Empire

Northland Age, Volume 1, Issue 5, 6 November 1931, Page 7

Empire

THE BRITISH ELECTIONS The complete—rather too complete triumph of the National Government forces at the general election has been the biggest event of world importance during the past week, and is likely to have far-reaching eifects. There has been nothing like it in British political history. Even the huge majority secured by the Lloyd George Government at the khaki election in 1918—which proved so futile for good fades into insignificance compared with this. The anti-Gov-ernment forces in parliament have not been routed, they have been annihilated. An examination of the election figures, however, does not bear out the election result ; rather it illustrates once more the glorious uncertainty of our present electoral system. The Government forces polled rather less than twelve million votes, the Labour candidates over six and a half millions. Had the polling been reflected in the election le turns—if, in fact, our representative system resulted in giving Britain a true representation of public opinion—the Government would have had nearly a two to one majority—its actual majority is nearer ten to one. From any point of view, it is not a satisfactory result, and though schemes for securing a better numerical representation of public opinion in parliament have so far not been very successful, yet this is only a fresh illustration of the need. We have ourselves experimented with the second ballot only to abandon it in disgust. Ireland has experimented with proportional representation but does not seem satisfied with the result. Some system of preferential voting by which the voter numbers the candidates in the order of his liking prevents a candidate being elected on a minority vote—as a large proportion of our present parliament was. But it does not prevent what happened in many constituencies in Britain at this election where there were only two candidates —a comparatively slight difference in the number of votes cast gave all the representation to one party by small majorities and left the other side unrepresented. In this respect the Labour party was exceptionally unfortunate this time.