How we can smash Britain’s two-party system for good at the next election | George Monbiot
www.theguardian.com
Labour is beyond repair. Time for a co-ordinated strategy to support progressive parties committed to electoral reform, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot

George Monbiot suggests that Labour shouldn’t be supported because they’re now pushing right-wing policies, in his view.

So he thinks people should tactically support progressive parties who support electoral reform (Lib Dems, Greens, SNP, Plaid Cymru), which may hopefully then lead to electoral reform, so that we end up with proportional representation. Then Brits will have more choices than effectively just two parties for future elections.

Thoughts?

  • kux@lemm.ee
    21·
    11 days ago

    honestly don’t favour proportional rep in the house of commons, this opinion was cemented during the last election when a handful of prominent independent local candidates took their seat, and some nearly did (wes streeting’s constituency in particular). this could not happen with party list type PR. i like the principle of a local connection to an area and wouldn’t like to lose that (i know candidates get parachuted in etc but in principle)

    I would prefer ranked choice voting for constituency seats, and apply PR to the house of lords instead. you could do this by counting votes for two purposes, so your vote for the local MP candidate also gets added to their party’s % seats in the lords. e.g. your vote for bob smith (green) gets added to his local count, as well as his party’s % allocation of lords

    this is a half baked idea tbh but i quite like it so far

    • gedhrel@lemmy.world
      2·
      11 days ago

      There are ranked choice PR systems, like STV.

      Of course if we did get PR here it’d be the worst version that preserves the power of whips to hand out sinecures.

      • kux@lemm.ee
        2·
        11 days ago

        true but stv is multi winner so i don’t think it works for a single winner local mp like e.g. irv would

        i’m not necessarily opposed to the various alternatives to fptp but essentially i would want to preserve locals ability to elect a person rather than a party, obviously party would inform their choice

        if we did get PR here etc

        also probably + sadly true

        • gedhrel@lemmy.world
          2·
          11 days ago

          Yeah, STV requires macro-wards that return several members. It does preserve candidate locality however.

          You could always season with a pinch of AMS if you wanted to continue the whipping system (which frankly is as much of a mess as FPTP).

          • kux@lemm.ee
            2·
            11 days ago

            sure. i will have to read up on that but basically if it doesn’t prevent a locally known + liked candidate getting elected on local issues i wouldn’t be against it