--- William T Goodall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I remember Gautam gave a good explanation of why the > US has two main > political parties (even if they swap positions over > time) when many > European nations have coalition-based governments > with several parties > receiving substantial support.
My God, I think that was my very first post on Brin-L...I can't _believe_ you remember it after this long. > The UK is basically a two-party system (is it > first-past the post vs > proportional voting that causes this?) but which > parties have changed > over time. Yeah, that's the major reason (in my opinion, of course). The fact that there's not a separate executive is probably why it's a weak two party system, instead of a strong one, like the US. > Now that we have a powerful third party (The > Lib-Dems) the situation > would seem to be unstable. Exceptionally. Also unhealthy. You can see it in the decent chance that the Tory's might actually lose enough support to the UK Independence Party that they might actually be _passsed_ by the Lib Dems in the next election. IMO (for whatever little it's worth on European politics) what the Tories could do to correct this is become the wholehearted opponents of the EU, and I honestly don't understand why they take this position... > > Could the two main parties become Labour and Lib-Dem > with the Tories > reduced to the distant third that the Liberals > (predecessors of the > Lib-Dems) occupied for most of the last century? Oohh, I just wrote on this above. Great minds think alike or something. Article in The New Republic on that possibility this week as well. > > Ironically one of the central tenets of Lib-Dem > policy is electoral > reform to proportional representation... Yeah, if they do become a second party I bet that changes really fast... > > William T Goodall ===== Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Freedom is not free" http://www.mukunda.blogspot.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - Send 10MB messages! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
