‘Proportional representation will lead to better politics’, Labour conference told
‘Proportional representation will lead to better politics’, Labour conference told
Voting reform is ‘not just about who the system will allow us to care for but what the system allows us to care for’
The only justification for not doing this is protectionism. Starmer is placing party above country. We can see how damaging the Tories are. I do not want to see their likes again.
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Same with my MP. He's lived in this town his whole life, and I've known him (distantly) since I was 11, when he and my dad briefly worked together. They were actually friends for a while, as they shared a lot of beliefs, both political and otherwise. And we're now at the point that even my dad calls the guy useless. In fact I have not heard anyone say anything positive about him in the last 10 years, which makes it extra puzzling that he got over 50% of the vote in 2019. That's some serious passion for a guy that, seemingly, everyone and their dog knows is a slippery, incompetent hypocrite. Electoral Calculus still give him close to 50/50 odds of winning the next election too. I genuinely do not know what the appeal of this guy is.
One of the PR systems that maintains a geographic connection, like having larger constituencies with multiple MPs, would work just fine for me. If I could have a Labour or Lib Dem MP that's a bit further afield, but whose political leanings and moral character were more in tune with my own, I'd feel so much more comfortable contacting them.
I have gave this a lot of thought. This one of the better solutions I have seen pushed, imo. Each party can see how many MPs they have allocated by vote share. They can then assign them by area. The leading party can choose which areas they represent first. There would have to be some sort of system to prevent say Labour cockblocking support in a known Tory area and vice versa, but I actually think this would most likely sort it self. Every area you try to grab from an opponent means your opponent will be in a constituency that wanted you there.
I reckon if you get a system where, say, 6-8 constituencies are merged into one, and then vote for the same number of MPs as the number of constituencies merged, you'd avoid any serious issues with cockblocking. 6-8 constituencies in the same geographic area would have largely similar populations with similar voting patterns, especially if care is taken during the merging phase to group them well, so no party could cockblock the entire constituency. The MPs would then represent the whole new, larger constituency, so that anyone living in that constituency can deal with an MP of the party of their choice, rather than having a specific MP assigned to a specific town.
And maybe it's just because I live in a rural area where I've got to travel across constituency lines to get to many amenities, so I'm used to considering a fairly wide geographic area to be my "local" area... but I really wouldn't care if I had to travel 15 miles to see a Labour MP, rather than 5 miles to see a Tory one. The town 15 miles away has all the same problems as the one 5 miles away, so it's not like the Labour MP wouldn't "get" it if I went to them saying "hey, I've got this problem going on, can you help?"
The other issue you get when you batch MPs to an area is that the party in power will get a lot more work than the other parties. If you are going to write to an MP and you have a choice then you will either choose one that is aligned with the topic. or choose the one with the most power.
That's kind of already the case, though? When the MP is of a party that's in government, they probably already get more letters from constituents, because there's an expectation that they can do more because they have more power (often not actually the case, though). But people have all kinds of reasons for contacting an MP, and all kinds of criteria for selecting who they'd rather deal with: whoever is geographically closest if they need an in-person appointment, whoever is in the right party, whoever has voiced an opinion the person agrees with, whoever has spoken up on the issue the person needs help with... It would all balance out more than you'd expect.
The problem with not having it district-wide is that say one party got an entitlement to one MP. That would mean that over the entire region, they got approximately 15% of the vote. Over a constituency with 6-8 MPs, it's fine that 15% of the population get represented by 15% of the MPs. But if that single MP is assigned to a specific 1/6th of the constituency, that constituency is then 100% represented by a party that only 15% voted for, which is actually less democratic than the current system at a local level, even if nationally it's more representative.
I think we both agree there will never be a perfect solution. For myself I would take on most things so long as we remove the FPTP system and not adopt any other system that has the same flaws.
Yep, we definitely completely agree on that! PR has its flaws, but FPTP is much worse.