Labour eyes proportional representation as party's elections minister backs voting shake-up

[ChadMcGoatMan]

[QUOTE]Labour looks set to back changing Britain’s voting system to proportional representation (PR) after a key shadow Cabinet ally of Jeremy Corbyn publicly endorsed the policy.

Frontbencher Cat Smith, who is responsible for her party’s policy on elections reform, put her name to a new report endorsing PR as a system used by “the kind of social democracies that we in the Labour Party want to create”.[/QUOTE]

[URL="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/proportional-representation-electoral-reform-pr-labour-manifesto-jeremy-corbyn-a7715786.html"]http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/proportional-representation-electoral-reform-pr-labour-manifesto-jeremy-corbyn-a7715786.html[/URL]

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Didn't they stab voting reform in the back only a few years ago?

[Sinzdri]

[QUOTE=download;52189384]Didn't they stab voting reform in the back only a few years ago?[/QUOTE]

The current labour is a very different beast for better and worse.

[BlackMageMari]

It's fairly fucked that our closest neighbour has such an archaic and awful voting system. It's only contributed to quite a number of issues there. We are not perfect by any means but I can at-least trust our system to return a government that the people did vote for.

[ChadMcGoatMan]

[QUOTE=download;52189384]Didn't they stab voting reform in the back only a few years ago?[/QUOTE]

Yea, In very flawed centrist Labour party under Blair's neoliberal policies before the loss in 2015 election.

[Morgen]

I don't imagine the conservatives will ever go for it.

[editline]5th May 2017[/editline]

And thus we remain fucked.

[Bob The Knob]

Catch-22 with electoral reform. You can only implement it if you win under the existing system, but once you've won under the existing system you won't want to change it.

New Labour was pretty big on electoral reform and [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenkins_Commission_(UK)"]laid some groundwork[/URL] after winning power, but ultimately abandoned it. The same happened more recently with [URL="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/01/justin-trudeau-abandons-voter-reform-canada"]the Liberals in Canada[/URL]. No party that wins under FPTP will want to scrap FPTP.

One big thing that has changed for Labour since the AV referendum is that they now seemingly have little-to-no chance of winning under FPTP, and that probably helps to explain why they've had a change of heart on the issue - as well as their obvious leadership/ideological changes.

[Joey Skylynx]

Labour had a chance to change the rules back in the day, but didn't because they thought they were secure in their positions. Honestly, this is an old case of beautiful irony and reaping what you sow.

[UK Bohemian]

this is fucking hilarious seeing as Labour just got their arses kicked again as the tories enjoyed their best local election results in a decade, even doing well in Scotland.
it seems May is only unpopular here.

[url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_local_elections,_2017[/url]