Brown Resigns

The general election was on Thursday and i've been following it avidly.


For the record, i'm a supporter of the liberal democrats.


The latest news is that Gordon Brown, Prime Minister and current leader of the Labour party has resigned as leader of the Labour party. Gordon Brown in his statement said that he wants a new leader in place by the party conference in September. Labour are going to enter into discussions with the Liberal Democrats.


The Liberal Democrats and Conservatives talks are going well. The Liberal Democrats have asked for clarification on some key points on which any agreement will be based upon such as economic stability, the pupil premium, taxes and voting reform. William Hague of the Conservatives have said that the Conservatives are willing to offer the Liberal Democrats a referendum on the Alternate Vote(AV) system.


The AV system can reproduce a more undemocratic parliament than the current First-past-the-post system. In fact if the AV system was applied to the 2005 election system, Labour would have had a larger majority in parliament than they did with the same 35.5% of the vote. 
The AV system means that any candidate in a constituency would have to receive 50% of the votes and if no candidate reaches that then voters 2nd preferences will be taken into account.


As a Liberal Democrat supporter, i would prefer an agreement with Conservative but i don't mind a coalition with Labour - that would be legitimate as 52% of the electorate voted for Labour/LibDem but my concern with a Labour/LibDem coalition is that the Prime Minister of that coalition is unknown and that the LibDems do not know who they will be working with once a knew leader is chosen for the Labour party by the Labour party.


Yesterday, i became concerned when Former Home Secretary David Blunket said that he was "bewildered" by Clegg's fascination with electoral reform because then we would be in this situation after every election. From my point of view, Blunket said that he was bewildered by the fact that the Clegg wants a democracy. The First=past-the-post system in my opinion does not provide a democratic society. It provides a majority government the majority of the time voted for by a minority of the public and oppresses a number of political opinion. IMO, the current system returns a system that is almost a dictatorship masquerading as a democratic society.


The one thing that all the main parties are saying is that they want a stable government - we have never had a stable government. There is nothing stable about oscillating between Conservative and Labour every 5-10years. The only reasons the country oscillate between Conservative and Labour is because the majority of the country don't want Labour or Conservative in power so a sufficient proportion of the electorate will swing between Labour and Conservative don't want either of them in power but due to the voting system no other party is likely to gain enough support to overthrow Labour and Conservatives.