Posts by BenWilson
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recordari, it's hard to say MMP is "better" than PV on any kind of first principles. The evidence is really in the "how has it worked in practice". In Australia, as George points out, PV has produced a two party system consistently. So it's not really much different to FPP on that score.
Whether you think that's good or not is another matter. In Australia there are some pretty substantial racist minority parties who have been excluded from power. But so has every other minority party. There have only ever been 2 indigenous Australians in Parliament, and there are none at the moment. That's a pretty sorry tale, IMHO, but I do wonder how much of that is because of what Australians are like rather than because of what their parliamentary system is like.
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If you don't want to represent minority interests, stick with FPP
Actually I think safer would be to say "If the only minorities whose interests you care to account for are the two biggest ones, then go for FPP". It's never been about representing "majority interests" that's for sure.
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Craig, Proportional Representation. Of whatever kind LibDem have been trying to get for-ever. What are you asking me? What kind of system I would like to have there?
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A referendum on what, exactly? Serious question -- and one I've not actually seen a straight answer to from Labour.
On changing the political system. They should pin Labour to actually committing to holding a referendum, not something weak like "having an inquiry into it".
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They'll take what they can from the Tories, plummet in the polls, have all kinds of internal ructions, and just have to hope that Labour in opposition commit to PR (not just a deathbed conversion) and the battle is won another day.
I don't think they're in that weak a position. They could let the Tories run a minority government, and limp along getting nothing done until the public get sick of them. It could be another election very soon. Their ability to avoid plummeting in the polls would very much come down to showing that the Tories did absolutely nothing whatsoever to earn a coalition. Which is true.
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I hope Clegg can see that the public "losing patience with him" is of no real concern at all. Those members of the public already didn't vote for him. If they want him to just shut up and roll over and give the Tories the keys to power with no concessions whatsoever, then they can just bloody lose patience.
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Cameron isn't going to offer a PR referendum. Clegg should play hard-line. It's the best chance his party will ever have. Make the deal with Labour, get the referendum. Or go back to the polls. Being bullied into a powerless position in a coalition would be a waste of every card they have.
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By Oakshott's standards I would be an arch-conservative. But I hardly ever feel compelled to vote for the right wing parties, because think they're only conservative in a limited way - usually in the social dimension. In terms of the way they manage money, they are quite radical, seeking to make huge sweeping changes based on ideology, and if they claim conservatism there, it's in an appeal to some time well before even my parents were born.
A conservative approach these days in countries like NZ is to follow the social-democracy line we've taken for more than 60 years, and to tinker with this institution and that, here and there, slowly building a better society. It is, in fact, the path we have followed.
So I'm often a little bemused by the claims of National and Tory supporters to being "conservative", whilst at the same time proposing huge changes to the tax regimes, gutting of public services etc. That just seems radical to me, more akin to the smash-the-state mentality of so many communists of yesteryear.
Under Oakshott's view, a great deal of which I agree with, I don't see that "conservatism" means "wants to go backwards". It just means "doesn't want to go forwards too fast". So I see total opposition to all social change, indeed a wish to return to former stupidity, to be not conservative, but reactionary and quite radical.
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Oh, "basically" that's crap -- Labour has (and does) benefit enormously from FPP. Or have I missed that Labour's share of the popular vote was only six points more than the Libs, but Labour won almost five times as many seats?
I should be clearer. Labour benefits more than anyone else, bar the Tories. But they might very well benefit from PR more, by virtue of their closer position to the other major voting bloc. They might end up in power more often that way, or the Tories could move towards the center, which would be a win for Labour too.
That is the kind of reasoning I'd use to sell it over there anyway. If Labour figure it's better to be the second place than the first place in a coalition, then it wouldn't work, but I think there's at least a chance they could see the point. The Tories, OTOH stand to gain nothing at all from PR and to lose a lot. No point appealing to them at all, except perhaps with general moral arguments.
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I agree that the smart move for LibDem is to agree to minority govt with their support, on the carefully negotiated proviso of a referendum on PR, very early on. If this doesn't eventuate, pull the pin on the government and go to the polls again. Then when the time comes they basically push the point to everyone but the Tories that if PR were the system, they would be part of the government right now. There would be a very good chance of Labour having hung onto power with these numbers.
Basically only the Tories benefit from FPP. Which is hardly surprising, considering they've been the party of power since the English first started acting like a democracy. It's long overdue that this class clique stops running a country that has long since lost any real pretensions of Empire. Same comment for the other class clique (workers) too.
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