I'm sure many people in this comment thread would say that this is a terrible idea. But lets say we had a different type of structure in the UK and someone drew up the current system for the UK - no doubt it would look like a terrible idea.

Democracy appears to be the least worst system we have, with varying implementations of it (as with Communism, varying implementations existed or exist each with their pros and cons).

If a system looks great on paper, chances are we've missed something.