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‘Proportional representation will lead to better politics’, Labour conference told
(leftfootforward.org)
this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2023
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I reckon if you get a system where, say, 6-8 constituencies are merged into one, and then vote for the same number of MPs as the number of constituencies merged, you'd avoid any serious issues with cockblocking. 6-8 constituencies in the same geographic area would have largely similar populations with similar voting patterns, especially if care is taken during the merging phase to group them well, so no party could cockblock the entire constituency. The MPs would then represent the whole new, larger constituency, so that anyone living in that constituency can deal with an MP of the party of their choice, rather than having a specific MP assigned to a specific town.
And maybe it's just because I live in a rural area where I've got to travel across constituency lines to get to many amenities, so I'm used to considering a fairly wide geographic area to be my "local" area... but I really wouldn't care if I had to travel 15 miles to see a Labour MP, rather than 5 miles to see a Tory one. The town 15 miles away has all the same problems as the one 5 miles away, so it's not like the Labour MP wouldn't "get" it if I went to them saying "hey, I've got this problem going on, can you help?"
The other issue you get when you batch MPs to an area is that the party in power will get a lot more work than the other parties. If you are going to write to an MP and you have a choice then you will either choose one that is aligned with the topic. or choose the one with the most power.
That's kind of already the case, though? When the MP is of a party that's in government, they probably already get more letters from constituents, because there's an expectation that they can do more because they have more power (often not actually the case, though). But people have all kinds of reasons for contacting an MP, and all kinds of criteria for selecting who they'd rather deal with: whoever is geographically closest if they need an in-person appointment, whoever is in the right party, whoever has voiced an opinion the person agrees with, whoever has spoken up on the issue the person needs help with... It would all balance out more than you'd expect.
The problem with not having it district-wide is that say one party got an entitlement to one MP. That would mean that over the entire region, they got approximately 15% of the vote. Over a constituency with 6-8 MPs, it's fine that 15% of the population get represented by 15% of the MPs. But if that single MP is assigned to a specific 1/6th of the constituency, that constituency is then 100% represented by a party that only 15% voted for, which is actually less democratic than the current system at a local level, even if nationally it's more representative.
I think we both agree there will never be a perfect solution. For myself I would take on most things so long as we remove the FPTP system and not adopt any other system that has the same flaws.
Yep, we definitely completely agree on that! PR has its flaws, but FPTP is much worse.