7 steps.

David Cameron has made a speech. (Well, tbh, he’s probably made several, but there’s one showing up on fb today that has made me see red.)

There was some waffle about the expenses scandal and then:

He went on to set out seven steps to changing our political system and giving back more control to people:

1) Change the way candidates are chosen

2) Sack your MP if they are caught misbehaving

3) Make ministers more accountable

4) End the quango state

5) Make sure a government can be decisively sacked

6) Cut the cost of politics

7) Never pass power to Brussels without asking the people

Hm, the summary seems good enough, doesn’t it? But this is a party where our local candidate says this about first past the post:

We believe in the tried and tested system of first past the post which enables the public to remove a tired and discredited government, while ensuring that each constituency has a dedicated MP.

Right. That would be our local candidate who moved to this area to be the candidate. Who appears to be speaking in the plural. Scarily reminiscent of a previous MP’s point of view. I thought we were looking to elect a representative, not just send in another party clone?

Anyway, the thing about this speech that originally irritated me was this:

Step five, let us make sure we can always decisively sack our government. One of the real threats, I think, of this whole debate about electoral reform is that we might lose the two things that really work in our system. The first thing that works is that one MP represents one constituency. Marcus here knows every single inch of Torbay, probably every hotel, every bed and breakfast, every grain of sand on the beach. He knows it backwards. He will make a great Member of Parliament and do brilliant things for people who live here because he feels it in his bones. Don’t give that up, but don’t give up something else. In this country, when the government is tired, when it’s discredited, when it has lost its way, you can decisively throw it out of power.

I think we’ve covered the local thing comprehensively above. Mr Cameron certainly couldn’t have given that bit of the speech in our constituency 🙁 (I’d really like to know how many places he could have – parachutes seem to be popular in the tory party.)

But let’s talk about decisive action to remove a tired government. Let’s talk about the general election in 2005, where 64.7% of those voting voted to remove the tired and discredited labour government. Who were returned to power with a majority of 66 seats.

That worked well for us then! First past the post did indeed return us a strong government but with stuff all relationship to how ppl voted. It’s nonsense, isn’t it?

It even seems possible that the libdems could get the largest share of the vote and simultaneously the smallest number of seats – how much sense would that make?

The best analogy we used here to explain this all to Big was the menu one. Put simply, imagine a situation where 10 ppl go out for dinner. There are 8 choices on the menu, but they can only have one dish for them all. 3 ppl choose the baked fish, each of the other 7 choose an option each – they all hate fish. But because fish has the biggest single number, all 10 end up with it, meaning 7 ppl have something they hate. Hardly fair.

Can someone, Mr Cameron perhaps, please explain to me how first past the post is supposed to be fair then? No? I thought not.

We need electoral reform (and I’m not talking about Gordy’s half assed attempt to skew the polls in his favour some other way) and I wish the conservatives would face up to that fact. I don’t understand their stance on this though I am prepared to be enlightened. Any volunteers?