Voting Reform
It is a bit late in the day, but nevertheless we probably should welcome Labour’s sudden desire to hold a vote on replacing the hopelessly outdated First Past the Post (FPTP) system of elections.
BUT!!!!
What is needed is a two stage process. First, by all means let’s have a vote to agree that we want to replace FPTP - if this can be done straight away then at least we have started in the right direction. But then we need to ASK THE PEOPLE what they consider a more appropriate replacement.So far in the UK there has been precious little debate on this except amongst those of us who are really passionate for the need for change, and most people have no idea of the merits of the various systems.
Personally, I would prefer us to slim down parliament, establish larger constituencies which would allow us to use Single Transferable Vote (STV), by far the fairest form of PR which preserves individual votes for individual candidates, and a constituency link - although it would be a much larger constituency.
This would then require a major reform of the system of local government - which we need anyway, so that local government has the power to make a difference, and the role of the MP as a local problem fixer, rather than a national legislator, could be reduced.
Local elections definitely need to be via STV and this is now used for local elections in Scotland. This change could be brought in immediately as the multi-member ward system we have currently lends itself to this already. And if we did this, we could end the quite appalling imbalance of representation at local level whereby we have 55 Tory county councillors out of 77 in Hertfordshire, versus 17 LibDems and 3 Labour, despite the proportion of votes being 46%:27%:14%.
Major changes like these should be brought in through a process of public consultation and hopefully cooperation between the parties.
So yes we need to agree to scrap FPTP, but we then need to hold an electoral conference (as we have been proposing) in order to come up with the better solution. What Brown is proposing is just a desperate gesture.
For more on electoral reform see http://www.voteforachange.co.uk/
February 2nd, 2010 at 11:25 am
Why do we need a referendum on it? Why in particular are people saying there should be a referendum on AV? AV is such a tiny change, which just introduces what wasn’t really seen as an issue until recently because elections with three viable candidates were so rare. In effect it introduces something that was just missed as an issue when the secret ballot was introduced. When people voted in public, they could see how others were voting, and so shift to another candidate if they could see their favoured one wasn’t getting anywhere.
The withdrawal of full voting powers from councillors by the forced introduction of the “cabinet” system was a bigger piece of constitutional reform. Why was there no referendum on this?