What a great voting system! I've been looking through a somewhat random selection of Parliamentary election results and find it impossible to discern what signals the voters have wanted to send. The only clearly discernible trend across the board is the small, steady but remorseless rise in single(ish)-issue anti-EU and anti-immigration vote of BNP and UKIP. (Our local UKIP candidate was a fervent climate change denier, too - don't know whether that's party policy.)
It's all very well having a system that delivers (supposedly) a 'clear winner' - but if the 'clear winner' actually has no idea why - or even whether - they really won, what kind of mandate is that? In what sense can they claim to represent 'the British people'? Yet Prime Ministers can send our armed forces into battle without even going to Parliament.
On the streets of East Oxford (I was canvassing students all afternoon) it seemed the Labour vote was collapsing and Lib Dems were surging. In fact, the opposite happened.
In Oxford West & Abingdon, I've just learned that the Green Party strategy of putting out a single, carefully crafted brochure/leaflet (instead of the very un-green reams of glossy bumf and 'personal' letters from Lib Dems and Tories) backfired : the Royal Mail simply failed to deliver them to much of the constituency. But then to those of us who suffer the vagaries of the local postal service perhaps that should have come as no surprise.
As I write, the city election ballot hasn't been counted; but we fear the Greens may have taken a hit.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment