In all fairness Britain are the only self-proclaimed Democracy (“Oldest in the World”, they tell us) with an even more undemocratic political system than the US, because in addition to a First Past The Post voting system, they also have a monarch with - as was exposed a couple of years ago - real power as head of state, an unelected Second Chamber with inherited and nominated-for-live positions and, probably worse, no written Constituition so any party in Parliament with a simple 50% + 1 majority can pretty much do whatever they want.
The FTPT + No Constitution combination is probably the worst part, as it means that a party with a mere 41% of votes of cast (so about the votes of only 1/4 of voters, due to abstention) - such as the current ones - can get a parliamentary majority (so, more than 50% of seats) and do things that in other countries would require constitutional changes (which generally require 66% or 75% of votes, depending on country), so things like changing the local definition of Human Rights.
Mind you, the Brexit vote isn’t at all affected by these things, so your point still stands unaffected by those considerations.
I appreciate the response, because this is actually fascinating. As much as I think America’s system is broken, it’s more to do with political spend and gerrymandering than literal centuries of aristocracy deciding it.
It mostly boils down to First Past The Post (single-representative electoral circles) IMHO - There is no such thing as Gerrymandering in countries were the matemathical method to allocate parliamentary representatives is Proportional Vote - such as The Netherlands - because all votes count the same and the party voted for or the party other people in the same area voted for makes no difference at all.
FPTP systems directly boost the number of representatives for the two major parties by quite a lot (for example, the Tories in the UK have around 60% of members of Parliament with only around 42% of votes cast) and indirectly because people switch their vote from smaller parties to “electable candidates” thus giving even more votes to larger parties which they would never get in a Proportional Vote system.
From there a ton of broader problems arise in terms of the behaviour of politicians (such as corruption) or simply not at all acting for the interests of their electorate (because people have no realistic option to replace one politician by a significantly different one, at most only by one serving the same lobbies but with a different discourse in the moral field). You even get insanelly adversarial politics (the more they’re alike in caring not economic equality and good quality of life for most people, the loudest the theatre they make around moral issues)
I also lived in The Netherlands which has Proportional Vote and its very different: even decision making tends to be all around seeking consensus (win-win solutions, if you will) rather than adversarial theatre on morals and behind-closed-doors deals on sharing the cake.
In all fairness Britain are the only self-proclaimed Democracy (“Oldest in the World”, they tell us) with an even more undemocratic political system than the US, because in addition to a First Past The Post voting system, they also have a monarch with - as was exposed a couple of years ago - real power as head of state, an unelected Second Chamber with inherited and nominated-for-live positions and, probably worse, no written Constituition so any party in Parliament with a simple 50% + 1 majority can pretty much do whatever they want.
The FTPT + No Constitution combination is probably the worst part, as it means that a party with a mere 41% of votes of cast (so about the votes of only 1/4 of voters, due to abstention) - such as the current ones - can get a parliamentary majority (so, more than 50% of seats) and do things that in other countries would require constitutional changes (which generally require 66% or 75% of votes, depending on country), so things like changing the local definition of Human Rights.
Mind you, the Brexit vote isn’t at all affected by these things, so your point still stands unaffected by those considerations.
I appreciate the response, because this is actually fascinating. As much as I think America’s system is broken, it’s more to do with political spend and gerrymandering than literal centuries of aristocracy deciding it.
It mostly boils down to First Past The Post (single-representative electoral circles) IMHO - There is no such thing as Gerrymandering in countries were the matemathical method to allocate parliamentary representatives is Proportional Vote - such as The Netherlands - because all votes count the same and the party voted for or the party other people in the same area voted for makes no difference at all.
FPTP systems directly boost the number of representatives for the two major parties by quite a lot (for example, the Tories in the UK have around 60% of members of Parliament with only around 42% of votes cast) and indirectly because people switch their vote from smaller parties to “electable candidates” thus giving even more votes to larger parties which they would never get in a Proportional Vote system.
From there a ton of broader problems arise in terms of the behaviour of politicians (such as corruption) or simply not at all acting for the interests of their electorate (because people have no realistic option to replace one politician by a significantly different one, at most only by one serving the same lobbies but with a different discourse in the moral field). You even get insanelly adversarial politics (the more they’re alike in caring not economic equality and good quality of life for most people, the loudest the theatre they make around moral issues)
I also lived in The Netherlands which has Proportional Vote and its very different: even decision making tends to be all around seeking consensus (win-win solutions, if you will) rather than adversarial theatre on morals and behind-closed-doors deals on sharing the cake.
What is this in reference to?