Ben Bradshaw uses "Mark Reckons" research on BBC Question Time to argue for electoral reform
Well that was a surreal feeling!
During a question about electoral reform on BBC Question Time just now, Ben Bradshaw the Labour Health Minister seemingly speaking in favour of electoral reform used the argument that there is a correlation that shows the safer the seat, the more likely the MP has been involved in the scandal. I can't get the exact quote until it appears on iPlayer and I can transcribe it.
What he said is almost verbatim what I have said on this blog from the work I did last week although in my case I have caveated it because it is not definitive and more work needs to be done. There were no such caveats from Mr Bradshaw! The relevant posts if you haven't seen them are here and here.
When I posted this stuff a few days back I had no idea that within a week government ministers would be using it to argue for electoral reform. It is more than I could have imagined. I think this demonstrates how far the political ground has shifted and I am more convinced than ever that now is the time for supporters of electoral reform to argue their case as strongly as possible.
Please blog, tweet and post about this wherever you can to keep the debate going. I personally favour Single Transferable Vote but any change to a more proportional system where there are no safe seats is worth looking at.
Also, have a look at the campaign that the Electoral Reform Society launched earlier this week. They are campaigning for a referendum to be put on the ballot paper to coincide with the next General Election. We need to get behind this too.
We will never get a better opportunity than right now to effect change.
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8 comments:
I also heard it referred to on sky news late last night, I almist called you up. Said that the staticical analysis was done on a blog. It must be yours
>Mark Reckons: Can't we get Gareth Knight to argue for PR and Patrick MacNee to argue for reform of the drug laws?
Gareth Hunt is ... er ... dead, so I wish you luck.
Meant to leave a :-) .
I know he is dead. It was my little joke but I don't think anyone got it because:
a) They probably don't know who he is and
b) Apparently I don't either because I got his name wrong. I should have just called him Mike Gambit.
So were you lurking then Matt or have you replayed it?
"Look at the correlation between those MPs who I think have behaved worse with their expenses and the safety of their seats. There's a very strong correlation. If you have a marginal seat, by-and-large you're much more careful about what your electorate think."
Congratulations once again on the success of your research Mark! Where next President Obama quoting the 'Mark Reckons' blog?
Judy and I thought you would be pleased with that! It was a pity he did not mention the source.
Nice to see other people spotted it!
BTW, Dizzy has just promoted your petition here in a blog post about Tom Watson's evidence to a select committee. I think he gets quite high traffic. You might want to check it out.
Surprising that Vince didn't mention electoral reform once though...
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