From The Evening Standard:
Unelected Baroness Warsi is to issue a direct plea to London's ethnic communities to oppose Britain's* First-Past-The-Post voting system by giving a speech near the site of brief skirmish which took place seventy-five years ago.
The Tory Party co-chairman will give an address tomorrow at Toynbee Hall in Whitechapel, close to Cable Street which saw a brief skirmish between pro and anti-fascist demonstrators on a Sunday afternoon in 1936. A few East Londoners took to the streets to oppose a march by a few of Oswald Mosley's blackshirts, setting up barricades and clashing with police trying to maintain order.
Lady Warsi will argue that First-Past-The-Post puts pressure on the two mainstream parties to adopt the policies of extremist parties like the BNP in order to secure the tactical votes of natural BNP supporters who are realistic enough to accept that the BNP are unlikely to ever win a seat. She will point out that the first-past-the-post system has served generations of immigrants badly.
Aides said the issue was of personal importance to Lady Warsi, a patron of "No to FPTP" who failed to win the seat of Dewsbury in the 2005 general election - the only election she ever fought before being elevated to the House of Lords as a token coloured woman - where the BNP secured 5,066 votes - more than the difference between the winning candidate and her own turnout.
"Under AV, it is quite possible that many of these BNP voters would have reluctantly given the Tory candidate, i.e. me, their second vote and I would have been duly elected," the Tory appointee will sigh wistfully, "You wouldn't believe how thick they are."
* There's no such place as "Britain", there's an island called "Great Britain", and the political unit they are referring to is more correctly referred to as "The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland".
So What Will Be Done About The Officer?
1 hour ago
16 comments:
Mark, you need to remove the italics from the first paragraph and/or correct the text: "oppose a change in Britain's voting system" is correct, you have "to oppose Britain's* First-Past-The-Post voting system" which is factually incorrect.
P.S. Guido points out a rather amusing FAIL for AV by the BBC trying their best to 'big-it-up'.
SO, Guido is, frankly, a traditional Tory-cum-Faux Libertarian.
"Baroness Warsi is to issue a direct plea to London's ethnic communities "
I don't know why politicians bother to give speeches at all these days when everyone knows what they are going to say before they have said it.
Anyway, who needs a voting system when your mates can hoist you into Parliament without the need for a vote, eh?
B, I've arranged to post a comment agreeing with your every word.
Surely "Britain" is a very common shorthand for "The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland". After all, we are British subjects/citizens and our government is usually referred to as the British government.
To refer to the whole as "Great Britain" (as, for example, with the Olympic team) is infinitely more ignorant.
C, yes, the government is referred to as 'British' and in your passport it says 'British Citizen' - but that's an adjective and there is simply no such place as 'Britain'. If they mean 'UK" then say 'UK' (which would be more accurately referred to as 'UQ').
I take your point on "Team GB", the problem is that people born in Northern Ireland can compete for either the Irish team or the GB team, it's all a bit tricky. I think we call it 'Team GB" so as not to offend the Irish team (fair enough).
Warsi is an excrescence with no valid reason for her position. Why would anyone listen anyway?
AV is not good for small parties, those ballots are redistributed to larger parties and it does not address the wasted vote concept because the first pref may do reasonably well and then the second is not counted.
JH, I dunno.
Den, we've been through this, AV is better for small parties than FPTP, end of discussion.
BE, do Scotland and N Ireland not have FPTP for Westminster elections?
Why does Warsi think the BNP votes would go to any Tory candidate?
The BNP is a working class party, competing directly with the Labour party.
UKIP votes probably would go to the Tories. David Cameron may not be as stupid as I thought!
"UKIP votes probably would go to the Tories"
Why would a UKIPper give any vote to the Conservatives? Dave decided long ago that party members who are not "progressive modern Conservatives" (© Francis Maude) can, in effect, f*** themselves since, in his not so humble opinion, he didn't and doesn't need them. Accordingly, and I assume MW can confirm or deny this, most of today's UKIPpers, who would have settled comfortably in the pre-Cameroon Conservative Party, have, in fact, migrated from there to UKIP.
BTW I received yesterday some literature from an organisation ("Yes to Fairer Votes") whose effort to persuade me to vote Yes comprised, in effect, a selection of photos of luvvies who support AV (Stephen Fry, Joanna Lumley etc) together with - in technicolour print - three fatuous (and incorrect) claims as to why AV is wonderful. If anything is calculated to turn off anyone with a modicum of common sense and a reasonably open mind (yeah, all 68 of us in London at the last count) it's demonstrating that the celebrity pall-bearers in the long funeral of what used to be a wonderful country support a change in the voting system so that Vince Cable can have a permanent spot as government spokesman on Today.
J, it was a spoof article.
U, as to wether lots of people will vote UKIP first, Tory second, there is only one way to find out. Also agreed, Yes2AV literature is a bit crap, they let themselves down badly there.
"AV is better for small parties than FPTP, end of discussion"
It may be better at maximising the number of votes cast for them, but it's not necessarily better at actually letting them win seats. Sarah Lucas would not have been elected under AV (not that I have any time for her or the Greens, but you see the point).
In fact it's often argued that AV will tend to encourage all electable parties to select bland, middle-of-the-road candidates and thus reduce the range of opinions represented in Parliament. See my recent comment re Dr Sarah Wollaston, who is nominally a Conservative but is arguing in favour of draconian restrictions on alcohol advertising.
BE, I think this gives the definitive, historical answer:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/14/Nations_of_the_UK.png/400px-Nations_of_the_UK.png
C, she's called Caroline Lucas, and maybe she wouldn't have done. I do not imagine that the final make-up of the House of Commons will change much under AV, but it will be nice for people to able to cast more protest votes with a 'safety' vote for the least-bad candidate.
B, sure, but it's always been called 'Great Britain' which is a big island and not 'Britain'. In any event, I don't even like 'Great Britain' because although geographically and politically correct, this name was imposed on us by the bloody Normans.
She omits mention of the fact that the BNP are with her calling for a No vote.
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