Off Topic UK / EU Future

Despite the dissatisfaction about the UK's political system on this board there really does not seem to be any discernible appetite for change amongst the UK public. The Lib Dems and Greens lobby for change without any success whatsoever.

 

What special power do you possess to state "there should be development"? Is that a law of the universe or just a Cologne viewpoint?
Another oft repeated mantra of yours "democracy is a process and not an end product". Is that so good you need to keep repeating it? I do not agree. Democracy is not a process or an end product. It is a system that can be used to help form a government and like all systems it is subject to change.
I do not want democracy to be living and breathing. I simply want to be able to vote if I choose. If democracy needs to be changed there will be public pressure to change it.
I do not care about Germany - or frankly other countries forms of democracy - so long as the people there are happy so am I.

 

I can count the number of people who seem to have a problem with the UK's political system on this board on the fingers of one hand.
In the population at large PR has been mooted since I was in nappies but there has never been a sufficient dissatisfaction with FPTP to bring about a switch to it

 

We only have enough contributors to fill the fingers of two hands, that has been the main problem for the last few years.

 

The expression ''Democracy is a process not an end product'' applies to life itself Leo. Like life itself everything created by man is subject to birth, growth, fruition, decay and death - there is no exception to this. You cannot freeze things in time, and say 'we have arrived'. So the minute you say 'we have arrived' you have missed it because the journey is the point, not the arriving. How do you measure public dissatisfaction Leo ? By non voters ? Or by other means....if so what ? One of the central problems is that we are pulling in different directions - you think that as long as you can vote between a limited range of options once every 5 years that this is enough. You presume that others think the same because they are not rioting on the streets about it.

 

It is fair to say the lack of support for political parties that push PR and the level of apathy shown in the recent Alternative Vote referendum clearly shows a lack of demand for a change in our political system.

 

I think you will find that the system which was offered as an alternative in the referendum on that was too, unnecessarily complicated. There are far simpler forms of PR. available.

 

Just because life is a process does not mean everything is. Democracy COULD be an immutable fact. The fact that it does change simply reflects that sometimes people want change - it is neither good nor bad in itself. I have only heard you use the phrase "we have arrived" - and that to deny it. Nobody else is suggesting "we have arrived". We are simply where we are - whether that changes this year, next year or sometime in the future is down to what people want.
How? I would ask scientists with an expertise in psephology(??) to interview and test a hypothesis as to voting satisfaction or apathy - if it mattered. That is the scientific method- not to pick a number and declare what it means (while denying you can assume the same in other countries).
Don't tell me what I think and presume - I don't. And coming from the man who keeps telling me not to put words in his mouth!

 

Sixty years are plenty for advocates of PR to drum up support for a system they want - if they could find such support. Maybe it does not exist because people are happy with FPTP. I think Churchill said something like democracy is the worst form of government but is the best we have. Perhaps the same applies to FPTP.

 

I think the recent Belgium example and now the German PR government teetering after only a few months in existence is hardly going to impress the UK public to change. I think the onus is on those looking to change the UK's system to show where there is any sign of interest, might be difficult.

 

I have a Swiss friend out here who says that the system in that country is a joke. It is supposed to be a system that involves the population, but the fact is that turnout can be tiny. 15% is not out of the ordinary when it comes to day to day matters. Six times to the polls in a year to vote on an issue happens because the original proposal doesn't have a large enough majority, so it is amended and put to the vote again. It should be more democratic than our system where for five years a government can basically do what it wishes, but with such a small number of people voting you have to question it.

 

Frankly I don't think the UK public give a monkeys about other countries form of voting. They are used to what we have and it is good enough to get 70% of the electorate voting which in my book is a great turnout.

 

and UK turnout steadily rising since 2001. Doesn't seem much wrong apart from the Tories lack of a healthy majority.

 

The problem is Leo that you do not know the reasons the 30% have for not voting. If you then add to this the numbers of people in the UK. who vote tactically ie. not necessarily for the party of their choice, but rather 'against' the Tories or Labour then you have a large number of alienated voters. The lack of PR. means that many people do not vote for the party of their choice, but rather for the party which can stop the party they dislike from taking a seat.

 

This is exactly what happened in France when the unpopular Macron was elected just because it kept the far right from power. No system is perfect, ours seems to satisfy most in the UK.

 

Since you admit you do not know the reasons for the 30% not voting you cannot add them to your "alienated voters". They may be ill, confused, remote...not necessarily alienated. People don't vote tactically because there is no PR but because they wish to see the nearest approximation to solving a complex set of political issues, just as they would if they were voting in a PR election. Such an election might give them the illusion of being closer to a perfect fit with their own set of values, but the reality is that compromise and short termism would inhibit many such hopes.

 

Sorry Theo but this is the reason in a nutshell. If you are eg. a Labour voter in a rural constituency in the south of England and you know that your party has no chance of winning the seat then there is a very good chance that you will simply vote for the party which has the most chance of stopping the Tories winning the seat - to do otherwise is to throw your vote away. In practice this would probably mean the Lib/Dem candidate. With PR. people would know that every vote is counted and would be more likely to vote exactly according to their consciences.

 

Who cares if people DO vote tactically. With PR you vote and have no idea what you will get because a bunch of politicians - maybe many of whom you detest get together for what you agree is horse trading. LibDem voters were pretty sure they would get no increase to tuition fees - but in a typical coalition deal that got "traded" for a PR vote - and the PR vote was scuppered by the complicated system chosen. So one set of coalition partners got nothing of what they wanted. In PR this would be the case EVERY time. Once you have more than three or four parties you are never again likely to get a single party government so will always be denied what you want. Greens like it because most hate the Tories and see it as a way of never again having a Tory government. I understand their enthusiasm for it. But they need not try to concoct some fabricated story about our democracy being poor to try to justify their case.
Equally understandably Labour and Conservative like the FPTP system because it gives them a chance to introduce a progamme that they believe in. The vast majority of voters vote for those two so using your dodgy approach to statistics I could say that they all support FPTP (nonsense of course as are your bogus statistical arguments).

 

I will say this in a way you can understand Leo. If we, as Greens, form a coalition with say the SPD (In Germany) we will have had a questionaire of party members to identify which points can be traded and which can't. If we have 5 points in descending level of importance and can trade 2 in order toget the other 3 then it is better than not being in power at all. From their side the SPD will be in government and can execute most of their voters wishes - which they would not have been able to do without us. So both get a bit of what they want - as opposed to the zero which they would have got. A larger percentage of the population is partially happy ie. would have got something from this arrangement. At the same time working together with another party will have produced more circulation of ideas than would have been the case otherwise.

 

Thank you for dumbing it down Cologne as I have such trouble usually in understanding English.
You describe a situation when PR works as you want it. There are dozens of examples where it does not. You do not know who your potential coalition partners might be, some may trade and some not, if no deal can be done you can end up with no government, people who vote for Green may be ordinary thickos like me with nobody there to simplify things for them so they may not know which policies will be traded and which not or may disagree with the ones to be traded. There are hundreds of scenarios so pretending it is all so honest, aboveboard, clear and decided is maverick.
At least in FPTP if you vote Conservative and a Conservative government gets a working majority you know what they will try to do.
What happens when the coalition party is the DUP - or are theypariahs that nobody will get into bed with.

We could debate this endlessly. If you cannot understand that both FPTP and PR have their pluses and minuses and yet both are equally examples of good democratic politics then I cannot help you. You seem to forget that as it happens I would prefer PR so have argued in an unbiased way - strangely I am able to see good and bad in other people's points of view and systems. I do not think that I am right and everybody else who does not agree needs things to be put in a way they can understand so that magically they can agree. We are all different and so different solutions fit.