Governments
I have been reading a lot of things recently about Tony Blairs departure, which will be soon to come. Some people have actually been hoping for a hung parliament next election, which would mean that labour would have a majority, but not an absolute one, and a coalition would have to be formed to create government. The argument against, this, apparently, is this is a bad situation to be in. In a hung parliament, laws are made slowly and rarely, and the government can get little done. First of all, I question quite how true this is- there exist many countries that have coalition governments that seem to be fine, but second of all, is this necessarily a bad thing? No government has got more than 50% of the vote in the UK.... I think for this entire century, although there might be one example. This is, of course, ignoring the people who do not vote at all, but either way it seems that the majority of people did not want the government in power, or at least did not have them as their first choice. The huge labour majorities obtained in 97 and 01 were based on 30 something percent of the country voting for them. So they were able to force through laws that 70% of the country may well disagree with. In this situation, I rather think a hung parliament might be a good idea.Another thing that irritates me is the arguments made by many that Tony Blair should be kept as leader of the labour party because he led them to electoral success. Yes, clearly electoral success is the goal of any party, but not at the cost of passing laws, or going to wars, over things they disagree with. I know these are politicans we are talking about, but surely there are some principles worth hanging on to?
Meh, it is a forgone conclusion that Gordon Brown shall be the next labour leader, and we shall see how he does.
posted by Mr K @ 12:50 am
3 Comments:
Interestingly enough, Lester B. Pearson's 1960's Liberal minority government was one of Canada's most productive. The current Conservative government has also been doing quite well as a minority. I do wonder, however, how anything gets done in those countries that require coalitions of three or more parties to make a government.
Yes, well LBP won a Nobel Peace Prize ... he was one of the best we've had.
Are there just the two parties in the UK, or are there independents and fringe groups, too? We've got Liberals, Conservative and New Democrats, as well as independents, the Green Party, the Communist Party (who run candidates whenever they can) etc. Oh, yeah, and the Parti Quebecois, whose major platform is that the rest of the country sucks and they want their own. It drives me crazy, too, though, because the sheer size of Quebec means that they often are quite significantly represented in parliament even though they have a very small part of the popular vote. And then the NDP (essentially socialists), who are often the favourite of Saskatchewan and Prince Edward Island, don't get in because we are so small.
But seriously, only in Canada would you get equal attention paid to the party whose major goal is to leave the rest of us. Anyhoo. Enough of that. Happy elections! :o)
Well I have decided that maybe it might be better to vote for Monster Raving Loony... Oh yes...that is a real party... and is made up of lots of different people with their own bugbears to conquer... Anyway... I;m writing this in my lunch break... must get back to eating... and reading...
I'm correcting a load of student experience evaluation forms... it is truely breathtakingly exciting... But my salad i have for lunch involves olives... the world is beautiful... :o)
Post a Comment
<< Home