A new Special Interest

Here in the UK, a General Election has been called for 6th May.

In the grand scheme of things, I’m not very big on politics. However, whenever a general election happens, I end up getting very drawn into it all, with very set views all of a sudden.

I’m a liberal. Not out of choice or even out of spending great deals of time pouring over policies. I just am. I guess I was born that way – my ideals align with them rather better than any of their rivals.

The voting system in the UK does not favour the Liberal Democrat party which is where my voting intentions lie. We use a ‘first past the post’ system that skews and twists the will of the electorate wildly. In recent elections, the Lib Dems have typically polled approximately 20% of the votes, but taken only 10% of the parliamentary seats. The two larger parties – Labour (currently in power) and the Conservatives take the lion’s share of the remainder of the votes and the seats. It is, however entirely possible for one of the two big parties to win a majority of seats with fewer than a third of the popular vote.

It’s no surprise then, that voting reform has always been one of the big pledges of the Lib Dems, and one of the political causes that I support with a passion when there is an election in full swing. It’s the lack of logic in the current system that I despise.

Something unusual has happend in the last week of the current campaign. For the first time, there has been a televised debate between the the Labour, Conservative and Lib Dem leaders. The Lib Dem leader, Nick Clegg did something unexpected and refreshing. He talked about his parties policies and how they differed from the ‘old’ policies of his rivals. His rivals squabbled amongst themselves. Nick Clegg ‘won’ the debate – snap polls immediately after the event had around 50% of people thinking he won the arguments.

Wow! The Lib Dems have now risen from around 20% to around 30% in the opinion polls, very similar ratings to the two big parties. But here is where it all goes wrong again.  Let’s look at one single, but reasonably representitive poll carried out this week:

Liberal Democrat: 33%, Conservative: 32%, Labour 26%

Based on an average distribution of ‘swing’ from one party to another across the country, this would give the following predicted break down of seats in parliament, if the above figures held on election day:

Liberal Democrat: 134, Conservative: 244, Labour: 243

Ugh! Not only do the Lib Dems end up with approximately 45% fewer seats than either of the other two parties, but Labour, who have less of the popular vote than either of the other two actually end up with the most seats, although not enough to rule on their own – it would be a hung parliament.

That TV debate has been something of a catalyst for me, and I’m now heavily absorbed in what is going on. My search for information – typically via the Internet – is now quite time consuming each day, and my quest for further knowledge seems to have no bounds – my brain is like a big sponge trying to take in everything I can find. I smell a new Special Interest in the making.

The Lib Dems cannot win this election. They do however seem to have captured the public mood right now, where people are fed up of the old style politics and politicians. They can’t win, but the Lib Dems can force a change. If there is a hung parliament – and it looks very likely right now – then they would hold a lot of power, by forming an alliance with either Labour or the Conservatives to allow a government to be formed. It’s likely that part of that power would allow them to ask the populace if they’d like to see a change in the way voting works.

Who knows – maybe by the time the next general election comes round, a fairer and rather more proportional voting system might be in place. I for one have my fingers crossed.

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