Agreed, the Kiwi system is about the best currently in operation (to the best of my knowledge). NB it is a form of PR.Puja wrote: ↑Fri Mar 15, 2024 12:38 pmI was just reminded of the importance of having a local MP recently by a friend of mine who lives in Nottingham and had to go to Nadia Whittome about a repair on a lift in the housing they're living in (they are disabled and live on the fourth floor, so it was kinda important) - 6 months of trying with the building management sorted in 48 hours by her getting involved. I've always been impressed with her as an MP from the outside.Sandydragon wrote: ↑Fri Mar 15, 2024 12:21 pmI'm not familiar with the Kiwi method, but I do agree that some local accountability is important, especially as local democracy is on its arse totally, and often the only recourse is to go to your MP (who tend to ignore most petitioners unless they are party donors).Puja wrote: ↑Fri Mar 15, 2024 11:35 am
I think there's a reasonable chance that it might tone down the crazies somewhat. Right now, the Tories have an 80 78 64 52 seat majority, which was voted for by a lot of very sensible voters, but has been controlled by the bat-shit loony fringe for a chunk of the last 5 years, because that was who had wrested control of the party. Same with the fringe leading us from "Of course we're not going to leave the single market" to "Brexit means Brexit".
The "Big Tents" thing that we have going on right now means that anyone can claim that the will of the people was X and that they have an electoral mandate for it, despite that never really having been on the ballot paper.
I don't think I'd go full PR - I'd be in favour of the Kiwi MMP system, as that seems to strike a good balance between having a local MP while still driving a broadly proportionate result.
Puja
The Kiwi method is really cool*. You have X seats for an area, of which half are constituency MPs that are elected with FPtP as per normal. The other half are then filled up from the lists that the parties provide, in order to make the whole number of X seats proportionate.
So say you have 20% Con, 45% Lab, 12% Lib Dem, 14% Reform, 9% Green in the South West and let's fictionally say that there's 100 MPs allocated to that area. So 50 of them are FPtP, which might mean 33 Labour MPs, 12 Lib Dem, 4 Cons, 1 Green. The other 50 would then be handed out so that we get the 20/44/9/14/7 split, so that's 16 Cons, 12 Lab, 0 Lib Dem, 14 Reform, 8 Green.
Puja
*Okay, so I'm a nerd, but it's still clever.
My preferred system (not in operation anywhere) would be the Kiwi system except that the 'top-up' MPs are chosen from the party's losing candidates in other seats, and selected in descending order of vote share in their constituencies. That way, you get a reasonable amount of legitimacy for all the MPs and you avoid unpalatable Mandelson types, or mates of the party leaders getting put at the top of the list.