Elections

To some this is probably a boring subject but I just felt I wanted to discuss it and air some views, outside of the arena of politically charged individuals, I am merely a ME with an opinion on these things and no particular political bias or axe to grind in any direction or for any party.

Yesterday it was election day, we voted in Borough Council Elections and the European Elections, we were in a very unusual situation here in that the local County Council was abolished a couple of months ago in favour of 2 new unitary authorities, Bedford Borough covering where I live and Central Bedfordshire covering the remainder of the county so these elections were for a totally new set of counsellors to cover the new authority.

The old County Council was always Conservative but the borough has been pretty much always hung (a council with no party in overall control, no party had a majority of councillors on the council) well following the election we are in the same situation in that there is no party who has overall control, we are once again having a hung council! Why is this an issue? Well some say its not an issue but the problem is that what happens is very little, no one can do anything without the cooperation of other parties and they keep bickering and falling out with each other so very little gets done and now we are in the situation where this weak and ineffective combination is responsible for the whole of council services not just the services historically held by the borough. At least it does mean that they stand less chance of doing anything to hurt the borough but they probably wont do anything useful and helpful either! I don’t know now whether they whole of the council will come up for election every 4 years as the old county used to be or 25% standing down by rotation every year, my guess is that they will all serve 4 years and come up for election en mass, simply because there always used to be up to 4 candidates representing most of the wards in the town centre, meaning that one came up for election each year. But now there is no ward with more than 2 representatives.

Anyhow, that’s my say and view on the council election, I hadn’t intended to say any of that! But hey at least I avoided wading in on the issue of the Mayor! Hey lets shut up whilst we can! Its an issue I will just keep shut on.

European Elections, I have a problem with these, I am not wishing to discuss the whole issue of whether we should be in Europe or out of it or what Europe should be and what our role in it should be! That’s for others to discuss and there are plenty out there with an opinion!

I am also not so concerned about the physical size of the ballot paper used or even the number of parties represented, although I was amused that there were several ‘fringe’ parties who stood for the same thing, who will have actually split the vote of their likely supporters significantly thereby reducing the chances of getting some (or as many) of their candidates voted in but there we go that’s for them to deal with not me!

However my issue is simply the whole method of election. In principle the idea of proportional representation sounds good! It is something that is often being suggested as what should happen with the UK parliament and I have to say that I used to believe this was the right thing! On the face of it to say lets take the total vote of the population and decide on the numbers of representatives from any one party based on the percentage of votes makes some sense.

e.g. if the vote is split as follows:

Conservative 35%

Labour 35%

Lib Dem 20%

Greens 5%

Others 5%

To say that the makeup of the house of commons should represent those percentages makes some sense! My issue with the whole thing, other than the fact that we would rarely have a government with overall control, and that’s not good, as stated above on the borough council situation but can be seen so clearly when you look at some of our European counterparts who face this situation regularly, they end up having the government so fragile that it breaks down all too regularly, no one seems to be able to run an effective government.

But the other issue with proportional representation and probably my biggest problem with it is that you are not voting for a person but a party! I am not a party kind of guy, I have no loyalties towards any of the parties and to be honest have voted for all the main parties and some of the not so mainstream parties at different times largely because I do tend to vote for individuals, yes I am interested in what the parties policies and manifesto is but I am more interested in the person, take one look at the mess our parliament is in right now, isn’t it so important at the moment to look at the actions of individuals rather than sticking to party loyalty.

How much do we need to ensure that the candidates we are voting for have integrity and are wanting to go into this for the right reasons etc, now we can never know for certain but it is possible to make judgements based on what we see and hear of the candidates, I am not prepared to vote for someone just because they wear the right colour rosette if I don’t feel that they have the right character and integrity or I am unhappy with their own stance on any particular issue.

So yes proportional representation does enable the government to represent the way the country has voted in terms of what party they voted for but it does depersonalise the whole process and you end up having to vote simply for the party or the prime minister you want rather than the actual candidate who you feel can do the best job in your area and I guess it really depends on your own stance on politics which will dictate whether you agree with me or not!

I would like to add that I am not an expert in these issues and don't really get involved in political discussion just wanted to air my own views and thoughts. So that’s my boring post on the elections over and done with!