Yes to AV: Time for a FPTP Debate!
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A No vote this 5 May is more than a vote against AV.
It's a vote in favour of our existing electoral system, first past the post.
But we've yet to hear the No campaign clearly explain the merits of the system they're campaigning to uphold this May.
I delivered a letter this weekend to the president of the No campaign, Margaret Beckett, challenging her to an honest debate about FPTP's merits.
Help make that debate happen by signing up to my petition for a debate now:
http://www.yestofairervotes.org/Debate-Challenge
We're inviting Beckett to name the time, the day, and the place for the debate.
All we ask is that the No campaign answer, with clarity and honesty, why they'll be voting Yes to FPTP in a few months' time.
We've yet to hear a logical, consistent, and coherent argument from the No campaign in favour of the broken status quo.
Join me in challenging Margaret Beckett to give the public the standard of debate they deserve:
http://www.yestofairervotes.org/Debate-Challenge
Thank you,
Jonathan Bartley
Yes to Fairer Votes |
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1 comment:
Since the FPTP people won't give us the real case for it, let's do it for them:
"FPTP makes you scared to vote for anything except the conventional for fear that this will 'split the vote' and let in whichever of the conventional you like least. In most places, 'the conventional' means the Conservative Party or the Labour Party, though in a few places it might also mean the Liberal Democrats.
So the good thing about FPTP is that is means most people feel they have to vote either Labour or Conservative, and that means this country will always have either a Labour or Conservative government, which we think is wonderful.
Even though it didn't quite work out that way in 2010, it almost did, because it meant the Conservatives got over five times as many seats as the LibDems on less than twice their vote. So that meant the coalition was basically a Conservative government.
That is how we say politics should be - the biggest party should have all the say in government even if it has the votes of less than half of those who voted and even if many of those who voted for them did so only because they were scared it would be a 'wasted vote' to vote for anyone else.
If politics that way, it's strong, because either the Labour Party or the Conservative Party is in complete control, and it can just give the country whatever it wants without any of this weak debate and discussion and compromise stuff.
Vote for FPTP to keep this country the same as it has always been, not like those countries in the rest of Europe which use proportional representation. They may be more prosperous and happier than us, but they're, well, foreign, aren't they? And anyway, British people are less clever than the Germans and the Dutch and most especially the Irish, so we could never expect Brits to master those complicated electoral systems they have, could we? In fact, I'm thick and proud of it, so I don't understand them either."
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