The UK Election!!!!

Once more, I lost track of time and neglected to apply for a postal vote, so I can't vote this time. I get to read the news about a British election, and sit through a near simultaneous general election here in the Czech Republic, and I'm not allowed to vote for either. Oh well, thank god for an electoral system where my vote is pretty irrelevant anyway!I would probably have voted Labour, not because I'm a particularly big supporter, but because the constituency in which I was intended on trying to register is a long-time Labour seat (ever since 1928), and I'm perturbed by the, however unlikely, possibility that dissatisfaction with the government would see it turn Tory.However, the seat in which I was actually legally entitled to register is in Liverpool, where the Conservatives regularly finish fourth or fifth (there are more than three parties!), so there's no danger of a Tory win. My vote there would have depended on trying to find local opinion polls. If it seemed likely that the sitting MP, Jane Kennedy, could lose, then I'd throw my vote to the Lib Dems simply to unseat her. Otherwise it would be a protest vote, probably for the Greens. I pay attention to the specific candidates as well as parties, though sometimes it seems necessary to vote for a candidate you oppose because of the way it would affect the makeup of Parliament (the Labour candidate I was intending on voting for, for example, is an insult to parliamentary democracy and definitely one of the least worthwhile MPs in the Commons, but I still would have voted for him even if the Conservative candidate seemed decent; in order to make a Conservative government less likely).I'm in the minority, though, and the majority vote strictly by party. Strong personalities, however, do make a difference, and seats can be won by a person instead of a party. Anti-war sentiment was strong in Bethnal Green at the last election, for example, but the Respect Coalition still probably wouldn't have won if not for the media personality of George Galloway.Edited by caffeine, : No reason given.

A vote for Labour in a Tory safe seat, especially one in which the Lib Dems are the second party, is even more wasted than the average. What's the point? Even if you think they are the best of the parties likely to get into government, a vote for them will in no way make this more likely.If the Lib Dems have a realistic chance of winning, then voting for them will do more to increase the likelihood of a Labour government than voting for Labour. If they don’t have a realistic chance, and you wish the Greens were a more viable choice, then vote Green. Obviously they won’t win the seat, but the higher their percentage of the national vote the more realistic they look as a party, and the more people consider them a worthwhile vote. This won’t make a difference where you live, but it might win them a seat somewhere like Brighton Pavillion, where they do have a realistic chance.More votes for little parties also means more exposure in other ways — party political broadcasts on the BBC, for example, are partially divided up based on previous performance in elections. And even if all this fails, an increase in the votes for smaller parties causes the larger parties to move closer to their policies, at least superficially, in order to win those voters over in the marginals where they really matter.Edited by caffeine, : No reason given.

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An internal vote of the members of the party. In the case of the Labour party specifically this includes some complicated union voting that I don't understand.

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The public in general don't have any direct say at all for any of the parties. Which I guess was the gist of your question.

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The Labour party used to give a third of the vote to the constituency parties, a third to the parliamentary party and a third to Labour affiliated unions, but this was changed in the 90s to one-member-one-vote for all party members. Note that the accuracy of that sentence is contingent on me accurately remembering the things I studied about 8 years ago, and there's no guarantee of that.And the public in general can have a say, if they want. Party membership is open, and I knew someone who was a member of both Labour and the Tories, specifically to vote in leadership elections. You do have to pay dues, though.Edited by caffeine, : typo

Personally, I wouldn't consider any of them foreign, but you don't have to be foreign to want your own country. The Irish don't seem foreign either. An English parliament would be a bit superfluous. 529 of the 646 seats in the House of Commons (82%) are English. If you wanted to give the English more self-governance, regional assemblies make more sense, but I don't think the cost of these is justified.All that's really necessary is to change the law so that Scottish and Irish MPs can't vote on legislation which only applies to England and Wales. This would only need a bill about a paragraph long, and is impossible to rationally argue against, so it frustrates me no end that it hasn't been done.

I went to a Catholic school in a former mining town, so well over half the kids at school, myself included, had Irish parents or grandparents. makes it hard to see them as foreign!ABE: Interestingly, despite the close ties between the two countries, the shared language and the huge proportion of Brits with recent Irish ancestry, Irish elections are almost totally ignored in Britain. We pay more attention to French elections (Presidential ones, anyway). Yes - it certainly has affected legislation. The way it's affected it, in my opinion, is the reason Labour have made no moves to correct the situation.Labour's Scottish MPs are quite loyal to the party leadership on the whole,
I think because the more rebellious and independent types in the party run for the Scottish Parliament instead nowadays. Most of them supported the government during the big backbench rebellions over controversial reforms. The healthcare reform bill that established foundation hospitals and the higher education bill that changed university fees would both have failed to pass if not for the votes of Scottish MPs. This is a ridiculous situtation, as neither reform applied to Scotland - the Scottish Parliament has repsonsibility for health and education there.I'm too out of touch with British poitics to know the parties' current positions on it.Edited by caffeine, : added in bit about Irish elections

I got impatient.

To paraphrase clients who were in our office recently:"I'm quite surprised by this country. No-one speaks English, and they won't accept American dollars!"Yes, what a bizarre place, where not everyone speaks your foreign language and you can't pay for things with foreign currency. Must be a big change from America.

So I just took the time to actually look at the results of the last election properly, and it seems I was a bit confused. The seat I was trying to register in will never go Tory. He seems to be one of the very few MPs to actually have an absolute majority, and was one of even fewer Labour MPs to increase vote share last election. The seat I should be voting in, however, actually seriously does have a chance of being lost to the Lib Dems. I could have helped kick Jane Kennedy out of Parliament if only I wasn't so disorganised.

In order to properly understand this, I think it's important to appreciate that this sort of attitude is partly a prerational, cultural thing - like supporting a football team you were bought up to hate (no offense intended towards your choice of party, Granny Magda, I'm not saying your political choices are irrational!). I was brought up learning children's rhymes about Margaret Thatcher's death. The thought of voting Tory provokes a strong, negative emotional reaction entirely seperate from the thought of any policies they'd enact.As for the separate question of how to make a fairer voting system without severing the link people have with a local MP, the answer seems obvious. A ower house elected proportionally, an upper house elected by single-member constiuencies. With the upper house not playing a role in the formation of government, it will make local MPs more responsive to their constituents' needs, as the party whip would no longer matter so much. It instantly solves the never-ending question of when Lords reform is going to be completed as well.

For me, voting Lib Dem is voting tactically, and that's what I was advising Kitsune to do as well. It's knowledge of the Lib Dems increase in support which makes a tactical vote for them in these not-quite-marginal seats where they're the second party worthwhile.An increase in uncertainty doesn't render tactical voting moot. Regardless of an increase in new, unpredictable voters, some things are fairly certain. Consider the result in Liverpool West Derby in 2005:Labour: 62.8%
Liberal Democrat: 12.9%
Liberal: 11.8%
Conservative: 8.4%or Liverpool Walton:Labour: 72.8%
Liberal Democrat: 15.6 %
Conservative: 5.9%
UKIP: 4%It's evident that the Conservatives are not going to win in either of these seats (or anywhere else in Liverpool, for that matter). Taking facts like this into consideration is what tactical voting is all about.

If you're thinking tactically, then being aware that the seat has no competition is important, because that means your best bet really is to vote for your favoured party, even if they routinely get about 0.3% of the vote.If these is competition though, you need to know what it is! There's a big difference depending on whether you're in a Tory-Labour marginal, a Labour-Lib Dem marginal or a Tory-Lib Dem marginal; or whether you're in one of the few seats the Greens have an outside chance of snatching, or whether there's a charismatic independent standing who could get elected etc. etc.

Bear in mind that a lot of votes for the Lib Dems generally means less seats than the same number would for Labour or the Tories, because their support is too evenly spread. In 1983 Labour beat the Liberal/SPD Alliance by less than 1% of the popular vote, but they outnumbered them in Parliament by more than ten to one (did I already bring this u

They'll certainly get some, but swings in the Lib Dem direction need to be bigger to make an impact. If we imagine that every seat everywhere saw a swing of 1% away from the sitting candidate towards the Lib Dems, this would only win them 2 seats (Guildford and Edinburgh South). If the same thing happened to the Tories, on the other hand, they'd gain 15 seats.The most recent poll I can find has the Lib Dems on 33%. This would be a 14.7% increase in their support since 2005 if they actually translated it into votes. Using the vastly oversimplified method of just looking at seats in which Lib Dems are the second party and the winner has a majority of less than 14.7%, this would win them an additional 45 seats, so their third of the vote would still mean only 15% of Parliament. It would still be the most successful Lib Dem election result ever.Note that my counting doesn't take into account the boundary changes or any of the real complexities of multiparty politics and local differences, so don't pay too much attention to this.

You know, I disagreed with Legend at first, but having read through the debate he's got a very good point. Our MPs are not experts. Many of them know bugger all about economics, many haven't the faintest understanding of science, and plenty don't know the first thing about education. They aren't some elite of philosopher kings - the only talent required to get where most of them are is the ability to convince your party to pick you as a candidate.The experts are in the civil service. These are the ones who actually draft most legislation, not parliamentarians. MPs are frequently ignorant and stupid, just like everybody else. This is the honourable member for Bosworth's learned opinion on the need for the NHS to take astrology into account more, lifted straight from Hansard:

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In 2001 I raised in the House the influence of the moon, on the basis of the evidence then that at certain phases of the moon there are more accidents. Surgeons will not operate because blood clotting is not effective and the police have to put more people on the street.

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I am arguing for more research. I have been criticised for raising the subject, but the criticism is generally based on a misunderstanding. It is based on the idea that I am talking about the stuff that we see in the newspapers about star sign astrology, but I am not. I am talking about a long-standing discipline-an art and a science-that has been with us since ancient Egyptian, Roman, Babylonian and Assyrian times. It is part of the Chinese, Muslim and Hindu cultures. Criticism is deeply offensive to those cultures, and I have a Muslim college in my constituency.

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The opposition is based on what I call the SIP formula-superstition, ignorance and prejudice. It tends to be based on superstition, with scientists reacting emotionally, which is always a great irony. They are also ignorant, because they never study the subject and just say that it is all to do with what appears in the newspapers, which it is not, and they are deeply prejudiced, and racially prejudiced too, which is troubling.

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Who were you planning on voting for who wouldn't say something banal and friendly about the Pope's visit? Traditional Unionist Voice, perhaps?