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From 1295, as a parliamentary borough, Reading elected two members of parliament (MPs). Under the Redistribution of Seats Act 1885, this representation was reduced to a single MP.
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Why the UK Election Results are the Worst in History.
What is the difference between parliament and government?
Which voting system is the best? - Alex Gendler
How would the UK House of Commons look under MMP?
Transcription
Hello Internet
The UK had an election we need to talk about
because after the debates finished, the people
voted and the ballots tallied the results
were this:
But parliament ended up looking like this:
Which isn't, exactly, representative. And
by not exactly, I mean at all.
Red earned 30% of the vote and 36% of the
seats, which is sort of close, but the rest
is madness: Orange earned 8% of the vote but
got one eighth of that while Yellow's 5% just
about doubled, and purple earned 13% and got
squat.
Meanwhile blue's 37% of the people booted
to 51% of the seats in parliament. The blue
boost is even bigger when you consider that
51% of the seats gives basically 100% the
control.
How'd this happen?
In the UK -- national elections aren't really
national, they're a bunch of local elections.
The UK is divided into constituencies, each
of which elects one member of parliament (M.P.)
to represent them. This local / national divide
is where the trouble begins.
Imagine a parliament with just three constituencies,
and it's easy to see how it wouldn't always
align with citizens. Some people think this
sort of result is fine -- “it's all *about*
winning local elections,” they’ll say.
“Each M.P. represents their constituency.”
And while the imbalance in this example is
dumb, but it's the same problem in the real
election and this same argument is given,
but there are two more problems with it in
reality land.
1) Few citizens have any idea who their MP
is, they just know what party they voted for
-- what party they want to represent their
views on the national level. And pretending
like it's a local election is a bit disingenuous.
-- in practice it's an election for now the
nation will run -- not really for who is going
to represent a tiny part of it.
and even if it were
2) The individual constituencies are worse
at representing their citizens than parliament.
Indulge this spreadsheet-loving nerd for a
moment, will you?
The difference between what a party earned
at the polls and what they got in parliament
is the amount of misrepresentation error.
If we calculate all the errors for all the
parties and add them up we can say the Parliament
as a whole has 47% percentage points of misrepresentation
error. That sounds bad looks like a utopian
rainbow of diversity compared to any local
election because the local elections have
*one* winner. Out of the 650 constituencies
647 have a higher representation error than
parliament. These are the only three that
don't and they're really unusual for having
so many of a single kind of voter in one place.
Most places look the The Wrekin which is dead
in the middle a mere one-hundred and one points
off. Note that the winning candidate didn't
reach a majority here. Which means more than
half of constituencies elected their MP with
a minority of voters.
The worst is Belfast South at the bottom of
the list. Hilariously unrepresentative. Less
than a quarter of the voters get to speak
for the entire place in parliament. This is
the the lowest percentage an M.P. has ever
been elected by.
So when people argue that the UK election
is a bunch of local elections 1) people don't
act like it, and 2) It's even more of an argument
that the elections are broken because they're
worse on this level.
These local elections are unrepresentative
because of the terrible 'First Past the Post'
voting system -- which I have complained mightily
about and won't repeat everything here -- go
watch the video -- but TL;DR it only 'works'
when citizens are limited to two choices.
Voting for any party except the biggest makes
it more likely the biggest will win by a minority
-- which is exactly what happened.
That citizens keep voting for smaller parties
despite knowing the result is against their
strategic interests demonstrates the citizenry
wants diverse representation -- but that successes
is the very thing that's made this the most
unrepresentative parliament in the history
of the UK.
People happy with the results argue the system
is working fine -- of course they do. Their
team won.
Government isn't a sport where a singular
'winner' must be determined. It's a system
to make rules that everyone follows and so,
we need a system where everyone can agree
the process is fair even if the results don't
go in their favor.
If you support a system that disenfranchises
people you don't like and turbo-franchises
people you do -- then it doesn't look like
you sport representative democracy, it looks
like you support a kind of dictatorship light.
Where a small group of people (including you)
makes the rules for everyone.
But as it is now, on election day the more
people express what they want the worse the
system looks which makes them disengaged at
best or angry at worst and GEE I CAN'T IMAGINE
WHY.
This is fixable, there are many, many better
ways the UK could vote -- here are two that
even keep local representatives.
And fixing voting really matters, because
this is a kind of government illegitimacy
score -- and it's been going up and may continue
to do so unless this fundamentally broken
voting system is changed.
History
Reading was one of the boroughs summoned to send members to the Model Parliament. The boundaries (encompassing the whole of one parish and parts of two others) were effectively unchanged from 1295 to 1918. In 1831, the population of the borough was 15,935, and contained 3,307 houses.
The right to vote was exercised by all inhabitants paying scot and lot, a relatively wide franchise for the period, and almost 2,000 votes were cast at the general election of 1826. Despite this high electorate, the corporation of the town was generally considered in practice to control elections to a large extent. In the second half of the 18th century, Reading was notoriously one of the most corrupt constituencies in England, bribery being both routine and expensive: Namier quotes the accounts kept for Prime Minister Newcastle of the 1754 election, which note that John Dodd, the government's candidate there, had already received £1000 and was promised £500 or £600 more to help him win the seat.[1] (Dodd lost by one vote, but had the result overturned on petition by a partisan vote in the House of Commons, and Newcastle's accounts show a continuing trickle of funds to him to nurse the constituency over the next few years.) A few years later, the nomination to one of Reading's seats was advertised for sale in a London newspaper, though Reading was not mentioned by name and no price was specified; the newspaper's printers were charged by the Commons with a breach of privilege, but the sale of seats remained legal if frowned-upon until 1809.
The Great Reform Act left Reading's representation and boundaries unchanged, and the reformed franchise far from increasing its electorate seems to have reduced it: it was estimated that there were 1,250 voters in 1831, but only 1,001 were registered for the first post-Reform election, that of 1832.
Context of 1923. Larger as town had grown, one of Labour's 191 of 615 seats: a supply and confidence government lasted for 10 months with Liberal support. 1929 was similar but better for Labour.
Context of 1906. The Liberal Landslide victory.
The Redistribution of Seats Act 1885, coming into effect at the 1885 general election, reduced the representation of the parliamentary borough to a single MP. The single-member Reading constituency continued to exist until it was split in 1950 into the separate constituencies of Reading North and Reading South. These two constituencies were merged back into a single Reading constituency in 1955, but again split apart in 1974; despite its name, the 1955 constituency did not contain the whole of the County Borough of Reading, with one ward being included in both of the Newbury and Wokingham seats.
After 1885, the constituency was marginal, regularly changing hands between the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party up to 1918, then between the Conservatives and Labour.
The area between the boundary of the Parliamentary borough and a boundary line drawn from the point at which the Reading and Reigate Railway crossed the boundary of the Parliamentary borough at the River Kennet, eastward along the Railway until it crossed Culver Lane, then westward along the centre of Culver Lane as far as the centre of Wokingham Road, then southward along the centre of Wokingham Road as far as the centre of Crescent Road, then westward along the centre of Crescent Road as far as the centre of Eastern Avenue, then southward along the centre of Eastern Avenue as far as the centre of Upper Redlands Road, then westward along the centre of Upper Redlands Road as far as the centre of Alexandra Road, then south and west along the centre of Junction Road to the centre of Christchurch Road, then along the centre of Christchurch Road until the line reached the boundary of the existing Parliamentary borough.[2]
Minor expansion - see map on Vision of Britain website.[3]
Boundaries extended to the south and west (gained from the Newbury and Wokingham Divisions), and to the north of the River Thames with the annexation of the Urban District of Caversham (part of the Henley Division of Oxfordshire) by Reading County Borough.
For the 1955 general election, Reading was re-established, replacing Reading North and Reading South and comprising:
The County Borough of Reading wards of Abbey, Battle, Castle, Caversham East, Caversham West, Church, Katesgrove, Minster, Redlands, Victoria, West.[4]
The East and Tilehurst wards were included in the Wokingham and Newbury constituencies respectively.
From the 1964 general election, a revision to the County Borough wards resulted in minor changes. The constituency now comprised:
The County Borough of Reading wards of Abbey, Battle, Castle, Caversham, Christchurch, Katesgrove, Minster, Redlands, Thames, and Whitley.[4]
The constituency was abolished once again for the 1974 general election. The Christchurch, Redlands and Whitley wards were included in the re-established constituency of Reading South, with remaining wards being included in Reading North.
A General Election was due to take place by the end of 1915. By the summer of 1914, the following candidates had been adopted to contest that election. Due to the outbreak of war, the election never took place.
General Election 1939–40:
Another General Election was required to take place before the end of 1940. The political parties had been making preparations for an election to take place and by the Autumn of 1939, the following candidates had been selected;
^"Chap. 23. Redistribution of Seats Act, 1885". The Public General Acts of the United Kingdom passed in the forty-eighth and forty-ninth years of the reign of Queen Victoria. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode. 1885. pp. 111–198.