Article

2015-04-14 Britain

UKIP unveils reforms for British political system

[AA.TR] The United Kingdom Independence Party, a right-wing minor opposition party, unveiled Monday a raft of proposals to improve Britannia's constitutional and democratic fabric.

The announcement was made by party leader Nigel Farage and Douglas Carswell, UKIP MP for Clacton, where the announcement was made.

They proposed a "Citizen's Initiative" to allow ordinary people to influence legislation.

The measure would see a national referendum every two years, and the most popular petition with over 2 million votes, would be included in the Queen's Speech, where the government sets out its proposed legislative program for the year ahead.

The party also proposed introducing "real recall," to allow people to sack their MP between general elections if enough signatures calling for a by-election are gained.

On the country's voting system, UKIP said First Past the Post was "no longer relevant" to party politics of the 21st century.

The current system states that whoever earns the most votes in a given parliamentary constituency wins.

This disadvantages minority parties or those whose share of the vote is spread across the country as opposed to being focused in a particular region, as the votes for second-place candidates onwards do not count.

UKIP would replace this system with a more proportional one, where the number of votes cast nationally is reflected in the number of seats awarded to parties.

The party would also abolish the current postal voter register and force people to re-apply with more stringent requirements, saying on its website, "You must have a valid reason for needing a postal vote."

UKIP is a right-wing anti-EU, anti-immigrant British political party, and currently has two elected MPs in the 650-seat lower house of Britannia's parliament, the House of Commons.

The U.K. general election will take place on May 7, 2015.

Posted by Fred 2015-04-14 00:00|| || Front Page|| [5 views ] Top

#1 The general rep loses the locality or representation, but does allow for a lot of fringe elements in (for better or worse - libertarians and communists for example).

Posted by OldSpook 2015-04-14 01:24|| 2015-04-14 01:24|| Front Page Top

#2 depends on the rules of the "popular petition" and how easy it is for groups to game.

eg: in Australia, House of Reps you cannot have those bogus electronic petitions which can be signed by anybody from here to timbuktu, multiple times on different devices or forever with TOR.

However in the Senate, you can

In the House of Reps the petition must have a person's name and signature- but not an address to be cross checked with the electoral roll

That means I can sign "Buck Rodgers" or "Harrison Ford" and they have to count it.

so - easily gamed by groups like Sociaist Alliance who will put up some bullshit about global warming or promoting islamism

or any other interest group

Other than that, it's a great idea to give citizens another pathway to participate in democracy

but they need to design the system so it reflects actual sentiment among the citizenry

Posted by anon1 2015-04-14 04:42|| 2015-04-14 04:42|| Front Page Top

#3 They need to make them actual referendums, voted on by the citizenry during the next election, like state level initiatives here in the US. If so many registered voters sign, then referendum goes to a vote of the whole electorate. And if it passes it, it becomes law. And it can't be overturned by the legislature.

What Farage has come up with is considerably less than that. In fact, it sounds like a stunt, not a serious suggestion on how to run a country. Picking 'the most popular one', like it is a contest, is disrespectful of the voters. And only adding it to the queens speech is even worse. That just means the ruling party (pretends) it intends to pass it into law.

The only reason for an initiative in the first place is because the politicians DON'T WANT TO PASS IT. There's no point in asking them nicely.

The problem with the Brit's is that they have no constitution, in any objective sense. Whoever controls Parliament is dictator until the next election. They can change any law they like, large or small.

Posted by dlr 2015-04-14 19:39|| 2015-04-14 19:39|| Front Page Top

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