes would have likely gone to Gore (both being liberals), and Gore would have easily won the state and the election.
Wow. Still this crap 10 years out. I'm no Nader fan, but the logic of this argument is (and has always been) preposterous. Nader didn't "spoil" anything. Gore did. To wit:
Gore needed 0.5% of Nader's votes to win. But Gore needed only 0.01% of Bush's votes. Which would be easier? Getting 1 out of 200 people dedicated enough to a third-party candidate to buck the mainstream, or 1 out of 10,000 random sheep who chose one of the two main candidates by default?
Also, 12% of registered Florida Democrats voted for Bush (roughly 200,000 voters). If Gore had succeeded in getting even 1 out of 1000 of these Democratic defectors from his own party to vote for him, he could have won Florida. Many more Democrats voted for Bush than all of Nader's votes combined (including Democrats, Republicans, and independents who voted for Nader).
The simple fact is that Nader's group of voters was tiny compared to the amount of Democratic defectors to Bush.
You don't get it. The fact is that elections are also lost by candidates who lose votes, including those from their own party. That was a hell of a lot more significant in Florida than Nader's "spoiling" effect. And given how many defectors were already present in Gore's own party (which dwarfed the Nader vote), how can you be so certain that if the entire election were run without Nader, a majority of the Nader voters would have gone to Gore?
The myth of the Nader "spoil effect" is just another way the Democrats have tried to blame their losses on someone else -- "It wasn't our candidate's fault -- it was... uh... Nader! Er... uh... the Supreme Court!" Sure, we might have created a different outcome by disenfranchising millions of voters nationwide who wanted an alternative to the two majority parties... or Democrats could have just had a candidate that would have caused about 0.1% fewer people to defect to Bush from his own party.