Election fever - May 2011

23-Apr-11 - This is not a political blog, of course, but there's been such a lot of hot air about the referendum on the voting system that I did a bit of research to try and find some semblance of the truth. The way I see it is this: leaving aside the lunatic fringe parties, let's say that you have a three-cornered fight between Lib, Lab and Con. One of the candidates gets 32% of the vote, one gets 33% and one gets 34%. This last candidate wins, even though two-thirds of the electorate manifestly did not want him or her. Is that democracy? According to my researches, more than 400 MPs (that's two-thirds) now sitting in the Commons didn't get 50% of the vote at the last general election, so whom do they represent? According to the Electoral Reform Society 382 MPs  are in 'safe' seats, effectively with jobs for life, even though most of them didn't get 50% of the vote, leaving 25 million voters disenfranchised. If you live, as I do, in a 'safe' seat and if you want to vote for anyone other than the sitting member you might as well tear up your ballot paper and put it in the bin.

I used to believe that it was the voter's responsibility in a general election to vote for the strongest candidate against the sitting member regardless of party, in the hope that it might remind sitting members that we are the bosses, not them, but it'll never happen of course: there are too many 'clockwork' voters who don't even think about it and vote the way their parents voted, or, indeed, on 'class' lines. Some years ago I was in Spain on the day of their General Election and I put this point of view to a local businessman. He smiled apologetically and replied "Señor - it is a nice idea, but if you get rid of the sitting member, you send away the man who already have the bag full." Wise words, perhaps, as we've seen in recent years there have been plenty of 'full bags' with the sitting members - some not sitting any more, indeed.

And then there are the local elections? Who to vote for? What I want is the fiscal policies of the Conservative Party, the social policies of the Labour Party and the Foreign policies of the Liberal Party. I can't have that, of course, so I vote for the candidate, regardless of party, who lives nearest to me, so that if I want something done I can go and bang on his or her door and put my point of view. Not that I ever have, but I refuse to vote for anyone who doesn't live in the ward.

Politicians should be local people who live in the constituency or ward, and have lived there for at least five years before being eligible to stand. The party system, however, ensures that obedient apparatchiks who will slavishly follow the party whip can be effortlessly 'parachuted' into safe seats, 'representing' constituencies about which they know nothing.

So, in my book, anything which shakes parliament up and makes MPs more accountable to the voters is a good thing. You can probably guess which way I shall be voting.