Janice Small is fighting a losing internal battle on electoral reform

Janice Small of Conservative Action on Electoral Reform (and also now Conservative PPC for Batley & Spen) wrote a piece on Comment is Free recently where she discusses the merits or otherwise of the Alternative Vote system that Gordon Brown is now trying to push through for Westminster. She rightly identifies that AV is not proportional and can actually be worse than first past the post.

However her post seems a bit muddled in places. She criticises Brown for his latest move, dismissing it as cynical political positioning (and urges the Lib Dems not to fall for it). She does also identify Single Transferable Vote as the best way forward (citing Douglas Carswell and Daniel Hannan as supporters of it) and urging her own party not to be afraid of PR pointing out how well they have done out if it in Scotland and Wales. She then also advocates open primaries for all new and sitting MPs in order to eliminate safe seats. But STV would largely do this job anyway and would be part of the actual election rather than something tacked on beforehand. She also reiterates Cameron's mantra of reducing the number of MPs by 10% and resize the current constituencies but she skips Cameron's real reason for wanting to do this which is in order to tip the balance of the existing electoral system back towards the Tories.

But the part that took my breath away was this:

If we are to have electoral reform, then the various voting methods should be put to the public and debated on their individual merits, not shoe-horned in by a government in its last days of power.

I couldn't agree more Janice. I think that is exactly what is needed. However whenever David Cameron opens his mouth on this issue it is to pour scorn on the idea that the First Past the Post System needs to be changed and to muster any argument he can find (often deliberately obfuscating the issues and misleading as I pointed out here) to shoot down any alternative system. And the vast majority of Conservative MPs and activists agree with him.

I am willing to bet a sizeable amount of money to Janice, or anyone else that if David Cameron becomes Prime Minister he will never open up this debate to the public and have a referendum on changing to a proportional electoral system for the House of Commons.

There is however a party who would do precisely that. I wonder if Janice, as she clearly feels so strongly about this issue has considered that she may be in the wrong one....