first-past-the-post

Them And Us: Politics, Greed And Inequality - Why We Need A Fair Society
by Will Hutton
Published 30 Sep 2010

The first-past-the-post voting system is palpably unfair. Governments can have substantial parliamentary majorities that are vastly disproportionate to their vote – like the Labour government of 2005–10, which had a parliamentary majority of over sixty with only 36 per cent of the popular vote. The Conservatives won a quarter of a million more votes in England but had fewer seats, while the Liberal Democrats won 21 per cent of the vote but somewhat less than 10 per cent of the parliamentary seats. Now the battle is set to be joined over which voting system should replace first past the post. In effect, it will be a battle for the future of the state.

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So there are no constituencies where it is purposeless to vote because the result is a foregone conclusion. Consequently, no single party will be able to form a government, which will force bargaining between parties to form coalitions rather than the ‘strong government’ beloved of advocates of first past the post. We enter a world in which the government overtly reflects evolving and changing shades of opinion, and where argument and reason play a greater role than the whips’ office. It is fair politics for grown-ups. But democracy is still based on the national demos. International law is made by states; it is not yet legitimised by the involvement of an international citizenry.

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Unfortunately, British politics has never been good at squaring up to vested interest groups and challenging the sometimes absurd assumptions on which they build their arguments in the wider public interest. Nor is it good at long-term planning for the future. Most politicians in any democracy find it hard to think beyond the next election. But in Britain the first-past-the-post electoral system, winner-takes-all politics and the centralisation of the state make steady, proportional, long-term policy-making even less likely. The struggle to manage the present exhausts most British politicians, leaving no energy for them to worry about the future. One of the great advantages of the old paradigm ‘leave it to the markets’ was that politicians were not required to take a view of the future, nor try to build it.

22 Days in May: The birth of the Lib Dem - Conservative coalition
by Laws, David
Published 22 Nov 2010

It would also help to deliver what both parties were committed to – fewer MPs. ‘So what I am suggesting is this,’ said Danny. ‘We will support your proposals on redrawing the constituency boundaries, to make voting fairer. But in return, we want your support for a referendum on a reformed first-past-the-post system.’ George Osborne frowned and looked interested. ‘What do you mean by a reformed first-past-the-post system?’ Chris Huhne explained. George thought for two seconds, smiled weakly, and then said: ‘Oh! You mean AV don’t you! No. That won’t work for us. Good try though!’ Danny said that this was key to securing the support of Lib Dem MPs, and that it could help usher in a new and more co-operative politics and a fairer voting system.

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Electoral reform is tough for us, but on the rest of the political reform agenda we are very open to your ideas. But I agree that this is the trickiest issue.’ William Hague now intervened: ‘We have to start by recognising a big difference between our parties on this. It is a very difficult issue for Conservatives, most of whom support first-past-the-post. There isn’t any support for proportional representation in the Conservative Party. You need to understand that.’ Chris Huhne responded robustly: ‘We understand how this is difficult for you. But our party has been strung along before on PR – not least by Tony Blair in 1997. We don’t want to repeat that experience.

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In addition, from a Conservative perspective, a coalition with the Lib Dems might improve their chances of picking up Lib Dem second preference votes. I suggested before our meeting on 9 May that this proposal should now be seriously tabled. Danny Alexander had half-jokingly suggested that we should seek to ‘sell’ AV to the Conservative team as just an ‘enhanced’ first-past-the-post system. Chris Huhne added that the Conservatives used an AV type system to elect their own leaders. Now, in the actual talks, Danny set out just how important electoral reform is to the Lib Dems. He said: ‘The bottom line is that we need a bankable commitment to change. Our MPs will expect that, if we are going to have a coalition.

Corbyn
by Richard Seymour

Many an erring pundit has been christened a ‘melt’ and invited to ‘eat your tweet’ or, better still, ‘delete your account’. At some point, however, this has to give way to a more sober appraisal of the dilemmas facing Labour. The problem is not just that Labour must now find a way to turn its advantage into electoral victory, which raises a question about where to find the necessary voters in a first-past-the-post system, and how. Even if a fresh election is called soon and Labour does win, it will be in the position of having to try to implement a radical programme in an economy where there is very little investment. It will have to persuade corporations to invest, in spite of the higher taxes, regulations, and workers’ rights they will face.

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Why might this be, and why have the pundits been so easily impressed by the claims of Labour’s right-wing? Thinking through the electoral arithmetic on the Blairites’ own terms, it was never obvious that the electoral bloc comprising people who think the same way as they do is even close to 25 per cent. The reason this hasn’t been a problem in the past is that elections in Britain’s first-past-the-post system are usually decided by a few hundred thousand ‘median’ voters based in marginal constituencies. As long as Labour could take the votes of the Left for granted, they could focus on serenading the ‘aspirational’ voters of Nuneaton. Even the erosion of ‘heartland’ votes didn’t register, so long as this erosion was happening to mountainous, seemingly unassailable majorities.

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Certainly, once they were in place, the Tories evinced no appetite for rolling them back, despite a brief, testerical campaign against ‘socialism’ in the elections of 1950 and 1951. No doubt this was in part because, despite exploiting real popular discontent with rationing and linking such policies to ‘socialism’, the Conservatives only gained office in 1951 due to the irregularities of the first-past-the-post system. Labour had in fact won slightly more votes than the Conservatives, and the Tories’ polling suggested to them that they needed to accept existing social democratic policies if they were to win support among skilled workers.29 As such, the Conservatives held on to governmental power, once obtained, by preserving rather than rolling back Labour’s reforms.

Democracy for Sale: Dark Money and Dirty Politics
by Peter Geoghegan
Published 2 Jan 2020

Elliott’s CV also contained a particularly rare qualification: he already had experience winning a British referendum. In 2011, Britain held its first national referendum since the vote on joining the European project more than thirty-five years earlier. This time around, the proposal was more narrowly procedural. Should Westminster switch from the first-past-the-post electoral system to the slightly more proportional alternative vote? The proposed alteration was a fudge. The Liberal Democrats, who wanted full proportional representation, had agreed to a referendum on a less democratic electoral measure as part of their coalition agreement with David Cameron’s Conservatives.

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Researchers in Berlin found that online adverts increased a party’s vote by just 0.7 per cent.27 But in closely fought elections, even such fine margins can be decisive – especially in non-proportional voting systems like the US or the UK. In 2016, just 80,000 ballots in the Rust Belt states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania won Donald Trump the White House. In 2019, under first-past-the-post electoral system, Britain’s Conservatives won 56.2 per cent of Commons seats with just 43.6 per cent of the vote. A shift of just 51,000 voters across 40 seats would have wiped out Boris Johnson’s “stonking” majority entirely. When elections depend on small numbers of swing voters, the influence of a digital campaign only needs to be very, very slight to make a major difference.

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Rather than demonstrating utopian transparency, digital parties are often extremely opaque. Money flows in from anonymous sources. The elision of the political party and the private business hints at a dystopian digital future, in which democracy becomes even less participative and pluralist. (This is a particularly worrying vista in Britain, where the first-past-the-post electoral system and the consequent marginalisation of smaller parties has already reduced much of the country to political irrelevance.) Digital parties have, of course, struggled in the face of real-world politics. In Italy, Five Star’s support has plummeted since 2018, when Beppe Grillo went into government with the far-right League led by Matteo Salvini, who is a far more ruthless political operator.

Nervous States: Democracy and the Decline of Reason
by William Davies
Published 26 Feb 2019

In April 2018, police in Nanchang used facial recognition technology to identify a crime suspect from a crowd of 60,000 people at a pop concert. Modern political campaigners understand that public opinion and sentiment can often best be swayed through small-scale and seemingly marginal interventions, rather than big formal announcements or information. Electoral systems which employ “first past the post,” such as the United States and Britain, have a particular vulnerability to viral campaign tactics and crowd surges, as it is only ever a small number of people in pivotal regions that need persuading in order to sway the overall outcome. A focus on small-scale but influential triggers is also a feature of “nudge” techniques, through which policymakers seek to influence our decision making in areas such as nutrition and personal finance by subtly redesigning how choices are presented to us.

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A/B testing, 199 Acorn, 152 ad hominem attacks, 27, 124, 195 addiction, 83, 105, 116–17, 172–3, 186–7, 225 advertising, 14, 139–41, 143, 148, 178, 190, 192, 199, 219, 220 aerial bombing, 19, 125, 135, 138, 143, 180 Affectiva, 188 affective computing, 12, 141, 188 Agent Orange, 205 Alabama, United States, 154 alcoholism, 100, 115, 117 algorithms, 150, 169, 185, 188–9 Alsace, 90 alt-right, 15, 22, 50, 131, 174, 196, 209 alternative facts, 3 Amazon, 150, 173, 175, 185, 186, 187, 192, 199, 201 American Association for the Advancement of Science, 24 American Civil War (1861–5), 105, 142 American Pain Relief Society, 107 anaesthetics, 104, 142 Anderson, Benedict, 87 Anthropocene, 206, 213, 215, 216 antibiotics, 205 antitrust laws, 220 Appalachia, 90, 100 Apple, 156, 185, 187 Arab Spring (2011), 123 Arendt, Hannah, xiv, 19, 23, 26, 53, 219 Aristotle, 35, 95–6 arrogance, 39, 47, 50 artificial intelligence (AI), 12–13, 140–41, 183, 216–17 artificial video footage, 15 Ashby, Ross, 181 asymmetrical war, 146 atheism, 34, 35, 209 attention economy, 21 austerity, 100–101, 225 Australia, 103 Australian, 192 Austria, 14, 60, 128, 153–75 Austria-Hungary (1867–1918), 153–4, 159 authoritarian values, 92–4, 101–2, 108, 114, 118–19, 211–12 autocracy, 16, 20, 202 Babis, Andrej, 26 Bacon, Francis, 34, 35, 95, 97 Bank of England, 32, 33, 55, 64 Banks, Aaron, 26 Bannon, Steve, 21, 22, 60–61 Bayh–Dole Act (1980), 152 Beck Depression Inventory, 107 Berlusconi, Silvio, 202 Bernays, Edward, 14–15, 16, 143 “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” (Freud), 110 Bezos, Jeff, 150, 173 Big Data, 185–93, 198–201 Big Government, 65 Big Science, 180 Bilbao, Spain, 84 bills of mortality, 68–71, 75, 79–80, 81, 127 Birmingham, West Midlands, 85 Black Lives Matter, 10, 225 Blackpool, Lancashire, 100 blind peer reviewing, 48, 139, 195 Blitz (1940–41), 119, 143, 180 blue sky research, 133 body politic, 92–119 Bologna, Italy, 96 bookkeeping, 47, 49, 54 Booth, Charles, 74 Boston, Massachusetts, 48 Boyle, Robert, 48–50, 51–2 BP oil spill (2010), 89 brainwashing, 178 Breitbart, 22, 174 Brexit (2016–), xiv, 23 and education, 85 and elites, 33, 50, 61 and inequality, 61, 77 and NHS, 93 and opinion polling, 80–81 as self-harm, 44, 146 and statistics, 61 Unite for Europe march, 23 Vote Leave, 50, 93 British Futures, 65 Brooks, Rosa, 216 bullying, 113 Bureau of Labor, 74 Bush, George Herbert Walker, 77 Bush, George Walker, 77, 136 cadaverous research, 96, 98 call-out culture, 195 Calvinism, 35 Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, 85 University, 84, 151 Cambridge Analytica, 175, 191, 196, 199 Cameron, David, 33, 73, 100 cancer, 105 Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Piketty), 74 capital punishment, 92, 118 car accidents, 112–13 cargo-cult science, 50 Carney, Mark, 33 cartography, 59 Case, Anne, 99–100, 102, 115 Catholicism, 34 Cato Institute, 158 Cavendish, William, 3rd Earl of Devonshire, 34 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 3, 136, 151, 199 Center for Policy Studies, 164 chappe system, 129, 182 Charles II, King of England, Scotland, and Ireland, 34, 68, 73 Charlottesville attack (2017), 20 Chelsea, London, 100 Chevillet, Mark, 176 Chicago School, 160 China, 13, 15, 103, 145, 207 chloroform, 104 cholera, 130 Chongqing, China, 13 chronic pain, 102, 105, 106, 109 see also pain Churchill, Winston, 138 citizen science, 215, 216 civil rights movements, 21, 194 civilians, 43, 143, 204 von Clausewitz, Carl, 128–35, 141–7, 152 and defeat, 144–6 and emotion, 141–6, 197 and great leaders, 146–7, 156, 180–81 and intelligence, 134–5, 180–81 and Napoleon, 128–30, 133, 146–7 and soldiers, number of, 133–4 war, definition of, 130, 141, 193 climate change, 26, 50, 165, 205–7, 213–16 Climate Mobilization, 213–14 climate-gate (2009), 195 Clinton, Hillary, 27, 63, 77, 99, 197, 214 Clinton, William “Bill,” 77 coal mining, 90 cognitive behavioral therapy, 107 Cold War, 132, 133, 135–6, 137, 180, 182–4, 185, 223 and disruption, 204–5 intelligence agencies, 183 McCarthyism (1947–56), 137 nuclear weapons, 135, 180 scenting, 135–6 Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE), 180, 182, 200 space race, 137 and telepathy, 177–8 colonialism, 59–61, 224 commercial intelligence, 152 conscription, 127 Conservative Party, 80, 154, 160, 163, 166 Constitution of Liberty, The (Hayek), 160 consumer culture, 90, 104, 139 contraceptive pill, 94 Conway, Kellyanne, 3, 5 coordination, 148 Corbyn, Jeremy, 5, 6, 65, 80, 81, 197, 221 corporal punishment, 92 creative class, 84, 151 Cromwell, Oliver, 57, 59, 73 crop failures, 56 Crutzen, Paul, 206 culture war, xvii Cummings, Dominic, 50 currency, 166, 168 cutting, 115 cyber warfare, xii, 42, 43, 123, 126, 200, 212 Czech Republic, 103 Daily Mail, ix Damasio, Antonio, 208 Darwin, Charles, 8, 140, 142, 157, 171, 174, 179 Dash, 187 data, 49, 55, 57–8, 135, 151, 185–93, 198–201 Dawkins, Richard, 207, 209 death, 37, 44–5, 66–7, 91–101 and authoritarian values, 92–4, 101–2, 211, 224 bills of mortality, 68–71, 75, 79–80, 81, 89, 127 and Descartes, 37, 91 and Hobbes, 44–5, 67, 91, 98–9, 110, 151, 184 immortality, 149, 183–4, 224, 226 life expectancy, 62, 68–71, 72, 92, 100–101, 115, 224 suicide, 100, 101, 115 and Thiel, 149, 151 death penalty, 92, 118 Deaton, Angus, 99–100, 102, 115 DeepMind, 218 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), 176, 178 Delingpole, James, 22 demagogues, 11, 145, 146, 207 Democratic Party, 77, 79, 85 Denmark, 34, 151 depression, 103, 107 derivatives, 168, 172 Descartes, René, xiii, 36–9, 57, 147 and body, 36–8, 91, 96–7, 98, 104 and doubt, 36–8, 39, 46, 52 and dualism, 36–8, 39, 86, 94, 131, 139–40, 179, 186, 223 and nature, 37, 38, 86, 203 and pain, 104, 105 Descartes’ Error (Damasio), 208 Devonshire, Earl of, see Cavendish, William digital divide, 184 direct democracy, 202 disempowerment, 20, 22, 106, 113–19 disruption, 18, 20, 146, 147, 151, 171, 175 dog whistle politics, 200 Donors Trust, 165 Dorling, Danny, 100 Downs Survey (1655), 57, 59, 73 doxing, 195 drone warfare, 43, 194 drug abuse, 43, 100, 105, 115–16, 131, 172–3 Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt, 74 Dugan, Regina, 176–7 Dunkirk evacuation (1940), 119 e-democracy, 184 Echo, 187 ecocide, 205 Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth (Mises), 154, 166 economics, 59, 153–75 Economist, 85, 99 education, 85, 90–91 electroencephalography (EEG), 140 Elizabethan era (1558–1603), 51 embodied knowledge, 162 emotion and advertising, 14 artificial intelligence, 12–13, 140–41 and crowd-based politics, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 15, 16, 21, 23–7 Darwin’s analysis, 8, 140 Descartes on, 94, 131 and experts, 53, 60, 64, 66, 90 fear, 11–12, 16–22, 34, 40–45, 52, 60, 142 Hobbes on, 39, 41 James’ analysis, 140 and markets, 168, 175 moral, 21 and nationalism, 71, 210 pain, 102–19 sentiment analysis, xiii, 12–13, 140, 188 and war, 124–6, 142 empathy, 5, 12, 65, 102, 104, 109, 112, 118, 177, 179, 197 engagement, 7, 219 England Bank of England founded (1694), 55 bills of mortality, 68–71, 75, 79–80, 81, 89, 127 civil servants, 54 Civil War (1642–51), 33–4, 45, 53 Elizabethan era (1558–1603), 51 Great Fire of London (1666), 67 hospitals, 57 Irish War (1649–53), 59 national debt, 55 Parliament, 54, 55 plagues, 67–71, 75, 79–80, 81, 89, 127 Royal Society, 48–52, 56, 68, 86, 208, 218 tax collection, 54 Treasury, 54 see also United Kingdom English Defense League, ix entrepreneurship, 149, 156, 162 environment, 21, 26, 50, 61, 86, 165, 204–7, 213–16 climate change, 26, 50, 165, 205–7, 213–16 flying insects, decline of, 205, 215 Environmental Protection Agency, 23 ether, 104 European Commission, 60 European Space Agency, 175 European Union (EU), xiv, 22, 60 Brexit (2016–), see under Brexit and elites, 60, 145, 202 euro, 60, 78 Greek bailout (2015), 31 immigration, 60 and nationalism, 60, 145, 146 quantitative easing, 31 refugee crisis (2015–), 60, 225 Unite for Europe march (2017), 23 Exeter, Devon, 85 experts and crowd-based politics, 5, 6, 23, 25, 27 Hayek on, 162–4, 170 and representative democracy, 7 and statistics, 62–91 and technocracy, 53–61, 78, 87, 89, 90 trust in, 25–33, 63–4, 66, 74–5, 77–9, 170, 202 violence of, 59–61 Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animal, The (Darwin), 8, 140 Exxon, 165 Facebook, xvi, 15, 201 advertising, 190, 192, 199, 219, 220 data mining, 49, 185, 189, 190, 191, 192, 198, 219 and dog whistle politics, 200 and emotional artificial intelligence, 140 as engagement machine, 219 and fake news, 199 and haptics, 176, 182 and oligarchy, 174 and psychological profiling, 124 and Russia, 199 and sentiment analysis, 188 and telepathy, 176–8, 181, 185, 186 and Thiel, 149, 150 and unity, 197–8 weaponization of, 18 facial recognition, 13, 188–9 failed states, 42 fake news, 8, 15, 199 Farage, Nigel, 65 fascism, 154, 203, 209 fear, 11–12, 16–22, 34, 40–45, 52, 60, 142 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 137 Federal Reserve, 33 feeling, definition of, xii feminism, 66, 194 Fifth Amendment, 44 fight or flight, 111, 114 Financial Times, 15 first past the post, 13 First World War, see World War I Fitbit, 187 fixed currency exchange rates, 166 Florida, Richard, 84 flu, 67, 191 flying insects, 205, 215 France censuses, 66, 73 conscription introduced (1793), 127 Front National, 27, 61, 79, 87, 92 Hobbes in (1640–51), 33–4, 41–2 Le Bon’s crowd psychology, 8–12, 13, 15, 16, 20, 24, 25, 38 life expectancy, 101 Napoleonic Wars (1803–15), see Napoleonic Wars Paris climate accord (2015), 205, 207 Paris Commune (1871), 8 Prussian War (1870–71), 8, 142 Revolution (1789–99), xv, 71, 126–9, 141, 142, 144, 204 statistics agency established (1800), 72 unemployment, 83 Franklin, Benjamin, 66 free markets, 26, 79, 84, 88, 154–75 free speech, 22, 113, 194, 208, 209, 224 free will, 16 Freud, Sigmund, 9, 14, 44, 107, 109–10, 111, 112, 114, 139 Friedman, Milton, 160, 163, 166 Front National, 27, 61, 79, 87, 92, 101–2 full spectrum warfare, 43 functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), 140 futurists, 168 Galen, 95–6 Galilei, Galileo, 35 gambling, 116–17 game theory, 132 gaming, 193–4 Gandhi, Mohandas, 224 gate control theory, 106 Gates, Sylvester James “Jim,” 24 Gavotti, Giulio, 143 geek humor, 193 Gehry, Frank, 84 Geller, Uri, 178 geometry, 35, 49, 57, 59, 203 Gerasimov, Valery, 123, 125, 126, 130 Germany, 34, 72, 137, 205, 215 gig economy, 173 global financial crisis (2007–9), 5, 29–32, 53, 218 austerity, 100–101 bailouts, 29–32, 40, 42 and gross domestic product (GDP), 76 as “heart attack,” 57 and Obama administration, 158 and quantitative easing, 31–2, 222 and securitization of loans, 218–19 and statistics, 53, 65 and suicide, 101 and unemployment, 82 globalization, 21, 78, 84, 145, 146 Gonzales, Alberto, 136 Google, xvi, 174, 182, 185, 186, 191, 192 DeepMind, 218 Maps, 182 Transparency Project, 198 Government Accountability Office, 29 Graunt, John, 67–9, 73, 75, 79–80, 81, 85, 89, 127, 167 Great Fire of London (1666), 67 great leaders, 146–8 Great Recession (2007–13), 76, 82, 101 Greece, 5, 31, 101 Greenpeace, 10 Grenfell Tower fire (2017), 10 Grillo, Beppe, 26 gross domestic product (GDP), 62, 65, 71, 75–9, 82, 87, 138 guerrillas, 128, 146, 194, 196 Haldane, Andrew, 32 haptics, 176, 182 Harvey, William, 34, 35, 38, 57, 96, 97 hate speech, 42 von Hayek, Friedrich, 159–73, 219 health, 92–119, 224 hedge funds, 173, 174 hedonism, 70, 224 helicopter money, 222 Heritage Foundation, 164, 214 heroin, 105, 117 heroism and disruption, 18, 146 and genius, 218 and Hobbes, 44, 151 and Napoleonic Wars, 87, 127, 142 and nationalism, 87, 119, 210 and pain, 212 and protection, 202–3 and technocracy, 101 and technology, 127 Heyer, Heather, 20 Hiroshima atomic bombing (1945), 206 Hobbes, Thomas, xiii, xvi, 33–6, 38–45, 67, 147 on arrogance, 39, 47, 50, 125 and body, 96, 98–9 and Boyle, 49, 50, 51 on civil society, 42, 119 and death, 44–5, 67, 69–70, 91, 98–9, 110, 151, 184 on equality, 89 on fear, 40–45, 52, 67, 125 France, exile in (1640–51), 33–4, 41 on geometry, 35, 38, 49, 56, 57 and heroism, 44, 151 on language, 38–9 natural philosophy, 35–6 and nature, 38, 50 and Petty, 56, 57, 58 on promises, 39–42, 45, 148, 217–18 and Royal Society, 49, 50, 51 on senses, 38, 49, 147 and sovereign/state, 40–45, 46, 52, 53, 54, 60, 67, 73, 126, 166, 217, 220 on “state of nature,” 40, 133, 206, 217 war and peace, separation of, 40–45, 54, 60, 73, 125–6, 131, 201, 212 Hobsbawm, Eric, 87, 147 Hochschild, Arlie Russell, 221 holistic remedies, 95, 97 Holland, see under Netherlands homeopathy, 95 Homer, xiv Hungary, 20, 60, 87, 146 hysteria, 139 IBM, 179 identity politics, 208, 209 Iglesias Turrión, Pablo, 5 imagined communities, 87 immigration, 60, 63, 65, 79, 87, 145 immortality, 149, 183–4, 224 in-jokes, 193 individual autonomy, 16 Industrial Revolution, 133, 206 inequality, 59, 61, 62, 76, 77, 83, 85, 88–90 inflation, 62, 76, 78, 82 infographics, 75 information theory, 147 information war, 43, 196 insurance, 59 intellectual property, 150 intelligence, 132–9 intensity, 79–83 International Association for the Study of Pain, 106 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 64, 78 Internet, 184–201, 219 IP addresses, 193 Iraq War (2003–11), 74, 132 Ireland, 57, 73 Irish Republican Army (IRA), 43 “Is This How You Feel?

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Kennedy International Airport, New York, x, xiii, 41 Johns Hopkins University, 176 Jones, Alexander, 131 Kant, Immanuel, 128, 130 Kemelmacher-Shlizerman, Ira, 188 Kennedy Jr., Robert, 23 Kepler, Johannes, 35 Keynes, John Maynard, 165 King Jr., Martin Luther, 21, 224 knowledge economy, 84, 85, 88, 151–2, 217 known knowns, 132, 138 Koch, Charles and David, 154, 164, 174 Korean War (1950–53), 178 Kraepelin, Emil, 139 Kurzweil, Ray, 183–4 Labour Party, 5, 6, 65, 80, 81, 221 Lagarde, Christine, 64 Le Bon, Gustave, 8–12, 13, 15, 16, 20, 24, 25, 38 Le Pen, Marine, 27, 79, 87, 92, 101–2 Leadbeater, Charles, 84 Leeds, West Yorkshire, 85 Leicester, Leicestershire, 85 Leviathan (Hobbes), 34, 39, 45 liberal elites, 20, 58, 88, 89, 161 libertarianism, 15, 151, 154, 158, 164, 173, 196, 209, 226 Liberty Fund, 158 Libya, 143 lie-detection technology, 136 life expectancy, 62, 68–71, 72, 92, 100–101, 115, 224 Lindemann, Frederick Alexander, 1st Viscount Cherwell, 138 Lloyds Bank, 29 London, England bills of mortality, 68–71, 75, 79–80, 81, 89, 127 Blitz (1940–41), 119, 143, 180 EU referendum (2016), 85 Great Fire (1666), 67 Grenfell Tower fire (2017), 10 and gross domestic product (GDP), 77, 78 housing crisis, 84 insurance sector, 59 knowledge economy, 84 life expectancy, 100 newspapers, early, 48 Oxford Circus terror scare (2017), ix–x, xiii, 41 plagues, 67–71, 75, 79–80, 81, 89, 127 Unite for Europe march (2017), 23 London School of Economics (LSE), 160 loss aversion, 145 Louis XIV, King of France, 73, 127 Louisiana, United States, 151, 221 Ludwig von Mises Institute, 154 MacLean, Nancy, 158 Macron, Emmanuel, 33 mainstream media, 197 “Make America Great Again,” 76, 145 Manchester, England, 85 Mann, Geoff, 214 maps, 182 March For Our Lives (2018), 21 March for Science (2017), 23–5, 27, 28, 210, 211 marketing, 14, 139–41, 143, 148, 169 Mars, 175, 226 Marxism, 163 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), 179 Mayer, Jane, 158 McCarthy, Joseph, 137 McGill Pain Questionnaire, 104 McKibben, William “Bill,” 213 Megaface, 188–9 memes, 15, 194 Menger, Carl, 154 mental illness, 103, 107–17, 139 mercenaries, 126 Mercer, Robert, 174, 175 Mexico, 145 Million-Man March (1995), 4 mind-reading technology, 136 see also telepathy Mirowski, Philip, 158 von Mises, Ludwig, 154–63, 166, 172, 173 Missing Migrants Project, 225 mobilization, 5, 7, 126–31 and Corbyn, 81 and elections, 81, 124 and experts, 27–8 and Internet, 15 and Le Bon’s crowd psychology, 11, 12, 16, 20 and loss, 145 and Napoleonic Wars, xv, 127–30, 141, 144 and Occupy movement, 5 and populism, 16, 22, 60 and violence, opposition to, 21 Moniteur Universel, Le, 142 monopoly on violence, 42 Mont Pelerin Society, 163, 164 moral emotion, 21 morphine, 105 multiculturalism, 84 Murs, Oliver “Olly,” ix Musk, Elon, 175, 176, 178, 183, 226 Nanchang, Jiangxi, 13 Napoleonic Wars (1803–15), 126–30 chappe system, 129, 182 and conscription, 87, 126–7, 129 and disruption, 170–71, 173, 174, 175, 226 and great leader ideal, 146–8 and intelligence, 134 and mobilization, xv, 126–30, 141, 144 and nationalism, 87, 128, 129, 144, 183, 211 and propaganda, 142 Russia, invasion of (1812), 128, 133 Spain, invasion of (1808), 128 National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), 23, 175 National Audit Office (NAO), 29–30 national citizenship, 71 National Defense Research Committee, 180 National Health Service (NHS), 30, 93 National Park Service, 4 National Security Agency (NSA), 152 national sovereignty, 34, 53 nationalism, 87, 141, 210–12 and conservatism, 144 and disempowerment, 118–19 and elites, 22–3, 60–61, 145 ethnic, 15 and health, 92, 211–12, 224 and imagined communities, 87 and inequality, 78 and loss, 145 and markets, 167 and promises, 221 and resentment, 145, 197, 198 and war, 7, 20–21, 118–19, 143–6, 210–11 nativism, 61 natural philosophy, 35–6 nature, 86 see also environment Nazi Germany (1933–45), 137, 138, 154 Netherlands, 48, 56, 129 Neurable, 176 neural networking, 216 Neuralink, 176 neurasthenia, 139 Neurath, Otto, 153–4, 157, 160 neurochemistry, 108, 111, 112 neuroimaging, 176–8, 181 Nevada, United States, 194 new atheism, 209 New Orleans, Louisiana, 151 New Right, 164 New York, United States and climate change, 205 and gross domestic product (GDP), 78 housing crisis, 84 JFK Airport terror scare (2016), x, xiii, 41 knowledge economy, 84 September 11 attacks (2001), 17, 18 New York Times, 3, 27, 85 newspapers, 48, 71 Newton, Isaac, 35 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 217 Nixon, Robert, 206 no-platforming, 22, 208 Nobel Prize, 158–9 non-combatants, 43, 143, 204 non-violence, 224 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 123, 145, 214 North Carolina, United States, 84 Northern Ireland, 43, 85 Northern League, 61 Northern Rock, 29 Norwich, Norfolk, 85 nostalgia, xiv, 143, 145, 210, 223 “Not in my name,” 27 nuclear weapons, 132, 135, 137, 180, 183, 192, 196, 204 nudge techniques, 13 Obama, Barack, 3, 24, 76, 77, 79, 158, 172 Obamacare, 172 objectivity, xiv, 13, 75, 136, 223 and crowd-based politics, 5, 7, 24–5 and death, 94 and Descartes, 37 and experts, trust in, 28, 32, 33, 51, 53, 64, 86, 89 and Hayek, 163, 164, 170 and markets, 169, 170 and photography, 8 and Scientific Revolution, 48, 49 and statistics, 72, 74, 75, 82, 88 and telepathic communication, 179 and war, 58, 125, 134, 135, 136, 146 Occupy movement, 5, 10, 24, 61 Oedipus complex, 109 Office for National Statistics, 63, 133 Ohio, United States, 116 oil crisis (1973), 166 “On Computable Numbers” (Turing), 181 On War (Clausewitz), 130 Open Society and Its Enemies, The (Popper), 171 opiates, 105, 116, 172–3 opinion polling, 65, 80–81, 191 Orbán, Viktor, 87, 146 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 72 Oxford, Oxfordshire, 85 Oxford Circus terror scare (2017), ix–x, xiii, 41 Oxford University, 56, 151 OxyContin, 105, 116 pacifism, 8, 20, 44, 151 pain, 102–19, 172–3, 224 see also chronic pain painkillers, 104, 105, 116, 172–3 Palantir, 151, 152, 175, 190 parabiosis, 149 Paris climate accord (2015), 205, 207 Paris Commune (1871), 8 Parkland attack (2018), 21 Patriot Act (2001), 137 Paul, Ronald, 154 PayPal, 149 Peace of Westphalia (1648), 34, 53 peer reviewing, 48, 139, 195, 208 penicillin, 94 Pentagon, 130, 132, 135, 136, 214, 216 pesticides, 205 Petty, William, 55–9, 67, 73, 85, 167 pharmacology, 142 Pielke Jr., Roger, 24, 25 Piketty, Thomas, 74 Pinker, Stephen, 207 plagues, 56, 67–71, 75, 79–80, 81, 89, 95 pleasure principle, 70, 109, 110, 224 pneumonia, 37, 67 Podemos, 5, 202 Poland, 20, 34, 60 Polanyi, Michael, 163 political anatomy, 57 Political Arithmetick (Petty), 58, 59 political correctness, 20, 27, 145 Popper, Karl, 163, 171 populism xvii, 211–12, 214, 220, 225–6 and central banks, 33 and crowd-based politics, 12 and democracy, 202 and elites/experts, 26, 33, 50, 152, 197, 210, 215 and empathy, 118 and health, 99, 101–2, 224–5 and immediate action, 216 in Kansas (1880s), 220 and markets, 167 and private companies, 174 and promises, 221 and resentment, 145 and statistics, 90 and unemployment, 88 and war, 148, 212 Porter, Michael, 84 post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), 111–14, 117, 209 post-truth, 167, 224 Potsdam Conference (1945), 138 power vs. violence, 19, 219 predictive policing, 151 presidential election, US (2016), xiv and climate change, 214 and data, 190 and education, 85 and free trade, 79 and health, 92, 99 and immigration, 79, 145 and inequality, 76–7 and Internet, 190, 197, 199 “Make America Great Again,” 76, 145 and opinion polling, 65, 80 and promises, 221 and relative deprivation, 88 and Russia, 199 and statistics, 63 and Yellen, 33 prisoners of war, 43 promises, 25, 31, 39–42, 45–7, 51, 52, 217–18, 221–2 Propaganda (Bernays), 14–15 propaganda, 8, 14–16, 83, 124–5, 141, 142, 143 property rights, 158, 167 Protestantism, 34, 35, 45, 215 Prussia (1525–1947), 8, 127–30, 133–4, 135, 142 psychiatry, 107, 139 psychoanalysis, 107, 139 Psychology of Crowds, The (Le Bon), 9–12, 13, 15, 16, 20, 24, 25 psychosomatic, 103 public-spending cuts, 100–101 punishment, 90, 92–3, 94, 95, 108 Purdue, 105 Putin, Vladimir, 145, 183 al-Qaeda, 136 quality of life, 74, 104 quantitative easing, 31–2, 222 quants, 190 radical statistics, 74 RAND Corporation, 183 RBS, 29 Reagan, Ronald, 15, 77, 154, 160, 163, 166 real-time knowledge, xvi, 112, 131, 134, 153, 154, 165–70 Reason Foundation, 158 Red Vienna, 154, 155 Rees-Mogg, Jacob, 33, 61 refugee crisis (2015–), 60, 225 relative deprivation, 88 representative democracy, 7, 12, 14–15, 25–8, 61, 202 Republican Party, 77, 79, 85, 154, 160, 163, 166, 172 research and development (R&D), 133 Research Triangle, North Carolina, 84 resentment, 5, 226 of elites/experts, 32, 52, 61, 86, 88–9, 161, 186, 201 and nationalism/populism, 5, 144–6, 148, 197, 198 and pain, 94 Ridley, Matt, 209 right to remain silent, 44 Road to Serfdom, The (Hayek), 160, 166 Robinson, Tommy, ix Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 52 Royal Exchange, 67 Royal Society, 48–52, 56, 68, 86, 133, 137, 186, 208, 218 Rumsfeld, Donald, 132 Russian Empire (1721–1917), 128, 133 Russian Federation (1991–) and artificial intelligence, 183 Gerasimov Doctrine, 43, 123, 125, 126 and information war, 196 life expectancy, 100, 115 and national humiliation, 145 Skripal poisoning (2018), 43 and social media, 15, 18, 199 troll farms, 199 Russian Revolution (1917), 155 Russian SFSR (1917–91), 132, 133, 135–8, 155, 177, 180, 182–3 safe spaces, 22, 208 Sands, Robert “Bobby,” 43 Saxony, 90 scarlet fever, 67 Scarry, Elaine, 102–3 scenting, 135, 180 Schneier, Bruce, 185 Schumpeter, Joseph, 156–7, 162 Scientific Revolution, 48–52, 62, 66, 95, 204, 207, 218 scientist, coining of term, 133 SCL, 175 Scotland, 64, 85, 172 search engines, xvi Second World War, see World War II securitization of loans, 218 seismology, 135 self-employment, 82 self-esteem, 88–90, 175, 212 self-harm, 44, 114–15, 117, 146, 225 self-help, 107 self-interest, 26, 41, 44, 61, 114, 141, 146 Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE), 180, 182, 200 sentiment analysis, xiii, 12–13, 140, 188 September 11 attacks (2001), 17, 18 shell shock, 109–10 Shrecker, Ted, 226 Silicon Fen, Cambridgeshire, 84 Silicon Valley, California, xvi, 219 and data, 55, 151, 185–93, 199–201 and disruption, 149–51, 175, 226 and entrepreneurship, 149–51 and fascism, 203 and immortality, 149, 183–4, 224, 226 and monopolies, 174, 220 and singularity, 183–4 and telepathy, 176–8, 181, 185, 186, 221 and weaponization, 18, 219 singularity, 184 Siri, 187 Skripal poisoning (2018), 43 slavery, 59, 224 smallpox, 67 smart cities, 190, 199 smartphone addiction, 112, 186–7 snowflakes, 22, 113 social indicators, 74 social justice warriors (SJWs), 131 social media and crowd psychology, 6 emotional artificial intelligence, 12–13, 140–41 and engagement, 7 filter bubbles, 66 and propaganda, 15, 18, 81, 124 and PTSD, 113 and sentiment analysis, 12 trolls, 18, 20–22, 27, 40, 123, 146, 148, 194–8, 199, 209 weaponization of, 18, 19, 22, 194–5 socialism, 8, 20, 154–6, 158, 160 calculation debate, 154–6, 158, 160 Socialism (Mises), 160 Society for Freedom in Science, 163 South Africa, 103 sovereignty, 34, 53 Soviet Russia (1917–91), 132, 133, 135–8, 177, 180, 182–3 Spain, 5, 34, 84, 128, 202 speed of knowledge, xvi, 112, 124, 131, 134, 136, 153, 154, 165–70 Spicer, Sean, 3, 5 spy planes, 136, 152 Stalin, Joseph, 138 Stanford University, 179 statactivism, 74 statistics, 62–91, 161, 186 status, 88–90 Stoermer, Eugene, 206 strong man leaders, 16 suicide, 100, 101, 115 suicide bombing, 44, 146 superbugs, 205 surveillance, 185–93, 219 Sweden, 34 Switzerland, 164 Sydenham, Thomas, 96 Syriza, 5 tacit knowledge, 162 talking cure, 107 taxation, 158 Tea Party, 32, 50, 61, 221 technocracy, 53–8, 59, 60, 61, 78, 87, 89, 90, 211 teenage girls, 113, 114 telepathy, 39, 176–9, 181, 185, 186 terrorism, 17–18, 151, 185 Charlottesville attack (2017), 20 emergency powers, 42 JFK Airport terror scare (2016), x, xiii, 41 Oxford Circus terror scare (2017), ix–x, xiii, 41 September 11 attacks (2001), 17, 18 suicide bombing, 44, 146 vehicle-ramming attacks, 17 war on terror, 131, 136, 196 Thames Valley, England, 85 Thatcher, Margaret, 154, 160, 163, 166 Thiel, Peter, 26, 149–51, 153, 156, 174, 190 Thirty Years War (1618–48), 34, 45, 53, 126 Tokyo, Japan, x torture, 92–3 total wars, 129, 142–3 Treaty of Westphalia (1648), 34, 53 trends, xvi, 168 trigger warnings, 22, 113 trolls, 18, 20–22, 27, 40, 123, 146, 148, 194–8, 199, 209 Trump, Donald, xiv and Bannon, 21, 60–61 and climate change, 207 and education, 85 election campaign (2016), see under presidential election, US and free trade, 79 and health, 92, 99 and immigration, 145 inauguration (2017), 3–5, 6, 9, 10 and inequality, 76–7 “Make America Great Again,” 76, 145 and March for Science (2017), 23, 24, 210 and media, 27 and opinion polling, 65, 80 and Paris climate accord, 207 and promises, 221 and relative deprivation, 88 and statistics, 63 and Yellen, 33 Tsipras, Alexis, 5 Turing, Alan, 181, 183 Twitter and Corbyn’s rallies, 6 and JFK Airport terror scare (2016), x and Oxford Circus terror scare (2017), ix–x and Russia, 18 and sentiment analysis, 188 and trends, xvi and trolls, 194, 195 Uber, 49, 185, 186, 187, 188, 191, 192 UK Independence Party, 65, 92, 202 underemployment, 82 unemployment, 61, 62, 72, 78, 81–3, 87, 88, 203 United Kingdom austerity, 100 Bank of England, 32, 33, 64 Blitz (1940–41), 119, 143, 180 Brexit (2016–), see under Brexit Cameron government (2010–16), 33, 73, 100 Center for Policy Studies, 164 Civil Service, 33 climate-gate (2009), 195 Corbyn’s rallies, 5, 6 Dunkirk evacuation (1940), 119 education, 85 financial crisis (2007–9), 29–32, 100 first past the post, 13 general election (2015), 80, 81 general election (2017), 6, 65, 80, 81, 221 Grenfell Tower fire (2017), 10 gross domestic product (GDP), 77, 79 immigration, 63, 65 Irish hunger strike (1981), 43 life expectancy, 100 National Audit Office (NAO), 29 National Health Service (NHS), 30, 93 Office for National Statistics, 63, 133 and opiates, 105 Oxford Circus terror scare (2017), ix–x, xiii, 41 and pain, 102, 105 Palantir, 151 Potsdam Conference (1945), 138 quantitative easing, 31–2 Royal Society, 138 Scottish independence referendum (2014), 64 Skripal poisoning (2018), 43 Society for Freedom in Science, 163 Thatcher government (1979–90), 154, 160, 163, 166 and torture, 92 Treasury, 61, 64 unemployment, 83 Unite for Europe march (2017), 23 World War II (1939–45), 114, 119, 138, 143, 180 see also England United Nations, 72, 222 United States Bayh–Dole Act (1980), 152 Black Lives Matter, 10, 225 BP oil spill (2010), 89 Bush Jr. administration (2001–9), 77, 136 Bush Sr administration (1989–93), 77 Bureau of Labor, 74 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 3, 136, 151, 199 Charlottesville attack (2017), 20 Civil War (1861–5), 105, 142 and climate change, 207, 214 Clinton administration (1993–2001), 77 Cold War, see Cold War Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), 176, 178 Defense Intelligence Agency, 177 drug abuse, 43, 100, 105, 115–16, 131, 172–3 education, 85 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 137 Federal Reserve, 33 Fifth Amendment (1789), 44 financial crisis (2007–9), 31–2, 82, 158 first past the post, 13 Government Accountability Office, 29 gross domestic product (GDP), 75–7, 82 health, 92, 99–100, 101, 103, 105, 107, 115–16, 158, 172–3 Heritage Foundation, 164, 214 Iraq War (2003–11), 74, 132 JFK Airport terror scare (2016), x, xiii, 41 Kansas populists (1880s), 220 libertarianism, 15, 151, 154, 158, 164, 173 life expectancy, 100, 101 March For Our Lives (2018), 21 March for Science (2017), 23–5, 27, 28, 210 McCarthyism (1947–56), 137 Million-Man March (1995), 4 National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), 23, 175 National Defense Research Committee, 180 National Park Service, 4 National Security Agency (NSA), 152 Obama administration (2009–17), 3, 24, 76, 77, 79, 158 Occupy Wall Street (2011), 5, 10, 61 and opiates, 105, 172–3 and pain, 103, 105, 107, 172–3 Palantir, 151, 152, 175, 190 Paris climate accord (2015), 205, 207 Parkland attack (2018), 21 Patriot Act (2001), 137 Pentagon, 130, 132, 135, 136, 214, 216 presidential election (2016), see under presidential election, US psychiatry, 107, 111 quantitative easing, 31–2 Reagan administration (1981–9), 15, 77, 154, 160, 163, 166 Rumsfeld’s “unknown unknowns” speech (2002), 132 Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE), 180, 182, 200 September 11 attacks (2001), 17, 18 Tea Party, 32, 50, 61, 221 and torture, 93 Trump administration (2017–), see under Trump, Donald unemployment, 83 Vietnam War (1955–75), 111, 130, 136, 138, 143, 205 World War I (1914–18), 137 World War II (1939–45), 137, 180 universal basic income, 221 universities, 151–2, 164, 169–70 University of Cambridge, 84, 151 University of Chicago, 160 University of East Anglia, 195 University of Oxford, 56, 151 University of Vienna, 160 University of Washington, 188 unknown knowns, 132, 133, 136, 138, 141, 192, 212 unknown unknowns, 132, 133, 138 “Use of Knowledge in Society, The” (Hayek), 161 V2 flying bomb, 137 vaccines, 23, 95 de Vauban, Sébastien Le Prestre, Marquis de Vauban, 73 vehicle-ramming attacks, 17 Vesalius, Andreas, 96 Vienna, Austria, 153–5, 159 Vietnam War (1955–75), 111, 130, 136, 138, 143, 205 violence vs. power, 19, 219 viral marketing, 12 virtual reality, 183 virtue signaling, 194 voice recognition, 187 Vote Leave, 50, 93 Wainright, Joel, 214 Wales, 77, 90 Wall Street, New York, 33, 190 War College, Berlin, 128 “War Economy” (Neurath), 153–4 war on drugs, 43, 131 war on terror, 131, 136, 196 Watts, Jay, 115 weaponization, 18–20, 22, 26, 75, 118, 123, 194, 219, 223 weapons of mass destruction, 132 wearable technology, 173 weather control, 204 “What Is An Emotion?”

Programming in Haskell
by Graham Hutton
Published 31 Aug 2016

Using the higher-order functions map and composition, this conversion can be implemented as follows: encode :: String -> [Bit] encode = concat . map (make8 . int2bin . ord) For example: > encode "abc" [1,0,0,0,0,1,1,0,0,1,0,0,0,1,1,0,1,1,0,0,0,1,1,0] To decode a list of bits produced using encode, we first define a function chop8 that chops such a list up into eight-bit binary numbers: chop8 :: [Bit] -> [[Bit]] chop8 []= [] chop8 bits = take 8 bits : chop8 (drop 8 bits) It is now easy to define a function that decodes a list of bits as a string of characters by chopping the list up, and converting each resulting binary number into a Unicode number and then a character: decode :: [Bit] -> String decode = map (chr . bin2int) . chop8 For example: > decode [1,0,0,0,0,1,1,0,0,1,0,0,0,1,1,0,1,1,0,0,0,1,1,0] "abc" Finally, we define a function transmit that simulates the transmission of a string of characters as a list of bits, using a perfect communication channel that we model using the identity function: transmit :: String -> String transmit = decode . channel . encode channel :: [Bit] -> [Bit] channel = id For example: > transmit "higher-order functions are easy" "higher-order functions are easy" 7.7Voting algorithms For our second extended programming example, we consider two different algorithms for deciding the winner in an election: the simple first past the post system, and the more refined alternative vote system. First past the post In this system, each person has one vote, and the candidate with the largest number of votes is declared the winner. For example, if we define votes :: [String] votes = ["Red", "Blue", "Green", "Blue", "Blue", "Red"] then candidate "Green" has one vote, "Red" has two votes, while "Blue" has three votes and is hence the winner.

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This function could be defined using recursion, but a simpler definition is possible using higher-order functions by selecting all elements from the list that are equal to the target value, and taking the length of the resulting list: count :: Eq a => a -> [a] -> Int count x = length . filter (== x) For example: > count "Red" votes 2 In turn, the higher-order function filter can also be used to define a function that removes duplicate values from a list: rmdups :: Eq a => [a] -> [a] rmdups []= [] rmdups (x:xs) = x : filter (/= x) (rmdups xs) For example: > rmdups votes ["Red", "Blue", "Green"] The functions count and rmdups can then be combined using a list comprehension to define a function that returns the result of a first-past-the-post election in increasing order of the number of votes received: result :: Ord a => [a] -> [(Int,a)] result vs = sort [(count v vs, v) | v <- rmdups vs] For example: > result votes [(1,"Green"), (2,"Red"), (3,"Blue")] The sorting function sort :: Ord a => [a] -> [a] used above is provided in the library Data.List.

Cultural Backlash: Trump, Brexit, and Authoritarian Populism
by Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart
Published 31 Dec 2018

UKIP in the 2015 and 2017 UK General Elections The electoral fortunes of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) in recent British general elections provides another illustration of the decisive impact of vote threshold hurdles in preventing support for minor parties from translating into seats. The case of Brexit is discussed in detail in Chapter 11, but first we will summarize some key aspects of the Plurality electoral system and why it proved critical for UKIP. The Single Member Plurality electoral system (known also as first-past-the-post) is used for elections to the House of Commons. There are 650 constituencies, voters cast a ballot for one candidate in their constituency, and the candidate winning the largest share (a simple plurality) wins the seat. During the post-­war era, the electoral system usually produced a stable two-­party system in which the Labour and Conservative parties rotated in office, winning an absolute majority of the seats in parliament, even with much less than a majority of the total votes.

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This gave UKIP’s leader, Nigel Farage, a public platform and media visibility on their core anti-­Brussels message. As Figure 11.2 shows, this strong performance was again repeated in the 2009 European Parliamentary elections – but not at the 2005 and 2010 general elections, which continued to be held under the first-past-the-post system. Their best performance, in terms of their share of the vote, came in the 2014 European elections, where UKIP broke through with more than a quarter of the vote and one-­third of the seats. This surge in the vote, the gain of two Eurosceptic Conservative MPs who switched parties to join them, and the popularity of UKIP in the opinion polls during a mid-­term period of government unpopularity, was critical in influencing Prime Minister David Cameron’s promise to hold a referendum on Britain’s membership in the European Union, if the Conservatives were returned to government in the next general election.

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Compared with systems of Proportional Representation, Majoritarian elections characterized by high electoral thresholds are expected to create disproportional results with greater mechanical and psychological hurdles for minor parties, and hence to prevent many Authoritarian-­Populist parties from gaining parliamentary seats. To classify the electoral laws during these years, we use data from the Varieties of Democracy project.57 Electoral systems in the European countries under comparison are classified into three major families, each including a number of sub-­categories: majoritarian formula (including first-past-the-post, second ballot, the block vote, single non-­transferable vote, and alternative voting systems); mixed systems (incorporating both majoritarian and proportional formula); and proportional formula (including party lists as well as the single transferable vote systems).58 The results of the comparison in Figure 9.3 confirm the importance of the electoral system.

Uncomfortably Off: Why the Top 10% of Earners Should Care About Inequality
by Marcos González Hernando and Gerry Mitchell
Published 23 May 2023

The Conservatives have been in Number 10 for 63% of the time since 1950, despite receiving 41% of the votes cast throughout this duration, compared to Labour’s 40%. Most votes went to parties to the left of the Conservatives in 18 of the 19 general elections in this period.85 In 2017, under our current voting system, only 11% of constituencies changed hands: the remainder were ‘safe’ for the incumbent party. Under the current first-past-the-post system, 70% of votes are not counted and therefore wasted.86 In 2019, the Conservatives gained power with less than 44% of the vote. On average, 38,264 votes were needed to elect one Conservative MP in the last election, while that figure was 50,835 votes for Labour, 336,038 for the Liberal Democrats, and 865,000 to elect Caroline Lucas, Britain’s only Green Party MP (2.7% of votes returning 0.2% parliamentary seats).

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Those who do argue for reform, therefore, are not seeking to improve on the representative model but are focused on ‘the democratisation of democracy’ through building in mechanisms such as citizens’ assemblies into the formal political system.45 172 ‘When the facts change, I change my mind’ Despite a lack of public conversation about the country’s political structure, British people do now want to see reforms. For the first time since records began, most of the public wants to scrap the first-past-the-post electoral system. According to a YouGov poll, 51% are in favour of switching to a form of proportional representation, while 44% prefer the status quo.46 This reflects the policy of many parties and an increasing number of trade unions. Some respondents hinted that their voting would become more tactical, and this is consistent with wider trends.

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See ADASS, 2021 Pembroke, 2019 Mok and Zinkula, 2023 Handscomb et al, 2021, p. 7 TASC, 2020 Spencer, 2022 Shrubsole, 2019, p. 5 Advani and Tarrant, 2022 Mulheirn, 2019; Standing, 2019, p. 58 Financial Times, 2020 Corlett and Odamtten, 2021 Allen et al, 2021 Davis et al, 2020; Hills, 2014; Standing, 2019 Alstadsæter et al, 2018 Alvaredo et al, 2018 Broome and Leslie, 2022 Lansley, 2022, p. 240 Stevenson, 2021 Savage, 2021, p. 161 Piketty, 2014, p. 746 Davies, 2022 Bullough, 2022, p. 14 Bullough, 2022, p. 14 Akenji et al, 2021 Whitmarsh, 2022 Lansley, 2022, p. 241 Committee on Climate Change, 2019 Chancel et al, 2022; see also Jorgenson et al, 2016 Chancel, 2021a Marmot et al, 2020 Raleigh, 2021 Marmot et al, 2020, p. 37 Financial Times, 2022b 195 Uncomfortably Off 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 Marmot, 2015 Woodward and Kawachi, 2000 Wilson and Daly, 1997 Woodward and Kawachi, 2000, p. 928 Hastings et al, 2015 Marmot et al, 2020, p. 5 Corlett and Odamtten, 2021 Belfield et al, 2017 Intergenerational Commission, 2018, p. 11 Chakelian et al, 2022 Chakelian et al, 2022 Mahmood, 2022; see also Department for Education, 2012; Iniesta-Martinez and Evans, 2012 Jones, 2014; Friedman and Laurison, 2019 Rivera, 2016 Davies, 2021 Webber et al, 2022 Financial Times, 2021 Winter, 2019, p. 8 www.makevotesmatter.org.uk/first-past-the-post www.bhcompass.org.uk/a/44852767-45609270 Thomas, 2020 Thomas, 2019 Gethins, 2022 Wilkinson and Pickett, 2019, p. 217; see also Stiglitz, 2016 Coglianese, 2020 Chapter 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 On sociological work on modernity and flexibility, see Giddens, 2000; Bauman, 2005; Boltanski and Chiapello, 2018.

The politics of London: governing an ungovernable city
by Tony Travers
Published 15 Dec 2004

The creation of the GLA followed a year behind the Scottish and Welsh reforms: if Margaret Thatcher had not abolished the GLC, there would almost certainly have been no London reform as part of the devolution process. Yet commentators have generally included the creation of the GLA within the wider constitutional picture. The fact that the 2000 London election was fought on the basis of proportional representation (as opposed to the first-past-the-post system used for all other local government elections in Britain) further stressed a link to the PR-based Scottish Parliament and the Welsh and Northern Ireland assemblies. Nevertheless the GLA is fully included within the scope of legislation passed by the Blair administration to ‘modernize’ local government.

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The first vote would be cast within a constituency using the firstpast-the-post system. The second vote would be for a political party or independent candidate. For the London-wide vote, parties (or independents) would list the names of candidates to be elected, in order, on the ballot paper. Constituency members would be elected in the usual first-past-the-post way (that is, the candidate with the largest number of votes, whether over 50 per cent or not, would win). All the second (that is, London-wide) votes cast would be counted, with winning candidates drawn from the list of parties (or independent groups) so that the overall number of assembly members would match the proportion cast for each party.

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By contrast, Frank Dobson’s result was a huge embarrassment for him and, in particular, for the Prime Minister – a candidate manoeuvred into place by a carefullyconstructed electoral college came third (though only just), with less than half of the Conservative’s votes. Fourteen members of the Assembly were elected on a constituency basis, using the ‘first-past-the-post’ system. The remaining eleven were elected on a London-wide basis using the ‘de Hondt’ formula for allocating seats under proportional representation. Under this system, Labour and the Conservatives obtained nine seats each, the Liberal Democrats four and the Greens three, giving the London Assembly, like the Welsh Assembly and Scottish Parliament, a distinctly un-British, even ‘European’ multiparty look. 

The Rise and Fall of the British Nation: A Twentieth-Century History
by David Edgerton
Published 27 Jun 2018

A small National Labour Party existed as part of the National coalition, 1931–45, and the new Liberal Nationals, also formed in 1931, were more successful than the original Liberals for many years. The nature of politics was determined by the elite, but also by the electoral system. At the beginning of the century the first-past-the-post electoral system operated differently from its later incarnations. This was because not all seats were contested by all the big parties. Before 1918 many candidates were unopposed, notably but not only in Ireland. Candidates did not stand where there was no hope of winning. Liberals abstaining in favour of Labour allowed the Labour Party to exist before 1918 as the fourth party in parliament.

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Designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott (of the red telephone box and Battersea power station) and engineered by Oscar Faber (of modernist flour mills of the 1930s), it was disguised to look like the old one. Much remained the same in the political system too. Labour had retained the House of Lords, only limiting its powers. It had abolished university seats and other forms of plural voting but retained the first-past-the-post system. After 1950 the pace of change was glacial. In 1958 life peerages were introduced, for men and women, who were now allowed into the Lords for the first time. From the 1964 Labour government onwards, except in some odd cases, no new hereditary peerages were created. The Lords continued otherwise unreformed until 1999.

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Through indirect means – supporting trade unions, the tax and benefit systems, a certain amount of redistribution was effected. THE TWO-PARTY SYSTEM Although the basic structures of the early twentieth-century political system remained, their outward appearance, and the effects they generated, was very different. The first-past-the-post electoral system now entrenched two class-based parties covering nearly the whole United Kingdom. The Conservative and Labour Parties were now roughly equally matched. Labour, in opposition, had 47 per cent of the seats in 1951 and 44 per cent in 1955. Other parties were driven out of the House of Commons.

Routes to Rejoin
by Stay European
Published 3 Oct 2021

Many strides were made in 2017 and 2019 in setting up digital resources and social media campaigns to encourage tactical voting – not enough to overcome the particular circumstances of those elections, but a strong base for next time. If the leaderships won’t construct a progressive alliance, we can build one from the grassroots. Proportional representation In our current electoral system, first-past-the-post, the Tories are wildly overrepresented – they have a large parliamentary 68 majority on a 44% minority of the overall vote. That is why many pro-EU campaigners have realised that campaigning for more democracy in Britain is likely to be a necessary intermediate step to rejoin – one that can offer an immediate shared aim for progressive alliances to cohere around.

Politics on the Edge: The Instant #1 Sunday Times Bestseller From the Host of Hit Podcast the Rest Is Politics
by Rory Stewart
Published 13 Sep 2023

Within three days of the announcement on social care her lead over Labour had halved from 20 to 9 percentage points, suggesting a forty-seat majority. On election day Theresa May still took one of the largest Conservative vote shares on record. But Jeremy Corbyn also managed to increase the Labour vote to a record. And, although Theresa May secured 2 million more votes than David Cameron, through the odd maths of a first-past-the-post system, she lost his majority. British politics had shifted in a way that had caught more than the polling companies off balance. Corbyn had shown the possibilities for a form of nostalgic populism, which had no real precedent in British political life, and which would soon suggest new possibilities for the Tory right (although their nostalgia seemed more for the Victorians, while his was for the socialism of the 1970s).

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In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries only about one in seven adult males were eligible to vote. Successive reforms to the suffrage gave votes to 60 per cent of men in 1884, all men over twenty-one and all women over thirty in 1919, and equal voting rights to women in 1928. Members are elected through a first-past-the-post system, in which whoever receives the most votes in a constituency is elected – even if they receive far less than the majority of the votes. I stood for election in 2010, 2015 and 2017. Parties with widespread national support but no concentrated support within a constituency can end up with little representation in Parliament.

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A66 road, 38, 111, 129 abortion, 40 academy schools, 62–5 Achilles, 214 Adam, Robert, 329 Addison family, 48 Adonis, Andrew, 320 Afghanistan, 2, 3, 9, 11–15, 19–20, 21, 26, 34, 219, 342, 375 Af-Pak strategy, 81, 85 Anglo-Afghan War, Second (1878–80), 19, 119 Cameron and, 22–4, 81–4, 116, 126, 178, 186, 199, 215 DfID in, 193, 195, 197–9, 217, 219 Foreign Affairs Committee visit (2010), 87–90 Foreign Office in, 219 Harvard University and, 13–15 NATO war (2001–21), 13–15, 22–4, 41, 44, 57, 61, 80, 81–93, 116, 130 opium production, 184 Pakistan, relations with, 84 parliamentary debate on (2010), 84–7 police force, 23, 83, 90, 198–9 Soviet war (1979–89), 84 street names in, 88 ‘surge’ (2009), 81, 82, 87 Turquoise Mountain Foundation, see Turquoise Mountain Foundation walk across (2002), 9, 19, 77, 87, 404 Africa, 218–28, 328, 342, 369 Burundi, 220 Central African Republic, 224 Chad, 239 China, relations with, 231–2, 239 Democratic Republic of the Congo, 223, 232–3, 237, 238, 336–41, 342 Ebola in, 187, 288, 293, 336–41, 342, 369 Ethiopia, 193, 199, 219, 220, 223, 226, 251 Ghana, 264, 326, 333 Kenya, 199, 223, 225, 231–2 Liberia, 231, 336 Libya, x, 116–17, 131–2, 139, 186, 220, 227–8 Malawi, 226, 229 Niger, 239 Nigeria, 199, 223, 224, 226, 229 Sierra Leone, 231, 288 Somalia, 187, 223, 224, 231 South Africa, 225 South Sudan, 220–23, 231 Tanzania, 220, 223, 231 Uganda, 218, 220, 223, 231 Zambia, 223–4, 225–6, 229 Zimbabwe, 166, 223, 231, 234–7 air quality, 153, 160–65, 180 aircraft carriers, 123, 135 Akufo-Addo, Nana, 326 Albania, 37 Alston, Cumbria, 45–6, 71, 97, 98 American Revolutionary War (1775–83), 24, 73 Amery, Julian, 37 Amess, David, 388–9 Anderson, Catherine, 71–2 Anglican Church, 345 Anglo-Afghan War, Second (1878–80), 19, 119 Anglo-Boer War, Second (1899–1902), 24, 61 Angola, 340 Appleby, Cumbria, 43, 101, 106–7, 170, 173 Arab Spring (2011), 3, 50 Arabic language, 12 Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, 160 artificial intelligence (AI), 116, 145, 362, 396 Arusha Accords (2000), 220 Ashdown, Jeremy ‘Paddy’, 19, 26 al-Assad, Bashar, 131 Assessment, Care in Custody and Teamwork (ACCT), 280–81 Athenaeum Club, London, 365, 370 Atkinson family, 45, 48 Auchterarder, Perth and Kinross, 29 Aung San Suu Kyi, 196–7 austerity (2010–19), 50, 65–8, 99, 112, 122–3, 130, 135 prisons and, 249, 270, 274–5 authoritarianism, 396 Azande people, 222 Baker, Steven, 276, 280, 348 Balfour, Arthur, 1st Earl, 217 Balliol College, Oxford, 191, 214, 218 Bamiyan, Afghanistan, 23 Bampton, Cumbria, 97 Bande people, 222 Bangladesh, 190, 195, 196, 199, 225 Bangladeshi people, 30 Bank of England, 27 Banks, Arron, 378 Banyamulenge people, 340–41 Barking, East London, 375–6 Barnier, Michel, 282 Barwell, Gavin, 148 Basra, Iraq, 74 Bateman, Libby, 111 battery technology, 116 Battle of Agincourt (1415), 292 Battle of Maiwand (1880), 19 Battle of Trafalgar (1805), 86 Battle of Ushant (1778), 187 BBC Breakfast, 289, 373, 376 Beaton, Kevin, 288, 290, 292–3 Bedford prison, 283, 287, 299 Behr, Rafael, 65 Benghazi, Libya, 131 Beni, DRC, 338 Benn, Hilary, 117 Benyon, Richard, 124, 134, 155, 402 Bercow, John, 56 Berlin Wall, fall of (1989), 115 Berlin, Isaiah, 16 Bewcastle, Cumbria, 45, 46, 112–13 Bezos, Jeffrey, 110 Big Data, 145 Big Society, 21, 98–103, 147 bills, see legislation Birmingham, West Midlands, 86, 107, 388 Black Watch, 136, 394 BlackBerry, 109 Blair, Anthony ‘Tony’, 24, 27, 65, 125, 127, 182, 399 Brexit, views on, 313–14, 319, 321 Cameron and, 115, 116 Iraq invasion (2003), 84 peerages, issue of, 125 prisons policies, 257 Boer War, Second (1899–1902), 24, 61 Boko Haram, 224 Boles, Nicholas, 348 Bongate Weir, Appleby, 101 Borders development zone, 166 Bosnia, 9, 20, 55, 115, 116 Botswana, 223, 224 Boulton, Adam, 314, 390, 406 Bracknell, Berkshire, 36, 248 Bradford, West Yorkshire, 381 Brady, Graham, 319, 354 Brampton, Cumbria, 44, 97, 98, 206 Brazil, 38 breast cancer, 107 Brexit, 4, 50, 117, 264, 272, 277–80, 311–24, 342 African leaders and, 233, 326, 338 backstop proposal, 277, 312, 313, 319, 322, 324, 344, 355, 356, 409 ‘cakeism’ and, 278, 356, 392–3 Chequers plan (2018), 277–80, 282 customs union and, see customs union European Research Group, see European Research Group farming and, 181, 182, 189, 278–9, 382, 388, 412 immigration and, 277, 312, 319, 322, 360 indicative votes (2019), 322 media and, 312–13, 317, 318, 349, 356–7 no-deal prospects, see no-deal Brexit October 31 deadline, 372, 389, 392, 399, 406, 407–8 polarisation, 319–20, 356–7, 362 prorogation of Parliament (2019), 389–90, 397, 399 referendum (2016), 147, 148, 178–81, 182–3, 276, 370 second referendum campaign, 314, 315–17, 319–20, 323 trade deals and, 277–8, 392 transition period (2020), 355, 409, 411 Withdrawal Agreement negotiations (2018–20), 282–3, 311–24, 354, 363, 366, 380, 392, 408 Brigade of Guards, 345 British Airways, 87–8 British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), 133, 147, 345, 363 Brexit and, 182, 313, 314, 320 Conservative leadership election (2019), 373–4, 376, 385 floods (2015), 172 Mugabe’s ouster (2017), 234 ‘primitives’ affair (2010), 114 Scottish independence referendum (2014), 136, 137 ten-prisons project and, 289 Brixton prison, London, 253–6, 296, 312 broadband, 99–100, 101, 109–11, 119–21, 124, 150 Brooks, Rebekah, 69 Brown, Andy, 171, 172–3, 176 Brown, James Gordon, 24, 53, 65, 81–2, 121, 138, 182, 257 Brussels, Belgium, 2 BT, 100, 110 Buckland, Robert, 391 Burley, Aidan, 55 burqas, 75, 346 Burundi, 220 Bush, George Walker, 32 Butembo, DRC, 338 Buttigieg, Peter, 365 Byng, John, 187 Caldwell, William, 83, 198 Cambodia, 203 Cameron, David, 19, 20, 21, 22–8, 32, 34, 37, 55, 115–17, 121–3, 185–6, 204 Afghanistan and, 22–4, 81–4, 116, 126, 178, 186, 199, 215 air pollution, views on, 160–65 austerity policies, 66–8, 99, 112, 122–3, 130, 135, 249, 270 backbench, views on, 27–8 Big Society, 21, 98–103, 147 binary decisions and, 178 business committee debates, 110 Cabinet, 69–71 candidate selection (2009), 20, 22, 25–8, 32, 34, 37, 39, 43, 51 chiefs of staff, 122 China, relations with, 116, 186 Clarke on, 69–71 coalition agreement (2010), 53–4, 125 Conservative Research Department, 27, 115 Defence Select Committee and, 133, 135 delivery unit, abolition of, 121 diversity and, 25, 186 EU membership referendum (2016), 147, 148, 178, 183 floods (2015), 174 Gauke, relationship with, 249 gay marriage policy, 67, 75, 115, 186 general election (2015), 145–9 global financial crisis (2008), 65, 116, 117 Greek bailout refusal (2011), 147 House of Lords policies, 57–8, 124–8, 141, 317 immigration policies, 122 international development policies, 67, 115, 123, 186, 193 interventionism, 115, 116, 131–2 Israel, relations with, 58 Iraq and, 24, 116, 117, 126 Johnson, relationship with, 216 leadership election (2005), 383 Libya intervention (2011), 116–17, 131, 186 open primaries, 39 Osborne, relationship with, 68, 115 Parliamentary Party, speech to (2010), 53 parliamentary year, extension of, 73 PMQs, first (2010), 56–8 Political Cabinet, 69 ‘Red Tape Challenge’, 159 resignation (2016), 28, 117, 183, 185 Russia, relations with, 116 Scottish independence referendum (2014), 138, 178, 186 Syrian War policies, 117, 130, 131–2, 134, 186, 317 team players, views on, 149 technology, views on, 116 UKIP, views on, 390 veteran MPs and, 75–6 Cameron, Lindy, 238 Cameroon, 220 campaigning general elections, 47–9, 145–8 leadership elections, 358–72, 373–87, 388–406, 407–15 local campaigns, 31–3, 36, 71, 103, 135 Campbell, Alastair, 333 Campbell, Leroy, 298–9 Canada, 16 Canute, King of England, 395 capital punishment, 41, 75 Carillion, 251 Carlisle, Cumbria, 30, 46, 147, 171 Carswell, Douglas, 57 Carthage, ancient, 214 Castle Carrock, Cumbria, 44 Castlerigg, Cumbria, 45 Catullus, 354 Cecil the lion, 166 Central African Republic, 224 Chad, 239 Chalk, Alexander, 146, 266 Charles I, King of England, Scotland and Ireland, 70 Charles III, King of the United Kingdom, 11, 12 Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, 146–7 chemical regulation, 152, 153, 154, 160, 178 Chequers, Buckinghamshire, 81–4, 178, 277 Chicago, Illinois, 325 chief whip, 53, 59 ‘children’s crusades’, 359 China, 3, 26, 109, 116, 117, 186, 203, 220, 360 Africa, relations with, 231–2, 239, 338 body-scanners in, 289 Taiwan, relations with, 396 Tibet, 213 WTO accession (2001), 116 Chinese language, 249 Chinese porcelain, 240 Christianity, 40, 41, 263–4, 265, 276, 277, 280, 345 Churchill, Randolph, 119, 219 Churchill, Winston, 24, 61, 73, 119, 123, 129, 343, 369 City of London, 181 Civil Contingencies Committee, 173 Civil Service, 3, 20, 45, 59, 68, 91, 136, 147, 182, 186, 188, 285 Cummings and, 370 Foreign Office, 224, 238 austerity and, 67 Penrith community schemes, 100, 102, 108, 111 DEFRA, 156, 168, 169, 177, 178 DfID, 190, 191, 195, 199–202, 333, 334 reshuffles and, 272 selection boards, 34, 42 Clarke, Kenneth, 68–71, 80, 117, 124, 322, 382, 386, 393, 396 Clegg, Nicholas, 122, 386 Cleverly, James, 383–4 climate change, 75, 187, 220, 330–31, 334, 361–2 Clinton, Hillary, 14, 15 Clooney, George, 220 coalition government (2010), 53–4, 122, 125, 154 Coates, Dawn, 98 cobalt, 375 Coffey, Thérèse, 187 Collins, Damian, 54 ‘Comical Ali’, 318, 347 committees, 53, 58, 65, 66, 71, 73, 99 common land, 97 Commonwealth Development Corporation, 203 Commonwealth, 224 community action, 98 computer modelling, 175–6 Conservative Home, 391, 396 Conservative leadership election (2019), 1–5, 343–57, 358–72, 373–87, 388–406, 407–15 Cleverly’s campaign, 383–4 Cummings and, 370, 379 customs union and, 344, 347, 355, 356, 366–7, 377 debates, 1–5, 397–400, 405–6, 407–15 Gove’s campaign, 1, 4, 386–7, 396–402, 404–6, 408–11, 412, 414 Hancock’s campaign, 374, 386, 397–8, 400, 402 Hunt’s campaign, 1, 4, 380, 386, 396–400, 403–6, 408, 411, 413–14 Irish border and, 372, 380, 381, 382, 383, 392, 409 Javid’s campaign, 2, 4, 371, 380, 386–7, 397–400, 404–6, 408–11, 414 Johnson’s campaign, 1, 2, 4, 371–3, 379–87, 389, 393, 396–8, 402–6, 407–12 media and, 354, 364, 369, 374, 376–9, 385, 388–9 no-deal Brexit and, 372, 378, 380, 385, 394, 388–9, 400, 403, 410 One Nation and, 344, 346–57, 363, 368, 374, 385–6, 389, 400, 402, 404 polling, 384, 387, 389, 396, 400 Raab’s campaign, 371, 374, 385, 396, 398–400 social media and, 374, 376–7, 379, 382, 383, 392, 404 Conservative Party coalition agreement (2010), 53–4 European Research Group, 276–7, 315, 317–18, 319, 324, 346, 347, 348, 350 leadership election (2005), 383 leadership election (2016), 183–6, 269 leadership election (2019), see Conservative leadership election local associations, 30–31, 35, 39 membership, 4, 5, 30–31 One Nation, see One Nation Research Department, 27, 115 Conservative Research Department, 27, 115 constituencies, 29–49, 97–114, 123, 384–5 surgeries, 103–6, 135, 203, 325, 367 Cook County Jail, Chicago, 325 Copernicus Satellite System, 159 Corbyn, Jeremy, 64, 205–7, 321, 322, 343, 357, 371, 395, 398 Cornish pasties, 125 corporation tax, 123, 396 Costa Coffee, Barking, 375–6 Costa Rica, 173–4 Côte d’Ivoire, 220 Cottingley Fairies hoax (1917–20), 377 council tax, 300–301 counter-insurgency, 10, 23, 81, 88–9, 91–2, 133 Coveney, Simon, 412 Covid-19 pandemic (2019–23), x, 3, 415 Cox, Brian, 404 Crieff, Perth and Kinross, 291–2 crime, 20, 69, 75 Crimea, 135, 138 critical thinking, 159 Crosby, Lynton, 122 Crowned Masterpieces of Eloquence, 61 Cuba, 205, 220 culture wars, 402 Cumberland and Westmorland Herald, 30, 38, 72, 129 Cumberland Building Society, 279 Cumbria, England, 29–31, 36, 37–49, 59, 62, 71–3, 97–114, 129 auction marts, 97 banks in, 97 Big Society in, 98–103, 147 Brexit in, 180, 278–9 broadband in, 99–100, 101, 109–11, 119–21, 124 common land in, 97, 101 community ownership in, 97, 101 Eden river, 29, 37, 43, 73, 106 farming in, 30, 37–8, 40, 44–9, 103, 112 floods (2015), 170–76 general election (2015), 147–8 general election (2017), 204–5 gypsy community, 106–7 hospitals in, 97, 98, 102 hydropower in, 101 as independent nation, 44 magistrates’ courts, 97–8 ‘middleland’ culture, 137 ministers, visits from, 108–9 mountain rescue in, 59–61, 97, 103 peat works, 98 police stations, 97, 98 pubs in, 97 schools in, 97, 98 snowploughs in, 97, 101 volunteer fire engines, 97, 98 Cummings, Dominic, 276, 370, 379 Curley, Stephen, 57 Curzon, George, 1st Marquess, 217 Cusack, Zak, 57 customs union, 178, 277, 312, 322–3, 324 leadership election (2019) and, 344, 347, 355, 356, 366–7, 377 Czechoslovakia, 16 Daily Express, 349 Daily Mail, 38, 113, 114, 165, 193, 229, 301, 349, 369, 374, 388–9 Daily Mirror, 356 Daily Telegraph, 19, 157, 179, 377, 378, 379, 395, 400 Dale, Iain, 36 Dari language, 12, 376 Dartmoor prison, 329 Davidson, Ruth, 368, 386 Davos, Switzerland, 115, 391 death penalty, 41, 75 debates, 52, 55, 58–65, 71 Defence Intelligence Service, 134–5 Defence Secretaries, 90–93 Defence Select Committee, 64, 77, 85, 86, 132–5, 151, 269, 345 defence spending, 123 Delivery Unit, 121 democracy, 10, 50, 71, 115–16 Democratic Republic of the Congo, 223, 232–3, 237, 238, 336–41, 342 Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), 276, 321, 323 Dent-Coad, Emma, 389 Department for International Development (DfID), 186–202, 203, 204, 217–41, 245, 286, 328–41, 342 Brexit and, 388–9 Cameron and, 67, 115, 123, 186, 193 Conservative leadership election (2019), 353–4 in Afghanistan, 193, 195, 197–9, 217 budget, 188, 189, 192–4, 229, 250, 328 in Bangladesh, 190, 195, 196, 225 climate change and, 330–31, 334, 361 in DRC, 336–41, 342 environment and, 330–31 Foreign Office and, 217 International Development Act (2001), 331 Johnson and, 229, 346, 347 in Kenya, 334 in Malawi, 226, 229–30 May and, 184, 328, 332 in Myanmar, 190, 195, 196–7, 217 in Nepal, 195, 199 in Nigeria, 226, 229 Single Departmental Plan, 331 in South Sudan, 222, 223 staffing, 328, 330 in Syria, 200–202, 217 in Zambia, 225–6, 229 Department of Communities and Local Government, 102 Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), 151–9, 160–78, 186, 188, 245, 286, 332 air quality, 153, 160–65 chemical regulation, 152, 153, 154, 160, 178 European Union and, 175–6, 178, 180–81 floods, 153, 157–8, 160, 170–76, 188, 189 forestry, 153, 160, 176–8, 189 land management, 175–6, 189 litter strategy, 160, 166, 188, 239, 269 national parks, 153, 157, 160, 167–8, 189 plastic bags policy, 165, 167, 177 twenty-five-year plan, 168–9, 178 Department of Health, 249, 338 Department of Trade, 189 Department of Transport, 164 Derby, Derbyshire, 393, 394 Derry, Ulster, 383, 394 Derwent river, 175–6 Dharamshala, Himachal Pradesh, 71 diesel vehicles, 161, 165 Dinka people, 222 disability, 72, 109 Disraeli, Benjamin, 61 Dorries, Nadine, 346, 348 Doyle, Arthur Conan, 377 dreams, 130–31, 362–3 drones, 259, 262, 265, 287 Dubai, United Arab Emirates, 10 Dufton, Cumbria, 43 Duncan, Alan, 226 Duncan Smith, Iain, 27, 373–4, 390 Durand Line, 92 Durham prison, 299 East Germany (1949–90), 12 East Timor, 197 Ebola, 187, 288, 293, 336–41, 342, 369 Economist, The, 227 Eden District, Cumbria, 102 Eden river, 29, 37, 43, 73, 106 Edinburgh, Scotland, 182, 368, 379, 394 education, 130 academy schools, 62–5 learning difficulties, 72 prisons and, 270, 299, 303–4 Edward III, King of England, 106 Edward VII, King of the United Kingdom, 54 Eisenhower, Dwight, 276 elections 1997 general election, 27, 35 2001 general election, 27, 35 2005 general election, 36, 38, 48 2009 local elections, 31–3, 39 2010 general election, 43, 47–9, 51, 53–4 2014 European elections, 147 2015 general election, 145–9 2017 general election, 204–9, 276, 343 2019 local elections, 369; European elections, 369; general election, 416 see also Conservative leadership election elective dictatorship, 117, 317 electoral boundaries, 125, 128, 146 electric vehicles, 116 electronic tagging, 325, 330 Eliot, Thomas Stearns, 48, 56, 301 Elizabeth I, Queen of England, 125 Elizabeth II, Queen of the United Kingdom, 138, 321, 327, 332 emails, 107–8 English Civil War (1642–52), 43 English Heritage, 240 Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, 382, 412 Environment Agency, 101, 104, 153, 171–6, 188 Ethiopia, 193, 199, 219, 220, 223, 226, 251, 253 Eton College, Berkshire, 25, 149, 204, 214, 300 European Central Bank, 180 European Commission, 57, 162, 277 European Council, 318, 332 European Court of Human Rights, 139 European Court of Justice, 104, 277 European Research Group, 276–7 leadership election (2019), 346, 348, 350, 354 Withdrawal Agreement negotiations (2018–20), 315, 317–18, 319, 324 European Union air quality standards, 161–3, 180 elections (2014), 147 Environment Council, 161–3 land use and, 46–7, 72, 175–6 subsidies, 46–7, 72, 160, 175–6, 177, 178 see also Brexit; customs union Euroscepticism, 24, 41, 56, 86, 101, 115, 122, 133, 147, 180 see also Brexit Euston station, London, 377 Evening Standard, 29 expenses scandal (2009), 18–19, 29, 33, 34, 35, 36, 51, 52 Facebook, 116, 138, 145, 357, 371 Fall, Kate, 25 Fallon, Michael, 135 Farage, Nigel, 320 farming, 30, 37–8, 40, 44–9, 103 austerity and, 112 Brexit and, 181, 182, 189, 278–9, 382, 388, 412 DEFRA and, 152, 167, 177–8 subsidies, 46–7, 72, 160, 175–6, 177, 178 Farrar, Jeremy, 337 Father of the House, 56, 71 Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, 382 Finance Act (2010), 59 finance, 396 financial crisis, see global financial crisis Financial Times, 247, 360, 396 fire engines, 97, 98 first-past-the-post system, 207 Fix the Fell Volunteers, 367 floods, 153, 157–8, 160, 170–76, 188 food banks, 135 footpaths, 103–4 Foreign Affairs Select Committee, 77, 86, 87–90 foreign aid, see Department for International Development Foreign Office, 101, 157, 159, 188, 191, 245, 286, 294 in Africa, 216–28, 229–41 forestry, 46, 81, 153, 160, 176–8, 189 Forth Road Bridge, 29 Foss river, 173 Fox, Charles James, 73 Fox, Liam, 85–6, 90 Francois, Mark, 348 free ports, 10 free-market economics, 115, 206, 296 Fuentes, Carlos, 16 G7, 338 Gaddafi, Muammar, 139, 220 gajumaru trees, 25 Gang Index, 280 Garel-Jones, Tristan, 40 GATT 24, 412 Gauke, David, 248–52, 283, 284, 286–8, 297, 301, 321 leadership election (2019), 351–2, 357, 382, 396, 398, 406 gay marriage, 67, 75, 115, 186, 263, 276 Gedling, Nottinghamshire, 65 George Hotel, Penrith, 103 Germany, 80, 116, 223–4 ‘Get Brexit Done’ slogan, 371 Ghana, 264, 326, 333 Ghani, Ashraf, 197 Gladstone, William, 61, 129, 152 Glenridding, Cumbria, 173, 183 global financial crisis (2008), 3, 24, 65, 116, 117, 138, 356 globalisation, 115 Glorious Revolution (1688), 315 Goebbels, Joseph, 314 Goldman Sachs, 180, 264 Goma, DRC, 338 Good Friday Agreement (1998), 182, 383 Gore, Albert ‘Al’, 14 gossip, 56, 69, 80 Gove, Michael civil service, views on, 285 Defence Committee election (2014), 133 Environment Secretary (2017–19), 332 EU membership referendum (2016), 179, 276 Justice Secretary (2015–16), 249, 251, 296 leadership election (2016), 183, 185 leadership election (2019), 1, 4, 386–7, 396–402, 404–6, 408–11, 412, 414 leadership speculation (2019), 345, 347–8, 355–6 prisons and, 68–72, 249, 251, 295, 296 voting record, 118 Withdrawal Agreement negotiations (2018–19), 311 GQ, 374 Greece, 66, 147 Green Chip club, 347 Green, Damian, 386 Green, John, 254 Green, Mark, 221, 338 Green, Philip, 361 Gretna Green, Dumfries and Galloway, 137 Grey, Edward, 217 Guardian, 113, 175, 247, 297, 331, 356, 369, 373 Guido Fawkes, 77–8 Guinea, 336 Gummer, Benedict, 54, 140 Gyimah, Samuel, 51 gypsies, 106–7, 273 Hadrian’s Wall, 129, 136, 137 Hague, William, 22, 49 Hammond, Philip, 90–93 Hancock, Matthew, 149, 185 leadership election (2019), 374, 386, 397–8, 400, 402 leadership speculation (2019), 349, 355, 365, 368, 369 Hands Across the Border, 137 Hansard, 65, 139, 153 Hartlepool, County Durham, 65 Harvard University, 13–18, 27, 42, 84 Hatt, John, 38, 41, 42, 148, 165, 197 Have I Got News For You, 172, 216 Havel, Vaclav, 16 hawthorn trees, 177 healthcare, 26, 67, 97, 99, 164, 360, 361 Heath, Edward, 68–9, 184 hedgehogs, 140 Helmand, Afghanistan, 57, 89, 92, 198 Henry I, King of England, 70 Herat, Afghanistan, 87 Heseltine, Michael, 363 Hillsborough disaster (1989), 214 Hilton, Stephen, 100–102, 103 Hind, Damian, 148 historians, 54 HIV/AIDS, 337 Hobbes, Thomas, 368 Hogg, Douglas, 19 Holbrooke, Richard, 14, 15, 23, 85 homosexuality, 67, 75, 115, 186, 263, 276, 381 Hong Kong, 10, 398 Horace, 227 hospital car parking, 361 House of Lords, 57–8, 75, 124–8, 130, 141, 317 housing, 206, 360, 396 housing associations, 104 Howgill ridges, Cumbria, 111 HS2, 369 Hull, East Yorkshire, 176 prison, 291, 305–8 Hunt, Jeremy, 1, 4, 99–100, 119–21, 278, 311 leadership election (2019), 1, 4, 380, 386, 396–400, 403–5, 408, 411, 413, 414–15 leadership speculation (2019), 344, 355 Hurricane Katrina (2005), 170 Hussars, 263–4 Hussein, Saddam, 9, 16, 214, 318, 347 Hutton, Cumbria, 72–3 Hyde Park, London, 311, 358, 364, 380–81 hydropower, 101 Ignatieff, Michael, 15–18, 27, 28, 37, 359, 390 immigration, 20, 24, 75, 122, 277, 312, 346, 360 Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI), 151, 187 income tax, 396 India, 9, 38, 117, 138, 198, 219, 227 Indonesia, 9, 22, 25, 27, 191, 197, 213 inheritance tax, 345 Instagram, 157 Inter-Services Intelligence Agency (ISI), 84 International Committee of the Red Cross, 333 international development, see Department for International Development International Development Act (2001), 331 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 236 interventionism, 9, 19–20, 115, 116, 186, 231 Iran, 9, 27, 214, 227, 335, 378 Iraq, 3, 9–11, 15, 19, 20–21, 22, 34, 41, 78–9, 130 Cameron and, 24, 116, 117, 126 Clarke and, 80 DfID in, 190 Ignatieff and, 16 Johnson’s visit (2005), 213–16 Parliamentary debate (2003), 84 prorogation and, 399 Red Cross in, 333 tribal leaders in, 107 veterans in, 74–5 Ireland backstop proposal, 277, 312, 355, 409 border, 277, 278, 279, 318, 322, 354–5, 356, 380, 382, 409, 412 Good Friday Agreement (1998), 182, 383 Irish Sea border prospects, 323, 344, 356, 372, 381, 392 peace in, 278, 279, 312, 354, 356, 383 Irrawaddy river, 38, 197 ISIS (Islamic State), 50, 134, 138–9, 214, 216 Islamism, 329 Israel, 58, 220 ITV, 395 Jakarta, Indonesia, 191 James and John Graham (grocers), 103 James II, King of England, Scotland and Ireland, 187 Japan, 2, 223, 417 Javid, Sajid, 2, 4, 51, 140 leadership debates, 398–400, 408, 409, 410 leadership election (2019), 371, 380, 386, 397, 404–6, 408–11, 414 leadership speculation (2019), 355 John, King of England, 395 Johns Hopkins University, 197 Johnson, Alexander Boris, x, 149, 213–17, 286, 346, 357, 381–2 ‘cakeism’, 278, 356, 392–3 Chequers plan (2018), 278, 280, 282 EU membership referendum (2016), 179, 216 Foreign Secretary (2016–18), 216–20, 225, 226–8, 232, 236, 238, 278, 346 ‘fuck business’ comment (2018), 397 general election (2017), 207, 208, 343 international development, views on, 229, 346, 347 Iraq visit (2005), 213–16 Irish border, views on, 372, 380, 381, 392, 406, 409, 411, 412 leadership debates (2019), 1, 2, 4, 407–12 leadership election (2016), 183, 185, 269 leadership election (2019), 371–2, 373–4, 377, 379–87, 389, 393, 396–8, 402–6 leadership speculation (2019), 343, 346–57, 358, 370 Lebedev, relationship with, 219 London mayoralty (2008–16), 179, 209 no-deal, views on, 347, 354–5, 370, 372, 373, 380, 385, 403, 410, 415 October 31 pledge, 372, 389, 392, 399, 406, 407–8 prorogation of Parliament (2019), 389–90, 397, 399, 415 Withdrawal Agreement negotiations (2018–20), 314, 321, 323, 347 Johnson, Joseph ‘Jo’, 185 Jordan, 225, 333, 364 Joy King Lau, London, 370 Juba, South Sudan, 221, 222, 223 Juncker, Jean-Claude, 122 Justice Select Committee, 266 Kabila, Joseph, 232–3, 237, 338, 341 Kabul, Afghanistan, 16, 190 Cameron’s visit (2009), 22–4, 215 DfID in, 197–9 Foreign Affairs Committee visit (2010), 87–90 Turquoise Mountain, see Turquoise Mountain Foundation Kampala, Uganda, 218 Kandahar, Afghanistan, 14 Karzai, Hamid, 84, 88–9 Keegan, Gillian, 393 Kendal, Cumbria, 48, 173 Kenya, 199, 223, 225, 231–2, 261, 334 Kenyatta, Uhuru, 231, 334 Kerry, John, 14, 15, 23, 86 Keswick, Cumbria, 173, 175–6 Kevlar, 88 Kew Botanical Gardens, Richmond, 376 KGB, 219 Khan, Sadiq, 122 Kigali, Rwanda, 338 Kiir, Salva, 221 Kim (Kipling), 18 Kinshasa, DRC, 233, 341 Kipling, Rudyard, 18 Kirkby Stephen, Cumbria, 43, 44, 101, 111 Kissinger, Henry, 110 knighthoods, 76, 361 Kosovo, 9, 115 Kunar, Afghanistan, 376 Kurdish people, 16 Kwarteng, Kwasi, 51, 54, 56, 147, 349 Labour Party, 20, 31, 33, 34, 35, 99, 117 academy schools and, 62 amendments, 59, 62 Brexit negotiations (2018–20), 321, 322, 363 crime policies, 301 DEFRA and, 154 economy and, 122 floods (2015), 175 general election (2015), 148 general election (2017), 205–7 Iraq War and, 20, 84, 214 leadership election (2015), 343 local associations, 35 Russia, relations with, 117 Stewart’s membership, 20, 34, 78 Trotskyite left, 35 Lake District, 38, 45, 167 lamb, 182, 382 see also sheep farming Lancashire floods (2015), 171, 173, 174 Langwathby, Cumbria, 112 Lansley, Andrew, 81 Law and Justice Party (Poland), 117 Lawrence, Thomas Edward, 15 Lazonby, Cumbria, 97, 98 LBC, 313, 373–4 Leadsom, Andrea, 185, 351 learned helplessness, 249, 252 learning difficulties, 72 Lebanon, 199, 224 Lebedev, Evgeny, 219 Lee, Phillip, 36 Leeds, West Yorkshire, 160 prison, 288, 292, 303 legal aid, 250 legislation, 52–3, 58–61, 71, 99, 118 Leicester Square, London, 370 Leslie, Charlotte, 148 Lesotho, 224 Letts, Quentin, 388–9 Letwin, Oliver, 117 Lewisham, London, 376 Liberal Democrats, 19, 31, 33, 40, 42, 48, 122 coalition agreement (2010), 53–4, 122, 125, 154 general election (2015), 148 House of Lords policy, 125, 126, 128 mountain rescue group, 60 Liberia, 231, 336 Libya, x, 116–17, 131–2, 139, 186, 220, 227–8, 333 LIDAR, 159 Liddle, Scott, 333 Lidington, David, 80, 117, 402 Lineker, Gary, 378, 404 lions, 166 litter DEFRA and, 160, 166, 188, 239, 269 in prisons, 258–9, 261–2, 273, 287, 290 Liverpool FC, 214 Liverpool prison, Merseyside, 256–60, 266–9, 287, 388 local associations, 30–31, 35, 39, 351 local identity, 360 local institutions, 97 localism, 98 Localism Act (2011), 99 London, England, 358–9 Athenaeum Club, 365, 370 Brixton prison, 253–6, 296, 312 Conservative leadership election (2019), 375–7, 380–81, 388, 392 mayoralty, x, 122, 179, 209, 415 Olympic Games (2012), 344 Pentonville prison, 262 taxi drivers, 4 Wormwood Scrubs, 280, 290, 302–3 London University, 134 Londonderry, County Londonderry, 383, 394 Longtown, Cumbria, 98 Lord Chancellor, 69, 248, 321, 391 Lord of the Rings, The, 45 Loudon, Lizzie, 333, 373, 374 ‘loving strict’, 304 Lowther family, 37–8, 41–2, 108 Lowther Valley, Cumbria, 37, 44, 112 loyalty to parties, 53, 124, 149, 159 MacDonald, James Ramsay, 74 Maclean, David, 29, 62 Macmillan, Maurice Harold, 184 Macpherson, Nicholas, 404 Maduro, Nicolás, 399 magistrates’ courts, 97–8 Magna Carta (1215), 70 maiden speeches, 61–5 Mail on Sunday, 141, 209, 386 Maitlis, Emily, 1, 407–15 Major, John, 27, 69, 75, 91, 182, 343 Malakal, South Sudan, 222–3 malaria, 337 Malawi, 226, 229–30 Malaya, British (1826–1957), 17 Malaysia, 10, 195 Mali, 340 Mallerstang, Cumbria, 111 Malthouse, Christopher ‘Kit’, 319, 354 Man for All Seasons, A (1966 film), 391 Manchester, England, 45 manual-worker backgrounds, 52 Marine Corps, US, 327 Martius, Flavius, 416 Marxism, 237 Marzetti, Gail, 199 Mathare, Nairobi, 225 Max Fac proposal, 319, 354 May, Theresa, 183–6, 272, 276 Africa strategy (2018), 240 Cabinet formation (2016), 187, 189 Chequers plan (2018), 277–80, 282 DfID and, 184, 328, 332 Foreign Office and, 217–18, 240 general election (2017), 204–9, 276, 343 Johnson, relationship with, 216 leadership election (2016), 183–6, 379 Ministry of Defence and, 326–8 Ministry of Justice and, 240, 296–7, 301 resignation (2019), 343, 364, 370, 372, 379 Syria policies, 201–2 Withdrawal Agreement negotiations (2018–19), 282–3, 311–24, 363, 366, 380, 392 Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan, 14, 86 McChrystal, Stanley, 23 McDonald, Simon, 217, 236, 237, 239 McGurk, Brett, 201 McKinsey, 264 McVey, Esther, 315 media, 69–71 Brexit and, 312–13, 317, 318, 319, 349, 356–7, 388–9 Conservative leadership election (2019), 354, 364, 369, 374, 376–9, 385, 388–9 international development and, 193, 333–4, 388–9 prisons and, 264–5, 301 Scottish Sun interview (2010), 112–14, 404 Medvedev, Dmitry, 64 Merkel, Angela, 163, 178 message discipline, 215 Messina, Jim, 145, 148 Met Office, 158, 170 Mexico, 16 MI6, 17–18, 201, 335 ‘middleland’ culture, 137 migraines, 342 Miliband, David, 20 military, 9, 21, 52, 67, 90, 326–8, 136, 394 budget, 123, 327, 345 Defence Select Committee, 64, 77, 85, 86, 151, 269, 327, 345 milk, 40, 41, 48, 278–9 Milne, Seumas, 322 Ministry of Defence, 92, 135, 290, 326–8 budget, 123, 327, 345 Ministry of Justice, 240, 245–60, 261–75, 280–84, 285 budgets, 249–51, 252, 269–70, 287–8 courts, 247, 251 electronic tagging, 325, 330 prisons, see prisons probation, 249, 250, 251, 295–9 sentencing, 253, 270–71, 283, 295, 297–8, 299–301, 325–6 minority ethnic MPs, 25, 51 Mitchell, Andrew, 80, 189, 207–8, 343, 346, 353, 359 Mnangagwa, Emmerson, 235–7 Mobile Infrastructure Project Fund, 110 Modi, Narendra, 117, 138 Mohamed, Amina, 232 monarchy, 21, 41, 67, 71 Mond, Alfred, 156, 160, 163, 187, 245 Montenegro, 213 de Montfort, Simon, 70 Monti, Mario, 180 Monty Python, 381 More, Thomas, 391 Morgan, Nicola ‘Nicky’, 348, 349, 350, 352, 357, 363, 385, 386 Morland, Cumbria, 44, 101 Mossad, 220 Mosul, Iraq, 50, 138–9 mountain rescue, 59–61, 97, 103, 130, 172 Mugabe, Robert, 234–7 Murad Khane, Kabul, 21, 88 Murdoch, Rupert, 148 Mussolini, Benito, 150 Myanmar, 9, 38, 129, 190, 195, 196–7, 217 N.

Rebooting Democracy: A Citizen's Guide to Reinventing Politics
by Manuel Arriaga
Published 1 Jan 2014

It is also possible for the more powerful parties to “break” proportional representation by splitting the territory into a larger number of constituencies, each of them electing just a handful of seats. As the number of seats in each constituency decreases, so do the smaller parties’ chances of securing any representation at all. This “trick” makes so-called “proportional representation” systems produce results that resemble those of first-past-the-post elections—thus cementing the power of the large, entrenched parties at the expense of non-establishment voices. Campaigning like the French Another issue central to electoral reform is that of campaign and party finance. The promiscuity between private funds and political parties is a well-known issue in almost every country.

Invisible Women
by Caroline Criado Perez
Published 12 Mar 2019

This being the case, gender quotas are nothing more than a corrective to a hidden male bias, and it is the current system that is anti-democratic. The form of quota that is available to a country depends on the electoral system it operates. In the UK, each of the country’s 650 constituencies has a single MP. This MP is voted in using ‘first past the post’ (FPTP), which means that the candidate with the most votes gets returned to Parliament. Since there is only one candidate per constituency, in a FPTP system all-women shortlists are really the only practicable corrective to male bias. In Sweden, a party list is used. In this system, each constituency is represented by a group of MPs allocated under proportional representation (PR).

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Australia gender pay gap gendered poverty Gillard ministries (2010–13) homelessness leisure time maternity. leave medical research military murders paternity. leave political representation precarious work school textbooks sexual assault/harassment taxation time-use surveys unpaid work Australia Institute Austria autism auto-plastics factories Autoblog autoimmune diseases automotive plastics workplaces Ayrton, Hertha Azerbaijan babies’ cries baby bottles Baker, Colin Baku, Azerbaijan Ball, James Bangladesh Bank of England banknotes Barbican, London Barcelona, Catalonia beauticians de Beauvoir, Simone Beer, Anna Beijing, China Belgium Berkman Center for Internet and Society Besant, Annie BI Norwegian Business School bicarbonate of soda Big Data bile acid composition biomarkers biomass fuels biomechanics Birka warrior Birmingham, West Midlands bisphenol A (BPA) ‘bitch’ bladder ‘Blank Space’ (Swift) blind recruitment blood pressure Bloom, Rachel Bloomberg News Bock, Laszlo body fat body 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The Extreme Centre: A Warning
by Tariq Ali
Published 22 Jan 2015

The decline of large parts of the country continued apace, and in turn, the country became increasingly restive. How would the people react? After eighteen years of Conservative rule, they voted Labour and Tony Blair into office with a huge parliamentary majority, achieved by virtue of an antiquated and blatantly unrepresentative first-past-the-post system: 13.5 million, against 9.6 million for the Conservatives and 5.2 million for the Liberal Democrats. Blair had fought a slick campaign that made few promises, but traditional Labour supporters nodded their heads in appreciation and thought him wise. The key was to return Labour to power after the locust years.

Hacking the Code of Life: How Gene Editing Will Rewrite Our Futures
by Nessa Carey
Published 7 Mar 2019

In February 2013 Feng Zhang from the Broad Institute* in Cambridge, Massachusetts published his paper in which the gene editing took place inside the nucleus of cells. His employer filed a patent application in December 2012. This might all seem straightforward, with Doudna and Charpentier being the first to publish and the first to file patent applications. Patenting is basically a first-past-the-post system, where the winner takes it all. If only it were that simple and clean. The Broad Institute paid to have its application fast-tracked by the US Patent Office and its patent was granted in April 2014. Many observers were surprised that the Patent Office agreed to rule on the Broad’s application when the earlier one from UC Berkeley and University of Vienna was still going through the system.

The Tyranny of Nostalgia: Half a Century of British Economic Decline
by Russell Jones
Published 15 Jan 2023

The early sharp increase in university tuition fees proved to be a major own goal. After all, the Liberal Democrats had pledged to scrap them altogether just months before. The 2011 referendum on electoral reform – a central provision of the 2010 coalition agreement – was also a disaster for the party, as a shift from ‘first past the post’ to an ‘alternative vote system’ was rejected by 67.9% to 32.1%. These were blows from which the Lib Dems never recovered. In 2015 the party lost all but eight of the fifty-seven parliamentary seats it had won in 2010, with the Conservatives taking eighteen of them. Labour had also lost its way.

…

Another significant political development was the rise of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), with its hardline anti-immigration stance and unabashed commitment to leaving the EU. It took some 12.6% of the vote in the election, the third highest total, and although it returned only a single MP under the retained first past the post system, it both scared the Conservative leadership and made considerable gains at Labour’s expense in working class areas. It was the advance of UKIP that had convinced the Conservatives to include in their manifesto a pledge to hold ‘a straight in–out referendum on our membership of the European Union by the end of 2017’.2 This would never have happened had the coalition endured, as the pro-EU Liberal Democrats would have vetoed it.

The Populist Explosion: How the Great Recession Transformed American and European Politics
by John B. Judis
Published 11 Sep 2016

In Great Britain, for instance, laissez-faire capitalism, associated with Adam Smith’s invisible hand, prevailed for much of the nineteenth century, but after World War II it was superseded by Keynesian economics. American politics is structured to sustain prevailing worldviews. Its characteristics of winner takes all, first past the post, single-member districts have encouraged a two-party system. Third-party candidates are often dismissed as “spoilers.” Moreover, in deciding on whom to nominate in party primaries, voters and party bigwigs have generally taken electability into account, and in the general election, candidates have generally tried to capture the center and to stay away from being branded as an “extremist.”

Roller-Coaster: Europe, 1950-2017
by Ian Kershaw
Published 29 Aug 2018

The war had produced unprecedented levels of national solidarity, temporarily at least overriding deep class divisions, and there was national pride in the victory over Nazism. The monarchy enjoyed great popularity. The British parliamentary democracy had almost total backing from the population. The ‘first past the post’ electoral system, unlike the proportional representation systems of most countries in Western Europe, strongly militated against small parties and tended to produce stable governments with sizeable majorities. Clear election winners emerged even though, in fact, the electorate was almost evenly split between Conservative and Labour.

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And sure enough in June 2007 the most successful leader in Labour’s electoral history resigned as Prime Minister, leaving Parliament soon afterwards. The Iraq War had lastingly sullied his reputation. His notable achievements as Prime Minister were as a consequence widely overlooked or played down. Gerhard Schröder did not have the luxury of the large majority that the British ‘first-past-the-post’ electoral system presented to Blair in 1997. The Social Democrats won the German election the following year, though with only slightly more of the popular vote than the Christian Union parties. The government Schröder was able to form, in coalition with the Greens (who were backed by a mere 6.7. per cent of the electorate), nonetheless embarked on an ambitious programme of social reforms.

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But opposition to immigration was a potent factor in the increased support for nationalist parties also in much of Northern and Western Europe. UKIP won 26.6 per cent of the British vote, the largest proportion of any party, at the 2014 election to the European Parliament. (UKIP had far less success in the British general election the following year, winning only a single seat in parliament on the first-past-the-post electoral system though still gaining 12.6 per cent of the vote.) The Front National was backed by around a third of the French electorate. Alternative für Deutschland (founded only in 2012 and turning from initial Euroscepticism to an anti-migrant party) saw its support rise to more than 20 per cent of the electorate in a number of state elections during 2016.

Unelected Power: The Quest for Legitimacy in Central Banking and the Regulatory State
by Paul Tucker
Published 21 Apr 2018

Representative democracy’s most basic institution, the system of voting, also comes in different shapes. Democracies are typically made up of districts (or constituencies as they are known in the UK), with elections to choose either a single candidate or multiple candidates to represent each district. Some have a first-past-the-post (plurality) decision rule; others have proportional elections, which can involve voting for party lists rather than individual candidates. In some countries, the whole state-structure package, including the electoral system, is formally enshrined in a written constitution or “basic law,” of greater or lesser length and prescription, subject to higher or lower hurdles for amendment, and whose meaning emerges and evolves through practice and interpretation.

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The construction of governments and the independence of individual legislators relative to party bosses depend on these high-level rules and conventions. And the same underlying incentives and constraints have a powerful influence on the structure of the administrative state and how it is overseen. Two First-Past-the-Post (Plurality) Systems: The UK versus the US While profoundly different in other respects, the US and UK lie at one end of the spectrum of electoral systems. Their legislative assemblies comprise single-member-district representatives elected on a plurality of votes and with the public having no legal obligation to vote.

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Their legislative assemblies comprise single-member-district representatives elected on a plurality of votes and with the public having no legal obligation to vote. Often termed majoritarian, a common shorthand for modern representative democracy, in neither country does government in fact require a majority of the popular vote, let alone of those entitled to vote. A UK versus US comparison illustrates, however, how things can differ even across first-past-the-post (plurality) systems. In the UK, the election (or reelection) prospects of individual candidates typically depend heavily on the popularity of their party, and in particular their party leaders, as voters know they are very likely to be choosing a single-party executive government that will be able to legislate its program.

How to Read Numbers: A Guide to Statistics in the News (And Knowing When to Trust Them)
by Tom Chivers and David Chivers
Published 18 Mar 2021

Of course, most of you (we hope) won’t be journalists or academics, but ordinary, horny-handed peasants toiling the fields, or whatever it is normal people do. And we’d love it if you got involved too. Trying to make these changes is a bit like trying to reform the voting system. In order to change to a new voting system – say from first past the post (FPTP), which the British Parliament uses, to proportional representation (PR), some form of which is used in many other European countries – you need to win under the old system. And once your political party has won under the old system, you have little incentive to change it, because you’re in power.

A Classless Society: Britain in the 1990s
by Alwyn W. Turner
Published 4 Sep 2013

Elections to the House of Commons and local councils remained unchanged, operating under the first past the post system (the former in single-member constituencies, the latter in multi-member wards), but elsewhere various systems were in use: the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and the London Assembly employed one system, the mayor of London (and mayors of any other cities who might follow) another, and the European Parliament yet another. There was little apparent logic in any of this jigsaw. In places it was progressive – the mix of first past the post and top-up lists in Scotland, Wales and London took a decisive step towards proportional representation – but elsewhere there were signs of Labour’s centralising tendency.

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Whether someone like Critchley could be regarded as typical of the stay-at-home Tories was a matter of some dispute, though the anti-Europe parties’ comparatively poor showing suggested that he might well have been; it seemed unlikely that the absentees were distressed by the lack of right-wing policies. The debate over who those missing supporters were, and how to win them back, was to preoccupy the Conservative Party for the next decade. For now, Labour had the luxury of simply ignoring the details. Thanks to the vagaries of the first-past-the-post system, the party had a majority of 179 seats in the Commons, more than 63 per cent of the MPs, and – taking into account boundary changes – had gained 145 seats. In parliamentary terms, it dwarfed even the 1945 landslide of Clement Attlee (though he had won a shade under half the popular vote), a moment that had largely passed into the realm of fable.

The Knowledge Economy
by Roberto Mangabeira Unger
Published 19 Mar 2019

So, too, the experimentalist culture of a high-energy democracy finds inspiration in a great wealth of contending interests and identities. These clashing perspectives need to win a political voice: hence the preference in most (but not all) circumstances for proportional representation and multiple rounds of balloting rather than first-past-the-post electoral regimes and conclusive decision on a single ballot. For the same reason, the state must have many parts, so that a tendency of interest or opinion that fails to find expression in one part may secure it in another. The danger that the manifestation of conflict not only in politics but in the state will lead to paralysis of coherent initiative is addressed by the second principle, of rapid resolution of impasse.

How Democracy Ends
by David Runciman
Published 9 May 2018

The most persistent conspiracy theorists are the people who feel they can never win under the rules of democratic politics. A recent survey of UK voters showed that conspiracy theories are most prevalent among those who feel permanently disenfranchised.24 If you support a party that has no chance of winning power – especially under a two-party, first-past-the-post system – democracy does appear biased against you. It will be worse if you support no party at all. An old anarchist slogan says that it doesn’t matter who you vote for, the government always gets in. It is not just anarchists who think like that. Anyone who has lost faith in the possibility of political change is likely to believe voting is not worth the bother; anyone who stops voting is likely to find that the system ignores them because their views don’t count.

The Global Minotaur
by Yanis Varoufakis and Paul Mason
Published 4 Jul 2015

But the one thing that did not happen was that for which Mrs Thatcher was given credit: real wages per hour did not drop. In fact, and in sharp contrast to the US experience, they rose considerably.7 It is now clear that Mrs Thatcher’s impressive electoral successes in 1983 and 1987 (Britain’s ‘first past the post’ electoral system notwithstanding) was due to two factors. First, many of the 4.5 million jobless people were too glum and disgruntled to bother to vote. Secondly, the workers who did hang on to their jobs saw their real wages rise. In addition, Mrs Thatcher gave them bonuses that roped them into a speculative mood, in tune with the financial frenzy in Wall Street and the City of London.

The Politics Industry: How Political Innovation Can Break Partisan Gridlock and Save Our Democracy
by Katherine M. Gehl and Michael E. Porter
Published 14 Sep 2020

The reality of American elections becomes clear: staying in the race might well mean handing a victory to the greater of two evils—the very candidate you were working so hard to defeat in the first place. You ran for office because you spotted an opportunity to act in the public interest—to deliver solutions ignored by the current players. Your startup campaign was poised to fill a gap in the marketplace. But in American elections, plurality voting—the dominant, first-past-the-post, winner-take-all voting system—creates the spoiler phenomenon and dissuades would-be elected officials like you from running altogether. Frustrated and amazed by this truly un-American abuse of the free market, you do what any good, civic-minded citizen would do: you pursue legal action, believing you have a promising antitrust case.

How Did We Get Into This Mess?: Politics, Equality, Nature
by George Monbiot
Published 14 Apr 2016

This is a system in which all major parties are complicit, which offers no obvious exit from a model that privileges neoliberal economics over other aspirations.13 It treats the natural world, civic life, equality, public health and effective public services as dispensable luxuries, and the freedom of the rich to exploit the poor as non-negotiable. Its lack of a codified constitution permits numberless abuses of power. It has failed to reform the House of Lords, royal prerogative, campaign finance and first-past-the-post voting (another triumph for the no brigade).14 It is dominated by a media owned by tax exiles, who, instructing their editors from their distant chateaux, play the patriotism card at every opportunity. The concerns of swing voters in marginal constituencies outweigh those of the majority; the concerns of corporations with no lasting stake in the country outweigh everything.

Exodus: How Migration Is Changing Our World
by Paul Collier
Published 30 Sep 2013

The space left by the mainstream political parties rapidly came to be occupied by a gallery of grotesques: racists, xenophobes, and psychopaths found themselves with an audience of decent, ordinary citizens who were increasingly alarmed by the silence of the mainstream parties. To date, the only thing that has kept extremist parties at bay has been first-past-the-post voting systems. In the United States and Britain, where such voting systems make it hard for third parties to survive, extremist parties have not gained traction. But in virtually all societies with more inclusive voting systems, single-issue anti-immigrant parties now attract a remarkably high share of the vote.

A Hacker's Mind: How the Powerful Bend Society's Rules, and How to Bend Them Back
by Bruce Schneier
Published 7 Feb 2023

In a 2014 parliamentary election, for example, five of the thirty-five candidates running for a particular seat were named Lakhan Sahu—and only one of those was an actual politician with a legislative record. The candidate from the major opposing party called it a “mere coincidence” that so many Lakhan Sahus were motivated to jump into the fray at exactly the same time. In the US, the general vulnerability is the two-party system, but vulnerability also lies in the first-past-the-post winner-take-all system of elections. Because we don’t require that candidates get a majority of the vote, but merely a plurality, political candidates are less likely to win if another candidate has a similar policy profile (or even a similar name) and splits the votes of would-be supporters.

The Lost Decade: 2010–2020, and What Lies Ahead for Britain
by Polly Toynbee and David Walker
Published 3 Mar 2020

The government and constitution of the UK are decrepit, in need of thorough spring-cleaning. The decanting of MPs and peers when the decaying Palace of Westminster is renewed could be a prompt. It’s time to correct the corruptions of lobbying and peerages, but most pressing is electoral reform for the House of Commons, now that first-past-the-post is so demonstrably incapable of representing a fragmenting country. Brexit exposed the unfitness of electoral law in the age of social media, hostile foreign intervention and unwarranted use of private data. Some Reasons to Be Cheerful In the bowels of the Tate is Richard Caton Woodville’s watercolour of General Wolfe heroically scaling the Heights of Abraham to take Quebec City; it was much viewed when the Brexiter generation was at school and world maps on classroom walls still showed great daubs of empire red.

Brexit Unfolded: How No One Got What They Want (And Why They Were Never Going To)
by Chris Grey
Published 22 Jun 2021

The only way that would be good for both would be a wholehearted recommitment (or, one might say, for the first time a wholehearted commitment) by the UK to the EU. How could that possibly be achieved on the back of a revocation which even if undertaken by a majority government would, very likely, only have had the backing of a minority of voters given the first past the post system? Especially in the toxic politics and culture that obtained, it would have been a recipe for disaster for both the UK and the EU. It was no good saying, as some revoke advocates did, that since the 2016 referendum was deeply flawed in its set-up, conduct and interpretation there was no need to be finicky about how to annul it.

Carmageddon: How Cars Make Life Worse and What to Do About It
by Daniel Knowles
Published 27 Mar 2023

As the experience of Paris or New York shows, in Europe and America at least, it is mostly city governments that are trying to do something about the sheer number of cars on our streets. That should not be surprising. After all, it is in cities where the costs of carmageddon are most visible. Cities are the places where congestion and traffic pollution are the most destructive. But nationally, the voters in cities tend not to be that important, especially in first-past-the-post systems like that of the UK and America. Suburban voters are generally the swing voters—the people who politicians want to reach out to. And they use cars. That is why national politicians are so keen to keep down the cost of gasoline and to build enormous amounts of new road. It is cities that suffer the costs.

Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy
by Francis Fukuyama
Published 29 Sep 2014

As anyone who has chaired a meeting of a club or committee knows, decision costs rise exponentially if one needs consensus in large groups. Decisions taken under a majority voting rule (50 percent plus one) often used in democratic countries thus deviate very far from an ideal democratic procedure, since they can disenfranchise nearly half the population. Indeed, under plurality (or what is sometimes known as first-past-the-post) voting, decisions can be taken on behalf of the whole community by a minority of voters. (The United States and the United Kingdom, both of which have such voting systems, elected Bill Clinton in 1992 with 43 percent of the vote, and Tony Blair with 42 percent in 2001.)5 FIGURE 22. Political Participation vs.

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In all other respects, however, the system concentrates rather than diffuses power. A pure Westminster system has only a single all-powerful legislative chamber, no separate presidency, no written constitution and therefore no judicial review, and no federalism or constitutionally mandated devolution of powers to localities. It has a plurality, or first-past-the-post, voting system, which tends to produce a two-party system and strong parliamentary majorities even when the majority party wins only a plurality of the vote.8 Critical to the functioning of this system is party discipline; the leadership of the Conservative or Labour Party can force its members of Parliament to vote according to their wishes because they can deny recalcitrant MPs the ability to run for office in the next election.

Brexit, No Exit: Why in the End Britain Won't Leave Europe
by Denis MacShane
Published 14 Jul 2017

AFTERWORD 24 HOW THE UK STAYS IN EUROPE In 1992 there was a narrow majority in a Danish referendum to reject the Maastricht Treaty. The Danes, like the British, are a proud, longstanding European democracy. Their election system is based on proportional representation, unlike Britain’s first-past-the post system. There has been no majority one-party government in Denmark since 1909. The government insisted that while it accepted the clear expression of the will of the Danish people in the plebiscite, it invited the nation to reflect on whether that was the final and only word, following which Denmark’s future lay in being isolated from its European partners.

The Road to Somewhere: The Populist Revolt and the Future of Politics
by David Goodhart
Published 7 Jan 2017

What it has not done is change the social composition of the party—about three quarters of Labour party members are middle class, about 60 per cent are graduates, and almost 40 per cent live in London and the South East.15 The decline of corporatism has also had a narrowing effect on politics. Corporatism, for all its faults, provided many millions of people with a second way to influence public policy through their union branches or business or professional associations. Moreover, in Britain, thanks to the first past the post system, most constituencies never change hands. This means a limited sense of political agency in national politics for the people stuck in the rotten boroughs, while local government politics, at least outside big cities, is often barely visible to most people (thanks in part to the sad decline of good local newspapers).

The Corruption of Capitalism: Why Rentiers Thrive and Work Does Not Pay
by Guy Standing
Published 13 Jul 2016

Be that as it may, it is the thinning of the democratic crust of society that should be of primary concern, epitomised above all by the commodification of party politics. THE GAME OF PLUTOCRATS Democracy is usually understood as a competition of political values and ideas, with informed debate preceding voting. Whatever the electoral system – ‘first-past-the-post’, as in Britain or the USA, or some form of proportional representation related to share of the vote – the health of democracy depends on the scope for debate based on truthful information. Yet political campaigns are increasingly narrowing that scope, using the power of modern communications technology to manipulate public opinion with simplistic, emotive and often untruthful messages and images.

Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class
by Owen Jones
Published 14 Jul 2011

'So,' says Taylor, I think Labour's strategy was; 'How do we appeal to the aspirational working classi" Does that mean that they took for granted whatever it is we mean by the 'non-aspirational working class'? Well, maybe partly took for granted, maybe partly those people are in constituencies that Labour are going to win anyway. So, whether you might consider that to be callous, but in a first-past-the-post [electoral] system you don't focus your energies on people who are in constituencies where they don't make a huge difference. And partly those people are also less likely, or least likely, to turn out. But what did New Labour mean by aspiration? 'If you look at the disCOursearound aspiration, it's a very restricted notion of what it is,' says influential Labour backbencher and former advisor to Tony Blair, Jon Cruddas.

Mindf*ck: Cambridge Analytica and the Plot to Break America
by Christopher Wylie
Published 8 Oct 2019

The Lib Dems wanted to talk to me because they were unsure whether they could translate this new school of campaigning into the British political system. What was so interesting for them about the project I had worked on with the LPC—setting up the same kind of voter-targeting system used by the Obama campaign—was that it was the first of its kind and scale outside the United States. And Canada, like Britain, uses the same first-past-the-post “Westminster model” electoral system and has a diverse array of political parties. In this conversation, the staffers realized that half of the localization work would have already been done if they imported the Canadian version of the technology. At the end of the meeting, they were almost giddy after learning about what the system could do.

Mapmatics: How We Navigate the World Through Numbers
by Paulina Rowinska
Published 5 Jun 2024

Remember that each district chooses just one representative, so even a relatively large minority – making up, let’s say, 40 per cent of the total district’s population – will never get to have someone representing their interests. One way around it would be to change the system so that rather than ‘first past the post’ (or ‘winner takes all’) it resembles the proportional representation used in dozens of countries from Albania to Uruguay: votes from all over the country get aggregated, so a 40 per cent minority would get about 40 per cent of the seats. This, however, would go against an important American value of local representation.

The Verdict: Did Labour Change Britain?
by Polly Toynbee and David Walker
Published 6 Oct 2011

In May 2011 there was a sharp reminder of Labour’s reactionary tendency, when many frontbenchers of 1997–2010 showed their true colours. John Reid joined David Blunkett and others unashamedly on a Tory platform, to inveigh against the reform of voting to the House of Commons – although they had been members of the Cabinet when Labour, to its credit, abolished first-past-the-post elections in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and contests for the Greater London Authority. In spring 2010 we witnessed Patricia Hewitt and Geoff Hoon touting their services as lobbyists and gobbling up corporate positions, former defence secretary Hoon joining AgustaWestland, the helicopter manufacturer, blatantly exposing the revolving door between the Ministry of Defence and the firms from which it procures equipment.

The Skeptical Economist: Revealing the Ethics Inside Economics
by Jonathan Aldred
Published 1 Jan 2009

Auction design that overemphasizes auction theory at the expense of messy political realities has gone badly wrong in practice. See Klemperer (2006). 4 Although some economists seem dismissive, I would propose social choice theory. This shows, among other things, the desirable ethical principles that different voting rules (first-past-the-post, proportional representation etc.) satisfy; and the combinations of desirable ethical principles that no voting rule satisfies (including rules we may not yet have invented). But again, social choice theory inhabits a kind of closed system. For a relatively accessible introduction to the beautiful world of social choice theory, see Sen (1999). 5 Mackenzie et al (2007).

The Glass Half-Empty: Debunking the Myth of Progress in the Twenty-First Century
by Rodrigo Aguilera
Published 10 Mar 2020

This has occurred despite the fact that there have been numerous innovative alternatives, such as the use of computer algorithms to define ideal district boundaries (mark my words: politics will be the last job to be replaced by robots, even though it probably should be among the first). Another relic is the first-past-the-post (FPTP) electoral system, the practice of elections being essentially a winner-take-all system that tends to heavily favor large, established parties and preclude smaller parties from offering legitimate challenges to the establishment. The US’s obscenely dysfunctional Electoral College is a prime example as is the UK’s voting system to a lesser degree.

How Will Capitalism End?
by Wolfgang Streeck
Published 8 Nov 2016

What is more, it is beginning to make its leading representatives to leave behind institutionalism pure and simple and move forward (or in fact back?) to a political economy perspective on democracy that deserves its name. Democracy and capitalism is now the subject, if not of choice then of necessity. Gone are the good times, or so it seems, when Glasperlen issues as harmless and comfortable as first-past-the-post vs. proportional representation, Westminster vs. veto point, consociational vs. majoritarian democracy, parliamentary vs. presidential rule, unitary vs. federal government, mono-cameralism vs. bicameralism etc., etc. could rule supreme in the discipline’s official journals. Back to the basics!

Britain's Europe: A Thousand Years of Conflict and Cooperation
by Brendan Simms
Published 27 Apr 2016

A ‘Brexit’ in 2016 is therefore perfectly possible.10 At the same time, the British Question is being posed in a different way by the campaign for Scottish independence.11 The long period of Tory government under Margaret Thatcher during the 1980s opened a divide between the more conservative English and the supposedly more socialist Scots (much magnified by the first-past-the-post electoral system). It was papered over but never closed by the Blair government’s devolution of powers to the Scottish Assembly in the late 1990s. In October 2012 the ruling Scottish National Party in Edinburgh under Alex Salmond secured a highly advantageous deal for a referendum on independence two years later.

Falling Behind: Explaining the Development Gap Between Latin America and the United States
by Francis Fukuyama
Published 1 Jan 2006

See Javier Corrales, Presidents without Parties: The Politics of Economic Reform in Argentina and Venezuela in the 1990s (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002). 31. Seymour Martin Lipset, American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword (New York: Norton, 1995). 32. New Zealand ceased to have a pure Westminster system when its electoral system was changed from single member first-past-the-post to mixed member proportional in 1994. 33. Though even in those instances, judiciaries that are too independent of public opinion have become highly controversial in the United States and other developed democracies that take basic judicial independence for granted. 34. Stein et al., The Politics of Policies. 220 Institutional Factors in Latin America’s Development 35.

The Levelling: What’s Next After Globalization
by Michael O’sullivan
Published 28 May 2019

In some countries, such as Germany, small parties need to get above a threshold vote in order to be allowed to take up seats in the Bundestag, and this can dissuade voters from voting for new, smaller parties. This is referred to as “Duverger’s Law,” named after the French sociologist Maurice Duverger, who observed that “first-past-the-post” electoral systems tend to foster two-party systems, whereas double-ballot-majority systems and proportional-representation systems tend to foster multiparty landscapes. Much of the evidence on the formation of new parties comes from Western democratic countries. Parties are less consequential in one-party systems or in nations where individuals and their families and close supporters rule.

Three Years in Hell: The Brexit Chronicles
by Fintan O'Toole
Published 5 Mar 2020

Painting the EU as a failed project is grossly simplistic, but there is enough truth in this crude portrait for people to recognise the likeness. It helped, finally and most ironically of all, that the same Conservative Party whose internal disputes created this historic moment, is governing with the very limited legitimacy that 35 per cent of the vote confers. Britain’s unreformed first-past-the-post electoral system has left huge parts of the population feeling democratically irrelevant and unrepresented. However much one might be repelled by UKIP, it is obvious that when four million people vote for a party and it gets just a single MP, Westminster itself becomes Them for many voters.

Democracy and Prosperity: Reinventing Capitalism Through a Turbulent Century
by Torben Iversen and David Soskice
Published 5 Feb 2019

Within these subnational communities—rural Gemeinde, as well as small and larger towns with their formal or informal guild structures, sometimes defined confessionally, linguistically, and/or ethnically—local decision-making involved consensus-based negotiation and bargaining so that different group interests (except those without possessions) could be effectively represented. This allowed the solution of collective action problems and the safe creation of cospecific assets within local and regional economic networks. In these countries a nominally majoritarian first-past-the-post electoral system worked adequately as a representative system at the national level through much of the nineteenth century. Constituencies were represented in national politics by local notables elected by plurality and often unopposed. With economic interests generally geographically defined, these provided for their more or less proportional representation.

The Myth of the Blitz
by Angus Calder
Published 28 Jun 2012

Her image as Elizabeth I Redivivus, or Female Churchill, following her dispatch of the task force to oust the Argies from ‘our soil’, because it was inherently ridiculous, probably contributed to the intense dislike of her felt by a very large proportion of the electorate, whose views could not be adequately represented because of the antiquated ‘first past the post’ system by which the Mother of Parliaments was elected to serve under the inscrutable British Constitution. Anthony Barnett, however, promptly showed, in a very lively analysis, that the Falklands affair was deeply revealing in regard to British political history since the war. The invasion should clearly have been anticipated and prevented.

This Land: The Struggle for the Left
by Owen Jones
Published 23 Sep 2020

Meanwhile, in forty-one out of the fifty-four Tory-held target seats Labour needed to win if it wished to form a government, a majority had voted to Leave23 – and the nature of Britain’s non-proportional electoral system meant that the party had to prioritize voters in marginal seats over safe seats. ‘It was fucking mad to go in a Remain direction given where the votes are,’ says Andrew Murray. ‘You have to win under a first-past-the-post system, and we could see from 2017 where we were vulnerable.’ It’s at this moment, however, that Labour made a fatal mistake. In the aftermath of the 2017 election, Corbyn had immense political capital. Labour MPs who had very recently been plotting to overthrow their leader were now serenading him with ‘Oh, Jeremy Corbyn!’

The Powerful and the Damned: Private Diaries in Turbulent Times
by Lionel Barber
Published 5 Nov 2020

Knighted in 2014 for services to business and charity. 5 Founded in 1971 by Ian Paisley, the DUP is the major force in Northern Irish politics in favour of maintaining the UK union. 6 Liberal Democrats wanted to introduce more proportional representation in Parliamentary elections in place of the first-past-the-post system that favours the two major parties, Conservative and Labour. 7 Stig Abell, a journalist who rose through the ranks at the Press Complaints Commission, later became its director. In 2013, he joined the Sun as managing editor, making the improbable but successful transition to editor of the Times Literary Supplement in 2016.

The Divided Nation: A History of Germany, 1918-1990
by Mary Fulbrook
Published 14 Oct 1991

The traditional penumbra of SPD youth, sporting and special interest groups was forbidden, depriving the SPD of one of its main organizational means of gaining and sustaining support. 6 Other studies, such as that by Rainer Schulze of the Chambers of Commerce and Industry, have shown how British support of these employers' organizations allowed them to secure advantages in influencing the policies of, and placing individuals within, emerging right-wing political parties.7 Page 140 There were also more politically neutral difficulties: the British, for example, set great store by the attempt to separate 'politics' from 'administration', politicians from civil servants, which in German traditions of local government had been conflated (as in the office which combined the functions of chief executive and mayor). There were also attempts in the British zone to replace the proportional representation voting system with the British system of 'first past the post', resulting in the hybrid compromise found in the later voting system of the Federal Republic (which combines both, as discussed further in Chapter Seven). Unforeseen problems were encountered with some of the aspects of democracy in post-Nazi Germany in practice. The Americans were somewhat taken aback when in one town a former Nazi mayor was re-elected, by democratic majority vote, as the new mayor.

The Perfect Mile: Three Athletes, One Goal, and Less Than Four Minutes to Achieve It
by Neal Bascomb and Kingfisher Editors
Published 13 Apr 2004

A few days before the Daily Mirror columnist, Tom Phillips, had compared Bannister to a great racehorse trainer who “rarely bothered about picking minor honors here and there. If he wished to win a classic race, he got his horse perfectly fit for that day and nearly every time his horse was first past the post.” Phillips concluded: “I believe Bannister will win and teach some of our other athletes, and the officials and coaches, a lesson in strategy and tactics.” If confidence could be drawn from the amount of column space guaranteeing his victory, Bannister was a sure thing. Most sportswriters considered him their favorite.

England: Seven Myths That Changed a Country – and How to Set Them Straight
by Tom Baldwin and Marc Stears
Published 24 Apr 2024

Based on focus groups she conducted in traditionally Labour constituencies across the North and Midlands, she described how people saw the party as being for ‘losers and scroungers’ or filled with ‘naïve and idealistic middle-class students – arrogant kids boasting degrees but lacking experience, young people who looked down on people like them’.58 Political parties spend much of their time dissecting − or ‘segmenting’ − the component parts of the electorate, which was why Mattinson restricted membership of her focus groups to working-class people with a ‘spread of ages from the late 30s up to the mid-70s’, and ‘asked for everyone to be past Labour voters who had switched to the Conservatives at the 2019 election’.59 And, inevitably in a political system where the MP for each constituency is determined through a first-past-the-post election, some voters matter more than others. But, as political strategists from every party admit, it’s impossible to tell the full story of what is happening in the country as a whole through a very narrow slice of the electorate. There must be much more being said by all those people never invited to focus groups.

Vulture Capitalism: Corporate Crimes, Backdoor Bailouts, and the Death of Freedom
by Grace Blakeley
Published 11 Mar 2024

In majoritarian electoral systems like those in the US and the UK, activists have little choice other than to work within existing social democratic parties. Doing so successfully will, however, require a strong focus on building power outside these parties as well—in communities, within the labor movement, and on the streets. These electoral systems themselves must also be the focus of reform. Systems like first-past-the-post privilege the two largest parties, as well as parties with significant regional support, over smaller parties that nevertheless command extensive popular support. Moving toward more proportional systems, which nevertheless contain an element of local accountability for representatives,71 would be a step forward for democratic politics in countries like the US and the UK.

India's Long Road
by Vijay Joshi
Published 21 Feb 2017

From independence until 1989, the national government was formed by the Congress Party (with the exception of the Janata Coalition from 1977 to 1979). It regularly got around 40 per cent of the votes and 60 per cent or more of seats, giving it an absolute majority in the Lok Sabha. (This discrepancy between votes and seats is made possible by India’s ‘first past the post’ electoral system.) Significantly, the Congress also controlled the Rajya Sabha. Moreover, from 1971 to 1989, and particularly for much of the time that Indira Gandhi was prime minister, the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) acquired great power over other institutions. From 1989, these centralizing forces have been reversed.

European Spring: Why Our Economies and Politics Are in a Mess - and How to Put Them Right
by Philippe Legrain
Published 22 Apr 2014

An elaboration of this approach is to set up citizens’ assemblies made up of a representative sample of the population that come together to deliberate on important issues. Canada is a pioneer. In 2004, the British Columbia Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform convened a policy jury to look at alternatives to the first-past-the-post electoral system.773 In 2007, a similar grouping considered alternative electoral systems in Ontario. Three of that province’s Local Health Integration Networks have also referred their budget priorities to a policy jury for advice and refinement. At the very least, both European countries and the EU should explore greater use of deliberative democracy on a consultative basis.

The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World
by David Deutsch
Published 30 Jun 2011

The system used to elect members of the legislatures of most countries in the British political tradition is that each district (or ‘constituency’) in the country is entitled to one seat in the legislature, and that seat goes to the candidate with the largest number of votes in that district. This is called the plurality voting system (‘plurality’ meaning ‘largest number of votes’) – often called the ‘first-past-the-post’ system, because there is no prize for any runner-up, and no second round of voting (both of which feature in other electoral systems for the sake of increasing the proportionality of the outcomes). Plurality voting typically ‘over-represents’ the two largest parties, compared with the proportion of votes they receive.

There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century
by Fiona Hill
Published 4 Oct 2021

He gambled that he could use the referendum to improve his negotiating leverage with the EU hierarchy in Brussels. Prior to 2016, the United Kingdom had held only two national referenda. The first, in 1975, was to confirm the country’s 1973 membership in the European Union in the first place. The second referendum focused on changing the British electoral system from “first-past-the-post” to an alternative voting system. This proposal was roundly rejected. The stakes were high for the third, given the daunting prospects of withdrawing from forty years of deeply entrenched formal economic and political relationships and trade networks. The Brexit, or “Leave,” referendum campaign followed a pattern similar to that of the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Bali & Lombok Travel Guide
by Lonely Planet

BULL RACES The Negara region is famous for bull races, known as mekepung, which culminate in the Bupati Cup in Negara on the Sunday before 17 August, Indonesia's Independence Day. The racing animals are actually the normally docile water buffalo, which charge down a 2km stretch of road or beach pulling tiny chariots. Gaily clad riders stand or kneel on top of the chariots forcing the bullocks on. The winner is not necessarily first past the post – style also plays a part and points are awarded for the most elegant runner. There is much wagering on the results. Important races take place during the dry season on some Sundays from July to October. Races and practices are held at several sites around Perancak on the coast and elsewhere on Sunday mornings, including Delod Berawan and Mertasari.

Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration and the Future of White Majorities
by Eric Kaufmann
Published 24 Oct 2018

This despite the fact that the more moderate UK Independence Party (UKIP), also sceptical of immigration, secured 16.1 per cent. This was an early political bellwether of the rise in anti-immigration sentiment that had been building since 1997. Many scoffed that European elections were protest votes with low turnouts, hence poor indicators of what might happen in a high-participation, first-past-the-post national election. It’s certainly true that supply factors – campaign resources and a local infrastructure of volunteers – are critical for winning national elections. While campaigning is also important in elections to the European Parliament, the electoral units aren’t local while seats in the European Parliament are allocated on the basis of the popular vote.

Enemies and Neighbours: Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917-2017
by Ian Black
Published 2 Nov 2017

‘But with the campaign under way, there is something more unpleasant in the electoral air.’ Instead of a single-constituency list system, which could produce proportional representation and encourage the electorate to think in national terms, the leadership opted for sixteen constituencies in which representatives were to be elected on a first-past-the-post basis. Opponents pleaded in vain that that would encourage clan-based voting in a society in which family still outweighed ideology, and discourage pluralist and coalition politics. ‘While a majority system might be suitable for stable democracies, it might not be appropriate for societies with deep political divisions and in which fundamental questions about national identity and territorial boundaries remain open’, commented the political scientist Khalil Shikaki.33 The only candidate challenging Arafat, and only for symbolic reasons, was Samiha Khalil, a respected campaigner for women’s rights as well as a forthright critic of Oslo.

Lonely Planet London City Guide
by Tom Masters , Steve Fallon and Vesna Maric
Published 31 Jan 2010

Critics point out, though, that despite the veneer of ecofriendly, liberal policies, the party remains utterly that of the establishment, with Cameron and much of his cabinet a product of Eton and Oxbridge. The only other major political party in the UK is the Liberal Democrats, who currently hold just 63 seats. Led by the young Nick Clegg, the Lib Dems are the established third party that always loses out to the first-past-the-post electoral system. While many see them as a credible alternative to the Tory–Labour double act (who have held power between them since 1922!), the reality of British electoral number crunching means that it’s extremely difficult for a third party to make a national impact. Despite this the Lib Dems wield much power in local government throughout the country.

The Deluge: The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916-1931
by Adam Tooze
Published 13 Nov 2014

Faced with the ‘degradation of this Parliament’ Ramsay MacDonald, who had lost his seat, despaired altogether of human nature.34 Lloyd George and his Tory partners had, it seemed, found a way to turn democracy into a vehicle for reaction. Lloyd George, the staunch opponent of the Boer War, stood accused of pandering to the basest instincts of nationalism. The sense of having been cheated was only amplified by the arbitrariness of Westminster’s first-past-the-post constituency system. Although Asquithians, Liberals and Labour gained more than one-third of the electorate, they won only one-eighth of the seats.35 But though this rankled, the vagaries of the Westminster system were predictable and they did not make the system inherently conservative. In 1906 it had given the Lib-Lab coalition a landslide.

Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress
by Steven Pinker
Published 13 Feb 2018

It also removes any incentive for a nation to obtain nuclear weapons to protect itself against an enemy’s nuclear weapons. But getting to zero will not be easy, even with a carefully phased sequence of negotiation, reduction, and verification.111 Some strategists warn that we shouldn’t even try to get to zero, because in a crisis the former nuclear powers might rush to rearm, and the first past the post might launch a pre-emptive strike out of fear that its enemy would do so first.112 According to this argument, the world would be better off if the nuclear grandfathers kept a few around as a deterrent. In either case, the world is very far from zero, or even “a few.” Until that blessed day comes, there are incremental steps that could bring the day closer while making the world safer.

State of Emergency: The Way We Were
by Dominic Sandbrook
Published 29 Sep 2010

While the moderate parties – the Faulkner Unionists, the Alliance, the SDLP and Northern Ireland’s Labour Party – competed against one another for votes, the loyalist UUUC parties agreed to pool their resources and run one candidate in each constituency on the simple slogan ‘Dublin is Just a Sunningdale Away’. In some constituencies, the power-sharing candidates won more votes combined than their rejectionist opponent, but in a first-past-the-post system, that was no consolation. For when the votes were counted, the UUUC had swept the board, winning all but one of Northern Ireland’s twelve Westminster seats. Only in West Belfast, where the SDLP’s Gerry Fitt won a narow victory on the back of the heavy nationalist vote, was there a glimmer of light for the moderates.

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
by Steven Pinker
Published 24 Sep 2012

A rogue state might support nuclear terrorists once it was sure that it would never be a target of retaliation. And in a world that lacked nuclear weapons but retained the knowledge of how to build them—and that genie certainly can’t be put back in the bottle—a crisis could set off a scramble to rearm, in which the first past the post might be tempted to strike preemptively before its adversary got the upper hand. Some experts on nuclear strategy, including Schelling, John Deutch, and Harold Brown, are skeptical that a nuclear-free world is attainable or even desirable, though others are working out timetables and safeguards designed to answer their objections.217 With all these uncertainties, no one should predict that nuclear weapons will go the way of poison gas anytime soon.