Saturday 30 December 2017

Tories claim FPTP is rigged against them.

 Political Betting have taken the Tories and the Telegraph to  Task for  aping D Trump when they claim the electoral system’s rigged against them

Mike Smitherson writes.
I know it is the holiday season and all that with political news thin on the ground but the Telegraph should have looked at the basic numbers from GE2017 before inferring that somehow the electoral system is rigged against the Tories and for Labour.
This might have been true after GE2005 when Blair’s LAB won 55% of the seats with 35.2% of the votes but things have moved on since then. The basic fact from June 8th is that the Tories won 48.9% of MPs with 42.4% vote while LAB won 40.3% of MPs with 40% of vote. The LDs secured 1.8% of MPs with 7.4% of vote.
    Under the current boundaries the Tories would win 13 more seats (out of 650) than Labour if they both get 42% and there is a uniform swing. Under the proposed new boundaries, the gap increases to 37 seats out of 600.
Those basic numbers point to the opposite of what CON ministers and the paper is suggesting.
One of the political problems the Tories have got with this is that under the current proposal the DUP looks set to lose three seats to Sinn Fein becoming the second party in Northern Ireland.
TMay’s “supply and confidence” partners are not going to do anything that supports a plan that would negatively affect them. Without the DUP’s votes it will be a struggle getting this through the Commons.
So please no whinging. This is naked political self interest by the Tories.
 If the seats had been fought under Pr then the result would look like this
  • Conservative, 276
  • Labour, 260
  • Lib Dem, 48
  • SNP, 20
  • Ukip, 12
  • Green, 10
  • DUP, 6
  • Other, 6
  • Sinn Fein, 5
  • Plaid Cymru, 3
  • SDLP, 2
  • UUP, 1
  • Alliance, 1
The Lib Dems have suffered more than most in that election after  Election has seen them under FPTP  never even approaching the number of seats their support at elections deserve.

And 2016 was the first in years  where the Two Party system was prominet qith Labour and the Tories  getting over 80% of the vote

A year earlier in the 2015 General election he Conservatives would have won 75 fewer seats but would still have been the largest party in the Commons. Labour too would have taken fewer seats.
The SNP's dramatic increase in seats of 50 would have been curtailed to 25.
But UKIP, the Lib Dems and the Greens would have fared much better.
UKIP would have been a force to be reckoned with in the Commons with 83 seats.
Mr Farage has not yet declared which of the many alternative voting systems he would favour, but any more proportional system would be likely to give him and other smaller parties a boost.
The contrasting fortunes of the different parties in Westminster under first past the post are made clear by looking at the number of votes won for each winning candidate.
UKIP then required more than 100 times as many votes for its lone elected MP than the Conservatives did for each of theirs. 

Some would consider Keeping Ukip out was worth it  and certainly could have then permanently  a major UK party instead of disappearing of the Screen.

 Of course the Tory-Telegraph claim that they are loosing out under the current boundaries  and their plans to Gerrymander the current seat by reducing the number of MP including a huge cull in Wales.

The whole problem is that both Labour and Tories have an interest in keeping the current undemocratic system, and even if they  were forced to propose a form of PR by a coalition partner .as the Lb Dems proposed Alternative vote  saw in the 2011 Referendum it can easily be defeated.

We need Progressive Parties and those in Labour who believe in democracy to make a clear case for PR and promote  the Single transferable vote STV).

Even those in Labour who stick to FPTP  should realise that they face the possibility of being a permanent  opposition if they don't want to repeat the Blue-Tory years and being endorsed by the Right-Wing media who believe they are now "safe" and will continue the "Blue" agenda.

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