On Thursday, Britain will vote for a new Parliament. Three parties are contending–Labor, Conservative, and Liberal Democrat. The leader of the party that gets the most seats will become Prime Minister, and if there is no clear majority, two of the parties will have form a coalition and govern together. Until Prime Minister Gordon Brown self-destructed last week, the three parties were neck-and-neck. Now the Conservatives, led by David Cameron, have pulled ahead.
One of the interesting effects of this campaign has been to spotlight how by modern standards the British parliament is so undemocratic. For one thing, all this electoral activity has been focused on the House of Commons, but there is also the House of Lords. The vast majority of its 733 members (87 more than the House of Commons) are appointed, except for those whose title in inherited, meaning they themselves have not necessarily done anything meritorious, but were just luckily descended from useful ancestors. The House of Lords is home to a number of dedicated people who make useful contributions to public life, but isn’t it odd that it the worlds oldest democracy, a house of parliament that controls legislation is never answerable to the public?
Even more weird is winner-take-all system that prevails in parliamentary districts. Called there `first past the post,’ it means very simply that the candidate with the most votes wins. That seems simple enough and reasonably fair, until one realizes that in Britain, this fair-seeming system is actually quit unfair. According to the BBC, if each of the major parties gained 30% of the vote, under the UK’s grossly-distorted system, the Labor party would get 315 MPs, the Conservatives 206 and the Liberal Democrats only 100.For more: Is Britain Really a Democracy? - Jamie Malanowski - Topic A, Among Others - True/Slant
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