"Extremists" Are As "Extremists" Do

Imagine if each of the 99 areas having a Lord Lieutenant elected six Senators and (grouped into nine elevens, depending on the relative size of the electorate) between two and ten MPs, always by means of voting for one candidate, with the requisite number declared elected at the end. Or if 594 Senators were still thus elected, plus a further six (who would have to be Independents and thus Cross Benchers) on a national basis, with the Commons elected by dividing the country into 100 constituencies with equally sized electorates, and with MPs elected by, again, voting for one candidate with the top six declared elected at the end.

No mountains of spoiled papers. No disenfranchisement of rural ares, especially not under the first scheme. No ridiculous spectacle of people losing their seats to members of the same party as themselves. But always the maximum possible one sixth of the seats in each House (under the second system), and so probably always the single largest party in each. And real Labourites, real Tories and real Liberals in Parliament, delivered by other new mass membership parties with, like us, endless links to wider civil society at all levels of both.

Plus extremists? Well, Respect is breaking up anyway, and not of its constituent parts or anything like them would stand much hope, except perhaps in parts of Scotland depending on exactly how the realignment of parties worked out, so it is rather unlikely even there. The second scheme might produce up to 11 BNP MPs, but probably not even that, and certainly no BNP Senators. Six Sinn Fein Senators and however many MPs, but no real change there. Likewise, the DUP, plus perhaps one or two UDP/PUP types under the second scheme. Scottish and Welsh opponents of or doubters about the Union, as at present.

And we could actually clear out most or all of the current extremists in Parliament: the old Stalinists and Trotskyists in or around the Euston Manifesto Group, and the old stooges of apartheid South Africa and Pinochet's Chile in or around the Henry Jackson Society, currently discharging their parliamentary responsibilities under the day to day direction of a cabal of crooks and cranks across the Atlantic. Treason. And treason that has already condemned Britain to the two most disastrous wars (to date) in her history.

No party actually founded on such principles would get anywhere at all. And anyway, where is that party?

Frit.