From: livesey@solntze.wpd.sgi.com (Jon Livesey)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
Subject: Re: Rule Britannia
Date: 8 Nov 92 07:25:10 GMT
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc.  Mountain View, CA
NNTP-Posting-Host: solntze.wpd.sgi.com


In article <1992Nov7.104804.26538@infodev.cam.ac.uk>, gdb15@grebe.cl.cam.ac.uk writes:
> In article <1df1qvINN7jo@fido.asd.sgi.com> livesey@solntze.wpd.sgi.com (Jon Livesey) writes:
> >
> >And is that what you want?   A permanent state of
> >coalitions?  Have you taken a look at Israeli, or Belgian
> >or Irish politics recently?   Or the sparkling record of
> >our own lamented National Government back in the thirties?
> 
> I was just stating a fact.  Anyway, I don't think many people would
> claim that Germany has been governed worse than Britain since the war.

Nor do they have to make such a claim.   If someone wants to
change the current system, I would expect them, if they think
Germany is relevant, to show that the way it's governed is
somehow better.

In any case, the reason I mentioned these other examples is to
make the point that it's what would happen in the UK under a
system of more or less permanent coalition.   Pointing to other
countries is just a way of showing that sometimes it works, and
sometimes it's a disaster.   The Germans seem fairly happy with
their system, but both the Italian and Israeli systems have
more or less ground to a halt, and people are calling for 
something more like FPTP, and MPs answerable to distinct
districts.  

> I think politicians can take far fewer liberties if they
> have to negotiate with people outside their own party.

I don't know.   Negotiation, to me, implies the exchange of
favours.

Two things bother me about coalition government.  One is,
as I said, that if many parties are on the inside, then they
are not working so hard to expose the weakness of the current
Administration.

The second may be more subtle, but it's well exemplified by
the National Government of the thirties, and it is that when
the dust settles, no-one takes responsibility.   Today, if
I mention the National Government.  Labour supporters say
"Well, we were hamstrung by the Tories" and the Tories say
the reverse.

> Well, there are rumours that Clinton may take Perot into his
> administration... 

God, I hope that's right.  It'll be a laugh a minute.  Until
Perot came along, I thought the deficit was important, but
after he'd mentioned it a couple of times, he went back to
making jokes about his ears.   Every time he talked about his
ears, support for him rose.    It showed that the deficit is
really a side issue: after all, it doesn't distinguish between
the candidates, since they were all offering to fix it.   Bush
was going to fix it by reducing taxes: that's the New Math.
Clinton kept saying that he wasn't going to promise not to
not raise taxes: that's the New Logic.   But Perot just kept
on about his ears.   I had never realised before how big the
ear vote is in the US.   If Prince Charles came over, he could
probably make Emperor.

>                But a presidential system is different from
> a parliamentary one.  In the US, Congress keeps a check on
> the President.  In the UK, there's nothing except Parliament.

Good point, except that it all works so badly.

> >Personally, I think we're all sensible enough to understand
> >what FPTP means.   
> 
> Of course we are.  It's a system whereby the winner of
> an election is determined not by her/his level of
> support but by how votes are split amongst her/his opponents.

Well, isn't there a certain justice to that.    If the
opposition voluntarily splits its votes up among competing
opposition groups, that actually does say something about
the coherence of opposition to the eventual winner.

> >Of course, I could easily be wrong about that.   Has anyone
> >done any simulations to show how many times PR or STV would
> >have resulted in different UK Administrations this
> >century?
> 
> Every time since the war, certainly, since no government has had more
> than 50% support.

I'm not sure I follow that.   Are you claiming that we would
have had different PMs and policies?    I can see that there
might have been a different Postaster General, or Minister
of Ag. and Fish., but I can't get too excited about that.

> Assuming that people's votes wouldn't be affected by a change in
> voting system (which is certainly not the case),

Yes, I agree.   The concept of tactical voting among the 
electorate would largely be replaced by tactical voting in
the House.   I'm not sure which I prefer.   At the moment,
we have fairly rough justice at the Polls, but once the
results are announced, we know what we are getting - modulo
U turns and skidmarks - but under PR, Parliamentary life would
have more of a smake-filled-room aspect to it, in which various
parties would bargain and horse-trde.

> we'd
> probably have had a Tory-Liberal administration instead of each Tory
> one, and a Labour-Liberal administration instead of each Labour one
> (although I'm not sure about Feb 1974, when the Tories got slightly
> more votes than Labour but Labour got more seats).

Yes, I guess that's right, but as I said above, I'm not
particularly excited by the prospect.   I can't see
changing the voting system just to get the no-doubt
trenchant wisdom of people like Thorpe et. al.   They
always seemed ideally formed for Opposition, to me.

jon.
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british