We need a new voting system


STOP THE MESS ; CHANGE THE SYSTEM

The one thing that’s clear about this election is that we need to change our electoral system. It can’t cope with splintered parties, governments with no majority,  multi party politics and issues which divide the electorate along different lines to the great party division between the have mores and the have lesses.

Politics have changed but the electoral system hasn’t and the result is chaos. Former party leaders denounce their successors and suggest voting for someone else.  Conservatives have left the party  to join the  Liberals or stand as independents.  Blairites who once dominated the Labour Party despair about Jeremy Corbyn and some show up in their real colours  as trendy Liberals not proletarian socialists . The Labour Party which once wanted to come out of Europe now loved it while the Tories who took us in want out.

What a mess! Even worse the Liberals have discovered that the soggy central ground they love to stand on is no longer  there so they’ve taken up the undemocratic policy of Bollocks to Brexit . Just as the fight over the environment becomes obsessive the Greens have devoted themselves to fighting for remain, the Brexit party has split and crumbled while the Scot Nats, have burbled on about Home Rule for Scotland which no one else wants insisting our a home rule referendum no one else wants. We may in the end need another coalition government but all parties have spent their time denouncing all the others.

Result? A mess which strains loyalties, confuses choices,  and creates the possibility the possibility of another government without a majority which can’t  govern. Then the elective dictatorship for so long the basis of British government would no longer work 

In a desperate attempt to cope we’re now seeing  a flood of advice on tactical voting to tell people to vote for any party they want less than the one they really want to vote for to keep another party out a kind of electoral algebra  which will baffle most people  and produce an incomprehensible result.

It’s all madness .There is a cure but its one that no one has mentioned in the cacophony that calls itself an election. It’s changing our first past the post electoral system to proportional representation. It gives every vote its fair value instead of chucking the votes of all who didn’t support the winning party into the dustbin. It gives  the people power over the politicians (which is a clue to why MPs don’t like it)

But now its essential  to force parties to work together to require them to form coalitions to create a government and to stop the election of any party which represents only a minority of the people. With Proportional Representation compromise is the art which keeps politics going. All parties must make it clear who they’d work with in government and  government becomes a coalition bringing enough parties together in a government which represents a majority of the voters.

That’s what’s happened in New Zealand. Twenty years ago they abandoned our Westminster style  of first past the post, introduced proportional representation, learned the art of coalition politics and and have never looked back. The same would  happen here But only if we learn the lesson . A continuation of this political chaos will be disastrous


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