Only here ...

I thought that some of my American visitors might be interested in what is going on in London at the moment.

We have decided to adopt the American system, and to have elected mayors of our main cities. However, it strikes me that the way this has been done in London has been a uniquely British phenomenon, with a kind of Gilbert and Sullivan zaniness about it.

Each political party had to select its candidates. The obvious choice for Labour was Ken Livingstone, someone who has always been on the left of the Labour Party, but who had a great deal of personal popularity during his period as leader of the Greater London Council (abolished by Thatcher). The Prime Minister, most definitely not being on the left of the Labour Party, was not too keen for ‘Red Ken’ to stand.

So Labour rigged the system of selection, so that Ken lost the party election. In his place they selected Frank Dobson, a rather stodgy and conservative man. This so outraged everyone’s sense of justice that Ken immediately gained even more popularity than he had before.

He decided to stand as an independent candidate, despite having given a previous assurance that he would never consider doing this. By standing as an independent in competition with the ‘official’ Labour candidate, he ensured his expulsion from the party.

Despite his volte-face about standing, the people of London have made it clear that they support him. Indeed, even Conservatives have said that they will vote for him. Frank Dobson is running a negative campaign, and every anti-Ken poster drives a further nail into Frank’s electoral coffin.

Labour’s antics over the whole affair have been so amateurish that I have heard it suggested that it’s part of a political ploy by the Prime Minister to destroy the Labour Party so that he can replace it with a Social Democratic/Whiggish group.

Certainly, what we expect to happen is for Ken to gain a massive victory on Thursday, when we will be faced with a mayor who sticks by the principles which have guided the Labour party over the last hundred years. Our prime minister, who has caused the Labour Party to abandon many of those principles, has been saying what a disaster it would be for London were Ken to be elected, thus making it very difficult for him to work with the new mayor.

As for Ken, he has managed to capture the trust and affection of Londoners. He is honest, straightforward, and always admits it when he makes a mistake. It’s strange that we should find it surprising that the above qualities would ensure personal popularity.

But of course, it’s not all over until the votes are counted, and nothing is certain in politics.

There is also an election for an Assembly. A friend who lives in London received the ‘Election Address by candidates for Mayor of London. There were six paragraphs about the way in which the votes for the Mayor would be counted. They made sense, but one of them mentioned that he " … will be given two ballot papers - a white one for the Mayor and a yellow one for the Assembly". This was the first time he had heard about this, and so he queried how he was to vote on the yellow paper, and also for whom he should be voting.

This was the reply he received:-

"... * The London Assembly
There will be 25 Assembly members who will be elected every four years using the Additional Member System (AMS).

14 members will represent local constituencies made up of two or three whole London boroughs. The other 11 Assembly members will be London Members. They can be representatives of political parties (their names will be published on "party lists" before polling day) or individuals standing as independent candidates.

* What is AMS?
AMS is a proportional voting system designed to ensure that, as far as possible, the share of the seats in the whole 25 member London Assembly reflects the share of votes cast for each party and independent candidate. At the same time, it allows Londoners to choose a London Assembly Member to represent their own area.

* How the votes are counted
With AMS you have two votes. The first vote is for a constituency candidate. The second vote is for a party list or individual candidate contesting the London-wide Assembly seats.

The 14 constituency members will be elected under the first-past-the-post system, the same system used in general and local elections. You vote for one candidate and the candidate with the most votes wins.

The Additional (London) Members will be drawn from party lists or will be independent candidates who have stood as London Members. The 11 Assembly seats will be allocated to ensure that the overall distribution of the 25 seats in the Assembly reflects the proportion of votes each party or independent candidate. This is done as follows:

* Allocating the additional seats
The 11 London member seats will be allocated according to the D'Hondt formula. This is a commonly used way of allocating seats under proportional representation. A worked example is below.

The number of votes cast for each party in the London Member ballot is divided by the number of constituency seats gained by each party, plus "1". The addition of "1" allows parties or independent candidates who have not won a constituency seat to be included in the calculation.

The party or independent candidate with highest resulting figure gains the first additional seat. In this case it is Party 4, which won no constituency seats.

To allocate the second to eleventh additional seats the calculation is redone, but each time an additional seat is gained it is added in. So, in this example, the vote for Party 4 is now divided by 2 (rather than 1) as it won the first London Member seat.

By the end of the calculation the ratio of votes to seats for each party has been made much more even."

Welcome to Britain!


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