THE GREAT PROGRESSIVE ALLIANCE

THERE IS A GREAT FLURRY OF EXCITEMENT among progressive types. They believe we are at last on the brink of proportional representation (that much cherished instrument of a nation's decline).
They believe that now Nick Clegg has become the 'king maker' after last weeks election results, it is now merely a matter of time before they have their way and are to be the proud inheritors of this appalling system; a system prone, more so than our present one, to corruption.
It is no accident that the shenanigans of our MPs during the last parliament has led the people to question, quite rightly, the current first past the post system - although humans are humans under whatever voting system you have, and this should not be the reason for changing the present one.
The advantage of our first past the post system is that it invariably leads to a strong government able to put through their manifesto promises - promises that the people voted for in sufficient numbers for them to govern. A hung parliament under our system is, thankfully, the exception rather than the rule, and this current mess is not part of a pattern that requires us to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
I can understand why the people have been driven to the belief that there needs to be political reform of our voting system. I also believe in change to our present system; but proportionality will make matters worse.
David Cameron has come up with the idea of equal constituencies, as well as the power of constituents to recall any MP if sufficient numbers of constituents demand it. I would also have a system of primaries whereby the people rather than the party activists choose a particular candidate to represent them at an election.
These would, I believe be sufficient safeguards against any abuse by our representatives. I would also reduce our MPs by a third and give those left a more generous income; after all, we have more representatives in our two houses of parliament than any other nation - with the exception of China.

THE SYSTEM OF PROPORTIONALITY envisaged by the Liberal Democrats would indeed lead to a Great Progressive Alliance(GPA), an alliance that would deny power to the 10 million voters who voted Conservative, and a Right of Centre government.
The Conservatives would be reduced to the status of a third party in similar vein to the Lib Dems (formerly Liberals) after the rise of Labour during the early part of the 20th century.
This, it seems to me, would disenfranchise millions of voters who do not believe in what are, laughingly called by its proponents, 'progressive' politics.
What we would have is a Left of Centre hegemony free to govern while those on the Right are left to feel resented by their dismissal from power in what is supposed to be a democracy.
Resentment will, in time turn to anger, especially as the GPA moves closer to their beloved European Union.

CIVIL CONFLICT, if not civil war, will be the GPA's historical legacy if they achieve their end and accomplish their hegemony through the Lib Dem's proportional voting system.
I hope that David Cameron will dismiss any condition imposed upon him by Nick Clegg that demands PR.
David Cameron should realise that he is in a more powerful position than he seems to think, unless he is a closet supporter of PR and is willing to abandon the Conservative Right of Centre to what he believes,as a liberal Conservative, the dustbin of history.
I once believed, and it may still materialise, that Nick Clegg wanted an alliance with Labour, but Brown was always the stumbling block. What Clegg sought was a change of leadership within the Labour Party, a change that brought either Ed or David Milliband to the party's leadership. Either of which he would readily form an alliance with. This would be an Alliance in its most desirable form as far as the Left were concerned, and I believe Clegg still has such an outcome in mind.

THE LIB DEMS ARE, like Labour, 'progressive' rather than traditional. Tradition is the very soul of conservatism. Cameron's MPs will be watching these negotiations very carefully, and if he abandons the Tory Party to PR in order to seek an arrangement to 'govern' for what will in all probability, be the next five months, then he has to put aside his own ambition for the sake of the nation.
Whoever forms the next government it will have to go to the electorate at some time this year to seek a stronger mandate to govern.
This country is in an even worse economic crises than the 1970s when Dennis Healy was forced to go cap in hand to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Yet our economic problems seem to have taken second place to changing the voting system.
Most people, I hope, are more concerned to know what will be happening to them and their nation in the coming months when their income will be reduced in order to reduce the deficit.
This current stasis created by a hung parliament has gripped the imagination of progressives, who now think the Great Day has finally dawned and all their tomorrows have been delivered by 50+ Liberal Democrats, and a rusting, disreputable Labour Party; all joined together in an alliance of losers.