Posted on 07/13/2010 9:37:46 AM PDT by Kaslin
The United Kingdom, the mother of all democracies, is about to change its political system in fundamental ways -- changes that will spell disaster for the nation and for its politics. For those who love Britain, the news of these impending alterations can only cause angst and distress.
As a result of the inability of either the Conservatives or Labor to win a majority in Parliament in the recent elections, both parties had to bid for support from the Liberal/Social Democratic Party. The price the Conservatives ultimately paid was to agree to some of these changes and to refer others to the electorate for a referendum.
The changes that the parties have agreed to will transform the British government from a decisive decision-making machine into a morass of compromise, half-measures and deadlock. Gridlock will be exported across the ocean to the United Kingdom.
Right now, the prime minister can dissolve Parliament anytime he wants, forcing new elections. He is also obliged to order new elections if he loses a vote of confidence. This power holds the members of his parliamentary majority in check and restrains them from turning on their leaders since, should they succeed in a vote of no confidence, it would plunge them into the uncertainty of a new election, which would imperil their own seats.
The new rules would bar the prime minister from dissolving Parliament during its five-year term and vest that right in a two-thirds majority of parliament. In other words, Parliament would have to vote itself out of office -- something likely never to happen.
So, under the new rules, if a government loses a vote over a major legislative item -- or fails to survive a no-confidence motion -- it must resign, but there need not be new elections. Instead, Parliament can refuse to order new elections and just re-form a new government out of the old Parliament.
The effect of this rule change is likely to be that governments will rise and fall all the time since they may do so without forcing members to face new elections. Like in Italy, the new governments will just be formed by reshuffling the current parliamentary deck into new combinations and coalitions.
Whereas now, if a government falls, there is an election to decide the issue, under the new procedure, the deadlock could just go on and on without resolution.
More dangerous is the proposed new voting system that must be approved by a popular referendum. Rather than vote for one candidate for Parliament in each district, voters will be obliged to rank the candidates in their order of preference. If nobody gets a majority of first-place rankings, the candidate with the least votes drops off and his second place votes are distributed among the other remaining candidates. The Liberal/Social Democrats are pushing this change in the hopes that there may never again be a parliamentary majority for the Conservatives or Labor and that they will always hold the balance of power in a hung parliament.
And they are likely to achieve their objective if the new voting system passes. Most districts in the United Kingdom, as in the U.S., tend either to the left or to the right.
In a leftist district, for example, the Labor Party usually finishes first, the Liberal/Social Democrats second and the Conservatives third. If the Labor candidate did not win a majority of first place votes on Election Day -- and they frequently don't -- the Conservative candidate will drop off and his second-place votes will determine the winner. But what Conservative voter is going to name Labor as his second choice in the polarized politics of the U.K.? Most will name the Liberal/Social Dems as their second choice, and that candidate will win the seat. In right-wing districts, the same process will happen in reverse, again to the benefit of the Liberal/Social Dems.
That means more hung parliaments, less decisive election results and more mush compromise. Together, these changes will tend to paralyze the British government, substituting muddled, mushy compromise for decisive and bold action. We will miss the old United Kingdom.
The EU will eventually take over and tell the British people what they can and can’t do. I hope the British people begin to stand up take their country back, as we here in the US are attempting to do. It can be done if they really want it. Just as it can be done here if the people want it.
Ah...the Liberal/Social Democratic Party....
Never ending political disasters!
Could care less really most of the rotten toothed morons think we should give up our firearms...Muzzie takeover looms nigh for these slackers.
However people want to freely associate to express their political will, so be it.
There are plenty of different models around the world to choose from.
Supposedly our system is better because we have fewer laws and regulations. Supposedly this is the case because our polarized two-party system leads to gridlock.
If this is the case, then the Brits were already in trouble when they decided that their prime minister would be from the same party as the majority in parliament. That guarantees there will be no gridlock.
Maybe a three-party system in Britain will result in more gridlock and a brighter future for Britain. Only time will tell.
Rampant socialism, a low birthrate and the growing influence of Islam is destroying England - and the British people don't seem to care, or not enough do, anyway. It is definitely tragic. Worse yet, this state of affairs is well on it's way to the U.S., unless we stop it, now. The upcoming congressional election is vital to that end. I believe it is the United States last, best hope to stop the fall of America, long desired by our enemies, within and without.
Even then, it will take a long time to undo much of the damage and turn, not only our economy, but our national attitude around to the point where citizens are alert and informed enough to stop buying leftist charades, such as 'PC' and 'Hope and Change'. I'm cautiously confident that will happen.
All the wars that were won and lost
Somehow don't seem to matter very much anymore
All the lies we were told
All the lies of the people running round
Their castles have burned
Now I see change
But inside we're the same as we ever were
Living on a thin line . . .
read
They’ll be more than three parties. You’ll see one or more the main parties begin to splinter, and unimportant fourth parties will start drawing voters.
This article is ignorant.
As for your comments - they are childish and also shameful. While young British morons are fighting in the mud against the enemies of civilisation you sit on your behind uttering the stuff that make the Islamists cheer.
“...Muzzie takeover looms nigh for these slackers.”
.
I hope that you do not think that this could not happen here, too. We have become a bunch of weenies ourselves when it pertains to Islam. We even went as far as to put one in the WH:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjS0Novt3X4&feature=related
There are already more than three parties on the Commons - 7 if I recall correctly (although Sinn Feinn doesn’t take their seat).
This article is full of holes. In fact it is laughably alarmist.
1. Never trust an Ameican writer who spells the Labour Party as Labor. They are either too stupid to know the correct spelling or think the audience is too stupid to cope with an extra ‘U’. Doh!
2. The PM cannot dissolve Parliament. Only the Queen can do so. No changes there.
3. There is no such entity as “Liberal/Social Democratic Party”. It is the Liberal Democrats. The author again is stupid or is trying to influence you.
4. The author complains that the Parliament would have to vote itself out of office with the new rules. Firstly Parlaiment is not in office, secondly this is no change. If a PM lost a no confidence vote he would have to lose support of the Parliament anyway. The only difference is in how many. If anything this increases stability as there is no chance of the opposition plus a few fringe groups doing the dirty.
5. There is no chance of political parties just deciding to create governments without elections. This is the most absurd thing I have ever heard. It’s as absurd as saying the Democrats and Republicans will just go together to create an eternal dictatorship. It’s the ramblings of a madman.
6. His final line about the missing the UK is the biggest load of nonsense ever. We already had a hung Parliament and we have the strongest and most finacially Conservative Government since Thatcher. We have an astonishing 25-40% cuts across Government departments.
You should worry if you accepted this nonsense as fact.
has there been any study on how forms of government, i.e. parliamentary vs. 2-party, affect policy?
Isn't there already a rightwing nationalist party in Britain? Why couldn't a Tory government get their support to form a government, and move Britain further right, i.e. toward sanity?
The rightwing parties in Israel have kept Nobel-Prize-Whore Prime Mininsters from undermining Israel's security in exchange for international acclaim.
The article is not alarmist, it is pretty much correct.
Not haveing an automatic dissolution on the loss of a confidence vote and changeing to a 2/3 rds majority to require dissolution, would lead to what he describes.
Changeing the voteing system to AV will do the same, we would always have coalition government, ie: weak government.
As to this ragbag government being fiscally conservative, don’t make me laugh, all it’s policies will do, is allow our debt to continue to grow, instead of explode.
Cameron is not a conservative, he is far happier going along with the Lib-Dums mad ideas.
The sooner things fall totally apart worldwide, the sooner small, roving nomadic bands of human beings can pick up where their ancestors left off some millennia ago ... dirt poor, but free ... beginning that long march into captivity once again, followed by yet another collapse of what passes for civilization.
I would respond further but I think saying that cutting government spending by 25-40% is not fiscally conservative is a bit “out there”.
You voted UKIP or BNP right?
Also note that the author says gridlock will be exported to England, as if we were the ones sending it there. What a stupid statement. If they get gridlock, they invented it for themselves, and if we have gridlock, thank God, because new laws are not being made to further curtail our liberties.
Yes, my point being that if Britain moves to some sort of proportional representation scheme that those smaller parties will grow, necessarily at the expense of the main three. On the whole, I have no opinion on whether such a developments would be positive or negative - only that the consequences would be somewhat different than Morris seems to think. I was specifically responding to his comment that both Tory and Labour voters would choose Liberals as their second choice. They wouldn't be forced into such a situation; as the number of viable parties multiplied, voters could find other options for their 2nd choice.
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