back to article Cameron aims to bring LibDems into government

David Cameron has issued an invitation to the Liberal Democrats to form a stable government with the Conservatives, preferring long-term compromise to trying run a minority administration. If taken up, the "big, open, comprehensive offer" is likely to mean Liberal Democrats would take up cabinet positions, rather than merely …

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    1. Magnus_Pym

      easy

      Insist on PR and a new election with a year.

  1. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Election Comedy

    Well, if there was ever any doubt that voting LibDem was a wasted vote this clears it up.

    At least if you voted for one of the "big 2" you would get to choose which colour would run the country. As it stands, LibDems now have the fun of hoping their party leader will wake up in bed with their preferred AntiChrist. (Given that its reasonable to suspect half the libdems are more labour than tory and vice versa, it seems there will be lots of unhappy people next time round).

    Clegg's argument that the one with the majority of the vote has the moral right to govern should be taken to its extreme and the LibDems excluded from the final decisions. Why should the Bronze medalists get to chose the winners?

    For all future elections, voters should be made clearly aware that voting Lib Dem is just as effective at choosing a Government as spoiling the ballot paper.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      WTF?

      Odd

      To all those who downvoted this - do you think that voting Lib Dem had any real effect in the election?

      Do you think the Libdems will get their way in government? Do you think its right that the third party *should* get its way?

      Just like the pointless liberal party in 1974, the modern day LibDems are nothing more than a drain (albeit minor) on the number of seats available to the two main parties. Its ironic that lots of people will have "tactically voted" LibDem to stop the Tories getting in....

      If you want to vote, vote. If you want your vote to have *any* purpose vote Tory or Labour.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        FAIL

        Even Odder...

        is that you have no clue about democracy, yet you have been brought up in one! A wasted vote? I don't think any of the 6,827,938 people that voted for the Liberal Democrats wasted their vote. In fact not one of the 29,653,638 votes cast was wasted--quite the opposite; the wasted votes were the ~15,897,265 that either couldn't be bothered or weren't able to vote. Those 16 million people could and probably would have completely changed the out come of the election!

        I can only presume that you haven't seen any of the debate about parliamentary reform that has been in the headlines and that this accounts for your superciliousness, but the 6,827,938 Lib Dem voters seem to have managed, by "wasting" their vote, to force this issue. The outcome may not be

        vastly different, Lib-Dems would still have come third, however, those that are undecided and vote tactically may vote for policy, making the process far more democratic.

        IMHO, a wasted vote is one that is used in tactical voting (a misnomer if ever there was one) rather than how it should be used, by voting for what one believe in.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Grenade

          Hmm

          "The outcome may not be vastly different, Lib-Dems would still have come third, however, those that are undecided and vote tactically may vote for policy, making the process far more democratic."

          So it would be more democratic but the outcome would remain the same..... Yeah, seems great to me.

          I can sort of see the argument that the Lib Dem votes were less wasted than a vote on (say) Labour but it all hangs on who the LibDems go into coalition with. Not something the average voter gets any say in. Basically voting LibDem just means you want the dominant party to have less of a majority. Odd situation.

          If we are to believe the politicians (yes, I know) the people in the UK *want* a strong governement, in which case bin all but the two main parties. You could even rename one the Whigs if you want a throwback.

          Alternatively the people want a weak government with no one party having an overall mandate to govern - in which case what is Clegg doing trying to cuddle up to one or the other?

          Makes no sense to me.

          Redo the election or let the tories try to govern. Dont pussy about with the minority LibDem party.

  2. Graham Dawson Silver badge
    Welcome

    Proportional Representation?

    You lot seem to be forgetting that we don't actually vote for party, we vote for a representative in our constituency. Lib Dems might get X% of the vote across the nation but that's irrelevant: each constituency gets the MP the majority votes for. An MP is meant to be part of his local community (yes I know how broken that is these days but that's now it's meant to be) and they're meant to represent their constituents in Parliament. PR would create the final divorce between the electorate and their representatives in Parliament as MPs would be chosen from party lists, and there'd be absolutely no incentive for them to maintain any links with the constituencies at all.

    Look at Europe, where they have PR in most countries. Every election there's a kingmaker or two, a little party that always finagles it's way into the government even if it's composed entirely of lunatics. In Belgium they've had to hold more elections in the last two years than we've had in the last decade because the government keeps collapsing. It doesn't "moderate" the actions of the state either; if anything they're more likely to come up with badly written laws that go against the will of the people, because the PR system gives inordinate power to the "little parties", the ones who by their nature do not represent even a small plurality of the electorate.

    Look at it this way: PR would put the BNP into Parliament and, judging by the number votes they got, would give them enough influence to weasel their way into a coalition.

    IF change is demanded then I'd say use the single transferable vote rather than a "pure" proportional representation. It seems to work just fine in Australia. And Scotland, for that matter; they use it in their local elections.

    1. Magnus_Pym

      Please Please Pleeeeeeeaaaaasssssse

      Read the other posts before commenting.

      As has been stated over and over again. We all ceased to be voting for a local representative in any real sense as soon as they started joining political parties. If you don't believe me ask your local MP what his party's Whip's Office is for and watch him (or her) squirm.

    2. Ocular Sinister
      Stop

      Belgium

      Is having repeated elections the union of Flemish half and French half is falling apart. This would probably have happened even under a majority government. Note also, that not only has there been several elections in recent years *no one formed a government*. I was there last weekend, in fact, and the waffles are still good, the mussels excellent and things generally getting done, despite all of this.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Big Brother

    Simples Answer

    1) Make voting mandatory with a hefty fine for non-compliance.

    2) Add "None of the above" to all ballots.

    3) Where "NOTA" gets a majority, no sitting member is elected.

    This forces the parties to engage with the electorate and also likely leads to a much smaller house. As anyone who's ever been on a decision making committee knows, the smaller the decision making group, the better.

    1. Magnus_Pym
      Thumb Up

      Nice. I would however add...

      3) Where "NOTA" gets a majority, a random member of the public who didn't vote is forced to represent the electorate for the life of the next parliament.

      This would not only force the party's to engage with the electorate it would also force the electorate to engage with politics.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Pickfords

    How about a whip-round to pay for a Pickfords (removals) van to be parked round the corner from Downing Street - should make a good news photo-story. Maybe the Daily Mail will pay for it.

    1. Ocular Sinister
      WTF?

      Already been done

      The Sun has already done this, and it is pretty stupid. No matter how much you dislike Gordon Brown, he is still prime minister until a new government is formed, whether he stays at number 10 or not, and Cameron is not in a position to do that yet. It may have escaped your notice, but there are important discussions with Europe taking place at the moment regarding Greece - we needed a representative at those negotiations, and that representative was Alistair Darling. Protocol has it, that under these circumstances the departing minister should correspond and work with the potential new minister, and this was indeed done. That's just the way our (unwritten) constitution works, the same constitution that allowed John Major to operate a minority government, too, if I recall correctly...

      1. Magnus_Pym

        Absolutely.

        This is the system that the Conservative desperately want to keep so it is no good complaining about it now.

        If the country hated Brown and loved Cameron as much as the Sun et al keep telling us we do, they would have got an overall majority and would be in power now. <sarcasm> It's almost as if Murdoch wants a Tory government or something. </sarcasm>

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    mandatory voting

    "1) Make voting mandatory with a hefty fine for non-compliance."

    Better option - carrot not stick - when you vote (in person) you are given a lottery ticket or scratch card - the prospect of winning £10M might get a few more people of their backsides.

  6. Magnus_Pym

    Just so as you know.

    Most parties do not use first-past-the-post to elect their own party officials. It is not democratic enough!

    They usually have a system requiring multiple votes, where the least popular drop outs after each round until only one remains. In this way the supporters of an unpopular candidate are forced to choose again. The winner of the first round often looses in the end because the others dislike someone else less. This is how Cameron became leader of the Tories. Good for them but not for us apparently.

    Look at the figures and see if you think he would be Prime minister if they adopted this system for the General Election. I suspect not.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    re: No link between local MP and voters...

    It may be true that there is no way to force an MP to vote as the electorate who put them there wish; but at least if they turn out to be a thieving peace of sh!t, you can (try to) get rid of them.

    Perhaps a better reform would be to limit the number of times a party can use the whips in any year/parliament. If for instance they were only allowed to use the whips say twice a year they would have to think very hard when to use them, and all other votes would be secret.

    Personally I would like to see the commons stay with FPTP, but have a fully elected Lords with a requirement that ALL votes are secret (ie: no party whips at all). This would also mean they have full mandate to block any legislation that is not passed in both houses. I would also like to see a limit (say 3) to how many times a bill could be presented, after that there would be a mandatory 2 year block.

    A Lords with no whips would effectively be party free so a FPTP would still work, as any party affiliation could not be enforced.

    1. Magnus_Pym

      No way

      It may be true that there is no way to force an MP to vote as the electorate who put them there wish; but at least if they turn out to be a thieving peace of sh!t, you can (try to) get rid of them.

      Yes but only after 4 or 5 years. There is no mechanism for recalling you MP from parliament before the General Election.

  8. Jonathon Green

    How about if...

    We were to retain the FPTP electoral system but then weight the votes of the MPs in commons divisions according to the share of the popular vote their party receives?

    That way we retain the traditional simplicity of the current "one cross in one box" system (to the benefit of traditionally simple voters), retain the direct linkage between constituency and representative, keep the nutters out (and restrict the damage which can be done by those nutters who do manage to get elected) while still distributing political power in a way which is representative of National voting patterns without resource to lists of loyal party hacks.

    This isn't an entirely serious suggestion, and I'm sure there's some terribly good reason why it wouldn't work but on the face of it, it's quite appealing :-)

  9. pan2008
    Stop

    not proportional representation but close

    The current system is not the best. In theory you can be the 3rd Partty but if your voters are placed in the right constituency then you can easily win the elections!! Look what happened with the parties in N Ireland, with a 0.5% of the votes they get 4-5 MP easily, just because of the concentration in the right place. I read today that the Conservatives with another 5-10,000 more votes would get overall majority if they voted in the right place, so more like pot luck.

    All votes should count, so because I voted labour in Bromley or Conservative in Hull doesn't mean my vote shouldn’t be counted! Then you have the other controversy of tactical voting which makes a farce of the system, or worse boundary changes. Pure proportional representation is not right cause we will never have a majority party, but a system where some degree of proportion is maintained makes sense. So a party getting 36-38% should be close to forming a government. Also you can put a threshold of 3-5% to get an MP.

    This semi-proportional representation system is used in many European countries and I am sure they can pick up the best one, it's definitely more representative of the wishes of the people.

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