“First past the post” in the UK is keeping people from voting for the party most likely to help tackle the climate crisis.
Via @RichardJMurphy
I sometimes wonder if democracy is at all still a core value of most Europeans.
In Germany, votes for parties that get less than 5% are discarded. They are not re-assigned to another second choice. To no surprise, parties only seem to care about this when they get close to getting kicked out of parliament. Meanwhile the biggest party CDU has a D for democracy in their name, shameful.
@potatoes_fall I’d love to say yes but it seems capitalism is the core value, not democracy these days.
@potatoes_fall @aral the UK are the USA of Europe in that regard, we need to reform it urgently. My only concern is that we’d then very likely see one or two actual fascists sitting in our parliament. That’s a horrible thought, but the Conservative Party have been in power for 13 years and have now adopted various dangerous policy & rhetoric to appease far-right voters that wouldn’t normally be called “conservative”, let alone “centre-right”.
@aral @RichardJMurphy if we assume the LD/Ref get their 1% each from the Cons, where are the rest of the Con voters going? To the Greens? Like, those people would vote green but because the Cons are more likely to win, they go with them? I’m finding that hard to believe.
@aral @RichardJMurphy The #UKLabour party conference voted to introduce #ProportionalRepresentation for General Elections - but #KierStarmer refuses to acknowledge it.
@matt @RichardJMurphy How surprising. Otherwise seems to be such a principled and authentic young man.
Need to get the Conservatives to say they like it, then he'll agree it's great. Won't listen to his own members, just copies the governments bigotry.
We have proportional representation in South Africa. It means each party has a list of who will be an MP, depending on the fraction of the vote. So the MPs are beholden to the party high-ups, not the voters.
@aral @RichardJMurphy I live in a country where there is no FPTP rules. That means that parties HAVE to get together and *negociate* an governement agreement to form a majority. While it's IMHO way better than FPTP, you would be surprised that a lot of people just don't get it "Yeah, at the end they all go together", "whatever you vote they will help each other", etc. A lot of people would actually find it more comforting to have "a winner takes all system"? 1/2
@aral @RichardJMurphy I'am always baffled when friends have that opinion honestly.
In Greece, the previous left gov tried to implement a "proportional" system for the election, it was used for the next election, and people actively voted TWO TIMES to go back to a "FPTP system". Killing it was even a campaign point of the winning party, that was not an hidden agenda.
2/3
@aral @RichardJMurphy I don't know if this is because we are taught so much to see the world with a "winners" and "loser" divide, that we cannot understand that good democracy is about compromise, social contracts and bridging the peculiarities of everyone needs, instead of just giving full power to a strong "winner" "that will take care of the problems".. 3/3
@aral @RichardJMurphy I dunno, we _have_ preferential voting here in Australia, and it doesnt seem to make any difference much of the time :(
@aral @RichardJMurphy I was one of the cohort of 18 year-olds who got to vote in 1970, the first election after the age limit was reduced. I lived in a rural, safe Tory seat then. I've lived in many different constituencies since, every one a safe seat for one of the two main parties. In >50 years my vote had never meant anything. Our democracy is a sham.