Proportional Representation
Take Back Parliament’s campaign to get proportional representation (PR)* introduced as our electoral system seems to have really taken off and is incredibly exciting. On Friday when I heard about the campaign and they launched their petetition they had some 10,000 signatures by the end of the day. Now they have nearly 50,000. Protests in London over the weekend saw thousands marching on the party negotations, and more protests are happening all over the country (including in Manchester on the 15th). A recent poll placed PR as the fourth priority of the public – incredible.
Sadly, the Tories have offered the Lib Dems a referendum on the Alternative Vote (AV) system (which is not PR) – I hope they see sense and look beyond their own self interest on this one . And they should, because opposition to a fairer voting system is hardly a strong plank of core Tory (or Labour) ideology. AV would further entrench the two-party system benefiting the Tories and Labour at the expense of smaller parties, which is why both seem happy to have it.
I wish we could, as a country, settle on a single fair voting system (like Single Transferable Vote (STV) – of which there are several varieties) for the majority of elections – currently we have the Additional Member system for the Welsh and Scottish Assemblies; STV for the Northern Ireland Assembly, Scottish local elections, London Assembly and the European Parliament; Supplementary Vote for the London Mayoral elections; and First Past the Post (FPTP) for the General Election and local elections in England and Wales.
I hope Nick sticks to his guns and the other parties act for the good of democracy and offer a referendum on STV – our wretchedly corrupt and broken democracy needs it so that confidence, accountability and fairness can be restored.
For information about the different systems see: http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/article.php?id=48
* PR is where the number of MPs elected for each party reflects the proportion of votes cast for each of them. You can see why this is important by looking at how our current FPTP produces results:
| Con | Lab | Lib Dem | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seats: | 305 | 258 | 57 |
| Votes per seat: | 35,021 | 33,338 | 119,397 |
| Vote Share: | 36.1% | 29.1% | 24% |
| Percentage of seats: | 47% | 39.8% | 8.7% |