• We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
Status
Not open for further replies.

Tommy4ever

Papa Bear
43 Badges
Sep 13, 2008
5.188
3.586
  • Rome Gold
  • Heir to the Throne
  • Hearts of Iron III
  • Divine Wind
  • Europa Universalis III Complete
  • Diplomacy
  • Victoria 2: A House Divided
  • Victoria 2: Heart of Darkness
  • Arsenal of Democracy
  • Crusader Kings II
  • Crusader Kings II: Horse Lords
  • Crusader Kings II: Way of Life
  • Europa Universalis IV: Common Sense
  • Europa Universalis 4: Emperor
  • Europa Universalis IV: Cossacks
  • Crusader Kings II: Conclave
  • Hearts of Iron IV: Cadet
  • Crusader Kings II: Reapers Due
  • Europa Universalis IV: Rights of Man
  • Europa Universalis IV: Third Rome
  • Hearts of Iron IV: Death or Dishonor
  • Europa Universalis IV: Cradle of Civilization
  • Hearts of Iron IV: Expansion Pass
  • Crusader Kings II: Holy Fury
  • Imperator: Rome
  • Imperator: Rome - Magna Graecia
  • Europa Universalis IV: Art of War
  • Crusader Kings II: Charlemagne
  • Crusader Kings II: Legacy of Rome
  • Crusader Kings II: The Old Gods
  • Crusader Kings II: Rajas of India
  • Crusader Kings II: The Republic
  • Crusader Kings II: Sons of Abraham
  • Crusader Kings II: Sword of Islam
  • Europa Universalis IV
  • Europa Universalis IV: Pre-order
  • Europa Universalis IV: Wealth of Nations
  • Europa Universalis III Complete
  • Europa Universalis III Complete
  • Europa Universalis IV: Res Publica
  • Victoria 2
  • 500k Club
  • Cities: Skylines
TitleFlag2-1.jpg

July 1945, months after the final defeat of Germany and with war still raging in Asia the United Kingdom prepares for its first general election in a decade. Over the course of recent decades Britain has been shook by two World Wars, the Great Depression and the rise of anti-imperialist sentiment across the largest Empire in history. At a crucial juncture in her history, Britain’s future path remains shrouded in uncertainty as various competing forces attempt mould the nation in their own image as it emerges, victorious, from the War.
 
Last edited:
Welcome to The Westminster System! This is my fourth interactive AAR following on from 'Let the Ruling Class Tremble', 'Vive la République!' and the recently completed 'Blood and Iron'. We've through France and Germany (twice), now its Britain's turn. If you have followed any of these previous IAARs then the general formula of this AAR will be familiar, despite the crucial differences in the voting system that will be described below.

I had been planning on doing a British Interactive AAR starting in 1945 for some time now, with the cancellation of EvW I considered abandoning those plans before deciding to use the NWO2 mod for Darkest Hour, having done some test runs I feel satisfied that this is an excellent mod with which to write this AAR.

Beginning with the 1945 British General Election, this AAR will attempt to model British politics - so elections should take place roughly every 4 or 5 years, but could be far more frequent depending on the voting habits of the readership.

There will be a bolded section at the end of each election update giving specific instructions on how to place your vote and also details of when the polls close. I will post in the thread, RL allowing, when the polls are closed and after that no further votes will be counted.

When you do vote I ask that you either place it in an entirely separate post or bold it to make it easier for me to tally them.

General Rules

- I as host reserve the right to veto any action any player wishes to undertake: To consolidate the stability of the AAR, to stop interference with the normal functioning of the thread or simply because I feel like it.

- You may not create your own political parties, militias, rebel groups or anything else. The only such groups that exist within the AAR are the ones I present.

- I ask that roleplaying is limited and that people use their own forum nicknames in the thread so as to avoid confusion.

- Campaigning outside the thread is forbidden.

- Refrain for spamming, inciting hate or otherwise harassing people within the thread.

- If you want to contact me I would prefer if you used my profile visitor message board rather than PM me, I usually have quite a full PM box.

- By taking part in this thread I assume you have read these rules. If I feel that these rules are being broken I will first post a warning in this thread, if the offending behaviour continues I shall not hesitate to inform a moderator.

- Vote switching is forbidden, your first vote will always count

The Westminster System

In this AAR I will attempt to, as best as I can, simulate the United Kingdom’s FPTP parliamentary electoral system – a system that produces very different results from the PR systems employed in my previous IAARs. I will call this ‘the Westminster System’ and its rules are as follows. Any additional rules included at a later date will be added in this post.

Thresholds and Weighting

The most important aspect of the Westminster System will be the use of thresholds to decide how heavily a vote is weighted. Essentially, this means that all votes are not equal – parties that are able to secure a very large share of the total number of votes shall see those votes weighted much more heavily. The system is designed to make it easier to produce absolute majorities, encourage something more akin to a two party system (although with leeway for smaller parties) and generally model the British political system far better than a simple use of PR ever could. Now, on with the details.

The Thresholds will be as follows:

<5% - 0 (If a party fails to secure a minimum of 5% of the vote it shall gain no parliamentary representation.)

5-10% - 0.25

10-15% - 0.5

15-25% - 1

25-35% - 2

35-45% - 3

>45% - 4

I have done a large number of tests to see what results different voting combinations would produce, and have attached a small sample of three different tests in order to give readers a better idea of what effect these thresholds would have in practise.


The two columns closest to the party names (these names were really mainly placeholders for my test, don’t read too much into them) mark out the number of in AAR votes (a total of 50 in all tests) and the corresponding percentage. The two further away columns show the number of votes each party had after weighting has been applied and then what share of parliamentary seats this tally earns each individual party.

I’ve have given a selection of different electoral results above, the first of which shows a classic two-party system. Both Labour and the Conservatives achieve a very high share of the vote with other parties being largely inconsequential. In the second example there are a number of medium sized parties, but no truly dominant one – yet Labour is able to achieve an absolute majority courtesy of being the only party to cross the 25% threshold. In the final example we see the effect of splitting the vote on one side of the political spectrum but not the other. Here the parties of the right and centre secure 60% of the vote overall – but as the left’s votes are concentrated around a single party Labour is able to storm to an enormous majority.

It is therefore clear that thresholds and vote weighting can have a tremendous impact upon the outcome of elections, creating a very different political system than we have seen in previous IAARs.

What About Northern Ireland, and Regionalists?

Northern Ireland provides a predictable thorn in the side of my attempts to model British politics, simply because its political system (especially during this period) is largely separate from the rest of Britain’s with very different concerns motivating voters. The election of Northern Irish MPs shall therefore be handled in a similar way to how minority votes were in Blood and Iron, with a set number of seats set aside for Northern Ireland (based upon the region’s historical contribution) and the division of those seats being decided by me.

Regionalists, more specifically Scottish and Welsh Nationalists, are a major part of modern British politics – but this was much less the case in the early part of the Cold War. As of yet I have decided not to include them in this AAR, but their inclusion is not ruled out permanently if a method of adding them into the Westminster System could be found.

No Vote Switching!

Single votes will have a much larger effect on this AAR than previous IAARs; it is therefore likely that what was once a nuisance could become endemic. I am therefore banning all vote switching from this AAR. Your first vote counts, any attempts to alter it will be ignored. Some might find it easier to hold off voting until later if they are inclined to be heavily influence by the way the election is going – but this is a matter of personal preference. I will place a reminder that vote switching is banned in each election update.

Electoral Pacts

Electoral Pacts will be a rarely used, but potentially extremely potent device. Realistically, an Electoral Pact will be scarcely a step behind the unification of a party, a very significant step.

The effect of such a Pact is to unite two parties’ share of the vote when calculating thresholds. For example, if the Tories and National Liberals entered into an Electoral Pact with the Tories gaining 34% of the vote and the National Liberals 13% of the vote then the effects would be as follows: whereas without the Pact every National Liberal vote would be weighted by 0.5 and every Tory vote by 2 – now both parties see their vote weighted by 4. This would double the Conservative share of parliamentary seats and see the National’s Liberals share of seats increase eightfold! The potency of such an agreement is very clear indeed. But, as mentioned previously, it will also be very rare.

If a Pact is agreed then both parties will stand on independent platforms, with their own section in the election, as normal with the Pact prominently mentioned in their party descriptions. Its effect will primarily be within the system of vote weighting.

Factions

Similar but crucially different to Electoral Pacts are Factions. Like Pacts, Factions will not appear in every election and will be relatively uncommon – but they are liable to rise to the fore at crucial times in the histories of their respective parties.

If ‘Factions’ appear in elections then there will be two separate slates for a single party, for example in the 1950s separate radical and moderate Labour Party factions might appear with different policies. Votes for either faction would count towards the Labour Party’s overall vote (acting in a similar way to an Electoral Pact between parties), ensuring that the separate Factions have a lesser direct impact on electoral results. However, a strong showing for one faction and a weak showing for another will lead to the victory of that faction in the ongoing internal party conflicts. Only the largest parties will be affected by factions, and as mentioned this is not something that will occur in every election but only when there is a major dispute. The Factions system is designed to give readers the ability to have a greater impact on politics within an electoral system that is less flexible than PR.

Amendments to the Westminster System

None

- This AAR has been approved by Qorten.
 
Last edited:
Hurrah! You took on board my party faction ideas! :)
 
Yay, I was a bit worried you might not do another one for a long while what with East vs West going.. well the way it did. Are you using the New World Order mod?

EDIT: Nevermind, just seen you are. :)
 
I thought you wrote the AAR was approved by the "Queen" but, alas, it was just Qorten :D I'm looking forward to this.
 
For God, King, and Country
 
Dear Lord your voting systems are far away from democracy... :eek:

Really allows a small well organized minority to tyrannize the majority.

And since you are good at drawing large number of socialists from all over the boards to support your AARs socialist parties, we will be doomed to a tyranny of Labour. :(
 
we will be doomed to a tyranny of Labour. :(

We sure will be if you keep on behaving like the former member for Ladywood!
 
Ah, but according to the post-war consensus, you are a heretic. :p



Ooh, there's a contradiction in terms. :)

Road to Serfdom was released before the end of the war; maybe the intellectuals in this time timeline actually read it before proclaiming it to be wrong? ;)
Human Action coming out in 1949. :cool:

Surely the servants of liberty will prevail and stand firm against the bestial behemoths hiding under the guise of socialism that are threatening the very fabric of the society.


Sorry I still don't write perfect English unlike you, I'm sure your Finnish, German, Swedish, Russian are also better than mine. ;)
 
Road to Serfdom was released before the end of the war; maybe the intellectuals in this time timeline actually read it before proclaiming it to be wrong? ;)
Human Action coming out in 1949. :cool:

Surely the servants of liberty will prevail and stand firm against the bestial behemoths hiding under the guise of socialism that are threatening the very fabric of the society.

On the off chance that the Tories win the 1945 election, that might actually be a not entirely historically implausible occurrence. :)


Sorry I still don't write perfect English unlike you, I'm sure your Finnish, German, Swedish, Russian are also better than mine. ;)

I meant the fact that there might be such thing as an anarcho-capitalist (or anarcho-anything) political party; Isn't that a bit like an anti-theistic religion? :p
 
I don't think that even at my most eloquent I could describe how excited I am. :D
 
I don't think that even at my most eloquent I could describe how excited I am. :D

The Rt. Hon Member for Norfolk is so delighted at the commencement of this AAR that his bodily functions have taken the liberty of acting independently of his consciousness and have dispensed their fluid content into my Honourable Friend's pantaloons without the assistance of a codpiece or other device?
 
Ooh, a British AAR. Looking forward to when it starts! :)
 
On the off chance that the Tories win the 1945 election, that might actually be a not entirely historically implausible occurrence. :)



I meant the fact that there might be such thing as an anarcho-capitalist (or anarcho-anything) political party; Isn't that a bit like an anti-theistic religion? :p

One could use the same logic for lot of socialist ideas that support the abolition of state and power belonging to local communes instead of a centralized state ruled by one party, yet they still form parties and hope to get elected so they can share the power of the central government.
Or people against private property still happy to have their own private property. ;)
And with 'classless' peoples republic somehow ending up with a new ruling elite whilst the proletariat stays poor.

The aim of an anarcho-capitalist party would be to start limiting the role of the state and allowing private enterprises to run as many formerly government run tasks.
Whilst it has its benefits, I think minarchism can be something that can be achieved in reality, anarcho-capitalism might be hard to be achieved.

Also maybe we should wait for this AAR to start so we don't end up in a prison for WPKs. :p
 
Status
Not open for further replies.