With This Ring (Young Justice SI) (Thread Fourteen)

6th February
14:01 GMT -6

"Good afternoon, children!"

Lynne just blinks while my namesake smiles and waves. Lynne's friend.. Rock? Looks perturbed, while the rest of the class suddenly seems a good deal more excited about their Social Science lesson.

"Class." Understandably, most of the class don't look at their teacher. "This is Mister Grayven. Given the particular role he played in the events we're going to be covering, I thought you might like it if he gave the introductory lecture."

I nod. "It should provide you with a fascinating lesson on using biased sources." I smile at the man. "Thank you for inviting me, Mister Carls."

He nods, then steps back and takes a seat at the edge of the room.

"The subject of today's lecture-" I clap my hands together. "-is the British General Election. As I hope you know, there was a bit of an incident last year which resulted in virtually the entire British legislature being put in prison. What was left was barely enough to function, but they had to wait until things calmed down a bit before they could hold the election necessary to replace any of them."

"But let's start with the basics."

Ring, holographic display.

By your command.

"Britain is a constitutional monarchy. This means that it has a hereditary head of state, but that the powers of the ruler are constrained by law. The present monarch is Queen Elizabeth the Second, and she's been in the job since nineteen fifty two."

The holoprojector cycles through a variety of historical images of her, each adapted into three dimensions from various pieces of old footage.

"But whatever the technicalities, the queen doesn't actually run the country. That's done by the head of the government. Hands up everyone who knows who the present head of the British government is?"

Lynne's hand goes up at once, and the rest of the class appear willing to let her answer it.

"Yes Lynne, I know you know. Anyone else?"

Rock's hand rises and a few others tentatively follow up.

I point him out. "Rock?"

"Jasmine Abbott."

"Correct, well done." I replace the images of Queen Elizabeth with one of Mrs Abbott. "Someone else, how many female Prime Ministers Britain has had?" A girl at the back of the class raises her hand. "Yes?"

"Three."

"Well done. Now, the head of the British government is not directly elected. Rather, they're the leader of the political party which commands a majority in the House of Commons. Anyone know what that means?"

A few hands, and I pick a boy at random.

"They have to have more people in the… The House of Commons, than any other party?"

"That's usually how it works out, but strictly speaking no. A 'majority' means getting more people to vote for it than vote against it. In the British House of Commons, there is usually one party which has an absolute majority; that is to say, more than half of the total number of Members of Parliament are from one party. In that case their leader will be selected by the monarch as the head of the government. In the American context, that's a bit like the President being the leader of the party with a majority in the House of Representatives."

"But if no one party has an absolute majority, things get a bit awkward. Unlike in America -where there are essentially only two parties in top tier politics-. All together, who are they?"

"Republicans and Democrats." / "Democrats and.. Republicans."

"Good show. Unlike that, Britain has a number of other parties who can reliably get people elected to the House of Commons. If one party nearly has a majority, they have to try to make a deal with one of them for their support. And that's important, because until very recently if a government couldn't pass a major piece of legislation that immediately triggered a new General Election. Try imagining having a new election in America every time the party of the President lost a vote."

"That sort of government is called a 'coalition government'. The third type of government that can arise in Britain is a 'grand coalition'. That's when the country is faced with such a major crisis -like a World War- that everyone agrees that there's no way to do anything but manage that crisis, so everyone throws in together. Those don't happen at other times because the people involved will have such radically divergent political ideologies that they can't work on the same things."

"Last year, a few friends and I managed to make one happen anyway when so many MPs were arrested that there were barely enough MPs left to do all the jobs they need to do." I pause. "Ah, I forgot to mention: in Britain, the cabinet is comprised of members of the House of Commons and the House of Lords, who are also expected to do their day jobs at the same time. That's like if the President had to nominate his cabinet from amongst the Senators and Congressional Representatives, couldn't pick anyone else and they had to carry on representing their states in the House and the Senate while doing their new jobs."

That gets a few confused expressions.

"The original plan was to have an election within two months. But it turned out that that wasn't practical." A majority of the remaining MPs wanted a chance to get their parties in order first, not realising or.. not appreciating that it would be a wasted effort. "So they're doing it this month, instead." Which means that there's a chance that there might be a majority of independents, rather than the Reform majority I wanted. Ah well. I can't see anyone but Geoffrey being able to command anything like a majority.

"In a British General Election-" The hologram changes to a map of Britain with the constituency boundaries on display. "-each constituency elects an MP through simple majority voting. What does that mean?"

A few more hands. I point to a girl at the front.

"The one with the most votes wins."

"Correct. The winner in each constituency becomes the Member of Parliament for that constituency immediately. Unlike in the United States, where the President Elect has a few months to get up to speed before taking over and only a portion of Representatives are up for election each time, everything is up for grabs. In theory, every single MP could be new to the job. What alternatives are there to simple majority votes?"

Hands go up and I pick one.

"Electoral colleges?"

"Correct. In an electoral college, votes from voters decide who gets votes from the college. This system is used for Presidential Elections in the United States. For homework, I'm going to have you work out what fraction of an electoral college vote an actual vote from a voter is worth in each US state." A few students frown as they try to parse that instruction. "What other alternatives?"

Nothing for a moment, then Rock raises his hand. I nod.

"Single transferable vote."

I nod. "A remarkably sensible system with a marked resemblance to the Tower of Hanoi puzzle. In a single transferable vote system-" The hologram shifts to show five columns of differing height. "-people vote for candidates in their order of preference. Once all of the first choice votes are tallied, the candidate with least is eliminated and their votes distributed to their second choice candidates."

The smallest column vanishes from the display, and the other four grow to differing degrees.

"And so on until one candidate has over half of the popular vote." Another column vanishes and another column grows significantly. "The French use something similar to elect their president: a two-round system where the winner and runner up of the first round compete against each other in the second, allowing people to shift their support from a candidate they actually like to one they could best tolerate."

"So, trick question: who elects the Prime Minister?"

Nothing for a few moments, then a hand is tentatively raised on the left.

"The party with the most Members of Parliament?"

"Ah, but remember: the cabinet have to be either Members of Parliament or Members of the House of Lords."

The hand-raiser realises that everyone is looking at him to work it out.

"So their constituency..? Unless they're a Lord? And their party?"

"And if there's no majority?"

"Ah… Other parties as well?"

"Yes, well done, I'll give you a gold star later. Now, who can name a British political party?"