Last Straw

It’s offi­cial, the UK has blown its his­tor­ical chance to bring its elect­oral sys­tem into the 21^st 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.