I spent yesterday watching the UK election, and laughing at UK commentators trying to wrap their heads around the stuff about coalitions and confidence and supply that is now The second-nature to us in NZ. The results are not final yet, but they already show us exactly what is wrong with First Past the Post:
Party | % Vote | Seats | % Seats |
Conservative | 36.1 | 306 | 47.1 |
Labour | 29.0 | 258 | 39.7 |
Liberal Democrat | 23.0 | 57 | 8.8 |
UK Independence Party | 3.1 | 0 | 0 |
Scottish National Party | 1.7 | 6 | 0.9 |
Green | 1.0 | 1 | 0.2 |
Democratic Unionist Party | 0.6 | 8 | 1.2 |
Plaid Cymru | 0.6 | 3 | 0.5 |
Sinn Fein | 0.5 | 4 | 0.6 |
Social Democratic & Labour Party | 0.4 | 3 | 0.5 |
Alliance | 0.1 | 1 | 0.2 |
Other | 3.9 | 1 | 0.2 |
The positive side is that with a hung Parliament, the LibDems are finally in a position to influence who gets to be Prime Minister - and to demand a referendum on electoral reform (which, if successful, would give a tremendous moral mandate for change) as the price. It will become clear in the next two days whether they will pull this off, or end up propping up a Tory government which offers them nothing but another election fought on the same unfair terms.
Meanwhile, the question for kiwis: is this really the sort of result you want to go back to? One which bears very little resemblance to the votes cast?
Update: Updated figures.