UKIP leader Nigel Farage MEP, Douglas Carswell MP and deputy chairwoman Suzanne Evans MEP publicly offered UKIP’s support yesterday to those calling for what they argue is a fairer voting system. This follows what analysts claim is the most disproportionate election result in British parliamentary history.
In doing, so UKIP’s most prominent members joined forces with the leadership of the Green Party, the Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru and the Scottish National Party as they arrived at Downing Street to present their demands.
The leaders of all five parties attending had signed a 478,000-strong petition, organised by the Electoral Reform Society and Unlock Democracy, promoting voting reform after the recent general election starkly illustrated the huge differences in proportions of votes cast to the number of parliamentary seats won.
As Breitbart London previously reported, 1.4 million people (4.7 per cent of the vote) voted for the SNP which took 56 Commons seats or 8.6 per cent of the House, whereas 3.8 million people (12.6 per cent of the vote) voted for UKIP which received just one seat, 0.2 per cent of the House.
Appearing on BBC’s Question Time programme last week, Jeremy Hunt, the Conservative government’s Health Secretary was asked whether the distribution of seats is fair. “The answer is it’s not fair,” he replied, “and no system anywhere is totally fair.”
Basing part of her case for a change to the law on the increasingly multi-party nature of British politics, Katie Ghose, chief executive of the Electoral Reform Society, said: “Our two-party electoral system cannot cope with the fact that people want to vote for a variety of parties.”
Speaking to the BBC, Farage described the campaign for reform as “vital”, continuing:
“The results of the general election where five million votes, the views of five million people, are now represented by only two MPs; four million people voted for UKIP, for only one seat. It cannot go on like this.”
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.