Nigel Farage determined to defy ‘the will of the people’ by ignoring First Past the Post referendum from the 2010s

Nigel Farage determined to defy ‘the will of the people’ by ignoring referendum from the 2010s



by marketrent

28 comments

  1. Excerpt:

    *Nigel Farage has called for an end to the First Past the Post electoral system that saw his party win five seats in the general election, despite the nation overwhelmingly choosing to keep it during a referendum on electoral reform in 2011.*

    *67% of the voting public chose to keep the First Past the Post system in 2011, yet Farage is determined to defy them and will continue his campaign to ignore the result.*

    *“We need change, and the 2011 referendum only had a simple yes/no question, where the options were to continue with the status quo, or not. That’s all it was.*

    *“The problem is that the ‘not’ answer ignored the many possible alternatives available, which means people didn’t really know what they were voting for.”*

  2. * cries in remainer “Yeah but people have died since then….young people who couldn’t vote can now……people have changed their minds”

    The beauty of democracy is we have the right to change our minds about things. What may have been a good thing in 2011 may not seem the same now.

  3. I’m not sure the nation overwhelmingly decided to keep FPTP, more like it rejected the Alternative Vote system. And the nation is dumb and fickle anyway. I agree with Farage.

  4. I think this a bit stupid, I know it’s a joke but all satire is based on serious criticism, and this criticism doesn’t make any sense. The public rejecting AV doesn’t mean that we must rule out any other kind of electoral reform, and it’s not hypocritical for a person to support that while also having campaigned for Brexit. This just feels like meaningless point scoring.

  5. The loophole here is the opposite of the complaint that was levied against the Brexit referendum.

    For Brexit people said “it’s only an advisory referendum, it didn’t say how/when/or what should come after it!”.

    The “First Past the Post Referendum” was a specific referendum on the Alternative Vote system, and the implementation had already been legislated. The law would have been enacted automatically upon a “Yes” vote.

    As such you could legitimately claim that people voted against AV, they didn’t vote against the STV or other systems, and be right. If the question had been “Do you think elections should be determined by a form of proportional representation?” and nothing else, then a “No” vote would have been a categorical “no” and there’s no weaselling around it.

    It’s still never going to change because it’s not in the interests of the incumbent to do so. But it’s not technically hypocrisy unless Farage is specifically wanting the Alternative Vote system.

  7. This article is silly. Advocating for PR is one of the few areas where I agree with Farage. 40% of the electorate didn’t vote at the last election and disenfranchisement due to our horrid fptp system is part of the reason why.

  8. Eh, I’m all for a bit of Farage bashing, but the AV referendum in the 2010s was a farce. We need a proper review of our electoral process, and PR was not an option on the referendum. The Tories basically reduced the options on the table to first past the post, and first past the post with preference ranking, and then ran advertising suggesting that if we changed the voting system it would somehow take money away from the NHS and the armed forces.

  9. Regardless of who it benefits at any particular given moment, it’s hard to argue in good faith the current system as it exists functions as it should.

    I don’t even see why labour are particularly worried about electoral reform – if they were serious about setting it in motion, the investigations, consultations and potential trials in smaller regions will take so long the current leadership will be long gone anyway.

  10. The voting system referendum in 2011 had a turnout of just 42%, mainly because the Tories deliberately didn’t publicise it, so it can’t be said to have been representative.

    By comparison, the Brexit referendum had a turnout of 72%

  11. This is one of those incredibly rare times where Newsthump miss the mark and make themselves and everybody on the left look stupid.

    AV is not PR.

  12. Funny that everyone is talking about Farage. The Greens were actually the party disadvantaged the most by the current system.

  13. Lots of new Reform voters were fine with FPTP for the 14 years that they were voting Tory

  14. As much as I hate FPTP it’s funny how to Nigel, the only permanent referendums are the ones he wins. He even went from ‘let’s have a second Brexit referendum’ to ‘this is a once in a lifetime vote’ as the votes were being counted and he started to realise he was winning. He has absolutely no principles.

  15. I’d love PR, but if they put through a PR referendum you can be damn sure they will push to put through rejoining Brexit referendum, or joining the EEA

  16. If FPTP goes I could see parties like Green and reform getting more power in the House of Commons. I think reform going after the system and potentially putting pressure in the house to get it changed is moving a chess piece for themselves

    It’s like a Palpatine from Star Wars move but instead of firing lightning out his fingers, darth Nigel is just a racist cunt

  17. The AV referendum wasn’t even for true PR. It was for a first round and a second round. We want straight up PR, with one vote taking place on one day.

  18. Yeah, I use to be in favour of PR. But with 20% or so of the country insisting on voting for obvious grifters who have zero intention of improving anything then I would rather stick with FPTP. 3 or 4 seats is all the representation that morons deserve IMO.

  19. One of the great “What Ifs” in recent British politics is if the AV campaign actually put Farage front and centre advocating. Instead they made it look like a left wing only thing being promoted by the Lib Dems who had just triple tuition fees to 9k.

    Including Farage would have shown cross party political diversity and might have led to the AV referendum winning.

  20. Bit dumb here. Is AV not a type of PR? It’s similar to STV right which is definitely PR. I might be getting confused with AV+ if I’m being honest. Or is it more about the implementation of said votes rather than the voting mechanism per se?

    STV is my preference. A nice balance between local and national representation.

  21. Yes FPTP is unfair. Votes have different values depending on address.

  22. Steaming crap take from OP.

    The referendum on voting systems change gave us one shitty option that was difficult to understand and didn’t really hold any weight with the public. There wasn’t a massive outcry for change at that time and certainly not for AV.

    I agree we should not ask that particular question again. However, FPTP remains a terrible system in the modern world. We should have a grown up discussion over many months regarding the best alternatives we can come up with, before then moving to talking about a referendum on it. Let’s educate and debate first, and see what the mood is like after that.

  23. In a hypothetical PR system how would constituencies work?

    Like if reform got 30% of the total votes but failed to get a majority in any individual areas than who are the MPs who go to parliament? Would they have any connection to local areas at all?

  24. What a joke. So when people voted for Brexit, he “won” and accepted referendum, while it destroyed business and lives of other people. Now he’s against referendum, because he lost.

  25. I think this election proved the UK needs some kind of voting reform. Maybe a French style two round system could work?

  26. The number of people taking this joke article seriously in these comments right now is extremely depressing

  27. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m with Farage on this one. Voting system needs to be changed.

  28. two for the price of one, let’s do a Rejoin the EU and change to PR referendum at the same time…

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