(b) Methods of election If there is a straight contest between two candidates, the process is simple and fair. The one who receives the most votes wins - for, by definition, he or she has received more than 50% of the votes. Our system originated with two parties and two-candidate contests, and we have never managed to find another way for selecting a winner than by the 'first-past-the-post' method: the winner is the one with most votes. The difficulty arises because for the past forty years, in most of our constituencies we have had at least three serious candidates, sometimes four. (For example, Labour, Conservative, Liberal and Scottish Nationalist.) If the candidates received, respectively, 27%, 26%, 24% and 23% of the vote, then it is not at all clear that the candidate with 27% of the vote most closely represents the popular choice of the voters. Today few members of Parliament can say that they have been elected by a simple majority of the voters.
At present we have an unfair system, but there are problems with alternative systems used by other Western democracies. So far we have failed to decide on a different system though many have been proposed. What seems to be very unpopular is the Party List system, where candidates are allotted places in Parliament according to the proportion of votes given to their party. That is unpopular because most people want to know 'their own' member of Parliament - not just someone who is supposed to be representing them because his or her name reached the top of the list.
(c) The powers of Government. If we had, say, six significant parties in Parliament, these parties would need to make alliances in order to form a coalition government. Coalitions are common in Germany and Italy. In Britain where the two largest parties share most of the seats between them, you can be sure that each party includes a wide - and conflicting -range of opinions. The discussions and disagreements, alliances and compromises go on within the Conservative and the Labour Parties. All parties are sometimes accused of hypocrisy because one MP is known to believe in a particular action, and another MP from the same party is arguing against it; but sorting out different views and arriving at effective compromises or a clear course of action which eventually ignores some contrary arguments is in the nature of politics. We do not all agree all the time; we do not have a totalitarian system in which only one policy is the 'correct' one. Circumstances change and good people change their minds. So there is constant debate, reluctant acceptance by some people of the policies supported enthusiastically by others, and a great deal of shifting within the parties.
Nonetheless what we call the 'core values' of the different parties do differ, although all-too-often they are not very obvious. As a British person who knows my society, I can be fairly certain about the way that individuals around me vote by listening to their general views on social and economic problems. We have reasons for voting for this party or for that party.
The idea of an Opposition Party (or two opposition parties) is central to our system. Because Parliament has to debate and argue about policies, it is not at all unpatriotic to oppose the government: on the contrary, it is the duty of opposition members to oppose. (This is very different from the attitude of many Russians that "patriotic' Russians will tend to agree with each other and so vote for the same party!) In Britain the largest opposition party is known as 'Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition' which may sound pompous but expresses very clearly the necessary right, even the duty, to disagree with those in power.
So Mr Dombey, the Junior Minister for Transport, will expect to be attacked by his Labour 'shadow Minister', Mrs Nickleby who may be bitterly against some of Mr Dombey's proposals (toll roads, for example). Nevertheless, there will be both official and discreet unofficial discussions between the two sides, and occasionally Mr Dombey will find himself more in agreement with Mrs Nickleby than with some of the noisier argumentative MPs in his own party.
For Mr Copperfield as Prime Minister, even if his own MPs privately disagree with him they will still vote for his legislation and support the Government, because they like their team to be in power. Occasionally, however, MPs rebel and vote against their own Party. [Early in 2003 Parliament held a very serious and difficult debate about the proposed invasion of Iraq by British forces. At that time the Prime Minister was Tony Blair who was strongly in favour of supporting the Americans who intended to occupy the country. Parliament had to debate the matter. Should we go to war against Iraq, and if so, why? The debate (as a debate) was excellent; thoughtful, impassioned, complex, with every member understanding that this was a deeply serious and tragic matter on which they would have to vote. A Labour Government was in power. The Conservative Party officially supported the Government on a matter as significant as making war on another country. (This is normal in times of war although on this occasion the Liberal Democrats were opposed to the invasion.) So the Government should have won easily. But in fact many Labour MPs and some Conservative MPs voted against the policy. In the end the Government did get its majority vote, but the vote was quite close because there were so many 'rebels'.]
Other rebellions in the first decade of the twenty-first century were in response to laws about how to pay for universities and laws to increase income tax for poor people. In response to these rebellions, occasionally the Government was forced to change its mind. That is very rare. Almost always the system ensures that ours is a very powerful government. Some people would say, 'Too powerful'.
(d) Who should sit in the House of Lords? Most democratic systems have two legislative chambers or sections: power is divided in some way between the upper house and the lower house. In Britain, the House of Commons has always been the centre of political power and Parliamentary sovereignty while the House of Lords has had a reviewing and revising function. The House of Lords used to be composed of members of the hereditary aristocracy; it is ridiculous but true that 'hereditary lords' were still the majority of members in 1997 when the Labour Government came to power with a manifesto promise to 'reform' the House of Lords. In fact the absurdity of having part of our Parliament based on hereditary principles that were outdated a hundred years ago has been recognized since 1958 when the Prime Minister was given the right to appoint life peers to the House of Lords. The seats of life peers are not passed on to their eldest children. But many hereditary peers remained, not all of them active, but some of them insisting on taking a part in governing the country.
In 1997 there were about 750 hereditary peers. By 1999 all but 98 had been dismissed. Those who remained did so on a temporary basis, along with all the life peers - until the government had decided whether to have a fully-appointed House of Lords or a fully-elected House of Lords - or something in between. For ten years nothing has been decided. The active life peers were mostly appointed because of their notable contribution to public life as experts in law, social work, politics, economics, foreign affairs, education and so forth, so debates in the House of Lords are often very lively and well-informed. Committed democratic lords insist that they have a useful function and do a great deal of important Parliamentary work. Most people would agree. The Lords (who include a significant number of Ladies) examine and suggest amendments to Commons legislation; they point out failings in the law when applied to new policies; they can and do insist on principles when the Commons are being more 'pragmatic'. But however democratic they may be as individuals, the institution is not democratic - which is where the problem lies.