Totnes elected Dr. Sarah Wollaston, a member of the Conservative party, as its Member of Parliament at the election of May 6, 2010. She is one of 139 women who are in the Houses of Parliament out of the 650 places. It is still a male dominated world despite all the verbal noise from politicians for an equal representation.
We are still waiting for democracy in Britain. We have as a poor substitute the first past the post system. If you get more votes than any other party does, even if you only get 20% of the vote, you get the seat. For example, the Conservative Party received 10,766,647 votes, Labour received 8,604 358 vote4s and the Liberal Democrats received 6,827, 938 votes. Yet the Conservatives won 306 seats, Labour 258 seats and Liberal Democrats won 57 seats. A democratic system would have given the liberal democrats roughly a quarter of the seats, which is about 140 seats.
Meanwhile in Totnes, Lydia Somerville of the Green Party received 1181 around 2.5 per cent of the total vote – well above the national average for the Green Party. If I remember correctly, I received exactly the same number of votes – 1181 votes – when I stood for the Totnes constituency in 1986. It could not have been the same people voting for Lydia as voted for myself, surely not!
Readers might wonder why the Green Party did not fare better in Totnes. Its due primarily to lack of democracy. Local residents engage in tactical voting. That means they vote for the Liberal Democrats in order to try to up seat the Tories who have lived for generations in this lovely corner of England. As it turned out, Dr. Wollaston had a majority of around 5000 over the Liberal Democrats.
It is better to vote with your heart than with your head (tactical voting). Lydia and her team worked incredibly hard in the past couple of years.
After more than three decades of hard work, the Green Party has its first Member of Parliament. Brighton voted in Caroline Lucas, the Green Party leader, as its Member of Parliament. It is hard to communicate to readers what an incredible achievement this is. History making stuff, a David and Goliath victory. The small voice defeats the machinery of powerful political forces. It is always a delight to listen to the common sense and thoughtful contributions that Caroline makes. I appreciate her views when I listen to her on television or radio, or read her response to national or global situations. She would make a wonderful Prime Minister.
Oh, I just forgot. Britain lags behind most of the rest of the Europe Union in terms of proportional representation to show true democracy. Germany had a Green Party member as foreign minister. Much appreciated, too. In one of his songs, Leonard Cohen sang “democracy is coming to the USA.” No, it isn’t.
Is democracy coming to Great Britain? We shall see what happens with our coalition government. Don’t hold your breath.
THANK YOU BRIGHTON.