‘Democracy is a very bad form of government – but it’s the best we have’  someone said.  So how do you make democracy fair and make it work, all at the same time?  A hung parliament is not good because forming a government depends on compromise.  It doesn’t seem entirely fair when ‘first past the post’ creates a situation where one party gets 25% of the total vote and 50 MPs compared with another party that receives 28% of the vote and has 200 MPs.   This could be corrected by proportional representation but, on the face of it, this would inevitably result in a hung parliament more times than not.  How would that solve any problems.  It also has to be acknowledged that very small minority parties would be entitled to representatives in parliament.

Not a bad thing to have diverse opinions represented – but not if minorities can control, and possibly dictate, what decisions are made.  To have strong government, with the power to carry out an agenda (for which they were elected) the governing party needs a majority in its own right.  But who then challenges excesses of power, except the members of that party (who are normally expected to do as they are told)?  Idealists would perhaps think that it would be better to have decisions based on strong argument, rather than strengh of numbers; that compromise might create the best result – until you consider that a donkey may well represent a horse designed by a committee.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 11th, 2010 at 2:16 pm and is filed under DPM. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.