Elections in the UK
Today we met Lewis Baston, he talked about the electoral system in the UK. I listened to him 5 years ago. Since then a lot has happened. For example , we have a coalition government between the Conservative and the Liberal Democrat party.
Lewis started by explaning how votes differed accoding to age and social class, and how the turnout for the 2010 election was 65%
The election system in the UK has changeed "- The biggest shake-up of our democracy since 1832 (Clegg) ". There was a referendum in 2011 about changing to the Alternative Vote. The result was that the public did not want to move away from the "first past the post" system.
Lewis Baston has written a book about the referendum is forward.
He also talked about how hard it is for women and minorities to reach parliament. Only 22% of the MPs are female and most of them are from the Labour party.
The next election will probably be in May 2015. Labour has modest 5-8 % lead over the Conservatives but the opposition often leads mid-term. Liberal Democrat popularity has fallen to around 10 per cent.
It was interesting to listen to Lewis Baston´s predictions about the future.
