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Mysterious arithmetic fail

Posted on November 15, 2011 by

Ever since the SNP achieved what was thought by most people to be impossible – winning an absolute majority in the Scottish Parliament under its proportional representation system – the Unionist camp has discovered a sudden pressing concern about the perils of majority government (regardless of the fact that almost every UK Parliament in history has operated with an absolute majority on a minority of the vote, and that Labour and the Tories regularly proclaim this as a great benefit of the wildly undemocratic First Past The Post method thanks to its delivery of "strong" governments, and oppose any form of PR for Westminster).

This concern was given voice today in a report by the Electoral Reform Society, proposing a change in the rules governing Holyrood's system of proportional representation, to a format which – quite coincidentally – would have resulted in the SNP narrowly missing out on a majority in May. The society's justification for the change was that "democracy works better with more parties represented", which seems a hard argument to find fault with.

The odd thing about the report, though, is that the Sainte-Laguë system which it put forward as the solution would have done precisely nothing to increase the number of parties represented at Holyrood, as this analysis of the results by Better Nation shows. The existing parties/groups would have had their representations fiddled around with slightly, but the same six (SNP, Labour, Conservative, Lib Dem, Green and independents) would have won seats as actually did. The only difference would have been that the pro-independence Greens would have held the balance of power, wielding a disproportionate influence with their 7 seats over the 64-seat SNP, as they could have held them to ransom over any policy they chose as a price for supporting an independence referendum.

This blog is a supporter of PR, so that's all fair enough. But it's curious that this report has suddenly raised issues with Holyrood now, after 12 years, just at the point where the SNP has taken control over it. It'll be interesting to hear the Unionist parties' take on it, and how they'll square it with the FPTP system at Westminster. Is "strong government" good or bad? As with many things, we suspect the answer depends which side of the border you're on.

1 to “Mysterious arithmetic fail”

  1. An Duine Gruamach says:

    I wonder if they could remind me what system was used when the Greens had seven seats, the SSP six, and Canavan, Margo, Jean Turner, and the Senior Citizens were all in.  Just seems the voters – damn them! – didn't vote the way they were "meant" to.

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