Whilst I obviously welcome our new overlords, I can’t help but notice that they seem to have an odd idea of electoral reform, and as Tom Harris observes it doesn’t really fit well with either the Tories claim to want to return power to the people, and quite odd that the LibDems seem to be happy going along with it.
The particular bit of reform that Mr Harris is concerned about is to change the vote of no-confidence in a government from a simple majority to 55%. Such a change only makes sense in that it allows a minority government (like say the Tories without the LibDems) more immune to votes of no confidence and actual majority governments virtually bullet proof. At present a simple majority would require 325 MP’s to vote against the government which would be quite a challenge especially as Sinn Fein have 5 MPs that never take up their seats. So even to get out the Tories with their current majority would require all but 9 non-Tory MPs to vote against them. For a 55% vote not even would every non Tory MP have to vote against the Government but 19 Tory MPs would have to rebel as well. Which as the vote would be heavily whipped means that 19 Tory MPs would have to be prepared to sacrifice their political careers (and expense accounts) for a non-confidence vote to pass, evidence suggests that MPs are unlikely to do this. This is as Dizzy says “not just an affront to democracy, it holds the power of Parliament in even greater contempt than the last lot did.”
Of course it gets worse, the form of PR that the ConDems seem to have decided to offer us is AV (alternative vote), which isn’t actually a form of proportional representation at all. It merely changes how the MPs are elected so the proportional of the national vote is still not relevant to the number of MPs any party may have sitting.
Mind you the LibDems would prefer AV+ which combines the problems of the above with
“party list” MPs thus entrenching larger national parties advantages even further and helping to lock out small parties and independents.
Update: Dizzy has further analysis of the 55% vote issue, and observes that it could be used by minority parties in coalitions to force change of government (or at least threaten it) with out recourse to an election. Which quite frankly is possibly worse than my initial take on matters.
