You are using an outdated browser.
Please upgrade your browser
and improve your visit to our site.
Skip Navigation

What Has The British Electoral System Ever Done For Us?

Rick Hertzberg notes that if the Liberal Democrats get to hold the balance of power in the U.K. elections, they'll probably demand a referendum for proportional representation:

There are many possibilities. But if you want to know what the Lib Dems really want—their beau ideal, their Holy Grail, their single-payer system—it was explained twenty-seven years ago, by the great John Cleese, in a ten-minute “party political broadcast” he made for the SDP/Liberal Alliance in the 1983 general election.

The video is a fantastic find. If it has whet your appetite for another political polemic from John Cleese, here he is in "Life Of Brian" arguing against Roman occupation, another classic liberal cause: