Some great points there and I agree with them, apart from Proportional Representation, you only have to look at Israel to see where it goes wrong, can you imagine a right wind Tory government in hock to Reform? Or a left wing government in hock to the far left, and we have enough extremists in this country to make that a distinct possibility.
People should be allowed to vote for whoever they want in a meaningful choice. If that means less than stellar governments then that's what we get. We get the Government that we deserve, every time, for better or worse.
The idea that we should protect democracy by restricting the diversity of political opinion that matters (i.e. are electable) into a sliver of the full range is wrong. You can't protect democracy by restricting it, its arrogant and elitist.
The only caveat to this would be in countries where the electoral system is corrupt due to ballot stuffing or enforced voting or whatever. Obviously that's different, but the UK has no issues with voter fraud or election fraud so its not a problem here.
Give the people exactly what they want and then the system would have done its job. I don't and have never believed that too much democracy results in the lessening of democracy. That's a view generally espoused by those inside the status quo. Why can't we have a serious parties on the far left and right? These are views held within the populace.
I've always considered this a form of cowardice and arrogance. Similar to when people were hawking that the BBC shouldn't let Nick Griffin on Question Time. And they did. And the BNP collapsed. Because nothing hurts these parties more than actually having to debate policy with people who know what they're talking about and are willing to question them.
I'll debate all day long with fascists and communists because I think their ideas are flawed and rooted in poor policy. They are not workable systems. Why people think they need to be hidden away like a dirty secret escapes me. Either people believe that their arguments are not strong enough to overcome them, or they believe that the British people are idiots who cannot recognise good from bad.
I don't have an inbuilt hatred of the people in this country. I think we're generally well educated and generally switched on politically comparatively and people can generally see what a party stands for. I think they can and should be trusted to vote for whoever they want and if we vote in a bad Government then that's on us.
PR is the only way forward for electoral reform. For a country that espouses to the world about how diversity is hugely important to us and has made our country better through new ideas and culture, we then cut a 1% slice of the political spectrum and tell people these are the grounds each party will fight upon. It's hypocritical.
I loved Jeremy Corbyn as a politician, we hold lots of similar views and his early PMQs appearances that he was roundly mocked for, I thought were brilliant. But I hated him as Labour leader because his politics, while admirable, had 0% chance of ever winning a General Election and you can't implement policy if you can't get it through Parliament. We all have to have a cold dose of realism and at that point, I felt Labour was more trying to be philosophers than politicians. Great in the speech circuit, bad in the election. And without power to implement policy, you're basically "an influencer". You know, like Instagram models. Winning is the most important thing for a political party even if its distasteful to admit.
This is not a favourable solution at all. Starmer will win the election and he will pass policy that is to the left of the current Tory policy. But it will be a step to the left and not a jump because its starting to take a generation now for things to change, mainly because the economy tanks when people make huge leaps as the last PM showed. In the last 25 years or so, we've had domination of one party then domination of the other. So it's not like we're a highly efficient political system to begin with, we're tiptoeing between two vaguely similar positions on a 12 year cycle while being petrified of the City.
So I suppose to summarise, I'd say that democracy should be as open and diverse as possible, FPTP has led to tactical voting and voting against interests because they're not winnable, and it has made the country change resistant and created generational reigns for each political party. PR has disadvantages but they're mainly philosophical and based in the idea that people are stupid and will vote for stupid. I'd argue they're not but I'd also argue that if they are and that's what the majority votes for then that's what we should do anyway because that's democracy
