[djm]

if they do promise change it's forgotten as soon as the election is over

I largely agree with your sentiment but I think it's important to consider that with our current government it is not reasonable that we should expect them to adhere to election manifesto promises.

We have a coalition government because no single party was elected with a majority vote. The government results from a compromise between the two parties and thus their election manifestos should be considered void.

It's because of this that I feel a little sorry for Nick Clegg over the student tuition thing - the public have held him accountable for a promise that should be considered void since he wasn't elected.

[arethuza]

Treating as void the election manifestos of coalition parties could be quite interesting given the Salisbuty Convention which limits the extent to which the House of Lords will oppose legislation that was in a manifesto.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salisbury_Convention

[djm]

Agreed! I was aware of the salisbury convention but hadn't really given any thought to how it might come in to play with coalition governments.

Thinking through it, I guess the logical expectation is that the HoL will have bigger teeth under a coalition.

That is interesting in itself because the government is currently looking at another round of HoL reform.

By the way, if your interested in all this check out channel 81 on freeview. They seem to be replaying a documentary on the history of HoL reform every few days at the moment.

[pointyhat]

I think that is down to the way the votes are counted which is, statistically speaking, bollocks.

The "majority" should simply be the most votes retained for a party across the entire voting populous, rather than divided up into political wards and with silly rules over the top. It's intentionally broken at the moment to favour the top two parties and always has been. Alternative vote is the same turd with a different jacket on.

There should be no possibility for a coalition.

[djm]

You do raise an interesting point. There are certaintly problems with splitting the country into different constituency areas. For example, an MP representing a constituency with a small number of residents has the same voting ability in the commons as an MP representing a constituency with a larger population.

Your solution is problematic too though. If we simply voted for a party then we would no longer be electing local representatives which would mean that local issues would not have representation in the house of commons. It also creates the difficulty of deciding who would actually compose government - if we just voted for a party then does the party decide itself which individuals form government?

It's also important to keep in mind that the government and our elected MP's are two different things. MP's are elected to the house of commons, not to government. Whilst all members of the government are MP's the vast majority of MP's are not members of the government. Although they are constrained in voting by the whip system they do frequently address issues relating to their constituencies in the commons.

[waqf]

Maybe a delegated voting system, as discussed in http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2484995#?

[djm]

Thanks for digging that up, I hadn't seen it the first time it came around. It seems obvious now but I really hadn't given any thought to how fairness in voting systems would ultimately come down to math. I'm not going to dig into it now but I've bookmarked it for reading on a rainy day. Cheers :)