Dutch election and the advantages of PR

Pretty sure they cant be gerrymandering anything as they dont appear to be talking about any elections that involve constituencies or boundaries.

What I was trying to say was that in Westminster, the SNP and Plaid would end up with less seats unless we split the UK by areas ( the Countries, to give one country parties ( SNP, PLAID, DUP etc ) more say in their area), but then I supposed you'd get the London lot saying hand on we are more people than Scotland or Wales we want special treatment too'

Perhaps the Tories would like to reintroduce first past the post to Wales?

Labour won 27/40 constituency seats last time - 67.5% of the seats on 34.7% of the vote. 
 
However, with the proportional top up, Labour ended up with 29/60 seats and no overall majority.

I lived there for over 5 years. Love everything about the place. I keep meaning to post on this thread then getting lost down memory lane...agree with your observations completely though.

Which is why as well as introducing a proportional electoral system, I would be in favour of a more decentralised federal set up - we already have it to some extent with Scotland, Wales, NI (intermittently) and a couple of areas of England (eg London, Greater Manchester) but we should go the whole hog and the rest of England needs to be federalised too.  We already know what the main regions would be. It is also pretty much the only way to keep the UK together.
I am sure the Tories would like the alternative future of an independent England with perpetual centralised Tory government with huge majorities probably still on less than 50% of the vote (they got 47% in England last time). 

Right on cue, Open Britain has launched a campaign 'PR2028' today to put pressure on for electoral reform. See this post and related petition:-


www.open-britain.co.uk/winner_takes_all


"Today, I’m excited to announce the launch of PR2028, our new campaign to bring about Proportional Representation for UK General Elections by 2028, at the latest.

In recent years it has become increasingly clear that our First Past the Post (FPTP) electoral system no longer meets the needs and expectations of 21st Century electors. The ‘winner takes all’ nature of FPTP breeds destructive ‘win at all costs’ behaviours that undermine efforts to find common ground and build consensus. FPTP leaves millions of voters disillusioned and disengaged. As we enter a period of significant change for our country, it is essential that our democratic system drives open debate about the future we want to build, and involves the widest possible range of people. The outdated electoral system at the heart of our democracy is getting in the way of that and it needs to change.


Since embarking on our current mission of ‘Making Democracy Work…For Everyone’ last year, many of our supporters have urged us to add our energy to the work already under way to make PR a reality. With the launch of PR2028, I am glad that we will be able to work alongside organisations such as Make Votes Matter and the Electoral Reform Society to push this important cause. In the coming weeks, I look forward to discussing our plans with other campaigns to ensure we add value where it is most needed.


You may be wondering why we have focussed our campaign on the year 2028. Well, 2028 will be the centenary of the Equal Franchise Act of 1928, the legislation that finally gave women in the UK equal voting rights. (Some rights had been won in 1918 but it was not until 1928 that true equality was achieved.) We think that centenary provides a fitting deadline for the achievement of a reform that will ensure millions of voices currently excluded from the democratic process can finally be heard. For the avoidance of doubt, we see 2028 as an absolute deadline…if we can help make PR a reality before then, so much the better!

Our two immediate priorities are to raise public awareness of the benefits of proportional representation and to challenge the government to call a national citizens’ assembly to consider which form of PR best suits the needs of our country as it navigates its post-Brexit, post-Covid future. We believe citizens’ assemblies have an important role to play in our future democracy and that they are a particularly good way of answering questions like this. We are so convinced of this that, if by February of next year the government has not accepted our call for a national citizens’ assembly, we will ask fellow campaigners to work with us to establish an independent one.


For that reason, we are today launching a petition designed to gauge public appetite for a citizens’ assembly on PR. We hope that petition will demonstrate significant support for the idea and help make the case to government. So please, sign the petition, share it with your friends and family, and forward it to all your contacts on social media. The bigger that petition, the more chance we will have of replacing our unfair ‘winner takes all’ electoral system."

Here is an analysis of the Dutch election result. The centre has advanced, the right parties stood still and the left is in further retreat. Free market liberals and socially liberal parties will define the new coalition, needing support from one of several possible choices that would fit their agenda. This could be any of the Greens, the Animal Party (which will require some concessions on farm animal welfare in an intensive farming country) plus Volt, a new pan-EU party who made an unexpectedly strong debut. But what is certain is that the resulting government will be overwhelmingly green, liberal and pro-EU.


  www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/18/dutch-pm-mark-rutte-coalition-talks-election-victory?utm_term=663f7a41b41786abce71d014108f2ab7&utm_campaign=ThisIsEurope&utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&CMP=thisiseurope_email