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| Your Political Class at work. |
This is not going to be pleasant.
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What you Britons really need is the relative vote system for elections.
ReplyDeleteRelative vote means that the seats in parliament or city council are distributed by the percentage of votes by each party, not by "winner-gets-it-all" principle as in majority vote. Relative vote effectively prevents the parties polarizing in the Evil Party and the Clueless Party.
True, it makes politics more difficult and forming the government more tricky. But it also gives the fringe groups a try - and can produce really unexpectable results, as in Austria, Sweden and Finland, where Nationalist Conservative parties have gained landslide victories - pretty much to mishap to the traditional parties. As relative vote almost always will produce coalition governments, such governments must be really careful and unanimous on their decisions lest they collapse.
The best value for a fringe group or a strong opposition is that it can effectively sabotage any really clueless, mean or nasty governmental decisions and introduce some common sense within the politics.
The landslide victory of the Perussuomalaiset (True Finns) in the 2011 elections - from five seats to 41 seats in the 200 seat Parliament - revived my faith on democracy and the voting power of Joe and Jane Average. Things can change if we really want them to change.