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Quirks of first-past-the-post affecting Britain

Clegg, Brown or Cameron? Hmmm

Britain's elections, which just concluded voting yesterday and with almost all votes counted, would produce landmark results never before seen since 1970. To those who have been following the British elections, there must have been some doubts and qualms about the big deal that British politicians and journalists are making over the elections and the way the winner is determined.

Britain, like Singapore (our system is adapted from theirs, for obvious historical reasons), uses the first-past-the-post system, also known as winner-takes-all and plurality voting system. Simply, the winner of the elections is one who has the most number of votes cast for him, but not necessarily with an absolute majority. I had problems trying to understand what this actually meant, but perhaps an example would work well here (the example in the Wikipedia article is quite confusing).

Take the current election for Britain. In brief overview, the British do not directly elect their prime minister, but instead elect a representative in their district, with each party wishing to contest having a representative. The party with the most number of representatives elected would win the election, and then a prime minister would be installed from the party (or alliance, if a few parties came together) that won the most votes. Of the three main parties, the Conservatives have won the most number of seats and the most number of votes in Britain, and hence is the largest party represented in Parliament. This would technically mean that the Conservatives would produce the Prime Minister and lead the Parliament. However, they have not won an absolute majority of votes in the election, as the number of votes for the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties, if added together, would outnumber that of the Conservatives. The Telegraph has a detailed breakdown of the results: Conservatives 36.45%, Labour 29.01%, Liberal Democrats 23.03%. So while it might be fair for the Conservatives to claim to represent the most number of people, proportionately this is not true.

In another perverse twist, the Liberal Democrats, while having 23% of the vote, have far from 23% of the seats in Parliament. After some calculations based on the results on The Telegraph, the Conservatives have 36% of the votes but 47% of the seats (there are 650 seats in Parliament). Labour has 29% of the votes but 39% of the seats. The disadvantaged Liberal Democrats have 23% of the votes but only 8% of the seats. So the Liberal Democrats are highly underrepresented in Parliament while Labour and Conservatives are overrepresented by 10%. The whole purpose of such a system is to produce strong parliamentary majorities that will reduce the need for coalition government, which can be messy and fractious as witnessed in countries that practice the proportional representation system (e.g. Germany), but given the conditions Britain is facing, the elections have produced a nightmare that will probably exacerbate the problems. An article in the Christian Science Monitor elaborates more on the implications of such a system.

The conditions have created a hung parliament: where no party wins an outright majority. The government could be created through a coalition of parties to produce a majority, or a minority government could be created by the largest party in Parliament (i.e. the Conservatives). The problems of a hung parliament for Britain are immense, as Britain currently faces a huge budget / debt crisis, that in the face of Greece's debt crisis, is all the more important to tackle fast. Given that a hung Parliament would often be undecisive and wrought by bickering, "leading to paralysis", the people and investors would be spooked, with terrible consequences for Britain's economy and medium-term prospects.

With a hung parliament, first-past-the-post magnifies problems: whoever forms up the government has only so much mandate to govern, given that each party has only so much representation of the electorate, and the electorate has given slaps in the face of all 3 parties. Initially the Conservatives were tipped to win the elections easily with an absolute majority, but somehow as the elections drew nearer the margin between the leading Conservatives and Labour narrowed. Labour is lucky not to have lost as bad, but to have lost 100 seats is an obvious indication of great displeasure with the current Labour administration. The Liberal Democrats rose in popularity during the televised debates (which I covered recently) but somehow that did not translate into votes; they even lost several seats in Parliament. The electorate has spoken and expressed displeasure with the politicians, but unfortunately how this will help to solve problems is anyone's guess. I dont blame the people for having voted like that, because the parties have not been performing to their fullest potential in highlighting the problems the country faces and in providing the solutions to these problems.

I wait with bated breath as the three major parties slug it out in the race to install the new prime minister of Britain.