148 Responses to “South East European”

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1. Barnaby JL Marder

   Liberal Neil –
   It may be deplorable, but the cost of a by-election across a region, particularly the South East, must be huge.

   So much, then, for the Liberal Democrats’ much-trumpeted commitment to extend democracy. It’s all about party advantage, isn’t it.

   July 6th, 2010 at 7:40 am
2. doktorb

   We’ve only got Labour to blame for the Party List rules, Barnaby.

   Whoever is next on the list gets the seat. That’s been the case since 1999.

   July 6th, 2010 at 7:55 am
3. Kieran W

   “Whoever is next on the list gets the seat.”

   That’s fine unless the outgoing member was an independent standing alone rather than as part of a list. In that scenario I would rather have the seat remain vacant until the next set of elections than have the absurdity of a region wide by-election. Ridiculously the winner of such a contest in the SE would be able to claim a personal mandate greater than any other elected politician.

   Under any PR system that involves the use of multi-member constituencies there really isn’t a simple, fair solution to the problem of filling casual vacancies.

   July 6th, 2010 at 11:00 am
4. Votedave

   God forbid that we end up with such a system for general elections. This is how the the connection between MP and constituent weakens, by having a list of names forced upon you. We still end up with seats for life for those fortunate enough to be at the top of those lists – no matter how respected or obnoxious they may be as individuals.

   July 6th, 2010 at 5:27 pm
5. Valenciano

   While I’d support STV as a better system than FPTP for Westminster elections I’d definitely vote against any system involving closed list PR and that includes some of the horrible top up systems proposed from time to time.

   For a look at what a farce is produced under closed list PR look at Spain. Since the last Spanish election in March 2008, 88 MPs out of a total of 350 have resigned, safe in the knowledge that they’ll be replaced by party colleagues. That’s one quarter of the legislature and is equivalent to 81 by-elections a year taking place in the UK!

   Open list PR at least gives people on the list a mandate though does lead to the glaring anomaly that people on one list aren’t elected whereas people on another list who get less votes are due to the list’s overall vote.

   July 6th, 2010 at 6:14 pm
6. Frederic Stansfield

   I’m with Valenciano.

   One of the big advantages of open list STV – but not the closed list version – is that voters get to choose which candidates from a party get selected.

   Actually, closed lists could do the same if, and only if, there are primary elections first to select the candidates and deternine their places on the list. As, to be fair, the Conservatives were beginning to move towards before the election in relation to FPTP, albeit only in selected seats.

   July 6th, 2010 at 6:34 pm
7. H.Hemmelig

   If we have to have PR, I would prefer to accept the closed list system, despite the disadvntage of the parties controlling the ranking on the lists, compared with the much worse disadvantage of STV whereby 2nd and 3rd preferences etc are counted with the same weight as 1st preferences.

   At the end of the day, in our system the parties will always have iron control over candidate selection in any case, and indeed given that in a party system MPs are just voting fodder, it doesn’t matter that much who is representing the party.

   Personally though I would prefer to maintain FPTP and will be voting do so.

   July 6th, 2010 at 9:22 pm
8. Joe James B

   I strongly favour FPTP, and have argued it on several threads, and won’t repeat it in detail.

   Except to say,
   if I had to pick something else, I would choose Additional Member (perhaps 10% of seats being regional top up).

   You would have to make the seats larger (which could be somewhat tricky as we’re already committed to making them larger to fit the reduced House).

   The election would be run exactly as it is now, albeit in larger seats, but you would – from that same vote – tweak it by adding a few seats for parties by region.

   All these choice based rigged fun and games of allowing losers votes to vote again are fundamentally undemocratic and wrong. I will certainly vote against, and for FPTP.

   We should also ask the LDs why PR is their no 1 priority regardless of the country’s other circumstances.
   Almost nobody mentions it spontaneously as a priority in surveys.

   July 6th, 2010 at 9:28 pm
9. Joe James B

   And those added as the Additional Members in regions
   should probably be the best losers in those regions.
   That’s a disadvantage because it means you can lose your seat and walk in on the Additional Member,
   but it’s better than the outrage of people putting themselves forward for constituency based seats aswell as top up seats (like on the GLA) which should be banned (although the effect in many cases will be the same).

   July 6th, 2010 at 9:36 pm
10. Pete Whitehead

    Sounds very like this system which someone flagged up only today in another place.

    http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/article.php?id=154

    July 6th, 2010 at 9:40 pm
11. Frederic Stansfield

    Now that all the regions have been abolished as administrative units by the Coalition Government, shouldn’t the European constituencies be redistributed so that they are of similar size?

    It is glaringly obvious that the currently gerrymandered boundaries lead to the election of more minor party candidates in the South of England than the North.

    A belated reply to H. Hemmelig. It is true that with open list STV the parties still get to choose who goes on their list. They can also cut down electoral choie, and I believe that overseas they often do, by putting up less that a full list. For instance, if they are likely only to get one seat, they may put up two canidates instead of a full list – which has the advatage of making the ballot paper more manageable! But they will still put up more candidates than places, which gives electors the oprion as to which one to put first. Very importantly, there is also the option to vote across lists. For instance, I don’t vote Tory, but if I had ten votes here I would certainly consider voting for Dan Hannan and Nirj Deva, because I think that individually they do a good job.

    For the next election, would it be possible at least to tweak the system so that whilst voting for a list electors could number the candidates within that list in order of preference?

    July 25th, 2010 at 4:15 pm
12. Joseph Brayson

    I’ve got a better idea, why don’t we just abolish the 9 regions which send representatives to the European Parliament and instead replace it with a single England region consisting of 58 members. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will all remain with the same amount of MEP’s. This would be the final step in abolishing the regionalisation of this country and England can be represented as a single region again.

    July 25th, 2010 at 5:13 pm
13. Frederic Stansfield

    Joseph, I don’t think the Cornish would think much of your idea, just for starters.

    What would the ballot paper look like for a 58 member constituency? And on a list system all sorts of weird parties would get MEPs (the BNP would sail in ) with one or two percent of the pole. If you tried to overcome this problem with a minimum threshold (e.g. 5%) you would lock out independents even more conclusively than now.

    Of course, many people would like single member European constituencies back, but the European ant-national sovereignty people would never allow it.

    More generally, England is already outrageously centralised, denying adequate democratic input, compared to just about any other country in the world with anything like a democratic system. And Joseph’s point does nothing at all about the inequitably political treatment that results from the grossly disparate sizes, in therms of population, of the currently recognised countries in the UK.

    July 26th, 2010 at 6:59 pm

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