House of Comments - Episode 126 - The One with the Electoral Reformers

The latest House of Comments podcast is now out.

This week I am joined by broadcaster and historian Dan Snow to discuss the previous week's election campaigning especially the BBC Question Time debate with the three main party leaders and given that Dan is an ambassador for the Electoral Reform Society and it's Mark's favourite pet political subject they speculate on how and when reform may just happen for Westminster.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here.

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Or you can listen to the embedded episode below here:

listen to ‘Episode 126 - The One with the Electoral Reformers’ on audioBoom

Any feedback welcomed in the comments below.


PS: A big thanks to Audioboom for hosting the podcast. We would also like to thank Kevin MacLeod from Incompetech.com for our theme music.

How can we increase the diversity of candidates?

Iain Dale has a post today entitled: "Why Don't the LibDems Select BME Candidates in Winnable Seats?". He makes the argument that the Conservatives have BME candidates in a number of winnable seats and estimates they will have between 11 and 16 BME MPs after the next election. He suggests there will be none on the Lib Dem benches.

In the comments, a number of people have taken him to task about his assumptions. LibCync points out that Operation Black Vote has identified 3 potentially winnable seats for the Lib Dems with BME candidates. He also points out that Nick Clegg has taken action to try and resolve this issue (see here and here).

Iain has rebutted this by suggesting that privately Lib Dem friends of his have expressed concern about the lack of BME representation and that the 3 seats identified are unlikely to be won.

I don't know if the seats cited will or will not be won by the Lib Dems but it is in the nature of the third party within our current electoral system to struggle to win seats. We have very few "safe" seats compared to the Tories who (certainly this year) will expect to have over 300 seats following the election. So comparing the raw numbers is pretty unfair. It strikes me that 16 BME candidates who have a shot at becoming an MP would be roughly 5% of the Parliamentary Conservative Party were they elected. 3 for the Lib Dems assuming we end up with roughly 60 seats again would also be 5% were they elected. Seems about the same to me and hardly a crisis situation.

But taking Iain directly up on his point about the chances of the 3 candidates OBV identified being quite low. That may be the case but it is not the Lib Dems fault that the electoral system is so stacked against it. We want to reform the electoral system to STV with multi-member constituencies. From the Electoral Reform Society, here is the second point from their website on advantages of STV:

With STV and multi-member constituencies, parties have a powerful electoral incentive to present a balanced team of candidates in order to maximise the number of higher preferences that would go to their sponsored candidates. This helps the advancement of women and ethnic-minority candidates, who are often overlooked in favour of a 'safer' looking candidate.

This is clearly an important issue and I am glad Iain is raising it. I wonder though if he might take another look at the benefits of electoral reform (that he has often been quick to dismiss in the past) and how it could help improve the chances of BME candidates for all parties.

UPDATE 14:45: Sunder Katwala has done a very detailed piece in response to both Iain and my posts here.

David Cameron, Electoral Reform, Turkeys and Christmas

Electoral reform is now at the top of the political agenda. As part of the crisis that the political system now faces, calls for a radical overhaul of the constitution have been very loud indeed.

Alan Johnson the Health Secretary joined the debate yesterday with an article in The Times calling for a referendum on electoral reform to be put to the electorate and to coincide with the next General Election. It seems that his argument is winning support both within the cabinet and the Parlimentary Labour Party. Part of Mr Johnson's thesis is:


The adoption of AV+ (a proportional electoral system originally devised by the Jenkins Commission in 1998 by the late Roy Jenkins) would shift the political focus currently concentrated almost exclusively on a few swing voters in a handful of marginal seats. It would end the perversity of the party with the most votes nationally forming the opposition rather than the government, as has happened twice since the war.


I absolutely agree that it is dreadful how our existing "First Past the Post" electoral system causes all political parties to focus on a very small minority of "swing voters" in marginal constituencies hence allowing the winner of General Elections to be decided by a few tens of thousands of voters. Reform of the electoral system to a proportional system would completely transform the political landscape and would genuinely mean that every vote counted towards the end result. The benefits of this approach would be immense and would reenfranchise great swathes of the electorate whose votes are currently wasted.

Clearly David Cameron has sensed that proper electoral reform is quickly gaining traction as an idea and has leapt in to try and halt the debate. In a wide ranging article in The Guardian as part of their "A New Politics" series he argues for all sorts of reform including reducing the power of No 10, "seriously considering" the option of fixed term parliaments, boosting the power of MPs and curbing the power of the executive. All of these are welcome measures and (if implemented properly) would certainly help to improve our system of Government.

However, when it comes to the biggest reform of all and the one that would yield the most results in terms of improving democracy and empowering the electorate, i.e. a more proportional electoral system, Mr Cameron has this to say:


A Conservative government will not consider introducing proportional representation, as many participants in A New Politics have demanded. The principle underlying all the political reforms a Conservative government would make is the progressive principle of redistributing power and control from the powerful to the powerless. PR would actually move us in the opposite direction, which is why I'm so surprised it's still on the wish-list of progressive reformers. Proportional representation takes power away from the man and woman in the street and hands it to the political elites. Instead of voters choosing their government on the basis of the manifestos put before them in an election, party managers would choose a government on the basis of secret backroom deals. How is that going to deliver transparency and trust?


This strikes me as clangingly at odds with the rest of what Mr Cameron is arguing. He claims that PR will move power from the electorate to the political elite but at the moment a government can win 55% of the seats in parliament on 35% of the vote (Labour did this in 2005) so how is this empowering the voter? Great swathes of voters under the current system needent bother voting as their choice at the ballot box makes no difference to the end result. As for his argument about secret backroom deals by party managers, well that doesn't stand up to scrutiny either. Currently, this sort of thing happens anyway within the party of government as we effectively have an elective dictatorship headed by the Prime Minister. At least with a proportional system, any attempt to push legislation through will be under more scrutiny whether this is through a coalition or a minority administration. Laws and measures will be better as a result of being properly debated. At the moment the government can largely pass whatever it wants and just whip its troops through the relevant lobby without having to win the argument and convince other parliamentarians of its case.

I would not expect Mr Cameron to be in favour of PR. If the polls are correct, he is likely to become the next Prime Minister and under the current electoral system could find himself with a decent sized majority on a minority of votes. He is still a young man and is probably hoping to get at least two terms as Prime Minister to be able to govern the country according to his principles and along the lines that previous administrations with the ability to legilslate unhindered by the need for full scrutiny. Mr Cameron's best hope of this sort of untrammelled power is to do exactly what he is now doing. He is a canny enough politician to know that there is a clamour for change and he has to address it so he is positioning himself by offering some changes (and they are important ones). But without proper electoral reform his other measures are merely tinkering at the edges.

My view on this is that if Mr Cameron is so sure of his arguments then he should back a referendum campaign and then campaign against it. That is the way to win his argument properly. At the moment he is trying to prevent the argument from being taken to the people of this country so that they can decide and if he gets his way there will not even be a referendum. One has to ask oneself why he does not want a referendum on this, after all he is keen enough to have one on the Lisbon Treaty. On that issue, suddenly the views of the electorate are desperately important.

There is another very important point that I think needs to be made here too. The MP Expenses scandal that has dominated the political scene for the last two and a half weeks has come about directly as a result of MPs deciding the rules about how they are paid and remunerated for their time. It has been shown over the last couple of weeks that they cannot be trusted with this and politicians of all parties are now calling for the decisions about how MPs are paid to be decided by an external panel. MPs are only human and it is perhaps not surprising that left to their own devices they would come up with and support a system that was to their advantage even when it was against what was in the public interest.

There is a direct parallel between this and the electoral system. Exactly the same principles apply to this as to MPs expenses and salaries. By the status quo of a desperately unfair electoral system being allowed to remain, most MPs benefit. Most MPs are in very or relatively safe seats and as long as they toe the party line can expect to be in parliament for many years, often decades. However, if a new electoral system was brought in, suddenly quite a lot of MPs may find that their positions were not as secure as they were before. There would be more democratic accountability and their chances of remaining in a safe seat for their entire career would be diminished.

The phrase "Turkeys don't vote for Christmas" is often used about this subject and it is spot on. As I said, MPs are only human and it is unsurprising that many of them are opposed to electoral reform as it endangers their personal careers. If I worked in a company with 645 other people and was given a vote on changes that would make my job less secure I would find it difficult to vote yes to that.

This is why the choice should be taken out of the hands of MPs. Just as with their expenses and their salaries they cannot be expected to do what is in the public's best interests when it comes to the electoral system. It needs to be put out to an external scrutiny panel.

And the best external scrutiny panel is the one made up of the electorate of the United Kingdom.


A broad range of people have launched a campaign this week for a referendum on PR to coincide with the next General Election. Please see my previous post here for details and how to get involved.

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.

MPs Expenses and safe seats correlation - update

Since my blog post yesterday about the MPs expenses scandal and the correlation that I seem to have discovered between the likelihood of an MP being caught up in this scandal and the safeness of their parliamentary seat, I have gone through the data again. This is because I discovered there was an anomaly in that Margaret Hodge had appeared in my source data twice (not sure why this was). Also, the Telegraph list here was updated at about 3:00pm yesterday so there are a few more people added to the list.

The new result is a value of 262.4 with 94 MPs implicated. We would have expected if there was no correlation between safeness of seat and implication in the scandal for this figure to be 323 (646/2). So it is still a long way from the median and implies a link between safeness of seat and likelihood of being involved in this scandal.

The quartile graph now looks like this:

As you can see there is still a clear gradation in each quartile indicating that the safer the seat, the more likely the MP is to be implicated.

UPDATE1: This post has now been linked to by Polly Toynbee of The Guardian in this excellent rallying call for constitutional change.

If I am right about this correlation then there are surely very serious questions to be asked about our electoral system. Advocates of First Past the Post always claim as one of their main arguments that the constituency link needs to be maintained (even though Single Transferable Vote, a much more proportional system with multi-member constituencies that the Electoral Reform Society and Make Votes Count advocate also has a constituency link). However looking at the above analysis it strikes me that FPTP does not serve its constituents well at all when it comes to this scandal.

When the dust of this scandal finally settles, I think we need a full "drains up" job in Westminster where everything is looked at in close detail. Proper analysis should be performed on the question I have posed, whether there is a correlation here and action taken to address this. I personally think an electoral system where there are no safe seats and the electorate can give their verdict without needing to vote tactically and where every vote counts towards the final result is needed.

UPDATE2: WARNING - From here on down it gets very technical!

Andy Hinton who blogs here has done some statistical analysis on this data now. Andy is not a statistician himself but has some experience of running stats tests from his degree (and he certainly knows more than me!). I have all the details he sent me but here is a synopsis of the two tests that he has run:

Firstly, he performed a "t-test for unequal sample size/variance" which he suggests is the best sort of test for this sort of data. I will let Andy take it from here:

It gives us ample grounds to think there's something in your hypothesis. The effect is significant at p<0.001.>

However, disclaimer: The t-test is only strictly valid for normally distributed populations. It is fairly robust for large samples like the one we're looking at, but... The problem is that it is impossible to have a majority of less than 0, so there is a cut-off point which skews the distribution of majorities somewhat, especially for the innocent MPs (whose average majority is closer to that cut-off). I don't think this completely invalidates the test, but if someone who was more of a stats geek than myself wanted to have a look, they might have some ideas about getting round it.

So it would appear that there is a 1 in 1000 chance that the effect we have seen would happen by chance, albeit caveated with what Andy says towards the end.

Andy then ran another test. Again, over to him:

I have added a sheet where I do a Wilcoxon Rank Sum test (also known as a Mann-Whitney test), which looks at the rankings rather than the absolute values. That should make the test more valid, and help us get around the skew problem. This time, I get p = 0.0003! ie. A 0.03% chance of getting that result randomly.

I think we're on pretty safe ground to say that this is a statistically significant effect.

So with this test there is a less than 1 in 3000 chance that the effect would have been by chance. Andy's overall view on the two tests when I asked him which one was best is:

As I understand it, as long as the assumptions are not violated, the first test is the more sensitive and preferable, since it is the one looking at the actual data rather than simply the ranks, so it is taking account of more of the information we have.

However, if the skew of the data is sufficient to invalidate that test, the second is, in technical terms, non-parametric, and therefore it's the more widely applicable. As long as I have performed it correctly, there shouldn't any problems about the second test. BUT, the second test is the one I have the less experience in performing, so I would be less surprised if I had made a mistake in doing that one.

So.. no simple answer, really. I think, probably, I'd go with the second one, but would be much happier saying so after some peer-review!

My feeling is that I have now had someone who is fairly knowledgeable about statistics run two different tests and whilst there are caveats, it is looking like the effect I have discovered is statistically significant.

Any statisticians reading this who want to offer their opinion or get hold of the data and run your own test(s) and/or peer review Andy's work please let me know.

UPDATE3: I have been invited onto Radio 4's "More or Less" to talk about my findings regarding this correlation this week. It's broadcast at 1:30pm this Friday afternoon (22nd May) and repeated this Sunday at 8:00pm.  See this post for more details.

UPDATE4: Government minister Ben Bradshaw has now referenced this research on national television.

UPDATE5: I have done an updated version of the analysis here.

Has our electoral system contributed to the MPs expenses scandal?

This is going to be a longish post so apologies in advance but please stick with it as I think I have uncovered something very interesting.

I had a thought when I was walking the dog yesterday. Could our First Past the Post electoral system have contributed to the scandal of MPs expenses?

My reasoning was that in our system, there are a lot of safe seats. In a typical General Election maybe a hundred or so change hands between the parties. In a landslide this can go up but you still have maybe 2/3rds of MPs who have very little to worry about in terms of the chances of them losing their seat. I then wondered if there was any sort of correlation between how safe a seat is and the likelihood of its MP having been involved in this expenses scandal.

When I got home, I noticed that Alix had posted a similar thought on LDV. I added a comment asking if anybody had tried any sort of statistical analysis of this. I have not seen anyone respond to this so for now I have assumed that they have not. I thought, therefore I would have a stab at this myself.

The first thing I should say is that I am not a statistician. I did however study stats as part of my Computing and Maths degree and am generally OK with numbers. The method I have used is as follows:

1) I found a list of all MPs from 2005 on this Keele university website. I took this data and put it into MS Excel and then sorted the MPs so that they are ordered by majority, largest to smallest and numbered 1 for the largest, 2 for the second largest and so on until I got to 647 (I assume there are 647 because the Speaker is included).

2) I found a page on the Telegraph website that lists all the MPs that have been covered in one way or another by them since this scandal broke as of 9:35am on Friday 15th May. I then went through this list and removed anyone for whom the coverage was positive (yes, there are a few) or Norman Baker who is about as clean as you can get but they were desperate to find something so he was included! I have also excluded Northern Ireland MPs from this because I felt that their majorities are generally very large because of the specific political situation there and it could distort things.

3) I noted the position in the majority listing for each MP who was implicated in one way or another.

4) I then totalled up all the numbers and divided this by the number of MPs implicated (74).

Now, what I think is that if there is no correlation between size of majority (safeness of seat) and the likelihood of being implicated in this expenses scandal I would expect the number to come out at 323 (646/2) or thereabouts. If there was an even distribution throughout the list this is what we should see. If the number is lower than 323 then it means that there is some correlation between safeness of seat and likelihood of being implicated (weak at first but getting stronger the further away from 323 we get). Commensurately, if the number is higher than 323, this would mean that there is actually a negative correlation and that we could conclude an MP was more likely to be implicated in this scandal if they had a smaller than median average majority.

The number comes out at just over 253.

Now I repeat, I am not a statistician or an expert on methodological analysis for this sort of thing. I fully accept that there may be flaws in my methodology here. I know that there may be interference from other factors that may contribute to the result. But still, I think this is a significant deviation from the median safe seat number you would expect if there was no correlation at all.

After this, it got me thinking even more. I decided to do a little bit more analysis on this. I divided the data set up into 4 sections. The top 25% of safe seats, the second 25%, the third 25% and the bottom 25%. Because 647 does not divide perfectly into 4 I have had to make them very slightly different sizes. I then totalled up the number of implicated MPs in each quartile. I have taken a snapshot of the result from Excel and put it here:

Now again, I need to caveat that this is not scientific etc. etc. However, using this methodology again there is a clear increase in the likelihood of an MP being implicated in the expenses scandal the safer their seat. It is in fact a fairly steady progression until it leaps up in the top quartile. Using this data, an MP is more than 3 times more likely to have been implicated in this scandal if their seat is in the top quartile as compared with the bottom quartile. They are almost twice as likely when comparing the top quartile with the second quartile.

I had suspected there might be a correlation but I had not expected it to be this stark.

If I am right about this then there are surely very serious questions to be asked about our electoral system. Advocates of First Past the Post always claim as one of their main arguments that the constituency link needs to be maintained (even though STV, a much more proportional system with multi-member constituencies that the Electoral Reform Society and Make Votes Count advocate also has a constituency link). However looking at the above analysis it strikes me that FPTP does not serve its constituents well at all when it comes to this scandal.

When the dust of this scandal finally settles, I think we need a full "drains up" job in Westminster where everything is looked at in close detail. Proper analysis should be performed on the question I have posed, whether there is a correlation here and action taken to address this. I personally think an electoral system where there are no safe seats and the electorate can give their verdict without needing to vote tactically and where every vote counts towards the final result is needed.

UPDATE1: I have been in touch with Iain Dale and he feels that my exclusion of Norman Baker and the Northern Ireland MPs is wrong. I do not want to appear partisan here about NB, that was not my intention so I have redone the exercises including NB and all the NI MPs mentioned by the Telegraph as of 9:35am yesterday.

With these extra MPs added in the total becomes 82 and the figure is now just below 254.5 so there is a marginal difference which moves it back very slightly towards the median.

I have also redone the chart and graph which still looks similar with the top three quartiles all increasing and the bottom one not:

Costigan Quist has also posted an excellent analysis of this situation and what the alternatives are on his blog.

UPDATE2: I have posted a more up to date version of this here.

UPDATE3: I have noticed a lot of traffic to this post from StumbleUpon. Welcome to all stumblers and if you like this post please give it the stumble "thumbs up" and let other people know about it too.

Cameron thinks current electoral system is unfair

I read in the Sunday Times yesterday that David Cameron is planning changes to the way MPs are elected if he becomes Prime Minister.

He says that the current system "under which constituencies such as the Isle of Wight have tens of thousands more voters than others such as Orkney and Shetland - 'neither fair nor efficient'."

He goes on to say: “We should start by looking at the way MPs are elected. At the moment, some seats have many more electors than others . . . it means there are more MPs than there need to be,” he said. “I believe every vote should carry the same weight, which means levelling up the size of constituencies. That would help reduce the number of MPs, save money, and give people confidence that their vote really mattered.”

Right, well I completely agree that the way MPs are currently elected is unfair. I think there are more MPs than there need to be and I absolutely agree that every vote should carry the same weight and that every vote should count. However, levelling up the size of constituencies will not achieve this. There will still be marginal seats and safe seats under this system. Does Cameron seriously think that his scheme will enfranchise a Labour voter in Kensington and Chelsea or a Tory voter in Sedgefield?

What Cameron has done is to identify the problem and then reach for a "solution" that is still grossly unfair but will have the effect of increasing the Tory representation in parliament. At the moment there is a bias in Labour's favour, but the solution cannot surely be to retain the old unfairness but just nudge it back in favour of the Tories a bit to compensate?

If David Cameron was serious about reform of the electoral system he would be looking at the sort of ideas advocated by the Electoral Reform Society and Make Votes Count. Their ideas would enfranchise everybody in the country with real reform using a system such as Single Transferable Vote.

I welcome Cameron's contribution to this debate but only in so far as it will allow us to open up the discussion to include potential reforms that will actually make everybody's vote count, not just benefit the Conservative party as his proposals would.


UPDATE1: Malcolm Clark from Make Votes Count has also posted on this today.

UPDATE2: I have now sent e-mails about this to both The Sunday Times and David Cameron himself. If I get any response from either I will post it on this blog.

Polly's argument is counter-productive

I have just been reading Polly Toynbee's latest article in The Guardian where she is advocating electoral reform.

I am a passionate supporter of electoral reform. Incidentally when I made this comment to a Tory last week she said "Yes, of course - you're a Lib Dem.". I then explained to her that it was actually the other way round. One of the reasons I joined the Lib Dems in the first place is because of their support for electoral reform. I have been a passionate advocate of this for years and long before I joined the party.

Anyway, Polly's central thesis seems to be a ressurection of her "nose peg" theme from before the last election where she was arguing that Labour is the lesser of the two evils (compared to the Tories). She dismisses the Lib Dems because of the electoral system in this country. She then goes on to advocate electoral reform. However, the problem is that towards the end of the article she is arguing from a very weak position. It could easily be interpreted (or spun) that she is now desperately trying to keep Labour in (or the Tories out) at any cost. Advocating change of the electoral system in the dying days of a deeply unpopular government which would likely have the effect of keeping the Tories out looks extremely cynical. Indeed many of the comments on CiF take this view.

She does make some good suggestions such as advising readers to get involved with Make Votes Count and/or the Electoral Reform Society with which I wholeheartedly concur.

I want electoral reform for the House of Commons. However the argument has to be made on the unfairness of the existing system. It will never gain traction if it is seen to be being argued for on the grounds of narrow partisan advantage.