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Originally Posted by Gayle
I hope so for the sake of common sense.
There is such thing as a whip and there are ocassions where Councillors are instructed by the whip as to which way they should vote. The situation there is that you can either vote against (and be in a whole heap of trouble with your party), vote for or abstain. As I'm not a Councillor (yet) I don't know how this works in practice.
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The whip system is just a formal arrangement (an alliance) to prevent chaos. Hyndburn has 18 Cons and 17 Labour councillors. If the Conservatives did a lot of work on something but their members could vote willy nilly at the end then potentially they could have wasted a lot of time. Particularly if Labour is opposed to an idea from the start. In Hyndburns case one maverick Tory means a lot of work gone to waste.
There is a lot of merit in a proportional voting system. It would do away with the whip system and would also give power to fringe parties such as the greens and liberal democrats (only joking Bill!!!) and perhaps make for more radical government by consensus. There are of course downsides as well.