A Broken System?

10 May 2010



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British Get a Hung Parliament

Thursday's election in Britain resulted in a hung parliament. The Conservatives can call on 306 votes in the new House of Commons. Labour's score is 258, and the Liberal Democrats came out of the polling with a disappointing 57 despite Cleggmania. The people voted "None of the above" in the only way their system will allow. Negotiations have been going on all week-end, and the question is whether there will be a Liberal-Tory coalition or a Tory minority government.

The first-past-the-post system of electing Members of Parliament has undermined its supporters' biggest and best argument. They claim that a system whereby the candidate with the most votes in a constituency gets elected (whether he or she has won a majority) delivers clear election results and in turn, those deliver decisive government. Clearly, it has done no such thing here.

For the Liberal Democrats, the result was confusing and revolutionary all the same. Despite winning a bigger percentage of the vote than in the last general election, they lost seats. However because the other two main parties did so badly, the LibDems' smaller representation is, nevertheless decisive. The trouble is that their hearts are with a Labour-Liberal coalition. The mathematics say a Conservative Liberal coalition is the only one available.

There are common points between the Liberal Democrats and the Tories, as Conservative Leader David Cameron said on Friday. Scrapping the National ID card, moving toward a low-carbon economy and dumping the National Insurance Contribution increase are points of agreement. However, the real challenge will be on electoral reform. The Liberal Democrats are committed to proportional representation by way of single transferable vote. The Tories, fearing permanent left of center government under PR, want to keep the current system. Can they square the circle, and if so, will the grass roots wear it?

If not, one expects the Liberal Democrats to decline to join a Tory government, but they will agree to a "confidence and supply" arrangement, under which they agree to let the Tories pass the Queen's Speech (which lays out the government's plans) and the Budget (which pays for the plans). Beyond that, the Liberal Democrats would be under no obligation. They would do this to buy breathing space, realizing that another election too soon would hurt them with the voters for being difficult.

So, it will be Prime Minister David Cameron. The question is whether he faces another election in 18 months or so when the LibDems finally decide to bring him down with Labour leading the way, or whether he can get electoral reform ideas through Commons as part of a 4-year agreement with Mr. Clegg's crew. Meanwhile, Labour is about to rip itself to bits, and Mr. Clegg may want to stay out of the way while his rivals on the left destroy themselves. Within 72 hours, the world will know what he decides.

© Copyright 2010 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Ubuntu Linux.

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