Legitimacy

[tobyaw]

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.

Comments

[ggreig]

The vote counting could easily be dealt with by an electronic voting system a la Holyrood. I'm sure if people are thirled to walking through the lobbies it could be triggered by some sort of proximity sensor.

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.

[tobyaw]

There is also an issue in that MPs votes mean different things at different times.

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.

[ggreig]

Good point.

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.

[tobyaw]

I suspect the boundary commission will be sympathetic to special cases. The Isle of Wight is another one where geography defines the constituency. The real importance is in evening out the majority of urban and country constituencies, so that Labour no longer has its in-built advantage at the expense of all the other parties.

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.

[hobbitomm.livejournal.com]

You could go for constituency MPs (and level up the population size of the constituencies to a more even value), with a regionally based 'top up' list of MPs who deputise for the constituency members (thus keeping their geographical link, albeit less strictly defined), whilst also levelling up the representation in the House to something more closely resembling the votes cast for each Party.