Posted on 05/09/2015 10:08:24 AM PDT by teevolt
The Conservatives won an impressive come from behind victory last night. I thought it would be interesting to compare the actual outcome, to the outcome that would have occurred with a German-style proportional representation system. In that system, seats are assigned in proportion to vote share, but only to parties getting at least 5% of the vote. I’ll show the number of seats under the German regime, with the actual number won in parentheses. The difference is stunning:
Conservative 273 (330)
Labour 226 (232)
UKIP 93 (1)
Liberal Dems 58 (8)
SNP 0 (56)
Others 0 (23)
I suppose the Tories could have cobbled together another coalition government, if the Lib Dems were keen on another suicide mission. But if they weren’t?
Europe has lots of right wing nationalist parties. While the UKIP is not as bad as some of the others, it is still a bit outside the mainstream. The reason the UK lacks a big populist party has nothing to do with the UK electorate, it’s all about the system.
PS. Of course the usual Lucas Critique caveats apply, especially where strategic voting occurs.
PPS. No surprises in today’s jobs report—more of the same.
And the sad thing - at the end Cameron was out there campaigning against UKIP, fearing it would draw from the Tory vote.
Under the situation this gup suggests no one would represent their local constituency. They could just represent the media or big business.
While the UKIP is not as bad as some of the others///
Why does the article assume the UKIP is bad?
Has the election moved the Tories a little more to the right? They no longer have their Liberal Democrat partners. What are they newly elected conservatives like - are they bland moderates, or closer to Thatcherites?
David Cameron has taken a stronger (verbal) stand against Islamfascism than any Republican I can think of. Perhaps that nudges him toward the Thatcher side.
This blog generally supports establishment, but does have some interesting analysis from time to time.
I really hope I’m wrong, but I think the Tories now have the sense they just ‘crushed’ UKIP and will no longer have to pander at all to the right.
Today’s Conservative Party is pretty much what Tony Blair was when he was Premier, both the Conservatives and Labour have moved to the Left, since Blair was PM.
As one of my faculty colleagues told me, there's no point in writing to "his" Member of Parliament. The letter wouldn't even be opened, let alone read. It's a perfect system for disenfranchising the electorate.
What are the numbers in brackets vs the other numbers?
Bracketed numbers are the seats actually won in the election (the UKIP only won 1 seat despite getting a large % of the vote), non-bracketed ones are how many seats each party would get if they were elected under the German system (in which case, the UKIP would get close to 100 seats).
The numbers in the brackets were the actual number of seats each party received in Britain. The other number would be the number of seats awarded if Britain had German election rules.
Michael Foot would have led a Lab/Lib/Social Democrat government after the 1983 election under this scheme.
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