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‘Proportional representation will lead to better politics’, Labour conference told
(leftfootforward.org)
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this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2023
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UK Politics
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It's a significant criticism to me. Our FPTP parliamentary system isn't great for representing the majority of people's views, but having fixed sized constituencies with local MPs is a bit advantage.
Ideally power should be devolved to be as close to the citizens as possible. Having a single person responsible for representing your community is much better in my opinion than having some group of people who represent a party who never visit your part of the country.
The surgeries MPs do in their local areas are a really powerful way for people to raise their issues and get heard. Plenty of national campaigns and law changes have been brought about by passionate people getting their MP on board.
There are obvious failings with this (Dories. Johnson. Etc) so some form of recall would be welcome.
STV for local representatives is an easy win without any major reforms to get candidates who represent their constituency as ideally as possible.
I'm for PR, but figuring out the best way to set up PR alongside local MPs is going to be a large debate and very tricky to get right. Much like abolishing the monarchy, it's a large constitutional change that we'd have to trust to the people in charge who it affects, and if done poorly could be very destabilising.
A few years ago in a former life I actually spent a lot of time developing a democratic model and it's hard to get right. One of the things we set up that worked really well actually aligns with what that glittery knob head's group advocates for.
A jury style system where people are randomly and fairly selected to be representatives of the people (age, gender, race, sec, etc) and get paid to serve a term of x amount of time, hear debates from proponents and opposition to policies, and form a consensus on issues would be pretty great. If we ever decide to get rid of the house of Lords I'd like to see it replaced by something like that.
Apologies for the really long reply, you raise great points and it's a topic I'm interested in discussing.
Edit: conditional - constitutional. Damn autocorrect.
Good post. I also think citizen assemblies need to be used more. Also majors.
We clearly now need a way of dealing with local MPs when they go rogue. No just when they don't do the job, but also when they change party or get kicked out.
I'd also get rid of the whole three line whip thing. Least for local MPs. Free them for complete compliance with the party. Put a tension between them and party.
The reason I like Mixed Member PR is the keeping of local MPs. It's used in Germany and New Zealand.
The monarchy I'd deal with separately. Let a proper democratic bed in first. The monarchy is always one bad monarch away from reform anyway.