Either that or he's just a devious bastard. Writing in the Evening Standard* today, he came up with this:
The second problem with PR is that it gives smaller parties an unfair and disproportionate boost... This Thursday Britain votes in the European elections. If just eight per cent of the electorate votes for the BNP then as a result of the PR system that Labour forced on us, that party is guaranteed a seat in the European Parliament...
Dude, WTF?
This has nothing to do with Labour! - elections to the EU Parliament have to be under a PR system - that's what the rules say**! BTW, I'm no lover of the EU, but I think the system the UK uses for EU Parliament elections is pretty good, actually.
As a secondary point, his maths is shit - to win a seat in the largest UK constituency for EU election purposes (the South East with ten MEPs) a party would need at least 9.09% of the vote (i.e. 1/10+1) to guarantee a seat in the EU Parliament. The North West (where BNP are most likely to get a seat) returns eight MEPs, so the BNP would need at least 11.11% of the vote (1/8+1) to guarantee a seat.
* Via LFAT, who linked to MarkReckons' demolition of Dave's logical errors; I prefer looking at factual errors (aka 'lies') as it saves time.
** To be fair, the rules say you have to use either party list/PR or Single Transferable Vote - Dave The Chameleon singularly fails to mention that under STV (a kind of PR favoured by Liberal Democrats), the BNP would be guaranteed of never, ever getting an MP or an MEP - he conveniently lumps all the supposed disadvantages of non-first-past-the-post systems together. (UPDATE: This footnote may be based on an incorrect understanding of the rules so feel free to ignore it).
About That Closet
5 hours ago
10 comments:
How do you make out that the BNP wouldn't get seats on STV? With the same 10-member constituencies, you would get a very similar outcome.
AMcGuinn points to the Achilles heel of all effective PR systems: they let the BNP through the middle,not just the fringe outfits
we like the look of.That is another count against them: that they render democratic fine-tuning next to impossible.
AMcG, I thought that the rules were either party list or STV (perhaps I'm wrong).
Either way, the rules (according to Wiki) say that "The electoral area may be subdivided if this will not generally affect the proportional nature of the voting system." so they could reduce the size of the constituencies to three seats AND the rules also say "Any election threshold on the national level must not exceed five percent."
A McGuinn - generally STV has 3-5 seat constituencies, so it would be very difficult for the BNP.
DBC Reed - Aren't we missing something when we criticise PR for allowing the BNP a seat or two? The real problem is the BNP getting 10% of the vote. This is primarily because people believe the anti-immigration crap written in the Tory tabloids.
The Tories stir up racial hatred to split the working class vote off from Labour because this is worth doing under first-past-the-post as the seats your party win is not just determined by your own vote, but by your main opponents vote.
So clever and subtle negative campaigning becomes paramount to splinter the opposition vote while appearing above the fray yourselves to hold on to your own voters.
Under PR this sort of campaign would be of little help to the Tories as their number of seats would only be determined by their own voteshare.
This is why the countries with a problem with the far-right tend not to be PR countries but France and the UK that predominantly use first-past-the-post systems.
Mark, you forget that very small parties that get just a few percent of the vote are ignored. So it is possible that 7% will be enough, depending on how many votes these very small parties get. This might be the reason for Tory funded libertas and NO2EU who will not win seats but splinter the vote and will help the other parties who do make the threshold. So there will still be a small percentage of votes that are wasted under this system - it has quite a high threshold. Of course the Euro parliament elections are better than fptp where MOST votes are wasted.
Amazing! In amongst his usual paranoid delusions, Neil writes something that I agree with.
The "problem" is indeed the BNP, odious scum that they are, getting 10% of the vote. The entire point of multi-member PR constituencies is that minority points of view get representation. It's a bit rich to turn around and complain when one of those points of view is one that you don't like very much.
The way to defeat the BNP is by shining the light of day on their little patch of darkness, and by addressing the real concerns that drive ordinarily reasonable people into their camp - not by trying to gerrymander them out of existence.
Hague squirms on Newsnight:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/8080379.stm
Glorious, I have linked. It's like watching a snake fight an alligator and not caring who loses.
Mark, I hate to do this, but to an extent Cameron's right and you're wrong.
Labour did force closed list PR using D'Hondt on us, there were many amendments trying to make it either STV or Open List PR, IIRC the Lords had to be told to back down under threat of the Parliament Act over their open-list amendments.
Yes, the rules say a PR system must be used, but it was Blair's Labour that forced through closed list PR using every parliamentary procedure they could muster (I was studying for my Access to HE certificate while the legislation was going through, as electoral reform is probably my biggest individual issue I followed it closely).
For those that think STV would make no difference to the BNPs chances, consider this. STV is all about the transfers.
In the NW, the Greens are competing with the BNP, openly, to get the last seat. The Lib Dems are sort of doing so as well due to the crazy D'Hondt allocation.
If the Greens poll less than the BNP, then all Green votes get transferred elsewhere, probably split between the LDs and Labour.
The only transfers the BNP will pick up will be a small number of English Democrats or UKIP supporters (both have racist voters, but the numbers are small, and the vehemence that they oppose the BNP is genuine).
So STV would lessen the chances of a BNP MEP scraping through by pipping the Greens or the Lib Dems to the last seat.
In fact, I'd say it does even more than that, as I know a large number of Lib Dem and Labour voters who would put a Green as their 1st preference then switch back to their main party.
Of course, the BNP could still get a seat, but they'd need to get almost all their support from first preferences, the odds of them getting significant preference transfers are minimal.
The reason I dislike list PR is because it doesn't eliminate tactical guesswork, in fact to an extent it makes it more important.
Mark, good post, weirdly, Cameron's on record elsewhere as saying he doesn't mind STV, as is Carswell.
I remembered wrongly, the Lords didn't back down, Blair forced it through using hte Parliament Act, the 5th time (total) that it's been used since 1911:
European Parliamentary Elections Act 1999
You can't expect condemned men to behave
This, specific, electoral system was forced through by Blair when it was known to all at the time that the Lords would've compromised on Open Lists or similar.
MattGB, in the finer details you may be right, but Cameron, scenting a landslide is reverting to type ( for example, do you remember his 'vote blue go green' phase? As little as I agreed with it, I find it more worrying that he dumped it when convenient than that he jumped on the MMGW bandwagon in the first place) and slagging off all PR - which includes STV (and I would prefer STV to FPTP, don't get me wrong).
I doubt very much that multi-member constituencies with STV would lead to significantly different outcomes than party list. Either way, I'm not fussed about the BNP, I want MY vote to make a difference, however teeny tiny (having moved from a safe Labour to a safe Tory area).
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