Friday, November 7, 2014

Women's Views on News

Women's Views on News

TV election debates to promote four establishment men?

Posted: 06 Nov 2014 03:00 AM PST

14e51584Why exclude the Green Party?

You would think it would be easy: set up a series of televised debates in the run up to May 2015 to promote each party’s policies and allow voters to be able to make an informed decision in the election booth.

You'd be wrong.

Plans released on 13 October showed that broadcasters intend to host three debates.

The first invites UKIP’s leader Nigel Farage to appear alongside the traditional “big” three parties – the Lib Dems, Labour and Conservatives; the second only the Lib Dems, Labour and Conservatives; and the last a showdown, with Ed Milliband versus David Cameron.

The inclusion of UKIP rather than any of the other "smaller" parties has raised a number of questions about our political system.

The first is simply ‘Why UKIP?’

And then ‘Why exclude the Green party?’

Is this an echo of the entrenched nature of institutional sexism? If the Green's leader was a man, would he have been invited to stand alongside the other suited establishment men?

Then there is the thorny issue of how you determine political viability.

On numbers the Greens have as much right to be included as any other party.

Polling on 2nd November 2014 has the Labour at 32%, Conservative at 31%, UKIP at 18 per cent, the Lib Dems at 7 per cent and Greens 6 per cent.

Both UKIP and the Greens have 1 sitting MP. But Green MP Caroline Lucas has been sitting since the start of the latest parliament in 2010, UKIP’s since 9 October 2014.

And both UKIP and the Greens are the only political forces showing a rise in activism, membership and polling.

Surely then they should both be included?

A spate of online petitions have gathered massive numbers of signatures, Change.org alone listing over 190,000 in a matter of days.

And these numbers appear to be backed up by voters. A YouGov poll showed that – excluding the ‘don't knows’ – over 60 per cent of the electorate feel that the Greens should be included because that seems fair.

It would seem straightforward.

But when you look deeper into how the poll percentages may (or may not) transform into seats at the election we get quite a different view.

The First Past The Post (FPTP) system isn't concerned with the total percentage of votes polled: the "winners" are the party with the most MPs.

Recent predictions estimate that UKIP could win as many as 10 seats in Parliament in the May 2015 election.

This would give them significant political leverage if neither Conservative nor Labour were able to form a majority government.

In comparison, the Greens may not hold onto their one MP’s seat – Labour’s Purna Sen is currently polling with a 1 per cent lead in Brighton Pavillion.

So what is the fairest way?

Currently no one is happy: the Greens don't want to be left out at all, UKIP don't want to be left out of the second debate, and the Lib Dems don't want to be left out of the debate between the main two.

For such a simple aim the TV companies which pitched the idea have not really made a great go of it.

The co-chair of the Young Greens, Siobhan MacMahon is on point when she says:

“The obvious truth from the proposed TV debates is that broadcasters are struggling to adapt to the new political reality that we face in the UK, with five or more parties all staking legitimate claims to featuring in the debate."

It would seem the majority of British people agree with her.