If the Labour Party didn't exist, would anyone today invent it?

westernpromise

I am afraid that these assertions about supposed electoral unfairness are deeply naive. They seem to depend on three misapprehensions.

One is that the voting system in use does not affect how votes are cast. That is, MyFirstPost is assuming that because 38% cast their vote a certain way in an FPTP system they would do so under a PR system, an STV system, etc. There is no evidence whatsoever that this is so, and plenty that it is not. For example, when there have been MEP and local council elections there have been completely different results for the same party in the same places on the same day with two different counting systems. This is why UKIP wins MEP seats but doesn't win any councils.

The next embedded wrong assumption is that because someone gets 44% of the vote they only have the support of 44% of the voters. This is false on several grounds. First, turnout is lower in safe seats, so if a seat has a 10,000 vote majority for one party large numbers of voters of all parties won't vote because in their seat the result is a foregone conclusion. This is why Labour was able to win a 66 seat majority in 2005 off 36% of the vote. They probably had another 10 or 15 per cent out there who didn't vote because their seat was either safe Labour or safe Tory.

It is also an empty assumption that voting for a party means you support it. Voters are perfectly capable of voting tactically for parties they don't support. I have voted Labour in the past because I lived in a Labour / LibDem marginal. Whoever won was an anti-Conservative so the result didn't matter. However, I wanted to keep the seat marginal so I voted Labour to ensure that the two parties would waste resources fighting each other there, and would thus be less effective elsewhere, where it did matter. Likewise, at the last European elections, I voted for a peculiar party called An Independence From Europe because all the potty Brexiteer parties were squabbling and I thought if would be fun to let UKIP think the People's Front of Judaea had pinched votes off them.

Finally, the idea that left parties got most of the vote so we must want a left wing government falls down all over the place. First, the left hates each other more than they hate the right - if there were a left wing consensus there'd only be one left wing party instead of five or six . Second, this sort of claim is usually the precursor to the argument that there should be a second preference voting system, but of course that is gerrymandering the system to ensure that left wing parties pick up lots of second preference votes. As there is only one right of centre party that party would not, so this is just a fiddle - unless you're allowed to cast two votes for one party.

So I am afraid it is a lot more complex than it seems, and the alternatives the left prefers are never as fair as they would like us to think.

westernpromise

Sorry about the typos, can't edit from my phone...

zagubov

Presumably as the austerity fanatics who're running the country, run down the public services so they're underperforming, they'll pretend that the only answer is privatization.

We'll all be relieved as we knew that had to be the answer.

antrobus

zagubov wrote: »

Presumably as the austerity fanatics who're running the country, run down the public services so they're underperforming, they'll pretend that the only answer is privatization.

We'll all be relieved as we knew that had to be the answer.

Look at Greece. The governing party is Syriza. Otherwise known as the Coalition of the Radical Left, an amalgam of various fractions of the Greek Communists, Trotskyists etc and so forth. There is no more left wing and anti-austerity party in Europe. And yet they have been implementing the most savage austerity programme now they are running things.

Besides, do you not know how the Labour government of 1945-1951 dealt with the deficit? Have you never heard of Austerity Britain? Do you not know why that nice Mr Cripps said that "There is only a certain sized cake"? Or why he was known as 'Asuterity Cripps'.

As Liam Byrne said, "I’m afraid there is no money".

antrobus

westernpromise wrote: »

..One is that the voting system in use does not affect how votes are cast....

Absolutely.

In a parliamentary democracy, under FPTP, in any constituency, rational voters will take into account how they expect everybody else will vote, before deciding which party to vote for. Or whether indeed to vote at all. And quite often they will be inclined to compromise.

That's one of the reasons why I prefer STV, because you can vote for the candidate for the Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist) if that's who you really want, and then put Labour as your second preference, or whatever you fancy. And of course, you can make choices between candidates of the same party.

westernpromise

STV systems are unfair if there is only one centre party but more than one centre-left or centre-right party.

Supporters of the former have nobody to cast their second preference vote for so their candidate has to to win outright at the first count, which the others don't. If you're going to give people more than one vote they should be allowed to cast both of them for the same candidate.

antrobus

westernpromise wrote: »

STV systems are unfair if there is only one centre party but more than one centre-left or centre-right party. ...

Ah! So we need a 'credible alternative' to the Conservative Party. That's what the Labour Party is for, I knew there was a reason.:)

Just a shame it's not fulfilling that function at present.

westernpromise wrote: »

...Supporters of the former have nobody to cast their second preference vote for so their candidate has to to win outright at the first count, which the others don't. If you're going to give people more than one vote they should be allowed to cast both of them for the same candidate.

No, you only get one vote under STV; it's Single Transferable Vote.

But if you have (say) a five-seat constituency, you might find that there were three Conservative candidates available. You might vote 1,2,3 for the Cons, or you might vote 1,2, I'm not voting for Fingle Jones because he's a right-wing-lunatic/wet-behind-the-years-liberal or whatever.

westernpromise

antrobus wrote: »

Ah! So we need a 'credible alternative' to the Conservative Party. That's what the Labour Party is for, I knew there was a reason.:)

Just a shame it's not fulfilling that function at present.



No, you only get one vote under STV; it's Single Transferable Vote.

But if you have (say) a five-seat constituency, you might find that there were three Conservative candidates available. You might vote 1,2,3 for the Cons, or you might vote 1,2, I'm not voting for Fingle Jones because he's a right-wing-lunatic/wet-behind-the-years-liberal or whatever.

Whereas if there were only two candidates you could support you'd end up expressing two preferences where others got three, so the system penalises united parties and rewards smithereen parties.

Spidernick

westernpromise wrote: »

One is that the voting system in use does not affect how votes are cast. That is, MyFirstPost is assuming that because 38% cast their vote a certain way in an FPTP system they would do so under a PR system, an STV system, etc. There is no evidence whatsoever that this is so, and plenty that it is not. For example, when there have been MEP and local council elections there have been completely different results for the same party in the same places on the same day with two different counting systems. This is why UKIP wins MEP seats but doesn't win any councils.

I'd agree with this and which is why I think the LibDems wouldn't do so well under PR (for example) as they'd like to think. However, I feel you are rather making the pro-Electoral Reform argument for us. Under FPTP people are often forced to compromise and vote tactically (which is where the LibDems do very well in places), but there is little, if any, need to vote tactically under most alternative voting systems. Your UKIP point above is a prime example of this.

UKIP want Electoral Reform and are not Left-wing, so your assertion that this is just something wanted by the Left is incorrect:

http://www.ukip.org/ukip_supports_electoral_reform_society_call_for_fair_voting

Ultimately I cannot see that the drop in support for UKIP in 2015 under a different voting system would have still left them with only one MP (ditto the Liberals in the example below). You have mentioned the 'supposed electoral unfairness' of FPTP, but there is nothing 'supposed' about it. It used to be most biased in favour of Labour and is now most biased in favour of the Tories, but has always been biased towards both the main parties - take a look at 1983 General Election results in terms of votes and seats for Labour in second and the Liberals is third:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_general_election,_1983

It was wrong and unfair when the bias favoured Labour more and remains so today. I really cannot see how anybody can argue against this.

antrobus

westernpromise wrote: »

Whereas if there were only two candidates you could support you'd end up expressing two preferences where others got three, so the system penalises united parties and rewards smithereen parties.

No. Under STV you can potentially rank all candidates. Although I seem to recall that the Australians require you to do so. Personally, I'd opt for letting the voter decide.

In any case, it's the other way around,surely? It's the smithereen party that suffers if some of its candidates are deemed 'unacceptable' by (at least some) of the voters, and either not given a preference or dumped right to the bottom of the list.