The LibDems have a duty to make it work
I’ve already argued that the LibDems made a huge error when they decided not to explore the possibility of a coalition with SNP in the Scottish Parliament and with Plaid and the Tories in the Welsh Assembly:
This is ridiculous! If they want to work only with Labour, why don’t they join Labour?
The same now applies in Westminster.
The LibDems keep saying that proportional representation is needed, and this will of course lead to many more coalition governments.
Because of this, the LibDems have a duty to demonstrate that coalitions can work.
To be concrete, they should do their very best to try and form a coalition with the Conservatives.
This is probably the only realistic option, given that Labour don’t have a majority together with the LibDems.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying they should enter a coalition with the Tories no matter what the terms are.
The important thing is that a coalition is explored thoroughly, and if it fails, it has to be because the Conservatives wouldn’t agree to reasonable terms, not because it’s easier to stand on the sidelines.
Con 298, LD 108, Lab 212
Filed under: Cons, England, Lab, Lib, SNP, Scotland, election, psephology
Most of the last polls before tomorrow’s election are now out, and they seem to point to a result along the lines of Con 33-37, LD 26-29, Lab 24-28.
There’s also a Scottish poll predicting Con 17, LD 22, Lab 37, SNP 21.
If I put the average of the figures into the Electoral Calculus Regional Predictor and shift LibDem support slightly towards the north of England, I end up with a seat prediction of Con 288, LD 98, Lab 232.
The Tories seem to be doing better in Lab-Con marginals, but this is to some extent cancelled out by the LibDems doing better in Con-Lib marginals.
Let’s therefore assume that Labour lose another 20 seats to the Conservatives, and that the LibDems win another 10 seats from the Tories, and we end up with my final prediction for tomorrow: Con 298, LD 108, Lab 212.
In many ways this would be an excellent result: The Tories would probably end up in power, but without being able to do whatever they fancy. Labour would have to find a new leader, and the LibDems would have demonstrated how bad the electoral system is if they got more votes but fewer seats than Labour.
Vote Match
Filed under: Denmark, Europe, Lib, SNP, Scotland, election, independence, referendum
In Denmark, websites that calculate which parties you agree the most with have been a regular feature of election campaigns for a decade.
However, they have been missing in the UK (to some extent because they make less sense under first-past-the-post), but now there’s finally one on The Telegraph’s site: Vote Match.
I tried it out, and it gave me roughly the results I expected (see the graph on the right).
The UKIP are much further up than I expected, and I had expected the LibDems and the SNP to be neck-and-neck, but then I do disagree with certain LibDem policies (such as Scottish independence and a referendum on EU membership).
Do try it out, and if you’re brave enough, publish your results in the comments section!
What to vote in East Renfrewshire
Filed under: Cons, Europe, Lab, Lib, SNP, Scotland, economics, election, environment
A few months ago, I gave some general advice on who to vote for in the General Election:
- If the LibDems have any chance of winning in your constituency, vote for them.
- If not, vote SNP/PC if they have a chance.
- If it’s down to Labour or the Conservatives, evaluate the local candidates and make your own choice.
It’s now time to have a closer look at the constituency I live in: East Renfrewshire.
Based on the last Westminster election in 2005, it would be easy to conclude that it’s a two-horse race between Labour and the Tories (Labour 43.9%, Cons 29.9%, Liberal Democrat 18.3%, SNP 6.8%).
It’s possible, though, that the SNP’s share of the vote was depressed by fielding a candidate called Osama less than four years after 9/11.
Also, the situation is more complex if one looks at the other elections that have taken place in the meantime.
Let’s start with the local elections in 2007 (1st graph on this page), which were conducted using STV (FPTP had been used in previous local elections).
The two largest parties were the Conservatives and Labour, with the SNP in third place. This is interesting, because it was a huge gain for the SNP: In 2003, the seat distribution (under FPTP) was Lab 8, Cons 7, LD 3, SNP 0.
At the same time, there were elections for the Scottish Parliament. These were conducted using the AMS system, which is basically FPTP with top-up seats.
The FPTP component was a two-horse race between Labour (35.8%) and the Conservatives (33.6%), with the SNP getting 18.9% and the LibDems only 8.5%.
However, the top-up votes probably showed more clearly people’s actual preferences, and this is shown in the second graph. Labour and the Tories were still the two largest parties, but the SNP were very close, and the LibDems did very poorly.
Similar patterns were seen at the European Elections in 2009, only this time the SNP actually overtook Labour (as seen in the third graph).
I would therefore conclude that East Renfrewshire is practically a three-horse race at the moment, with the Tories as the favourites to beat Labour, but where the SNP also have a fair chance of winning.
The LibDems, on the other hand, do not have a realistic chance of success in this seat.
Following my general advice, I must therefore recommend voting SNP in East Renfrewshire.
This recommendation is strengthened by examining the candidates:
- Jim Murphy is well-known as the current Secretary of State for Scotland, who seems to think it’s his job to quarrel with Alex Salmond rather than working with him to get the best possible deal for Scotland. He seems unlikely to stand up to Gordon Brown and help recreate an electable Labour party.
- The Tory candidate, Richard Cook, is commercial manager for Biffa Waste Services, and in his election leaflets he doesn’t provide a single positive reason to vote for him, only reasons not to vote for Jim Murphy. Also, he’s been a parliamentary candidate several times before, and he’s always been the loser.
- Gordon MacDonald, the LibDem candidate, holds important posts in (the Christian charity) and Care not Killing (an anti-euthanasia group), which seems a bit lopsided (although on the positive side he as a PhD in the Political Economy of Defence Procurement).
- The SNP’s Gordon Archer is managing director for Carbon Accountable (a company advising on how to combat climate change) and has in the past worked as senior advisor and spokesperson for John Swinney, so he should be strong on both environmental and general politics.
A better way to elect the UK parliament
Filed under: Cons, Denmark, England, Germany, Lab, Lib, ROI, SNP, Scotland, election, psephology
When people in the UK discuss alternatives to the current electoral system used for Westminster (first-past-the-post), they tend to look towards Ireland, Australia or possibly Germany, but never Scandinavia.
However, the system used there has many advantages, and indeed people there just take it for granted, so it must have got something right!
To make the Danish electoral system tangible, I have therefore made a simulation of the UK General Election 2005 according to the Danish system. (It’s quite long, so feel free to skip down to the results instead of reading all the details.)
Here are some of the advantages of the Danish system:
- Every vote counts. Even if your vote doesn’t get anybody elected where you live, it will count towards your party elsewhere in the country. This combats the way parties under FPTP tend to concentrate all their efforts on swing voters in marginal seats.
- The politicians need to get themselves elected, not just their party. A politician will typically be up against at least ten other candidates from their own party, and it is therefore important to have a personal agenda, not just to toe the party line.
- Need to be positive. When all votes count, if party A claims party B are evil, it might benefit party C or D just as easily as party A. So instead, party A needs to give the voters reasons to vote for them.
- It preserves some sort of constituency link. Given that it’s still the constituencies that put up candidates, and given that MPs are elected in small groups of constituencies, there is still a very strong local link, and it’s easy to understand how to get rid of a bad MP.
- Results are available quickly. Like FPTP, but unlike STV, results come in quickly, thus providing for a good election night experience.
- Opinion polls are right. Under FPTP, there is no simple correlation between share of the vote and number of seats won, so a party can lose votes but gain seats and vice versa. Under the Danish system, more votes leads to more seats, and opinion polls will therefore accurately predict how many MPs each party will get.
- Parties become truly national. Under FPTP, most parties tend to get most of their MPs elected in specific geographical areas (LibDems in the South West, Labour in the cities, the Tories in rural England). The Danish system spreads out the MPs more evenly, so that the LibDems will get fewer seats in the South West but more in the cities and rural England, Labour will get fewer seats in the cities but more elsewhere, etc. (This is not taken to extremes. The SNP only gets seats in Scotland – it’s not artificially extended to England.)
Prime ministerial debates in Scotland
Filed under: Cons, England, Lab, Lib, NI, SNP, Scotland, Wales, election
The BBC’s Michael Crick can report that “the Leaders’ Debates at the forthcoming election have now been cancelled. Instead, over the past 2-3 weeks they’ve been quietly replaced with Prime Ministerial Debates. It’s a cunning manoeuvre, agreed by the three main broadcasters (the BBC, ITV and Sky) and the three main parties, to exclude the SNP and Plaid Cymru leaders from the debates.”
I’ve discussed in the past why the SNP cannot be excluded in Scotland.
It is also very well described in a comment to Crick’s story by DougtheDug:
If it is true that this renaming has been done to exclude the SNP and PC from the debates along with the Democratic Unionist Party, Sinn Fein and the Social Democratic and Labour Party, (The Ulster Unionist Party will be represented via their link with the Conservatives), then it’s a clever ploy but once again done with no knowledge of the rules of the game.
Under OFCOM the SNP is classed as a major party in Scotland along with the Conservatives, Labour and the Lib-Dems. PC has major party status in Wales and the NI parties have major party status in Northern Ireland.
Party political election broadcasting is not worked out on the basis of a party’s UK standing but its standing in each of the constituent home nations of the UK. The debates, call them what you will, are multi-party election broadcasts and unless they are impartial in all four home nations then they will fall foul of OFCOM, the BBC guidelines and the law. The only way they can be impartial in Scotland is for all four major parties to be on the platform at the same time. Similarly for Wales and Northern Ireland.
What the broadcasters are trying to do is to apply the rules of impartiality in England which has three major parties to the four party setups in Scotland and Wales and the four party set up in Northern Ireland. It’s a classic case of the broadcasters thinking that England is Britain is England.
Let electoral law reflect what people think
In the UK, opinion polls tend to report percentages (such as Cons. 40%, Lab 28%, LibDem 22%, etc.), with an implicit understanding that these percentages will be reflected in the next parliament, and that the leader of the largest party will become prime minister.
However, the electoral system does not reflect this, given that it’s first-part-the-post, and the parties that have a chance to win any given constituency might not be the biggest national parties.
To see how broken the current system is, just have a look at the recent decision to exclude the SNP from televised party debates.
So perhaps it’s time to change the electoral system to better reflect what people expect?
For instance, introduce proper proportional representation for Westminster, so that 40% of the votes leads to close to 40% of the seats, and at the same time introduce a separate election for prime minister, perhaps along French lines, so that there is a run-off between the two strongest candidates from the first round.
I think people would very quickly get used to this – they might even after a few years start to think the new system had always been in place!
Who to vote for in spring
Filed under: Cons, Europe, Lab, Lib, SNP, Scotland, economics, election, recession, referendum
I had been planning to blog this just before the next general election, but now that the main party conferences are over, I think the picture is clear.
It’s obvious that Labour is an unmitigated disaster, especially under Gordon Brown. They claim to be progressive and prudent, but they’re centralist authoritarians that waste our money. Also, they’re dependent on public-sector votes to a degree that makes it unlikely that they’ll ever be able to shrink the public sector to any meaningful degree.
It’s also clear that while the Tories have some interesting policies in some areas (e.g., their free school plans are captivating), they’re more hostile to the EU than ever before. Their plans to repatriate powers could lead to a huge disaster, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the UK left the Union if the Tories were in power for very long. Also, they haven’t really demonstrated that they have a proper plan for growing the British economy.
The SNP are doing a decent job in Scotland, although I disagree with quite a few of their ideas (esp. with regard to alcohol), but the only reason to vote SNP at a general election is to call for a referendum. At certain times, that might well be the most important question, and it is then proper to vote SNP at a Westminster election, but at the time of a deep financial crisis, it would be foolhardy.
That leaves the LibDems as the only party that will try to end the recession and keep the UK within the EU.
Of course, it’s unlikely that the LibDems will get a majority, but it’s not at all impossible that the Tories will need their votes to gain power, which would be a great outcome: The LibDems could prevent the Tories from doing anything really stupid in Europe, and the two parties could probably agree on a feasible economic recovery plan.
To conclude, here are my voting recommentations:
- If the LibDems have any chance of winning in your constituency, vote for them.
- If not, vote SNP/PC if they have a chance.
- If it’s down to Labour or the Conservatives, evaluate the local candidates and make your own choice.
Four nations, one debate?
Filed under: Cons, England, Europe, Lab, Lib, NI, SNP, Scotland, Wales, election, health
It sounds like such an obvious idea to have a televised debate with the leaders of the main parties before the next general election. Indeed, such a debate takes place in many, if not most, democratic countries.
However, as Alex Salmond has now pointed out, it’s not as simple as that.
In England, the three main parties are the Conservatives, Labour and the LibDems. Yes, there are other parties, e.g., UKIP and the Green Party, but they’re not standing in all constituencies, and it’s well-known that they don’t have a chance to gain more than a couple of seats.
However, in Scotland the largest party is the SNP, and of course they would feel disadvantaged if they were excluded from the main event in the election. However, including the SNP wouldn’t make much sense for viewers in the rest of the UK.
For Wales, something similar can be said about Plaid Cymru, except that they’re not the largest party.
And finally, in Northern Ireland none of the British parties contest the election, in which only by local parties take part. A debate between Clegg, Cameron and Brown would therefore not really put any parties at a disadvantage, it just would seem a bit irrelevant, perhaps.
Add to this mess that the subject matters that are devolved vary from nation to nation.
For instance, I’m sure English viewers would want to see the party leaders discuss schools, hospitals and policing, but all of that is devolved to the Scottish Parliament, so the debate on these areas would be of no interest to Scottish viewers.
Perhaps the best solution would be to have one debate about devolved subject matters including only the English party leaders, and broadcast this only in England, and another debate about reserved matters, such as the EU, Afghanistan and terrorism, and to include the SNP and Plaid Cymru in this one.
Two-party Britains
Filed under: Cons, Lab, Lib, SNP, Scotland, Wales, election
For many years, the Conservatives and Labour divided almost all of Britain between themselves.
Under IDS, there seemed to be a possibility that the LibDems would replace the Tories as the main opposition to Labour, and now there is a possibility that Labour will disappear.
So I asked myself which constituencies the LibDems would have to win to become the main opposition party.
To find an answer, I used Electoral Calculus’s user-defined prediction, and I fiddled around with the parameters until I achieved two big parties and a very small third party (30-40 seats). I didn’t do anything about the SNP or other parties.
I did this for three scenarios: Labour-Conservative Britain, Liberal-Conservative Britain, and Labour-Liberal Britain.
The first one is very similar to the 2005 election, just with fewer yellow dots. Labour is strong in Scotland, Wales and the big cities, and the Tories rule the rest.
The second one is perhaps what we’ll see in 2014. Labour are holding on to a few seats in Wales, Scotland and the big cities (e.g., Glasgow North-East, Rhondda and West Ham), but apart from Scotland and Cornwall, the LibDems are now dominating the cities, with the Tories dominating the rural seats.
The third scenario is now totally unrealistic, but just a few years ago it would have seemed likely. The Tories are holding on to places like Richmond and Buckingham, but otherwise the LibDems have taken over most of the countryside, with Labour mainly holding on their current seats.