Tag 2010 UK general election

Entries 6 Total

UK denied chance to choose proportional representation

May 12, ’10 7:02 AM

It’s offi­cial, the UK has blown its his­tor­ical chance to bring its elect­oral sys­tem into the 21st cen­tury and make a bet­ter democracy.

Both the Con­ser­vat­ives and Labour have ensured the UK won’t get a ref­er­en­dum on whether people want pro­por­tional rep­res­ent­a­tion or not. The Lib­eral Demo­crats didn’t have the num­bers. There will be a ref­er­en­dum on the Altern­at­ive Vote sys­tem but, while an improve­ment, it is not pro­por­tional representation.

Labour is now lying to their sup­port­ers that they didn’t have the num­bers for a coali­tion. In fact they did, the smal­ler parties were offer­ing their sup­port to an alli­ance. Labour sup­port­ers who are gut­ted that the Con­ser­vat­ives are now in power should real­ise that it is entirely Labour’s fault that they are:

A [Lib­Dem] spokes­man said key mem­bers of the Labour team “gave every impres­sion of want­ing the pro­cess to fail” and the party had made “no attempt at all” to agree a com­mon approach on issues like schools fund­ing and tax reform.

“Cer­tain key Labour cab­inet min­is­ters were determ­ined to under­mine any agree­ment by hold­ing out on policy issues and sug­gest­ing that Labour would not deliver on pro­por­tional rep­res­ent­a­tion and might not mar­shal the votes to secure even the most mod­est form of elect­oral reform,” he said.

This isn’t a party inter­ested in policy. They’re inter­ested in unbridled power. Instead of com­prom­ising a little on policy with the Lib­eral Demo­crats they’d rather com­prom­ise com­pletely and have a Con­ser­vat­ive government.

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2010 UK Election: fact for the day

May 11, ’10 1:09 PM

The Con­ser­vat­ives won around 10 mil­lion votes while the Lib­eral Demo­crats and Labour together won around 15 mil­lion votes, around 5 mil­lion more than the Con­ser­vat­ives. And yet the Con­ser­vat­ives get 306 seats while Lib­eral Demo­crats and Labour together get only 315 seats. Just 9 more seats than the Con­ser­vat­ives. Why do we pre­tend this is rep­res­ent­at­ive democracy?

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Labour and Tories arrogant as usual

May 9, ’10 9:15 AM

As coali­tion talks con­tinue in the UK both Labour and the Con­ser­vat­ives are prov­ing them­selves arrog­ant as usual.

The biggest bar­rier to a Conservative-Liberal Demo­crat coali­tion is the Con­ser­vat­ives’ refusal to sup­port a ref­er­en­dum on elect­oral reform, offer­ing instead a tooth­less “all party com­mit­tee of inquiry on polit­ical and elect­oral reform”; the Con­ser­vat­ives would rather retain an unfair vot­ing sys­tem which dis­en­fran­chises not just a third of voters (about 10 mil­lion people) but also 16 mil­lion or so eli­gible voters who didn’t vote, most of whom prob­ably don’t see the point in vot­ing in a rep­res­ent­at­ive sys­tem that clearly isn’t even representative.

Mean­while Labour is dash­ing its own chances of form­ing a coali­tion, which, along with the Lib­eral Demo­crats, would require the sup­port of other smal­ler parties too. Alex Sal­mond of the Scot­tish National Party offered that sup­port yes­ter­day. Labour’s appar­ent response? Unbe­liev­ably to refuse it:

BBC News:

Scotland’s First Min­is­ter, SNP leader Alex Sal­mond, called on the Lib Dems to join a “pro­gress­ive alli­ance” involving Labour, the SNP and Plaid Cymru.

How­ever a Labour source dis­missed that as “a des­per­ate attempt by Alex Sal­mond to make him­self look rel­ev­ant after a ter­rible gen­eral elec­tion result”.

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Greens win first seat ever in UK parliament

May 7, ’10 12:31 PM

Car­oline Lucas has become the first ever Green to be elec­ted to a UK par­lia­ment, by win­ning the Brighton Pavil­ion seat. Well done Brighton Pavilion.

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UK election: statement on the thousands of voters turned away

May 7, ’10 12:17 PM

State­ment from the Elect­oral Commission

Update: The Guard­ian has a map with a break­down of all the prob­lems that occurred around the coun­try on polling day.

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Too late Labour, you had your chance

Apr 21, ’10 8:41 AM

Nick Clegg and the Lib­eral Demo­crats are as much a part of the estab­lish­ment as the rest of them but they get my vote (my first in a UK elec­tion) for point­ing out the bleedin’ obvious:

Brown sys­tem­at­ic­ally blocked, and per­son­ally blocked, polit­ical reform. I think he is a des­per­ate politi­cian and I just do not believe him.

Brown and Labour, at heart, are author­it­ari­ans and deserve to be thrown on the dustheap. This is the best chance Bri­tain has had for elect­oral reform in a very long time.

Next time maybe Bri­tain will be able to vote in mod­ern demo­cracy under a mod­ern sys­tem of pro­por­tional rep­res­ent­a­tion (not the ruse that Brown was tout­ing, the altern­at­ive vote).

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