PR or not PR

I find it interesting that everyone has suddenly realised that the distribution of seats in Westminster is not proportional to the popular vote. I wonder where these people have been for the last few hundred years.

But is the system really, as some commentators claim, broken?

Why should the seats in Westminster be distributed proportionally to the overall vote? To me this is akin to decided the Premier League champion not on which team won the most matches, or lost the fewest, but by which team scored the most goals.

If Westminster was divided up by the share of the national popular vote at this election then the BNP would have as many seats as the SNP and UKIP would have twice as many as both.

Depending on where the threshold was set perhaps none of the Northern Irish parties would have an MP between them. Independent local MPs fighting an election on local issues would have no chance of being elected. If Westminster was truly divided in terms of the popular vote there would be move of accountability and democracy away from local people and power would be made more centralised.

None of that sounds very democratic.

Which is not to say I am against electoral and constitution reform per se.

For me issues like the West Lothian Question and changing the House of Lord to make it fully elected and accountable to the people should be addressed before changing the method used to elect parliament.

The system we have now is simple. We all cannot be consulted on what laws need passing, so we (along with about 50,000 of our neighbours) elect someone to make those decisions on our behalf. The constituency lines are drawn up by the politically independent Boundary Commission. Whoever gets the most votes in the constituency gets to be the MP. Simple.

I guess there is an argument for an Alternative Vote system to make sure that each MP has received a vote from a majority rather than just the plurality of their constituency but the AV system is no more likely to lead to a House of Commons proportional to the popular vote than the current system.

I think the media are partly to blame for this current lust for PR by their reporting of opinion polls and voter preference. The daily reporting of polls tracking voter intention imply that the share of overall vote is an important number.

It isn’t.

The press giving this number importance it doesn’t actually have has now resulted in angry people who feel they have not taken part in democracy.

Rather than questioning the system these people should maybe be questioning themselves. If an MP they don’t support got elected in their constituency then maybe they should have campaigned or donated for another candidate. Maybe they should have handed out leaflets. Or maybe they should shut the fuck up.

These are my own personal views and not those of the BBC.If any offence is taken to the above I assure you that the offending comments are ironic.