I think there are plenty of good points to the parliamentary system but I also feel like you should have to win more than 34% of the vote to get a supermajority
Yeah. That's not parliamentary per se, it's first past the post which is the same thing we have. But it gets worse on the disproportionality when you have four parties breaking double digits and first place is in the mid-30s.
Unfortunately FPTP is like The One Ring of UK politics: whoever wins does a Boromir/Isildur and thinks "Maybe we shouldn't destroy it, maybe we should use its terrible power for good?"
Lib Dems got played hard when they had their once-in-a-generation chance in coalition with electoral reform as one of their top demands, and then let the referendum be on AV (RCV) instead of PR.
I always wonder what would have happened if Clegg hadn't gone full Lawful Neutral and decided he must go into coalition with Cameron because they'd won the most seats. If he'd entertained the idea of letting Brown pitch a Lib Lab coalition to him.
In fairness, the all-party committee made a complete hash of things, recommending a change in electoral system...and completely ducking the question of what thar system should look like. Which left the Liberals with two bad choices: impose a system, or just do nothing. And they chose nothing.
I’m from NZ and still lived there when we shifted to proportional representation. Genunine game changer. We ‘tried’ (very badly) here in the UK but there was no commitment to it. FPTP remains so dumb though
The Danish system is like that. We always end up with at least two parties sharing power. Usually three. And once it was a four-way split to get enough seats to actually have a government.
Yes, the US system would produce the same sort of results if the vote was split that many ways. They're the same electoral system: single-member districts with first past the post.
This is the second UK election in a row when the winning party got a lower share of the vote than Trump in 2020, and yet ended up with a massive, unassailable parliamentary majority.
I've noted the same myself, that there's no extra powers that get unlocked in the British system for getting beyond a simple majority. But is anybody actually confused about that? I haven't seen anybody suggest as much. They talk about in terms of strength of the political mandate, not legal powers.
There is the practical reality of how much does party leadership have to accommodate the desires of its more marginal members. The bigger the majority the less they have to accommodate
That's why I get frustrated when folks complain that the US needs more than two parties. The trouble is in any population you're gonna get about 20 to 30% that default to "conservative" (ahem), more when times are hard. Fragment your coalition and you hand them power forever
This is FTTP on steroids.
Don't get me wrong, I welcome Labour to power and think they'll be a better choice for the UK and the world. But 1/3 of the vote getting you nearly 2/3 of the seats is... it feels wrong somehow. Even if I like the result.
It's a bunch of races for individual single-member seats and that party isn't concentrated enough to take first place in many of them, their voters are more dispersed geographically.
Sounds almost like gerrymandering, possibly backfiring at the conservatives?
or at the very least certain parties successfully focusing on particular districts.
The other big parties didn't pick up, but the Conservatives were down 16 (or 18, i forget) percent. Voters didn't show up or switch, they stayed away in droves
