Britain Should Change Its Voting System To Proportional Representation

My opponent makes the point. "Due to the political situation in Britain and the total lack of ability for the two main parties to cooperate this will likely give increased power to minority political parties, particularly the DUP, LD, UKIP, PC, GP and SNP. None of these parties are supported by anything like the majority of British people and this will likely result in both unpopular and unrepresentative governments. " He claims these governments would be unrepresentative, however they would be voted for by the majority of the British people. That means at least half of the voting public would have a party in government in which they voted for. He also claims that these governments would be unpopular. However with the current voting system in Britain we have extremely unpopular governments. The current Conservative led government is miserably unpopular, for most of David Cameron's years as Prime Minister his government was very unpopular, as was Gordon Brown's government before him and in the later years of Tony Blair's government he was very unpopular. For instance between August 2005 and mid 2007 when Tony Blair resigned he did not get a single positive poll rating by any major UK pollsters. Even before then the polls were on average very negative. This is not to claim coalition governments would not be unpopular but that non-coalition government can be just as unpopular and their is no real reason why a coalition government would be any more unpopular that a one party government. . http://ukpollingreport.co.uk... . http://ukpollingreport.co.uk... My opponent makes a good point about the Liberal Democrats not wishing to work with either the Conservative Party or the Labour Party but I think the Liberals are a special case. They have just had two disappointing election results and their failure to keep to their promises particularly on Tuition Fees has cost them dearly after they were in government with the Conservatives. This has made them wary of future coalitions but this is likely not to continue for much longer. He mentions Belgium and I think it is fair to point out that a coalition government was eventually formed. That current government is currently enjoying a 20% opinion poll lead over all opposition parties combined so clearly has a high degree of popularity. I accept the Lebanon situation was worrying however that is one example among many others who use proportional representation to great effect. . https://en.wikipedia.org... I agree with his point on regional representation and it is definitely a downside to PR. However there would still be local governments under PR who would elected by the local community and they would be able to appeal to Parliament on issues affecting their local area. Another solution to this problem would be to have a second chamber, (replacing the house of lords) with limited powers that was elected with the FPTP to represent local communities. I accept there are drawbacks with both ideas but they are two possible solutions. The PR system would result in only a minor shift in representation away from Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland so the likelihood of increased nationalism would be very low. If it did occur however I would advocate giving more powers to the devolved administrations to counter the threat of nationalism. Furthermore giving more devolution across all of the UK including at County and City Level in England would help prevent local communities not being represented which was a point made by my opponent. My opponent mentions AMS as viable voting system but that too has significant disadvantages. It is far more complex than both Proportional Representation and First Past The Post with voters having to cast their votes several times. It also means voters have multiple representatives and that can be confusing and difficult to manage. One of the great problems with AMS and FPTP is tactical voting. This is voting whereby people vote for their favourite party out of the parties that could win rather than voting for their favourite party overall. This is a problem as it means parliament is even less tailored to what people want. Furthermore in some constituencies that are known as safe seats it doesn't often matter what individual voters choose because the majority of the constituency will always vote one way. For instance in the seat of Middlesborough Labour gained 65.7% of the vote in that constituency. In over 40 seats at the 2017 Election Labour gained over 70% of the vote in that constituency meaning it would be virtually impossible to unseat them at the next election. This means millions of voters will not have a vote that matters. . http://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk... . http://www.bbc.co.uk... I now await my opponents response.