Whilst the Conservative party might be rejoicing at their success during the General Election and the SNP are basking in the glory of having 56 seats in the House of Commons, the other parties are less pleased with what happened.
The British system of “first past the post” does not truly represent the wishes of the people. To make matters worse, proposed changes to the boundaries that the Conservatives will now drive through will be to their advantage at the next election. Although the notion of proportional representation was rejected in 2011, maybe it is time to revisit the idea.
These bar charts from the Independent highlight what this would have meant to the results this year.
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As you can see, the Conservatives, SNP and Labour would have lost out and neither of the two largest parties would have been able to form a government without entering into a coalition. It is also pertinent to note that 36.9% of a turnout out 66% means that the Conservatives actually represent less than 25% of the voting public.
2 comments:
The change of boundaries would and should already have happened had it not been for the veto of the LibDems in the recently ended Coalition. There are currently some badly-unbalanced constituencies, estimated to give Labour an advantage of somewhere between 3 & 6 % so it's no surprise Labour did not do this during its last mandate. A change of boundaries will simply restore balance to an admittedly flawed system.
Your suggestion that PR (actually the 2011 referendum, part of the coalition agreement at the behest of the LubDems, proposed a system called AV) be revisited so soon almost seems as if you want to keep on asking until you get the "right" answer.
It has also been estimated that had AV been in place for GE2015 if the 2011 referendum had gone the other way, then what would have resulted would probably have been a Conservative/UKIP coalition or a minority Conservative government & it's doubtful if that would have lasted the full 5 years. Not ideal, to my way of thinking.
... and of course the referendum result was not remotely close as it resulted in a 68/32 split, a pretty decisive rejection, for good or ill. Full disclosure, I was one of the 68%.
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