Naturally Unnatural Issue #3: 29th April 2017 | Page 5

Issue #2, 22 nd April
OPINION: Voting for
Labour is voting for
change
By Matthew Clifton
The general election is fast approach-
ing the choice of who will be the next
Prime Minister is Theresa May or Jere-
my Corbyn. The other political parties
are mostly pointless within the current
political system and without refor-
mation of it, this will not change. But
for the general election on June 8 th , it is
too late to change much, except the
possibility of 16 and 17 year olds vot-
ing, however, that looks increasingly
unlikely despite further calls to extend
the voting age.
To clarify further that this is an opinion
piece on why you should vote Labour on
June 8 th . Stay with me because I first want
to further highlight the inconsistencies
with the UK’s electoral system.
The UK’s electoral sys-
tem
24.4% of eligible voters if you count
those who didn’t turn up, 34.6% of voters
didn’t turn up to the booths.
ing together can the UK see high levels of
growth again. Conservative policy highly
focuses on the private sector, because of
the idea that it will relief the burden from
This underlines voter disillusionment
the taxpayers, however, with several
within the UK and it is a system that des-
loopholes and legal manoeuvres compa-
perately needs changing. Along with se-
nies can often avoid paying as much tax
rious reforms to parliament itself, the civil
as they should, which pushes the burden
service and the House of Lords. In com-
onto the taxpayers through increases in
parison, the recent French Presidential
VAT and other means.
election, the first round had a voter turn-
out of 79%, which is a drop slight drop
The reasons you should vote Labour is
even if you don’t like or think Corbyn is
from 2012 (80%) and a larger decrease
form 2008 (83%). But significantly higher the best leader but believe the policies
are good, vote for the policies not the
than the UK, further highlighting the
man. Labour are a team of MPs and other
problem.
staff, Corbyn himself consulted experts in
their fields to create these progressive
Underlying reasons to
policies. If you want change but don’t be-
vote for Labour
lieve that either Conservative or Labour
will provide it, vote Labour because it has
Right now, you are probably wondering,
been Conservatives in power for the last
what does this have to do with voting for
7 years, if you want change and vote Con-
Corbyn’s Labour? Several times Corbyn servative, you vote for the status quo. Un-
himself has come out in support of refor- fortunately, this is a two-party race and if
mation of the electoral system, with Chu- you want change then vote Labour, it is as
simple as that.
ka Umunna and Jonathon Reynolds pre-
senting arguments for the abolishment of
FPTP for a proportional representation
system, in parliament. A high number of
Labour MPs support the idea of moving
onto this kind of voting system. But ulti-
mately that kind of change won’t have a
chance of manifesting for a long time if
Labour aren’t in power.
Currently, we have the First Past the Post
(FPTP) voting system, where everyone
gets a choice between each party candi-
date and whomever is standing in that
constituency gets the most votes win, giv-
ing 1 seat in parliament to whichever par-
ty they belong to. Parliament has 650
seats up for grabs meaning, whichever
party secures more than half the seats
forms the next government. If no party
gets more than half, then parties can form
coalitions to create a government or the
party with the most seats can form a mi-
nority government. But the latter is ex-
tremely rare because it would be hard to
push through policy and legislation
through parliament.
Labour policy is vastly different from
Conservative policy, it is anti-austerity
In the general election 2015, the Con-
that focuses on funding the public sector,
servatives won with just 36.9% of the
which historically props up the private
votes from a turnout of 66.4%. This is just
sector. Only by these two sectors work-
5