Big Question Sunday: Is the British electoral process fair?

Well my local area made national news over the last week as the Labour party experienced its first victory under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn when my new MP Jim McMahon won the recent Oldham west and Royton by election, comfortably securing a 10,000 vote majority over UKIP candidate John Bickley. However the allegations of corruption by and rigging the postal votes has caused the election to be investigated, I won’t go into too much detail about that, I'll save that for later. This issue it did raise a very serious question for me: Is the British electoral process fair?

Firstly lets look at one reason why it could be considered unfair. In the UK a political party can have a significant percentage of the votes across the entire country, but because of the way things are this counts for nothing if these votes aren’t in the same constituency. For example lets look back at the last general election, UKIP had 3,881,099 votes across the UK, meaning 3,881,099 people backed the party’s ideas and wanted them to win. However the vast majority of theses votes count for nothing as UKIP only gained 1 seat (Clacton). This means that although over 12% of the UK voted for UKIP but only the 19,642 votes from the Clacton constituency actually counted as it is the only UKIP held constituency in the UK. Therefore the remaining 3,861,457 votes for UKIP count for nothing.

Now lets look at why the system could be considered fair. Although the candidate you voted for won’t always be elected an election does, whichever way you look at it, give every over 18 year old who is a registered voter a chance to voice their opinion in the running of their country. For example every single over 18 year old in the UK who is registered to vote can cast their vote in General and local elections. Therefore elections are a chance for people to have their say in the running of their country, which is a huge part of all our lives as it effects everything from benefits to taxes. If you don’t like any of the candidates then you do have the option to vote for nobody so your vote benefits no particular candidate.

Of course there are many more reasons for both side of this argument ,I could write something about proportional representation but it’s knocking on half 9, I haven’t eaten frankly I can’t be arsed writing about them.

In my opinion the bad outweighs the good on this one, I'd say the first past the post system that is operational within the UK is flawed and doesn’t give each person the best opportunity to get their constituency represented by the best candidate.

And there you have it, what do you think?

Another Big Question next Sunday and thanks for reading.