So, the results are in, and they're bad for Labour. The SNP has won in Scotland, though they will have to put together a broad coalition in order to govern, which may put paid to their goal of a referendum on independence. In Wales, Labour has been forced into a coalition, though they have a choice as to who they go into coalition with. And in England, Labour lost 485 councillors, and was almost forced into third place in the national vote share by the Lib Dems. After a week of lowering expectations, Labour is trying to pain this as a victory ("at least we didn't do as badly as expected"), but its difficult to see it as anything other than a final kick in the arse for Tony Blair.
In Scotland, there's a fiasco over spoiled ballots (apparently due to having both local and parliamentary elections on the same day), plus some serious problems with a new electronic counting mechanism. Almost unnoticed is the glaring problem with the electoral system. While both Scotland and Wales use a form of proportional representation, it is done on a regional rather than national basis, and in the case of Wales has a laughably small number of regional list seats. The result is significant disproportionalities, which (naturally) work in favour of the larger parties. So for example in Scotland Labour got 36% of the seats on 29% of the vote, and ended up with 8 more seats than it would have been entitled to if the results were strictly proportional (even allowing for an arbitrary 4% threshold, they would have ended up with 4 more). The SNP got 36% of the seats off 31% of the vote. The difference between the two is a lot smaller than it would have been under FPP (witness the electorates; the SNP outpolled Labour nationally, but won only 21 electorates to Labour's 37 - though the presence of strong third parties complicates things). And in Wales its even worse, with Labour getting 43% of the seats off 29% of the vote. The system seems purpose-built to give a veneer of fairness while entrenching the disproportionate power of larger parties, and I'm really not sure why they put up with it.
6 comments:
Snap!! :)
My post on the results is here-
http://andrewfalloon.blogspot.com/2007/05/election-watch-uk-results.html
Posted by andrewfalloon : 5/05/2007 12:47:00 PM
It's interesting that Scotland has the FPP hangover that the largest party has the automatic right to form the government.
This isn't the actual procedure - they've codified that (in a manner which we could copy) - see here. But it seems that it will either be a SNP-led coalition or an SNP minority government. I'm not sure how things work out in the latter case. They could elect a First Minister by exhaustive ballot who could not command any sort of majority - and then fail to agree on electing any ministers. I guess they would muddle through - the limited powers of the Scottish Executive means that they don't actually need "supply" - the UK Treasury would keep taxing the Scots and writing the cheques regardless.
Posted by Rich : 5/05/2007 01:34:00 PM
Why do you think the degree of proportionality makes so much difference? Isn't the important issue that it is feasible to change the dominating parties, not 100% proportionality? Regional lists may make it easier for party activists to make an impact on the composition of lists. Doesn't that and the local representation outweigh some of the benefits of increased proportionality that national electorates offer?
Posted by Testener : 5/07/2007 06:07:00 PM
It would be possible to have regional lists and then adjust the number of MPs to achieve proportionality to the national vote.
Posted by Rich : 5/07/2007 06:50:00 PM
Regional lists may make it easier for party activists to make an impact on the composition of lists
In most countries it's up to parties how they select their lists. For instance, I believe the NZ Greens rank their list by a vote of party members. So it's feasible for "party members to make an impact" with national as well as regional lists.
Posted by Rich : 5/07/2007 07:02:00 PM
Tor-Espen: Why do you think the degree of proportionality makes so much difference?
Because I think that a representative democracy should be exactly that: representative. I also think that parties should have to have a majority of the votes to have a majority in the legislature - something FPP and to a lesser extent the hybrid Scottish system don't deliver on.
Scottish "PR" retains the worst feature of FPP - it magnifies differences in vote share. While in this case it has retained a rough parity among the two larger parties, it is clearly at the expense of the smaller ones, and both have representation well in excess of the amount they earned (even allowing for a nominal threshold, which many PR systems use). And its difficult to see it as anything other than intentional: an attempt by New Labour to lock in its dominance, while disarming concerns about unrepresentativeness by giving small parties token representation.
If the concern is about regional-based parties, then the solution should be a regional threshold, not the distortion of regional seats. If its about geographic representation, that's what electorates are for.
Posted by Idiot/Savant : 5/07/2007 07:54:00 PM
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