CM de civi. britannique
The British electoral system is a “first-past-the-post” system: in each constituency,
electors vote once and for one candidate. The candidate who has the most votes is
returned (= dans ce contexte, élire) to Parliament and he becomes the MP (Member of
Parliament) of his constituency. This means that he doesn’t need an absolute majority of
votes, he only needs a relative one.
This system has several important consequences:
- there is a strong link between a MP and his constituency
- big parties are advantaged at the expense (= aux frais) of small parties: at the last
election, in 2001, the Labour party won 40.7% of the votes and it obtained 63% of
the seats in the House of Commons, the Conservatives won 31.7% and obtained
25% of the seats and the Liberal Democrats won 18.3% of the votes, but only 8%
of the seats.
- in Britain, there is a two-party system: generally, in most cases, the government has
an absolute majority in the House of Commons.
Nonetheless, in recent years, there have been increasing demands for an electoral
reform. Many people would like to replace the “first-past-the-post” system with a
proportional representation. The main difference is the difference between the number of
votes and the seats. For example, the Labour party, instead of having 413 seats, would only
have 268 in 2001. The advantage of proportional representation is that small parties obtain a
better representation. We could say that this system is fair. The drawback (= inconvénient)
is that it can lead to political instability because no party has an absolute majority. They
have to form coalitions in order to govern.
The 1998 official report, called Jenkins report, recommended a reform after the 2001
election. However, the Labour party is reluctant to change the system because it will lose
power and it has underlined the problems of proportional representation. Coalition
governments are often unstable (for example, in Italy, there have been about 60 governments
since 1945, which means that they last, on average, 1 year each). Those who support
proportional representation give the example of Denmark and Belgium where coalition
governments are stable.