General election update from John Birchall
Whatever your political views and the way you voted yesterday it seems clear that the majority of voters wanted the politicians to work together to assist the country get out of its current economic and political woes. A considerable number of those who cast their vote did NOT want a single, first past the post winner of the election. They wanted a coalition with politicians working together to face the problems we face as a nation.
It seems that Mr Cameron may dangle PR in front of Mr Clegg but then will not vote for it in a referendum – this may not impress Mr Clegg. Within the last few minutes Mr Brown (still the Prime Minister) offered Mr Clegg an immediate referendum on proportional representation – which he would vote for. That may or may not attract Mr Clegg in to a coalition.
So, what is proportional representation?
A simple definition is ‘Representation of all parties in a legislature in proportion to their popular vote.’ That is fairly simple to understand but how does it work?
I suppose that for the Liberal Democrats the fact that they polled 22% of the vote but won less than 10% of the seats means that once again and after 90 years of trying PR to them must be something that has ‘come of age’. Mr Brown never seemed to be that much in favour of PR and Lord Ashdown has said as much. However, if we accept that the UK is broadly a ‘centrist democracy’ then for the Tories PR may mean political suicide. But how much longer will the electorate tolerate having such a small say in who governs them? It may be time to accept that only four members of the EU have first past the post voting ( that includes Greece) and that the most successful nation in Europe, namely Germany has only once elected in single party government, in 1957, since it returned to democracy after World War 2. What is keeping the political classes chattering today would, to say a Belgian, be ‘par for the course’ and as I write Belgium does not even have a government.
The arguments for a strong government with a mandate to lead now seems to be something which after three weeks of electioneering, some may say two years and millions of pounds of Lord Ashcroft’s money, the electorate have rejected. Six months ago Mr Cameron had a 20%+ lead in all opinion polls. Just two weeks Mr Clegg was shown to be in first place in one opinion poll and regularly above Labour in the share of the vote. So, there are no clear winners in the 2010 election (might there be another?)- is it time for the electorate to win for once and when we next queue outside polling stations, hopefully able to get in and vote, the outcome will be one we feel we can affect?
Some teaching resources
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2010/05/sdp-liberal-alliance-broadcast://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/proportional_representation.htm
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2010/05/sdp-liberal-alliance-broadcast - John Cleese tries to explain PR.
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/polit/damy/BeginnningReading/howprwor.htm - a simple explanation with easily understood diagrams
http://www.proportional-representation.org – both sides explained with a certain humour
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ziDciRjxUo - YouTube’s very own UK political section