An old work colleague of mine posted a status that caught my imagination on Facebook that I’ve lifted as the title for this post. Thanks Josie!
It seems that the only person with any apparent political power right now is Nick Clegg. He’s taking his time. And I think it right that he should be taking his time.
The real imperative is that this country should have a strong and stable government for the next few years and I believe that can not be negotiated in a matter of a few hours; especially when die-hard opinions exist within all parties that could easily de-rail the needs of the country.
But should the “loser” be able to cause all this fuss? I’d say an emphatic yes!
If we take a look at the following that I’ve borrowed from a BBC website article you’ll see that any of the alternative and fairer voting systems would indeed have provided more influence to the Liberals and a closer result than we saw under the current (and some would say unrepresentative) system.
The current situation looks like this:
Both the Conservatives and Labour have offered AV as the first possible step:
The Lib Dems are really looking for STV which is the preferred approach of the Electoral Reform Society.
Source: Electoral Reform Society
Now I am not so naive as suggest that we should for this election be operating under a voting system that the nation has not agreed to but it does validate the idea that an alternative electoral method is necessary to properly reflect the whole country’s wishes. And since the only major party that genuinely appears to want electoral reform is the Liberals I believe that we do need them to call the shots right now.
And we need Nick Clegg and the others to consider the implications of government way beyond the issue of electoral reform, because the country has many other serious issues to solve in this next term.
Whether we like it or not we need the Political Ransom and all its machinations right now because the choices to be made in the near future will be harsh and will affect us all.
About Peter
I agree we need electoral reform now, and that the Liberals are the only party progressive enough to really want it.
I am confused however by the figures shown here. How can we know the possible results of AV or STV since we do not know how people would have ranked the candidates they didn’t choose.
The figures are modelled but with proper statistical rigour. The details are on the ERS site in their blog post from today.