Wednesday 16 February 2011

There Is An Alternative

It is good to see the Lords functioning as a House of Parliament rather than as a club for the convenience of its members. One of them has to. A No vote or the loss of this Bill would mean the end of the Coalition, a comfortable Labour win, and at least five years of Ed Miliband as Prime Minister. Even with First Past The Post in place, I do not think that the Conservative Party could survive that.

But then, nor could either of the others. The end of First Past The Post would be the long-overdue end of the existing parties, as such. Perhaps not immediately, although perhaps so. But very rapidly. Metropolitan, capitalist social liberals could never again impose themselves on rural or provincial, protectionist, socially conservative areas. There would be two substantial parties of conservative patriots, one with Tory roots and the other with Labour roots, at least one of which would always be in government at any given time. Bring it on.
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4 comments:

  1. Anonymous16 February 2011 at 23:08

    "A No vote or the loss of this Bill would mean the end of the Coalition, a comfortable Labour win, and at least five years of Ed Miliband as Prime Minister."

    The Lib Dems will not risk an election on their current poll ratings.

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  2. David Lindsay16 February 2011 at 23:12

    Being in government doesn't matter to them. It's not why anyone ever joined the Lib Dems. The SDP, in its early days. But not the Liberal Party for a very long time. And not the Lib Dems, ever. Whereas being in government is the only reason why anyone ever joined the Conservative Party.

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  3. Anonymous17 February 2011 at 00:10

    Our people could expect an awful lot of second and third preferences. With fringe figures eliminated early on, we could really get somewhere with this. Your last sentence is spot on. STV would be better, but it is not on the ballot paper. Did you hear Prescott on Newsnight, scorning the fact that the Australian Labor Party has to rely on "two farmers"?

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  4. David Lindsay17 February 2011 at 00:25

    And Paxman, saying that no one in the Lords had been elected "by any mechanism whatever". Er, 92 of them have been, actually.

    I agree with everything that you say.

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