No place like Rhône

As often, a good glass stimulated good talk. We were drinking some promising young Rhônes and the discussion ranged wide, moving onwards from the Rhône itself, to the differences between the UK and our sweet enemy France, then to the merits of democracy and the challenges facing it. Democracy has the overwhelming merit of providing governments with legitimacy, thus ensuring that conflicts are resolved in the legislature rather than on the streets or the battlefield. Though this does not always work — see Germany in the 1930s — it does so often enough to justify the Churchillian maxim: the worst form of government apart from all the alternatives.

Yet there is a problem. If the electoral process is based on PR, governments are likely to be weak. A first-past-the-post system should breed strength, but the danger is that after a narrow result, the minority will sulk off into internal exile, which does not encourage a society to be at ease with itself.