PR and extremists

[ewx]

A few people have expressed the objection to PR that it might lead to BNP MPs (I think twelve is the figure currently being bandied around). Rather than repeat my responses to that each time someone says it:

1. Some of the BNP votes may be protest votes. The BNP vote might very well turn out to be less in a situation where they might actually get seats.
2. FPTP doesn’t actually possess some magical anti-BNP property. It just happens not to give them any MPs because of the way their support is currently spread. That situation isn’t guaranteed to persist.
3. Choosing an electoral system to disadvantage a specific party is fundamentally dishonest. There are lots of better reasons people say they like FPTP, even if they aren’t persuasive to me. (I know this is the Internet and so everyone who disagrees is assumed to be arguing in bad faith, but let’s ignore that for a moment.)
4. A handful of ineffectual extremist MPs publicly making idiots of themselves is a reasonable price for a fair voting system (whatever you think a fair voting system looks like). I think that as well as being predisposed to ineffectiveness, the other parties would tend to cooperate to deny them any real power (because supporting them would be electoral poison).

Arguably we already have some extremists (of various kinds) in Parliament already, you just don’t find out they’re an extremist until they make a politically unwise outburst.

Is this academic, since the most we’ll get is a referendum on AV (which is electoral reform but isn’t PR)? Maybe, but I think that even a lost referendum would keep the electoral reform debate open in the medium term, so (if extremist support remains near current levels) the point will remain relevant.

I need a politics userpic.

Comments

[gerald_duck]

Yes, some of the BNP votes may be protest votes, but equally some people may be inhibited from voting for the BNP because they don't think the BNP can win and prefer to vote tactically.

FPTP does have a "magical" anti-minority-party property. Yes, by concentrating support in a handful of constituencies it is possible to get an MP with an arbitrarily small share of the vote (in theory), and we might get unlucky and have one or two BNP MPs once in a while, in the same way we currently have a Green MP, but there is still a systematic bias against small parties that have no regional emphasis. I would argue that this bias is good. You might argue it's bad, but I don't think you can argue it doesn't exist.

If choosing an electoral system to disadvantage a specific party is fundamentally dishonest, what about choosing one to advantage a specific party? I say that's just as dishonest. Now, disadvantage or advantage compared with what? If the status quo, that's a strong argument about changing to an electoral system that predominantly and massively benefits the LibDems. If not compared with the status quo then presumably compared with some metric of fairness — but which and why?

Yes, nine times out of ten an extremist will be simply sidelined. But what about the time when their support for some issue might be make-or-break? How do we feel about the fact that the Conservatives might attempt a minority government in which they have to keep the DUP sweet, for example?


Also, my main concern about PR is that I do think strong majority governments are a good thing and favour a system that's biased in favour of them. People keep trying to tell me that I'm wrong to think it, citing examples of coalitions that have worked. They say "Relax, plenty of countries have coalition governments. Sometimes the coalition takes six or nine months to hammer out, but they get there eventually."

If successful government by coalition is genuinely potentially compatible with the UK's political psyche, perhaps we should get good at it before consigning ourselves to hung parliaments in perpetuity, not after?

[fanf]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acerbo_Law (dangerously near to Godwin's law!)

I note that we have been trying out PR in Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, where it has worked OK.

[nunfetishist.livejournal.com]

And in fact the British demanded PR in Ireland as a condition of independence.

[gerald_duck]

Er… surely those are arguments against PR?

At least, given a sufficiently cynical stance, they're consistent with the view that PR is bad for a nation or region that uses it. Mussolini was arguably worse for everyone else than he was for Italy, and it's not evident that the UK had Ireland's best wishes at heart when granting it independence. (-8

[fanf]

The reference to the Acerbo law was in reply to the first part of your comment, about making special laws for or against particular political parties. Nothing to do with PR.

Ireland has political problems but these are due to corrupt government and weak parliamentary oversight, not PR. The reason for PR in Ireland (originally) and in Northern Ireland (now) is to avoid unfair representation for nationalists versus unionists (etc.) and it has succeeded magnificently at that.

[gerald_duck]

So maybe the question is: are we in the UK more scared of political paralysis and indecision or of getting taken over by a malevolent dictator? It seems PR protects against the latter, and majority-promoting electoral systems (whether FPTP, some kind of thresholded PR-STV, or a "gamma-corrected" system) protect against the former.

Or maybe it's possible to protect against both. Or neither.

[fanf]

Where is the evidence of PR causing paralysis and indecision?