31 May 2009

Could The Rise Of UKIP Bring PR Closer?

UKIP members and MEPs are mostly made up of a bunch of right wing ex-Tory old men. And they are as embrollied in the expenses scandal as much (if not more so) as the Tory and Labour MPs. If you want to vote for a party unscarred by expense scandals, then vote Green on June 4th.

But UKIP could hold the key to electoral reform. It was the rise of the New Zealand Party - a party to the right of the centre-right Nationalists in New Zealand that finally brought a referendum on electoral reform over there.

Established parties to the left of the Labour party help the Tories in this electoral system, but UKIP does the Tories the most damage. If UKIP could keep in double figures then a hung parliament would be much more of a prospect.

Labour have been too frightened to take on the Tories over electoral reform, so easy places like Scotland and Wales where the Tories are a minor party and helped most by PR, were a good place to start to win Tory support for reform. Tory voters have been reinvigorated in these places as their votes now count and a lot of them now support PR there.

So all you disenchanted Tory voters, if you really want to punish the Tories but still vote against the EU then vote UKIP on June 4th. Of course UKIP are not exactly clean on the expenses issue either, in which case voting Green on June 4th is the best option.

4 comments:

  1. OpenEurope has published an important league table of MEP performance here: http://www.openeurope.org.uk

    MEPs have been ranked using two main categories:
    ‘Transparency, openness and democracy’ and ‘Fighting waste and misuse of EU funds’.

    I have gone through the data for UK Greens, Con, Lab, LibDem and UKIP and summated their scores, then divided by the number of MPEs. The lower the score the better.

    Here are the results :

    Greens - 51

    LibDem - 116

    Conservatives 152

    Labour 205

    Ukip 343


    This survey is vitally important for the electorate. People are understandably angry with the three Westminster parties, and at the moment, due to deficient information, UKIP is the main beneficiary of the disaffection, polling 10-16% at the moment. This research shows that voting UKIP in protest at MP expenses scandals is to jump from the Westminster frying pan into the Brussels fire.

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  2. DocR, Interesting stuff that needs to more widely known - it seems UKIP are the worst of the lot!

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  3. ? Does not compute.

    If UKIP and the people who vote for them had their way, we wouldn't be in the EU, so there wouldn't be any EU funds (paid largely by UK and Dutch taxpayers) to be misused.

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  4. mark, i think the survey looks at MEP voting records, on this score UKIP appears not to be doing what their voters want them to do.

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