[code][/code]


It would also impact on the quality of our MP's in my opinion, by letting in the lower echelons of the minor parties.

Would our Parliament be improved by having the 82nd best UKIP candidate in it, or the 24th best Green party candidate (given that the leader could barely string 2 sentences together)? How rigorous are the selection policies of the minor parties? How does the 82nd best UKIP candidate compare in experience, education and intellect to the 243rd best Conservative candidate?

I suspect there are a few of their own MP's that the SNP would rather not have in Parliament now, and would have had a more rigorous selection process if they knew they would win 56 seats.

At least with the current system you know exactly which candidate you are casting your vote for.

Who's "we"?

Not really. It was a disaster when it was first implemented in Greece (at the business end of the phalanx) - bringing down the entire Athenian empire within years. The Greeks very quickly discovered that he who controls the flow of information controls the democracy and the entire system was wide open to be "gamed" by the likes of Alcibiades and other such demagogues.

Plato nary had a good word to say about it. Alexander The Great paid little more than lip service. The Romans thought it was quaint etc. etc.

The notion that democracy is self-evidently the finest political system in the world is a relatively new idea. In truth it was the Spartan system which right up until the first World War was universally admired.

Would that we have the original Greek interpretation of representative democracy anyhow - where politicians are selected purely on the strength of their abilities, must balance the books at the end of each year, are forced to account for the actions under direct inquiry from the citizenry, fight at or near the front of the phalanx during war and face the threat of ostracism (or worse) in the event of incompetence.

Politicians these days have it easy.

What it will mean is that instead of our Supreme Court making decisions, based on ECHR agreements. For as long as we remain a member of the EU, then any UK subject will still have the right to appeal to the European Court of Justice. Repealing the Human Rights Act will just help serve the lawyers.

Unless of course, this bunch of misfits really are intent on leaving the EU

This seems to sum things up nicely: www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/econ ... -tree.html

This seems to sum things up nicely: www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/econ ... -tree.html

The HRA was brought in to do exactly the opposite. Too many cases were being taken to the ECHR to overturn a British decision (and mostly under the 1990s Conservative government...), so the principles Cod'ead listed were brought fully into British law in 1998 to enable British courts to consider them and make decisions. Hopefully this would (and probably did) save the exchequer a few pennies by avoiding government lawyers having to schlepp over to Strasbourg to defend a case when it could more easily be done here.

If the HRA is repealed (unless we also decide to withdraw from the convention and join Kazakhstan and Belarus outside it), all that will happen is that millions of £ of public money will be spent defending HR cases outside the UK. It's a knee jerk policy in response to successful applications by people the government don't like, and those applications are based largely on crappy decision making by the government's own staff in the first place.

We do have a "proud and well earned history of justice and ... human rights". Let's not ditch it for the sake of a political soundbite and media crying.

Yep. Our courts can decide these cases and either losing party can ultimately go to the ECJ. In practice there's little point as a group of senior judges has already considered your case and rejected it so you may as well accept the decision. Repealing the HRA will mean that every case can now go there.

Mind you, with all the restrictions to legal aid introduced by that clown Graying and no doubt to be exacerbated by that bigger clown Gove, who the hell would be able to afford to take any cases to our Supreme Court, let alone the ECJ?

What do you mean "the 82nd best UKIP candidate"? I assume you are talking about some sort of list based system where parties MP's are chosen in order of preference from a list drawn up by the parties. If so what makes you think the person at the top of the list isn't the worst candidate of the lot? The fact Farage would be top of the UKIP list rather proves the point.

Also if a party is under-represented compared to it share of the vote, how do you know parliament isn't missing out in the services of some very capable people?

At the moment we have safe seats which are just as bad as list system and require just as much patronage to secure one as getting your name high up on a parties list. Portillo and Balls moments are rare and so the idea FPTP delivers quality compared to a list system doesn't stand up. Safe seats deliver MP's like Grant Schnaps (AKA Mr Green) and Rees-Mogg. With a list idiots like that might find themselves at the foot of it so rather than a list system delivering poor MP's it could do the opposite.

Arguing against PR because the electorate is going to vote in 78 kipper MP's is complete non-starter whether you use a pure list based system, STV, AV or AV-plus. It is just anti-democratic.

In any case just because the kippers got 12% of the vote under FPTP doesn't mean that is how things would have turned out under a PR system. Quite often you see stats published that say "If the electorate vote as they did in 2015 then under PR the seats won would be....". It's total rubbish because under PR you wouldn't get tactical voting.

As to think an MP has to his constituency is this really so strong? I'd never heard of our ex-Tory MP Stephen Mosley (I think he came from outside Cheshire) before he was the candidate in 2010.

I think some people are getting a bit carried away with thinking the Tories can just push through whatever they want now that they have a majority.

But in a way their position is actually weaker now than in 2010-2015.
The Tory-Lib Dem government had a majority of 33.
The new Tory government has a majority of just 6.

The Lib Dems jumped in with the Tories so willingly that there was never a chance of them bringing down a major Tory proposal, as they'd all been agreed to in the formation of the Coalition and the Lib Dems were determined to not be the ones who broke up the Coalition.

With the Lib Dems licking their wounds and the SNP very anti-Tory, there's probably a much higher chance of a controversial Tory proposal being beaten.

Actually, most people when asked about why they voted Tory said that they didn't feel that Milliband was Prime Minister material and/or they were frightened of the SNP. Even so, Labour's share of the vote actually increased slightly. Practically nobody mentioned the factors you list.

It's also worth remembering that the majority of UK voters were happy to vote for a party other than the Tories. They may have a narrow majority of MPs thanks to our crackpot electoral system but they command the support of a minority of the population.

Labour lost the election by sitting on their hands for 4 years waiting for the wheels to come off the Coalition, then panicking and producing an ill-thought-out and uninspiring campaign that failed to present a compelling alternative to the status quo.

Most right-wingers have a weak grasp of the realities of Parliament. And of pretty much everything else for that matter.

3.9580078125:5