David Coates Parties of the Left that choose to govern in the Center invariably pave the way for the return of government by the Right.
There is an understandable fascination this weekend with all things politically British. From the editorial pages of the liberal press to the comedy program of Stephen Colbert, there seems to be a genuine hunger to know: what are the British up to? Why have the British suddenly gone mad?
What they are up to, of course, is not madness.[i] It is political stalemate. The British political class is suddenly having to do what the German, the Belgian, the Italian, even the French, political class do on a regular basis – make deals with each other in return for power. The sort of prolonged coalition-building that is standard practice in democracies whose electoral systems rely on some form of proportional representation is now underway in London – in the one major political system outside the United States which (like the United States) prefers to rely on a ‘first past the post’ way of deciding who has won power in each individual constituency. First-past-the-post electoral systems do not normally create political stalemates, because in those electoral systems, coming second in a constituency is as bad as coming ninth – worse actually, become if you come second you get lots of votes but no seat. Your voter-waste count tends to be exceptionally high. READ FULL POST
