Can European peoples be trusted to vote the right way?

[Clarkkent]

The only thing anyone votes for is a single candidate to represent a single contituency. Nobody votes for a government. The fact that each candidate gives an undertaking that they will support one particular collection of policies or other is incidental.

Nobody votes for a prime minister. The monarch askes the leader of the faction with the largest support among elected representatives if he or she can form an administration. How he or she puts that administration together is of no concern to the elector when voting.

[Hoddy]

"OK, hands up. Who voted for a coalition?"

I agree Betty - no-one voted for a coalition. It's for this reason that I'm not worried by the recent UKIP vote. I think it was more of a curse on all your houses vote than a pro UKIP one.

Hoddy

[Quillan]

I think it is a good advertisement against proportional representation. We have had two coalitions in my lifetime and neither has worked particularily well. When you look at other countries like Belgium where they have not been able to form a proper gvernment for a couple of years now (just as an example) it shows just what can happen if you have proportional representation.

[Rabbie]

[quote user="Quillan"]I think it is a good advertisement against proportional representation. We have had two coalitions in my lifetime and neither has worked particularily well. When you look at other countries like Belgium where they have not been able to form a proper gvernment for a couple of years now (just as an example) it shows just what can happen if you have proportional representation.[/quote] But that's the basic flaw with democracy - it doesn't always give you the answer  you want. I can see no valid demcratic reason why a party having less than 50% of the vote should have a majority in Parliament and a licence to push its policies through even though more than half the voters may be opposed to them.

I too have had 2 coalition governments in my lifetime. I think that the first - the wartime coalition - could be regarded as a success as it acheived its objective in winning the war with american help. The current coalition is doing its best in a difficult situation and it is too early to judge its success or failure.

On a pedantic note the Lib-Lab pact in the late 70s was not a coalition as there were no liberal ministers in the government. It was a minority labour government.

I have heard that Belgium is no worse off than many of its neighbours so we may well be overestimating the effect that politicians actually have.

[Rabbie]

[quote user="Hoddy"]"OK, hands up. Who voted for a coalition?" I agree Betty - no-one voted for a coalition. It's for this reason that I'm not worried by the recent UKIP vote. I think it was more of a curse on all your houses vote than a pro UKIP one. Hoddy[/quote]I agree that there was a large element of protest in the UKIP vote. However I think that many people who voted for the Lib Dems may well have wanted a coalition or powersharing government not necessarily with the conservatives.  I doubt that many Lib dem voters thought they had a chance of winning an outright majority so a coalition with Lib dem ministers was the best they could hope for.

 

[Quillan]

[quote user="Rabbie"] But that's the basic flaw with democracy - it doesn't always give you the answer  you want. I can see no valid demcratic reason why a party having less than 50% of the vote should have a majority in Parliament and a licence to push its policies through even though more than half the voters may be opposed to them.[/quote]

I am probably being a bit thick here but nobody got 50% or more of the vote but the Tories got a higher percentage of the overall vote i.e. they got 38.1%, Labour 29% and the Libdems 23% leaving 11.9% spread around all the other parties. The Tories also have 306 parliamentary seats, labour 258 and the Libdems 57. The next bit I am unsure about but I was under the impression that there either has to be some specific numeric gap in number of seats between the winners and the runners up or there has to be greater than a specific number of total seats, like winning by just 1 seat over the runners up is not enough. I am sure somebody knows the answer to that one.

[quote user="Rabbie"]I have heard that Belgium is no worse off than many of its neighbours so we may well be overestimating the effect that politicians actually have.[/quote]

As you say there is the rub. As I understand it they have not had a government for a couple of years because no two or three parties can form a coalition because of their differences leaving the country in many ways in the hands of the civil servants to run. Of course they can't make policy but they can continue to run the country with existing policies in place. They go a little way to showing that actually to maintain the status quo you don't actually need a government.

 

[Clarkkent]

[quote user="Rabbie"]

[quote user="Hoddy"]"OK, hands up. Who voted for a coalition?" I agree Betty - no-one voted for a coalition. It's for this reason that I'm not worried by the recent UKIP vote. I think it was more of a curse on all your houses vote than a pro UKIP one. Hoddy[/quote]I agree that there was a large element of protest in the UKIP vote. However I think that many people who voted for the Lib Dems may well have wanted a coalition or powersharing government not necessarily with the conservatives.  I doubt that many Lib dem voters thought they had a chance of winning an outright majority so a coalition with Lib dem ministers was the best they could hope for.[/quote]

British Constitution 101

In General Elections the British do not elect governments, they elect representatives to the Legislature. It is customary to ask the leader of the largest party in the Legislature to form an administration, the Government. The members of the government usually, but not always, come from the elected representatives. Some of the members of the government may be people from outside the party (when this happens, they will usually be made life peers so that they can sit in the Lords and report to the legislature) there is no reason why members of the government cannot come from other parties - hence coalition. The expectation is always that there will be sufficient supporting votes in the Commons to enable legislation to be passed.

(Edited since original posting)

 

Don't forget, the first thing that happened after the last election was that the queen asked Gordon Brown, who had not yet resigned as prime minister, to try to form an administration. He tried to form a coalition with the LibDems and failed. Only then was David Cameron asked if he could form a goverment. Until he succeeded, Labour was still in office. I seem to recall tv pictures of Brown arriving at Buckingham Palace to resign only minutes before Cameron arrived to accept.

No-one voted for a coalition. But a coalition - of some kind - was the only way of preventing a second election taking place, and in the intervening time, Labour government would have continued.

Looking at the behaviour of Conservative MPs leads me to think that the Conservative Party in the House of Commons is more of a coalition than the government!

 

[Rabbie]

[quote user="Clarkkent"][quote user="Rabbie"]

[quote user="Hoddy"]"OK, hands up. Who voted for a coalition?" I agree Betty - no-one voted for a coalition. It's for this reason that I'm not worried by the recent UKIP vote. I think it was more of a curse on all your houses vote than a pro UKIP one. Hoddy[/quote]I agree that there was a large element of protest in the UKIP vote. However I think that many people who voted for the Lib Dems may well have wanted a coalition or powersharing government not necessarily with the conservatives.  I doubt that many Lib dem voters thought they had a chance of winning an outright majority so a coalition with Lib dem ministers was the best they could hope for.[/quote]

British Constitution 101

In General Elections the British do not elect governments, they elect representatives to the Legislature. It is customary to ask the leader of the largest party in the Legislature to form an administration, the Government. The members of the government usually, but not always, come from the elected representatives. Some of the members of the government may be people from outside the party (when this happens, they will usually be made life peers so that they can sit in the Lords and report to the legislature) there is no reason why members of the government cannot come from other parties - hence coalition. The expectation is always that there will be sufficient supporting votes in the Commons to enable legislation to be passed.

(Edited since original posting)

 

Don't forget, the first thing that happened after the last election was that the queen asked Gordon Brown, who had not yet resigned as prime minister, to try to form an administration. He tried to form a coalition with the LibDems and failed. Only then was David Cameron asked if he could form a goverment. Until he succeeded, Labour was still in office. I seem to recall tv pictures of Brown arriving at Buckingham Palace to resign only minutes before Cameron arrived to accept.

No-one voted for a coalition. But a coalition - of some kind - was the only way of preventing a second election taking place, and in the intervening time, Labour government would have continued.

Looking at the behaviour of Conservative MPs leads me to think that the Conservative Party in the House of Commons is more of a coalition than the government!

 

[/quote]Thank you for your gratuitous lecture on the British Constitution. I was well aware of that. If you read my post you will see that I actually said that some voters may well have wished for a coalition as a final result. I did NOT say that they voted for a coalition.

BTW are you giving your grandmother a lecture on sucking eggs[:D]

[Clarkkent]

[quote user="Rabbie"]

Thank you for your gratuitous lecture on the British Constitution. I was well aware of that. If you read my post you will see that I actually said that some voters may well have wished for a coalition as a final result. I did NOT say that they voted for a coalition.

BTW are you giving your grandmother a lecture on sucking eggs[:D]

[/quote]

Good Heavens. Do you mean someone actually read it?

Does gratuitous mean that you liked it? We have fried eggs normally but since my grandmother is dead I can't teach her anything.

[YCCMB]

Damn. we had a gratuitous lecher on here and I missed them....[:(]