Legitimacy
There are fifty nine Westminster seats contested in Scotland. The Liberal Democrats hold eleven seats with 18.9% of the vote; the Conservatives hold a single seat with 16.7% of the vote. Together the coalition government gained 35.6% of the Scottish vote.
In 2005 Labour formed a government with 35.3% of the vote across the UK.
In 2005 Labour formed a government with 35.3% of the vote across the UK.
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It is worth noting that the new coalition government gained 59.1% of the UK vote. When was the last time that a government in the UK had more than 50% of the vote?
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Of course, I'm also in favour of making voting compulsary (in the Australian fashion) with a fine for failure to exercise it (even if it comes in as a 'none of the above').
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If this is the start of sensible coalition politics then I welcome it. I just hope it lasts.
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Maybe adding benefits for voters would be a good compromise? Perhaps government and council services should only be available to those who bother to turn out at elections. If you want to use a job centre, swimming pool, or library, make sure you turn out to vote! (Actually that might appeal to immigrant-obsessed Labour voters and Daily Mail readers!)
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Voting is a duty- it's part of the price we pay for the benefits of representation. Hence why I voted in a constituency where really my vote is entirely irrelevant!
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People could get pretty bored of having to vote in elections in which they have no interest.
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I think there would also have been a wider, more divisive issue: with the SNP and Plaid Cymru in a coalition, with the stated aim of preserving funding for Scotland and Wales, the special deals involved ('pork barrel politics') would have fostered resentment in England, and perhaps done major damage to English voters' readiness to accept coalition government.
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Now, the Scots Labour MPs may well have objected (I'd have been surprised if they hadn't), but a well run Whips department can usually keep that sort of thing under control, with a mixture of threats and bribes!
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We elect all our MPs on first past the post, then the value of their vote in Parliament is assigned proportionally by party; so the vote of an individual MP would be a real number rather than an integer.
Never gonna happen, but an interesting idea.
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It seems inevitable that the coming years will be filled with arguments over voting reform.
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The point about some MPs being more important than others is a more difficult one to answer, and might be where this method would fall over - besides the difficulty of explaining it to people.
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For whipped votes, they are party votes and there could be an argument about aligning them better along party-vote-share lines.
But for unwhipped votes, or where an MP rebels against their party, they are potentially representing all of their constituents, regardless of party affiliation. As all constituencies should be a similar size (and may be, after the forthcoming political reforms), each MP's vote should have the same value.
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Slightly worried about the equal size constituency thing; while I agree with it in principal and for almost all seats, I do think there's a case for some exceptions, such as Na h-Eileanan an Iar. Its geographical character is so distinct even from its closest neighbours that it does require sympathetic representation.
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Oh, and the Tories wanted to reduce the number of MPs (to about 550 I think). I couldn't see anything about that in the coalition document, so I suppose it is still an aim, although with Nick Clegg in charge of political reform, I don't know where that fits into his priorities.
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