Great Britain will hold a House of Commons election in May 2015, and already the arguments over which parties should be included in BBC’s debates (for the potential prime minister candidates of each party) are raging. The BBC had already said four parties could participate: Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat, and UKIP.
The Green Party has now demonstrated that it has more dues-paying members than UKIP. See this article. The BBC has acknowledged that the new information is relevant, so possibly BBC will change its mind and include the Green Party. David Cameron, leader of the Conservative Party and the current prime minister, has been saying that he won’t participate unless the Greens are included. Thanks to Thomas Jones for the link.
Why is the 4th largest parliamentary party being excluded?
The H.C. is the nonstop gerrymander source of WORLD evil – since the 1200s.
The bare majority gang winners in the May 2015 election may be elected with ONLY about 20 percent of the votes — esp. now with the various larger 3rd, 4th, 5th, etc parties.
The uproar will hopefully be TOTAL — i.e. lots of yelling and screaming with DEMANDS to get P.R.
I actually don’t think we’re likely to have debates at all. Cameron’s clearly trying to avoid them, and Miliband and Clegg’s preferred result is probably “no debates, with Cameron taking the blame”. Farage wouldn’t mind that either. Including the Greens, and possibly UKIP would raise legal issues over equal time, as would empty chairing Cameron. As someone who considers them a silly presidentialisation, I would be quite happy about this.
I think the Greens should be in if they happen, but I don’t think membership (particularly estimated membership, since we won’t actually get official numbers till after the election) is a particularly good reason for ths.
Jim Riley: Because the DUP only stand in 18 seats and none of the mainland parties really run against them? Or, for the SNP, because >90% of the population won’t get the chance to vote for them.
DemoRep:
We don’t have gerrymandering.
Calling the House of Commons the source of all evil just makes you look rather silly.
Nobody’s expecting the largest party (who may not get a majority) to get less than 30% and I think the second-largest may get more than that as well.
While I support PR, most people won’t care “They got the most votes, why should how much by matter?”.
It’s also worth mentioning they’re having to include estimates for separate parties to even claim their estimated membership is bigger than UKIP’s.
Thank you for your enlightening post, Owen.