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sirguym -> RE: UK Election result (5/14/2010 4:22:10 AM)
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I am a long-term Liberal activist, first pushing leaflets through doors in the early 1960s, been elected to public office as a Liberal, sought once to stand for parliament, held office in the Liberal Party at every level from ward to national, etc. etc.
I believe the coalition will work because just as the populist/centrist wing of the Liberal Democrats are probably closer to Labour on social policy, there's many an activist like me who's actually closer to the Tories on the libertarian issues. There is much more to it than a simple one-dimensional spectrum.
There'll be defections of activists and voters from the Social Democrat wing of the Liberal Democrats, I guess, and this next term is going to be a poisoned chalice for whoever gets to govern, but hopefully there'll be some credit going if done well, and I expect to see some defections from the Conservatives to the Liberal Democrats when they actually realise they were liberals all along.
The voting system you're talking about is Single Transferable Vote, STV, the system the Liberal Democrat party prefer. The other system is the Alternative Vote, AV, which is the one the other two parties favour 'sort of', for purely tactical reasons.
quote:
ORIGINAL: SohCahToa
If you mix the extreme left of the liberal democrats with the extreme right of the conservatives, what you end up with is a Labour government in 2-5 years.[:D]
We know the next government will be a poisoned chalice, for the 'Liberal Conservative' coalition and also know the Liberal democrats will find themselves locked into the decisions of this government. So their typical supporters are going to desert them in five years and possibly wonder how the likes of Nick Clegg are able to set themselves apart from those conservatives. I means if there are no real differences and this coalition can get by then what differences were we actually voting for and how does the liberal democrat party justify it's existence.
Lucky now we the English won't be held to ransom by those nationalists, I was watching an interview with Alex Salmond (a week back) about how the Labour party should form a coalition with the SNP . I think he needs a lesson in maths because even with all the Nationalists, not forgetting the likes of the DUP had already aligned themselves with the conservatives, a Labour coalition with anyone would not have realistically worked.
The Liberal Conservative alliance looks promising but we all know that individual politicians don't always vote with their party, so start looking for that 55% no confidence vote if the direction is heading away from the Lib Dems.
I won't be voting for PR in any upcoming referendum because I like the status quo and don't like being held to random by a party that only acquired fifty odd seats especially when some of those seats were probably Labour supporters voting tactically.
Is anyone going to put (1) next to labour and (2) next to conservative on that PR form, or vice versa??? What we need is a system where the single vote of the politician is weighted by the share of the vote they got in their constituency. If we had three MP's for each seat elected to parliament (one from each party) and reduced the overall number of seats by two thirds, now that would be progress. Then our vote in the commons would be proportional to the party allegiances we all seem to have. i.e. if we are going to vote for teams rather than people.
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