This contradicts a democratic society and is seen as a dictatorship because elections are the cornerstone of a democracy. So if two out of three powers that are running the UK are not elected, this itself questions whether or not we are living in a democracy. Furthermore, having a monarchy is very important yet traditional but not in the same aspects of Parliament, as they have more authority over
However, this does not always happen, which can be seen in the current government. Since the election in 2010, the UK have been under a coalition government with the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, with David Cameron as the Prime Minister and Nick Clegg as his deputy. First Past the Post is also a simple process, where each electorate has only one vote, meaning that the time taken to count the votes is very short, making it a quick and efficient process. The First Past the Post system also keeps extremist parties, such as the BNP party, away from power, so they cannot carry out their manifestos. For example, in their 2010 manifesto, the BNP party stated that if they were voted in as the leading party they would “The BNP will ban the burka, ritual slaughter and the building of further mosques in Britain” and that they would “reintroduce capital punishment for drug dealers, child murderers, multiple murderers, murderers of policemen on duty and terrorists where guilt is proven beyond all doubt”.
A merit of this process lay in the fact that whilst turnout is low, those who are committed to the result of the election do turn out. Hence, caucuses tend to favour more ideological candidates compared to voters in the alternative primary system. In 2008, Republican candidate Ron Paul who is on the libertarian wing of his party had some of his strongest showings in caucus states. For example, he won 21% in the North Dakota caucuses and 19% in Maine caucuses. This exemplifies their significance as it means that a candidate elected in a caucus state is essentially in line with the true ideology of the party and some of the party's most committed participants- who, pivotally invest a lot of time and money which is vital.
Furthermore, minor parties which secure a large number of votes, Liberal Democrats, will command a more reflective percentage of the seats in the Commons as each vote cast will be viewed with equal value over the whole country meaning a minority vote could no longer decide which party dominates the Commons. Overall, it will make the House of Commons more democratic but also at the same time making it more legitimate and giving it greater authority as the people votes actually reflect more in the government of the day. However there are some who do not like the idea of Proportional representation as they believe that by giving minority parties a greater representation will reduce the chances of one party dominating, as to some
Due to the increasing presidential style of recent prime ministers and the party loyalty of the executive one can consider Parliament’s control of executive power minimal. However, due to the development of independent bodies surrounding Select Committees and the delaying of legislation by the House of Lords it can still be argued to be effective. The government usually has an overall majority. This is due to our voting system of FPTP which gives preference to the two main parties, normally giving them majorities (and increasingly large ones) as opposed to coalitions and minority governments which are produced through other voting systems such as AV in Scotland and Wales. Although we are currently in a coalition the government still has a majority through the combination of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats.
For a party to form an executive (government), the party needs a majority of 1 seat over the other party’s in the legislature (parliament). The British electoral system has come under scrutiny because a majority of seats allows a party to form an executive not the overall majority of public votes. In 1945 Labour won a landslide victory in the elections and gained a 180 seat majority over the Conservative party, and a 148 seat majority overall. For each seat Labour won they had polled 30,522 votes. However in the 1951 elections Labour had polled 231,067 more votes from the general public than the Conservative party, however the Conservative party gained 26 more seats and squeezed into power.
Furthermore, the actual turnout was only 61.4%, so they were only representing around a third of the population. In this sense, representative democracy does not operate effectively in the UK as most of the population did not vote for the winning party. Britain follows a representative system because we are all represented by MPs in Parliament who will take care of local problems and take important grievances to the government. When we vote for these MPs, we give them the legitimacy to make decisions for the constituency but expect them to take the majority
When evaluating the arguments raised on both sides it I believe that the Electoral College should be replaced by a national popular vote. An argument that exposes the weakness of the Electoral College and why it should be replaced by a national popular vote is because the ‘winner takes all’ system distorts the results of the elections. There have been various results in which the popular vote did not reflect the results of the Presidential election. A notorious example of how distorted results can be under the Electoral College is that of Bush and Al Gore in 2000. Though Al Gore won the popular vote by 48.4% Bush won the votes of the Electoral College which resulted in him winning the Presidential election.
Howard’s leadership was based on ‘strong leadership,’ strong leaders claim that they can create national unity amongst other things. This is how Howard won the 2001 and 2004 elections. In 2007, John Howard lost the election because the voters failed to see him as the best leader. By March 2007, Rudd had the best poll results ever for an Opposition leader. This was because the government had problems with their policies and mandates, also because voters believed that John Howard had been Prime Minister for too long.
If a party gains a majority it will be offered the chance to form government by the Queen. The MP is then responsible for representing all constituents, even those who didn’t elect the member. For example in 2005 George Galloway received only 18.4% of his constituents but was still elected MP for Bethnal Green and Bow. [1] This high proportion of constituents who didn’t vote for Galloway is not a unique anomaly, during the 2005 election only three MPs secured more than 40% of their constituents votes. It may be argued that voter apathy has a large influence on this