Saturday, April 17, 2010

Leader's Debate: voters do not choose the PM

Thing about the  Leader's Debate (congratulations to Nick Clegg btw) is that it compounds the illusion that in a General Election the public gets to vote for the Prime Minister. This is not so. You get to vote for your MP, and only about 1 in 3 of the electorate have a real chance of affecting the outcome, the rest are in safe seats. The MPs get to choose the Prime Minister.

Reasons to gang up on the Tories #1 : they oppose electoral reform.

3 comments:

David Cox said...

There is a BPIX poll in tomorrow’s Mail on Sunday puts the Liberal Democrats in the lead! CON 31%(-7), LAB 28%(-3), LDEM 32%(+12). Sadly I don’t think it will last.

Talking about PR in the past has always sounded both self-serving and boring. Yet if the UK voted this way the Lib Dems would get the smallest of number of MPs and Labour the largest. Suddenly people are waking up to the fact that the FPTP system is frankly corrupt.

So thanks for being gracious to Nick Clegg, and avoiding the churlishness of some Greens. If (and it is still a big if) Clegg kicks down the door, Greens will be coming through too.

(Thanks for the info BTW, must talk after the election about Equality Trust group for the SW).

DocRichard said...

Hi David
Will it last? I hope so. The electorate is in a mood to rebel, so hopefully they will stay with it.
My only worry is that the LDs will lose the commitment to RP (or should that be STV) in the negotiations for coalition.
Regards
Richard

David Cox said...

Well it's up to ordinary party members to make sure our leaders keep the faith. I’m not being negative here, but Lib Dems should learn from the Irish Greens’ experience going in to coalition with FF.