Defending The Indefensible – The UK’s Unfair And Discredited Voting System
David Cameron and other Tory party speakers have been trying to pretend that the current electoral system has some benefits for the electorate whilst failing to mention that the main beneficiary of First Past The Post voting systems are the parties who hold safe seats. It is perhaps particularly insulting to the electorate that the Tory party didn’t use a simple FPTP system when they elected David Cameron as their leader. If it is not good enough for the Conservative party why do they defend it when the electorate are asking to be given a democratic vote that actually counts for something.
Every election that has been introduced in this country in recent years has been based on the idea that your vote should count and we have The Scottish government and Welsh assembly using proportional voting systems. The European election uses proportional voting as do most successful Western democracies.
The claim made by David Cameron that the current system allows you to ‘chuck out’ a government or an MP is accurate but also entirely misleading. An MP sitting in a safe seat for decades is almost impossible to remove by the voters unless he upsets his party committee. It may be up to two thirds of the voters, in a safe seat, are wasting their votes every four years when an election comes around. You can spend your lifetime living in a safe seat and your vote will always be a wasted vote. How good is that for democracy and feeling you matter in society? No wonder we have a broken Britain.
I discovered an interesting website that demonstrates how pointless voting can be at www.voterpower.org.uk where you may be disappointed to discover how little your cote counts. The site points out that in the UK, the only voters with any real power to choose the government are those who live in marginal constituencies.
It is a depressing fact that the FPTP voting system suits both Tory and Labour parties but denies just about everyone else a voice in the government of the country. When you see senior members of a political party saying that if you live in certain seats you should vote tactically for a party you do not support then you know we have a broken electoral system. Voting is supposed to be about showing support for the candidate you believe is best rather than trying to prevent another candidate succeeding.
David Cameron has been promoting the idea of a broken society that needs fixing and making ‘the great ignored’ feel that they do matter. It seems very hard to understand how he can hold those views and yet support a voting system that leads to a Government which has only a quarter of the electorate actively supporting it.
The Labour government should have been an example of why the FPTP electoral system is discredited. With no mandate they have increased the power of the state, removed the civil liberties that have existed for hundreds of years and led us by the nose into the worst financial crisis in a hundred years. Regardless of how you view their policies, the fact that they have been able to do this whilst commanding only 25% of the electorates votes must surely feel wrong to even the most enthusiastic supporter of FPTP.
The plain fact is that the Tory party benefit from the FPTP voting system and David Cameron is clearly far more concerned with that than he is with fixing a broken society where people feel disenfranchised and ignored. By arguing in favour of the First Past The Post voting system he has shown himself to be only interested in power rather than wanting to make Britain a fairer and better place.
The Tory slogan for the 2010 election is “Vote For Change” but it is like voting for a change in the deckchairs on the Titanic. The ship is still going down whatever deckchair you vote for.
