{"id":2441,"date":"2010-05-08T23:59:54","date_gmt":"2010-05-08T22:59:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.widmann.org.uk\/?p=2441"},"modified":"2010-05-08T23:59:54","modified_gmt":"2010-05-08T22:59:54","slug":"a-letter-to-my-tory-friends-about-pr-ge2010-doitnick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/a-letter-to-my-tory-friends-about-pr-ge2010-doitnick\/","title":{"rendered":"A letter to my Tory friends about PR"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\"\"<\/a>
\n
\nLetter from Francestown, February 1856<\/a>
\nOriginally uploaded by gbaku<\/a>
\n<\/span>\n<\/div>\n

Dear Tory friends,<\/p>\n

you might not normally listen to what I’ve got to say, given that I’m a liberal and so on, but I have something to say to you about proportional representation.<\/p>\n

You want to keep first-past-the-post, because you think it’s the best chance for you to form a government once in a while.<\/p>\n

You might have heard about Blair’s idea<\/a> that PR would lead to a “progressive century”. This is based on the idea that Labour and the LibDems normally get a majority of the votes together, so logically they should always get a majority together under PR.<\/p>\n

It’s nonsense, though.<\/p>\n

If that was the case, most European countries would have a permanent government, but that doesn’t happen anywhere. In all democratic countries, power sometimes changes hands.<\/p>\n

Perhaps that will require another right-of-centre party to emerge that can attract voters from the left-of-centre parties. Perhaps the the left-of-centre government will just screw up so badly that a majority of the population will start supporting the Conservatives.<\/p>\n

The main thing is that PR will not keep either side out of power permanently.<\/p>\n

Of course the frequency of Tory governments might change, but which party is it that FPTP actually is favouring?<\/p>\n

Labour.<\/p>\n

At the moment, Labour can get a majority in parliament with about 30% of the votes, while the Tories need close to 40%.<\/p>\n

As an aside, let me point out that most observers would say that sociologically Britain is not less conservative than Denmark, which had right-of-centre governments from 1982 to 1993, and again from 2001. Surely that’s better than what the Tories achieved here under FPTP?<\/p>\n

Also, remember that there are different versions of PR. Some of them would favour Labour slightly, others the LibDems, and still others the Tories. You are in a strong position to choose which one.<\/p>\n

I hope this will make you reconsider your opposition to PR.<\/p>\n

All the best,<\/p>\n

your friend<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Letter from Francestown, February 1856 Originally uploaded by gbaku Dear Tory friends, you might not normally listen to what I’ve got to say, given that I’m a liberal and so on, but I have something to say to you about proportional representation. You want to keep first-past-the-post, because you think it’s the best chance for you to form a government once in a while. You might have heard about Blair’s idea that PR would lead to a “progressive century”. This is based on the idea that Labour […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[95,159,130],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-denmark","category-en","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2441"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2441\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}