Gerrymandering

One of the proposals in the coalition agreement in 2010 was to alter the boundaries of constituencies to ensure more equal numbers of voters in each seat.

As it happens, this policy fell by the wayside in the aftermath of the Tories backing away from reforming the House of Lords. But for a time it looked like the equalisation of constituencies was going to happen.

Labour were dead against this change. They came up with various arguments against it but the term I saw used time and time again was "Gerrymandering". This is a term coined in the 19th century to describe a situation where boundaries are manipulated in order to favour one political party.

I bridle every time I see this word used with respect to the boundary changes. The boundaries in the UK have become so distorted over decades that there are some constituencies with only just over 50,000 voters and some with double that number. The idea that the current boundaries are somehow "fair" is nonsense. The equalisation was intended to ensure that constituencies had roughly the same number of voters (within a tolerance of about 5% around the average).

It was likely that the Conservative Party would have benefitted from the changes. But the current situation is manifestly unfair. How can it be the case that in one area a voter has about twice as much influence in terms of how much their vote counts towards electing an MP? So to use the term gerrymandering in the context of trying to redress a huge historical imbalance is utterly perverse and wrong in my view.

Don't get me wrong. I think there are much better ways of reforming our electoral settlement than tinkering with boundaries under first past the post. But after the debacle of the AV referendum we are stuck with our current system for now. So in that context ensuring the boundaries are more evenly distributed is actually fair. It only didn't happen because of shortsighted Tory MPs assuming they could break one part of the coalition agreement and for there not to be consequences.

One final point. All those Labour politicians and activists who are so quick to cry "gerrymander" at the proposed changes should bear the following in mind (taken from Wikipedia):

Because gerrymandering relies on the wasted vote effect, the use of a different voting system with fewer wasted votes can help reduce gerrymandering. In particular, the use of multimember districts alongside voting systems establishing proportional representation such as Single Transferable Voting can reduce wasted votes and gerrymandering. Semi-proportional voting systems such as single non-transferable vote or cumulative voting are relatively simple and similar to first past the post and can also reduce the proportion of wasted votes and thus potential gerrymandering.

Rather than throwing around inaccurate terms implying political corruption they should redouble their efforts to get behind proper electoral reform. Then any future attempts to gerrymander, perceived or real would have much less effect anyway.

But lots of the dinosaurs in Labour don't want that. Could it be because the current system benefits them so disproportionately? They should be careful about that. They don't want to be accused of gerrymandering now do they?

"How STV resembles the Grand National" or "Why Prateek Buch deserves his FPC place"

I stood in an election recently.

It was for the Lib Dems Federal Policy Committee.

I lost.

The elections use Single Transferable Vote and I was in the bottom quarter of candidates in terms of first preferences. I was eliminated fairly early on during the count. I make no complaints. It was my first time in an internal election like this and I have learnt some useful stuff that will hopefully mean I have a better shot next time.

One person who did not lose in the FPC election however was Prateek Buch. He was elected from the 63 candidates who stood to one of the 15 places available. He is a good candidate and has done lots of high quality work, not least in the area of one of my particular hobby-horses, drugs policy.

However if you look at the election tables which show how the STV count progressed (available here) you would not have guessed at the end of round 1 of counting that Prateek would have been elected. At that stage, after only first preferences were counted he was in joint 27th place, way off the pace.

But this is one of the great things about STV. Of the just over 1,200 voting reps who make up the electorate 19 wanted him on the committee as their first choice. There were more voters who wanted other people on as their first choice. But as the count progressed, something interesting started to happen. As lower preferences from eliminated candidates began to be redistributed and surpluses were also factored in, Prateek started to inch up the pecking order. Slowly at first, but by the time we get to the latter stages of the count he is really piling the transfers on. In this phase he is regularly getting 2, 3 or 4 transfers and this pace keeps him in contention. In the end he just pokes his nose over the finishing line bagging 14th place with 64.05 votes. If he'd been 3 transfers shy of this he would not have got onto the committee.

Tracing this through it does show to me how a transferable electoral system can be a thing of beauty. It actually does take on the auspices of something like a horse race. You can see at each stage who is keeping up and who is falling behind. You can also see which horses have fallen at each stage (I fell at fence 12 for example). Perhaps it is because I am a psephological geek but it was rather exciting to go through the stages and observe how the fortunes of different candidates fared as it progressed.

It is invidious to try and say what would have happened if this election has been run using first past the post. Voters would have voted differently and it is never clear how the final result would have differed. What is clear is that Prateek may only have had the first preferences of 19 voters, but there were many more than that (more than 3 times as many) who preferred him to many of the other candidates. He may not have had as deep support as some of the much higher placed candidates such as Lord Rennard or Evan Harris. But he certainly had a decent breadth of support. Crucially his wider appeal as a candidate put him above most of the candidates who after the first round looked like they were better placed.

During the AV campaign last year, one of the criticisms used by the "No" camp was that transferable systems "allow losers to win". That was always based on a specious reading of how AV works and used an extremely narrow definition of "loser". It was essentially anyone who did not have a plurarlity of votes after round one. AV is effectively just a single member variant of STV but it does also allow a candidate with a breadth of support to win even if a plurality (although not a majority) of voters prefer another candidate as their first choice.

I have to say that I am much happier with a process that allows such sophistication in voting preferences and for all that information to feed into the result.

Prateek Buch very much deserves his place on the committee.

As for me, I clearly need many more first preferences next time I stand to have a chance. It's all very well having a breadth of support, but you have to stay in the race long enough for them to count!

Outline of a No2STV campaign

Now that the AV referendum has been lost, those of us who supported the change are licking our wounds and wondering when the next opportunity for electoral change for the Commons may present itself.

At the moment it is looking like a long way off. However I think in the aftermath of the failed AV bid it is worth having a look at what those of us in favour of electoral reform can learn from this campaign to be borne in mind in the future, whenever the next opportunity may present itself.

The system I and most other Liberal Democrats (and more generally most in favour of electoral reform) favour is Single Transferable Vote. It is much more proportional than FPTP (or AV) but importantly it is similar to AV in that you rank candidates in order of preference. The big difference being that more than one MP is elected for each larger constituency (between 3 and 6 is optimal).

Having witnessed at close quarters the tactics used by the No2AV campaign I think we are in a position to at least have a stab at predicting what the outline of a No2STV campaign may look like further down the line. I think this will be a useful exercise in order to ensure that those campaigning for a Yes vote are ready to handle the sort of things that are likely to be thrown at us.

Here are variations on five campaigning messages that I expect we would face:

1) "It's too expensive". This was one of the No2AV campaign's most pushed lines certainly in the early days. Having spoken to people it would seem that this message was resonating. The claim that AV would cost £250 million was bunkum. But it worked this time so you can expect it will be tried again. And of course next time it is likely to be harder to rebut as we already know that counting machines are used for some STV elections. I would suggest that the response to this has to be firmly and consistently on the basis of principle. Moving to STV may cost a little more but what price democracy? I have made the point previously that moving to the universal franchise (twice as many ballot papers to print, issue and count) was more expensive but nobody seriously argues now that women should not have the vote. I have found when trying to make this point that I have faced scorn for appearing to try and conflate votes for women with electoral reform but I maintain it is a fair comparison because to argue it is too expensive to change the electoral system is a diversion and this highlights it. A Yes2STV campaign would definitely need to get on the front foot regarding this message from the off.

2) "It's too complicated". Again, this is a message that was used to apparently good effect against AV. And let's be honest, if AV is considered too complicated then STV could arguably be even more so. Even though I certainly think most people can grasp the concept of what is going on in both cases, a big failure of the Yes2AV campaign was in educating people about how it works. Instead of the first referendum broadcast featuring people shouting at "MPs" using megaphones they would have been much better off explaining how AV actually works (there was none in that broadcast) and highlighting a small number of key reasons why it is better than FPTP. Similarly for STV it will be vital that the system is concisely explained as often as possible and with key messages as to why this is better. With STV I actually think the second part of this will be easier because there is a very clear message regarding fairness with the proportionality factor.

3) "It will help the BNP". Or substitute BNP for whatever extreme party (or parties) exist at the point of the campaign. It proved remarkably difficult to shake this accusation against AV during the recent campaign. This was particularly surprising to me because the BNP was actually in favour of keeping FPTP. However the No campaign rather deftly managed to sow confusion by discussing how lower preferences from those voting BNP as their first preference could end up "deciding elections". I am not going to deconstruct the counter arguments here, it has been done elsewhere many times (best example I have seen is here in this excellent post by mathematician Tim Gowers which incidentally rebuts pretty much all the No2AV campaign's claims) but I will make the point that if the No2AV campaign was able to make this message stick when the BNP are against the change themselves, then I think we can have a pretty good guess at how hard they will push this message when the BNP are likely to be for the change. And I would imagine moving to a more proportional system, even STV would be something that extremist parties like the BNP would be in favour of. I actually think it would be pretty hard for parties like the BNP to get any MPs under STV because it is preferential and therefore makes it very hard for parties that are actively strongly disliked by most people. However having seen what happened during the AV campaign I would expect this message to be drowned out as it relies on a fairly detailed understanding of the underlying counting process for STV. What I would suggest for this message right from the off is that it needs to be rebutted with the argument that the way to beat parties like the BNP is not to rig the electoral system against them. All that does is make them look like martyrs. Instead the way is to beat them by arguing against their extreme and unworkable policies. There are other arguments that can be deployed here too but I think the one of principle is the one that is on strongest ground and should fit in with other campaign messages well too.

4) "Under STV, candidates that come first can end up losing". This was another effective message from No2AV. Of course it all depends on what your definition of "coming first" is. No2AV was relying on the number of votes after one round of counting which is what we are all used to under FPTP. Because under STV there would be multiple seats up for grabs it would be a little different. But I can certainly imagine them trying to argue that STV is "unfair" because a candidate that is way behind when first preferences are taken into account could still eventually end up getting a seat. I expect because the move would be to multi-member constituencies that the change is quite wide reaching and therefore a direct comparison with FPTP is harder. But I am certain No2STV will find a way, and probably quite an effective way of portraying this as unfair. It would be tempting for Yes2STV to try and rebut this claim with technical details but I think instead the "fairness" mantle has to be seized immediately by Yes regarding the proportionality argument. Once people understand that the proportion of MPs elected will be much closer to the number of votes cast, any claim about fairness regarding second, third and so on preferences would hopefully have much less potency.

5) "It will lead to weak and unstable government.". The Yes2AV campaign expended quite a lot of energy trying to claim that coalitions and hung parliaments were no more likely under AV than FPTP. This was a very defensive approach and they may well have been better off trying to argue in favour of coalitions in principle rather than the rather muddled messages that ended up coming across. At least a Yes2STV campaign would have little choice but to argue from the off in favour of coalitions as STV is certainly much more likely than FPTP to produce them. Indeed that is precisely why most campaigners for reform want it!

This is obviously just a very first pass by someone who is admittedly biased but followed the campaign from both sides with great interest. I was disappointed by both AV campaigns as I have blogged about in detail previously. But I still think it is worth thinking ahead whilst the wounds the Yes campaign are licking are still very fresh! I expect others will have their own ideas and I have almost certainly missed some important lessons here. One that springs to mind instantly is the "multiple votes" argument. But I am very tired of rebutting that particular one and let's face it, we have a lot of time to learn all of the lessons!

In conclusion, in some ways STV will be easier to argue for than AV. It has some advantages over FPTP (from a reformer's perspective) that are probably easier to sell than AV. Its proportionality is whatever your view certainly a clear change, rather than the rather mixed change in this respect that AV would have given. However the counting process is harder to explain than AV and that is the area in which I expect No2STV would try to make the most capital (I plan to come back to this point in a future post where I will discuss some other potential broader consequences for the electoral reform movement from the AV No vote). I think another thing that is clear from the AV failure is that more time would be needed to ensure the new system could be explained and understood much better than AV was by 5th May 2011.

Oh, and one more very important lesson. Please, please, please let's not have the referendum on the same day as any other elections!

FOOTNOTE: I have made the assumption for the purposes of this post that an STV campaign would follow roughly the same blueprint as the AV one did, i.e. a single question referendum with only two choice with a No and Yes campaign batting for each side. I actually think there are much better and more sophisticated deliberative processes that could and arguably should be used for something as important as changing our electoral system but that argument is for another day.

This post was first published on Dale & Co.

Rebutting Iain Dale's STV criticisms

Iain Dale has popped his head above the parapet today and highlighted some of what he perceives as the problems with the Single Transferable Vote system. He also briefly touches upon AV and AV+.

I tried to leave a comment on his post but it got so long that the system rejected it! Instead I thought I'd interweave my thoughts on here with his. Iain's post is in italics and my responses are in bold:

Several commenters in the previous post have taken issue with my assertion that Proportional Representation, and most especially the STV system, weakens the constituency link - and this is the reason why I cannot support it. Let me explain.

The proponents of STV deny that STV weakens the constituency link. In their view, if you have bigger constituencies with 10 or 12 MPs you still get the constituency link because seats are awarded proportionate to the votes received. Well, in the sense that you have constituencies and MPs who represent them, the constituency link still remains. Sort of.

The trouble is, that in 3, 6, 8, 10 or 12 member constituencies no one would really know who their MP is, just in the same way that no one now knows who their MEP is. The second effect is that when they eventually find out who their MPs are, which of them do they contact with a constituency issue? The probability is that they will contact the MP representing the party which they voted for. Nothing wrong with that, you may say, but I think it is a good thing that current MPs represent ALL their constituents, not just those who put a cross against them on the ballot paper.

This point about STV "weakening" the constituency link is one that can be debated. It depends what you consider a good link between MPs and constituents. Having one MP per constituency is of course one way to do it but there are disadvantages to this way too, for example someone who is say viscerally opposed to Labour may have to deal with a Labour MP. It is also possible that you want your MP to represent your views about something to which they themselves are diametrically politically opposed to. Now in both of those cases it is possible under a single member system for the constituent to be represented in a way that satisfies them but I would argue that under a multi-member system they would have a better chance of being well represented. Not least because if one of their MPs did not do a good job they could try one of the others. Conservatives relish competition in most other areas. It seems slightly odd how opposed they are to that same competition when it comes to the political sphere.

One other minor point, most advocates of STV do not suggest seat sizes of more than 6 MPs. Between 4 and 6 is the optimal amount. I just raise this because you lead with an example of between 10 and 12 which is basically double what would be likely to happen and is therefore potentially a bit misleading.

Can we also dispel the myth that AV is in any way proportional. The Jenkins proposal of AV+ where you had additional members would be. But it would put a lot more power in the hands of the central party.

AV is indeed not proportional. I have heard a number of Tories using this as an argument against a "Yes" vote. However as you well know the Tories refused a vote on a proportional system. AV is a compromise which ensures a fairer result in each individual constituency and avoids the situation at the moment where nearly 2/3rds of all MPs (in the 2010 election) got in with less than 50% of the vote in their seat.

AV+ is a bit more proportional as you state but that was also not on the table from the Tories.

And of course under STV, the party has even more power and influence over candidate selection.

This final point is just plain wrong. There is no reason why under STV the central parties should have more control over who is selected. That is entirely down to the way the selections are made. They could be similar to now with local parties choosing their candidate(s). It could be instead through open primaries or other mechanisms that allow local people greater control over the candidates. Also, because each party is likely to be fielding multiple candidates to maximise their vote across the constituency there is a built in incentive to field a diverse range of candidates which should lead to more women and ethnic minority candidates standing.

No electoral system is perfect but most proponents of STV think that it is the least worst system available and that FPTP is just about the worst worst! AV is an improvement on the status quo. FPTP has all sorts of problems which I expect will be highlighted during the coming campaign.

UPDATE: It looks like my comment on Iain's post did get through after all (twice!) despite the error messages I received.

Five reasons to cheer the timing of the AV referendum

So if the unofficial comments from the government are correct, the referendum on changing the electoral system to the Alternative Vote will be held on May 5th next year to coincide with the local, Scottish and Welsh elections.

If this is true then it is good news for a number of reasons:

1) It will demonstrate that the referendum has not been kicked into the long grass and hence that the Lib Dem section of the government has real clout when it comes to the issues that it got into the government's programme. This is especially true of the AV referendum because so many Conservative MPs and activists are against any change.
2) The fact that it will coincide with the local and Scottish/Welsh elections will increase turnout. This will be a good thing however the country ultimately votes.
3) It will be easier for the Lib Dems to get out the vote for a "Yes" vote as they will be out campaigning all over the country anyway. This of course will also be true for the "No" campaigners but they will be better funded than us so would have had a headstart whenever the vote was called and hence the differential between resources in the two camps will be more equal.
4) It will ensure that the Labour leadership candidates have to properly address what they would do and whether they will support a change, after all the referendum will be held only a few months into their leadership, whoever is elected. In my view it will look pretty cynical if the winning candidate does not campaign for a "Yes", after all it was in their manifesto and they were willing to go even further than the Conservatives during coalition negotiations.
5) It will give us 4 years to get the necessary changes in place if there is a "Yes" vote which should be more than enough time to ensure that the next general election in the UK (in 2015 or even if it was earlier) is held under the new system.

The fact that this is being announced so soon makes me wonder if the rumours that Cameron may not campaign for a "No" and that he may even back a "Yes" vote (perhaps tacitly) may indeed be true. If the Conservative leadership was dead against it you would expect they would have found some way to nudge it forward a bit to suppress turnout and make their lives easier.

Just one last point. I am still in favour of a proportional electoral system which AV is not. However this is the referendum that was politically possible and it can be used as a stepping stone to a more proportional system later. In the meantime it would remove tactical voting, ensure that in individual seats people were not forced to choose the least worst option and may even reduce negative campaigning by encouraging candidates to appeal to their opponents' supporters for second and third preferences. It will also get people used to preferential voting which is of course the method used for Single Transferable Vote, my preferred (and much more proportional) system. And if we can increase the Lib Dem share of seats in future parliaments, then we have a good chance of getting a referendum on STV at some point.

So I will be campaigning for a "Yes" vote.

PR is a red line for me in any coalition

Regular readers of this blog will be unsurprised to learn that as far as I am concerned, a referendum on electoral reform to a more proportional system is a red line for me in any coalition negotiations now we are in a balanced parliament situation. The fact that we increased our vote share by 1% to 23% yesterday but our number of seats fell by nearly 10% just underlines (yet again) how broken our electoral system is.

The Labour Party are already offering such a referendum. However there are a number of problems in considering joining with them. For example, whilst Brown is still leader I would not countenance any deal with Labour whatsoever and I know many Lib Dems feel the same. Also, Lib Dem and Labour combined will not quite have enough seats to form a majority government.

None of the problems with that though are insurmountable in my view and if a deal cannot be reached with David Cameron then I think it would be a valid option to pursue with Labour however I think Nick Clegg is right to say that Cameron has the first shot at trying to agree a deal.

I know that many Conservatives are opposed to electoral reform to a proportional system (with the odd exception such as Douglas Carswell). However I think that rather than the messy idea Cameron has come up with thus far of yet another committee to look into it (i.e. kick it into the long grass) he needs to do much better. He needs to offer a referendum.

I would not expect the Conservative Party to campaign for a yes vote. Indeed I would expect them to do the exact opposite. But the public should be given the chance to decide. Their attention has been starkly drawn to what I think are the deficiencies of the existing system during this election campaign. The Conservatives think that despite these, FPTP is the best system. They have a number of arguments that they think back this up. I don't agree with them but it is fair enough for them to think this. They need to have the courage of their convictions and to be willing to argue their case in front of the electorate. Who knows, maybe they will be able to convince the public that they are correct and we should stick with the status quo.

If Cameron cannot or will not offer this then there is another party who despite the difficulties mentioned above is offering it. Hopefully this will focus Mr Cameron's mind.

On many other policies I am more willing to compromise and from what I have seen of Cameron's suggestions I think there is ample scope for agreement. PR is a red line for me though.

So that's what I think. If you are a Lib Dem member, the Federal Executive of the party wants to know your views too. Have a look at this post on Lib Dem Voice for details of how to make sure your view is represented to them. You need to do it before they meet at 2pm tomorrow.

Rest assured I will be sending them my thoughts imminently.

UPDATE: When I posted this yesterday I was very tired not having slept for more than 36 hours and I realise now I did not mention a specific PR system. To be clear, I favour Single Transferable Vote with multi-member constituencies.

Can we please, PLEASE make this the last election where we get this:

• Don't vote Lib Dem here, you'll let the Tories in.
• You can't vote Labour here, they've got no chance, you'll let the Lib Dems in.
• Tories can't win here.
• Vote Conservative to keep Labour out.
• SNP are the only ones in this seat who can keep the Tories out.
• A vote for Plaid Cymru is a vote for Labour.
• You do realise don't you that if you vote Lib Dem you could let Labour in here?
• Vote tactically for us to keep them out.
• Only Lib Dems can keep Labour out.
• Only the Conservatives can keep Labour out.
• Only the SNP can keep Labour out.
• Etc.
• Etc.
• Etc.

Are you sick of it yet?

It is the First Past the Post system that forces all parties (yes, yes, I know including my own) to indulge in this very negative way of campaigning. A change to Single Transferable Vote which allows voters to list their preferences would transform all of this. Instead of scaring voters with the possibility of them "letting in" the candidate they fear most, candidates would suddenly find the way to win is to appeal for people to vote *for* them rather than *against* someone else. It's built into the system and comes for free.

Please let's make this the last election under this sort of relentlessly negative system.

Nick Clegg is right to rule out a coalition

So it looks like Nick Clegg has decided to go for option 3 as I highlighted in this post back in November. He has ruled out a formal coalition with either of the other main parties. Instead he would look to support a Queen's Speech that included the following:

1) Investing extra funds in education through a pupil premium for disadvantaged children.

2) Tax reform, taking 4 million out of tax and raising taxes on the rich by requiring capital gains and income to be taxed at the same rate.

3) Rebalancing of the economy to put less emphasis on centralised banking and more on a new greener economy.

4) Political reforms, including changes to the voting system and a democratically elected Lords, that go further than proposed by Labour

I think on balance that this sort of approach is the right move. I have been asked numerous times by both Labour and Conservative activists which party I would want to go into coalition with and I have seen our senior MPs asked this over and over again. There is a danger that if we don't nip this in the bud it will dominate any discussion featuring the Lib Dems in the next few months and we find ourselves constantly being put in the position of defining ourselves in this way. Instead, Clegg has now set down the red lines in terms of what we would want to see before offering cooperation and has also eschewed the possibility of ministerial office for himself and colleagues.

I do wish that number 4 had been defined a bit more clearly though. Electoral reform can mean all sorts of different things. Far better to have said Single Transferable Vote and leave people in no doubt what we mean.

The interesting thing about this list though is that from what I have seen and heard I would imagine the Conservatives would have problems with some of these, especially number 4). It might mean that the party cannot support a Queen's Speech from them, however frankly that's their problem. There seemed to be a feeling around a few months ago that a hung parliament could be a nightmare scenario for the Lib Dems as pressure was put on us to agree with or vote down a putative Queen's Speech. As I said at the time:

The idea that Cameron could try to corner the Lib Dems ... I do not think is likely to work. It would be perfectly reasonable for us to support the things we agree with and oppose those we do not. If that meant voting down a Queen's Speech (if we were forced into that position) then so be it.

Now that Clegg has laid out the terms by which we would be willing to discuss supporting a minority government (of either main party), I very much hope spokespeople of both red and blue hues are regularly put on the spot and asked if they would be willing to support the Lib Dem principles outlines above.

That would make a nice change and I think people would be interested to hear their responses...

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....

Is AV even worth campaigning for?

With today's announcement that the government is going to prepare the ground for a referendum on changing the electoral system to the Alternative Vote system in a Commons vote next week I, like many Lib Dems I suspect, have very mixed feelings about it.

As I have blogged about previously, AV is not proportional. In fact it can be even less proportional than the current First Past the Post system. In 1997, Labour could have had an even bigger majority under AV.

However it is reform and it does greatly reduce the need for tactical voting which is one of the pernicious features of our current system. It would be churlish to deny this. Also, the Lib Dems would probably benefit electorally from the change. However it would be a bad idea for the party to back a change to a still very unfair system just because it might be a bit better for us.

My view is that it would be better to hold out for a proper change to a proportional system, Single Transferable Vote with multi-member constituencies. Chris Huhne appears to agree although he is leaving the door open to potentially supporting the move to AV as a first step. The big problem with this approach is that even if we were to get this change, any further electoral reform would be off the table for at least a political generation. People would feel that we have already had reform and therefore why would we need more?

So Gordon Brown is now putting the Lib Dems in a tricky position. Does the party support the move to AV as a first step towards what we think is really the best system or does it oppose the move out of principle as nowhere near good enough? Brown of course knows this and is dangling what he thinks is enough of a carrot for the party to bite.

It will be interesting to see whether it does.

Some MPs are more equal than others

One of the main arguments that opponents of electoral reform to a proportional system use is that some forms of PR create two classes of MP. Now firstly, this is not true for Single Transferable Vote with multi-member constituencies, the system that the Lib Dems and most electoral reformers favour. However it is true for systems like Alternative Vote Plus or Additional Member System. Those systems have a "top-up element" to allow proportionality but that does generally mean that some MPs have constituencies and others don't. In other words some MPs have constituents to answer to and others from the list only have their party to answer to.

Just to reiterate, I (and many like me) do not support these top-up systems but the fact that they exist and in the case of AMS have been used in the past gives supporters of the status quo an opportunity to blur the issue and making this claim of two classes of MP against all variants of PR.

But it is worth just taking a few steps back here and looking at our existing electoral system, First Past the Post. I was struck by the following passage in Chris Mullin's excellent Westminster diaries "A View from the Foothills" when I read it recently:

Friday 11th May (2001)

Much speculation about which members of the New Labour elite will be parachuted into the safe seats vacated by MPs retiring at the last moment. Ed Balls and David Miliband are among the names being mentioned. Not for them the cutting of teeth in hopeless seats or the long, wearying slog around the selection circuit. A few high-level phone calls, a quiet word in the right ears and ... Bob's your uncle ... a safe seat for life. And who knows, within two or three years a foot on the ministerial ladder, first steps on the inevitable rise to the Cabinet.

As we now know, both Balls and Miliband were indeed selected for very safe seats. Miliband in 2001 (he was in the government by 2005 and the cabinet by 2006), Balls in 2005 (he was in the government by 2006 and the cabinet in 2007 as soon as Brown became leader). There are plenty of examples over the years of favoured candidates who are parachuted into safe seats like this and hence their political career is put on the fast track. Because they are gifted a seat where there is virtually no chance of them losing it they don't have to worry too much about what their constituents think. They will not have to have spent years slogging away at getting to know the constituency and their constituents before election and they will have to pay little attention to them after election too. Whereas MPs in less safe or marginal seats will have to pay much more attention to their electors and indeed spend much more time on them.

So we already have MPs who on a sliding scale have to take less and less notice of their constituents as we go up the list of safe seats. That sounds to me very much like a two (or even more than two) classes of MP that we have already.

Under Single Transferable Vote this would not happen. The seat of every single MP would be at risk in every election and they would have to earn re-election. There would be no safe seats. But of course if we had this, how would Blair have been able to secure an easy passage for Miliband and Brown likewise for Balls into the Commons and ultimately the cabinet?

Also, the seats of even the most senior politicians would need to be tended to properly and the electors engaged with.

This is why the decision on how they are elected cannot be left up to the MPs themselves. They have already proved that they cannot be trusted with their own remuneration. Why should they be any different when it comes to the terms of their own employment?

AV is the wrong change

Ever since the expenses scandal broke and people started to question whether the safe seats gifted by our rotten electoral system might have had something to do with it, senior politicians have been doing their best to look like they are doing something about it. The thing is, the reforms implemented and planned really do not abolish the safe seats.

The Conservatives have gone for Open Primaries (or more usually caucuses) where they give the opportunity to voters within a constituency to select their candidate. There are numerous problems with this approach. One of the main ones from my perspective is that CCHQ is still in control of the shortlists, so for example in my constituency in Bracknell where an "open" caucus was held back in October, no local candidates were allowed to stand. I know for a fact that there were local Tories who wanted to stand but they were not shortlisted. I suspect this has happened in other seats as well. One of the losing candidates in Bracknell has already been selected for a completely different seat. A number of these candidates are now doing the rounds at all sorts of different open primaries until they get selected. It is the same sort of faces who would previously have put themselves before a selection committee. It gives the veneer of reform when in practise it is nothing of the sort. Allied to this, there is currently no suggestion that a sitting MP would be challenged for their seat so once selected for a safe seat, we are back to the same old situation.

And now Labour are apparently going to legislate for a referendum to change the electoral system to use the Alternative Vote method. Although the referendum could not happen before the next election they hope to legislate in such a way that a successor government would have to specifically legislate to overturn the decision to hold a referendum during the next parliament which would put e.g. a Prime Minister Cameron in an invidious position looking like he was against reform. All very clever-clever politics (and typical Brown tactics) but aside from all the politicking AV is not proportional. In fact it can be less proportional than our current First Past the Post system. Perhaps most importantly though in the context of doing something about the safe seats, it does not get rid of them. There will be almost as many safe seats under AV as there are now.

I should just stress that I am not being partisan here. It is likely that AV would benefit the Lib Dems and we would end up with more seats. However it is the wrong change. Electoral reform to Single Transferable Vote with multi-member constituencies would give a roughly proportional result and completely get rid of the safe seats.

The two main parties are trying to get away with as little change as possible whilst looking like they are reformers.

Women only shortlists would be unneccesary under STV

David Cameron's announcement today that he is going to impose all women shortlists in some seats for the next election has met with a mixed reaction, not least from Conservative bloggers, many of whom think that this is a profoundly unconservative move.

I absolutely agree with Mr Cameron that we should have more women in parliament but I do not think women only shortlists are the answer.

At risk of seeming a bit like a broken record, I think the answer is electoral reform. Bear with me here...

If we had Single Transferable Vote in multi-member constituencies (with say 5 members per constituency) then each party would be encouraged to supply a diverse range of candidates in terms of gender, ethnicity, age etc. Any party just supplying white, middle aged male candidates would likely find themselves suffering electorally. It would then be up to the electorate to choose the MPs from the various available candidates from all parties but crucially, no party would feel they had to go with a traditional candidate profile "just to be on the safe side" as I fear all too often has happened in the past.

I firmly believe that if we had such a structure in place then strong candidates of both genders and all sorts of different backgrounds would end up as MPs. There would be no need to restrict shortlists to any particular type.

The answer is staring Mr Cameron in the face.

Has Bracknell sent a message about local candidates in primaries?

The result has just been announced of the Conservative Bracknell open primary/caucus and the winner is Dr Phillip Lee. I want to extend my congratulations to Dr Lee for his victory in this hard fought contest.

The contest has been very closely tracked in the blogosphere not least because of the presence in the shortlist of the leading Conservative blogger Iain Dale who came third. My commiserations to him.

What I wanted to focus on in this post though is what message Bracknell may be trying to send to the Conservatives and politicians in general about these primaries and the candidates they were offered. I should state that despite being a constituent I was not at the meeting (I am abroad at the moment) so I do not know how each of the candidates performed. However I was concerned right from the outset that there were no local candidates on the shortlist.

My friend Darren did some interviews with some of the candidates on Bracknell Blog and from Phillip's interview, as well as other information I have seen it struck me that although he did not live in the constituency, he was the "most local" of the candidates having been a GP just 10 miles outside the seat boundary and actually having some on-call patients within the constituency. Given all of this, my hypothesis was that if the "localness" of a candidate was a crucial element in the minds of the voters then Phillip would win. That has now come to pass.

Of course I do not know if this was the crucial element in his election, there may well be other reasons. I would however be surprised if it was not at least a factor and given how close the contest seems to have been (it went to 5 rounds) it could easily have been what made the difference. So, perhaps there is a lesson here for all parties but especially the Conservatives who have been most keen on this form of caucus/primary type election.

I think it will be worth looking at how other contests of this nature go in the future to see if a pattern of local (or "more local") candidates being selected is borne out. If it is then it will be food for thought for the party bosses making the decisions about how to select candidates. After all, if it becomes increasingly difficult to parachute favoured candidates into safe seats in the future I suspect they will not like that. At all...


PS: I should just make clear my view that I think contests of this nature would be unnecessary if our electoral system was changed to Single Transferable Vote with multi-member constituencies. That would give the entire electorate the chance to rank multiple candidates from different parties as part of the election itself.

Open primaries are second best

I read with interest Shane Greer's recent piece in the Yorkshire Post about the benefits he perceives in open primaries. His basic argument is that they give voters in a constituency more power by enabling the local electorate to select the party candidates for elections to the House of Commons prior to that election.

The recent MPs expenses scandal has thrown up lots of issues about MPs and reform of the system is desperately needed to at the very least eliminate the safe seats that give too many MPs secure tenure irrespective of what they do or how good they are. However if we rushed to bring in open primaries, we would be overlooking a more extensive reform we could undertake to our electoral system and that would provide almost all the benefits of open primaries but would improve our representation in other ways too.

As the piece I referred to earlier was for the Yorkshire Post, I thought I look at 5 Yorkshire parliamentary constituencies: Batley and Spen, Bradford North, Bradford South, Bradford West and Halifax. All of these seats are grouped together in the centre of West Yorkshire and all of them returned Labour MPs in the 2005 general election. However when you look at the total number of votes cast across all 5 seats you can see that actually Labour only received 43.9% of the votes, the Conservatives 27.5% and the Lib Dems 19.3% with others on 9.3%. Yet Labour got 100% of these seats and no other party got any of them.

This is as a result of our current "First Past the Post" system which gives the seat to the candidate with the most votes. It led in 2005 to the current government getting 55% of the seats in the House of Commons with only 35% of the vote in the country.

Single Transferable Vote however is a system which would stop this sort of injustice. It allows voters during an election to list their candidates by order of preference. These preferences are then allocated to the candidates and if your first choice candidate is not elected then your second and third choice (and so on) are taken into account. This means that your vote needn't be wasted as under the current system. The crucial difference though is when it is combined with a multi-member constituency system. Those 5 seats listed above could be combined into one seat (called say West Yorkshire Central) and then the likely effect would be to give a fairer result with say 3 Labour MPs, 1 Conservative and 1 Liberal Democrat. At the moment, Conservative and Lib Dem voters in those seats have their vote count for nothing. Under this new system they would get representation. There are a number of other countries including Ireland who already use a system like this.

Electing parliament this way would eliminate the safe seats that both myself and Shane wish to see the back of. In a multi-member seat system like this, there are no safe seats and several members of the same party can stand against each other in the actual election (not in a primary run-off beforehand) thus maximising the number of electors who can express their preference. This way, different strands of opinion within the same party can stand and the electorate can decide whether they want for example a Dennis Skinner or a David Miliband (or both, or neither) rather than have the party foist that candidate on the seat.

If rolled out across the country, a system like this would mean that the number of seats in parliament would roughly match the percentage of votes cast for each party across the country. This would eliminate the unfairness that is baked into our current electoral system and would mean politicians in every seat really had to fight for every vote rather than concentrate on the marginal seats as happens at the moment. This should have the effect of widening issues for debate at election time.

Things have gone a bit quiet recently from our elected representatives about reform following the expenses scandal. The main leaders made a lot of noise initially in response to the public outrage but nothing has really changed. Reform of the nature outlined here would demonstrate that the politicians really had listened to the public and that they are willing to change how they are elected even if it means their own political careers become more precariously balanced. If politicians had feared the ballot box more, the recent scandal may never have happened.

On that point, Shane and myself are in full agreement.

Interview with Douglas Carswell MP about "The Plan"

I recently read "The Plan: Twelve Months to Renew Britain" by the Conservatives Douglas Carswell MP and Daniel Hannan MEP. I found it an interesting read and whilst I did not agree with all the ideas proposed within it I certainly think it is a welcome addition to the debate on reform in the UK.

Douglas Carswell who runs a good and frequently updated blog here has been kind enough to grant me an interview about the content of the book which I have included below.

Particularly noteworthy for me is where he confirms that he would be willing in principle to campaign for electoral reform to Single Transferable Vote with multi-member constituencies for Westminster. There aren't many Tories who would do that!

Interview below. My questions are in bold and the responses are in italics:

How many copies of the book have been sold so far?

Over 14,000 - and rising.

I was quite impressed to discover whilst reading it that the book is "Print on Demand". Do you think that eventually most books will be produced in this way?

Yes - and it won’t just be books that’ll be manufactured on demand.

As Dan and I were writing The Plan, I was reading Chris Anderson's The Long Tail. It gave us a eureka moment. Having written various books with various publishers previously, we realised that if we switched to print on demand, we could leverage off internet distribution ourselves directly.

We were convinced that the themes in our book would sooner or later become central to the political debate in Britain - we just didn't know when.

Then along came expensegate. The Plan suddenly seem prescient and demand took off. Print on demand meant that we were able to meet that demand 100%. The Plan wouldn't have been a bestseller had we published conventionally.

In Part One of the book you bemoan “declamatory legislation” based on emotive rather than proportionate evidence based responses to issues or events. What would you suggest is the best way to debate against this sort of political tactic?

The best way to ensure that the laws that are passed deal with real problems is to ensure that our law-makers are made more directly answerable to local voters. If we had a right of popular initiative, plus recall and open primaries to decide who gets to be the MP in the first place, we'd have wiser, more judicious people in our legislature, passing proportionate laws.

Part of your “Cleaning up Westminster” section suggests that select committee chairmen should be elected by the Commons in a secret ballot rather than appointed by the whips office. Wouldn’t the fact that the governing party generally has an inbuilt majority within the house restrict the effectiveness of this approach?

Not at all. That's what happens today. And its one of the reasons why the executive controls Parliament - rather than the other way round.

Using secret ballots to decide who gets to chair select committees would take power away from party whips. The executive would no longer be able to decide the shape of the legislature.

Even more profoundly, it'd change the chemistry of the Commons. Today advancement in Westminster comes through party whips. This encourages MPs to behave primarily as cheer leaders for the executive or shadow executive. It helps explain why the Commons generates much heat and noise, while at the same time being quite so supine and spineless.

Once you use free and fair ballots to decide who gets promoted, advancement would come from the degree to which an individual MP could command support and respect from across the chamber. It would encourage the fair and independent minded.

Another idea from the “Cleaning up Westminster” section is open primaries. You spend some time explaining how this would improve representation but you completely dismiss proportional representation saying: “it would make the problem even worse: a party list system concentrates yet more power in the hands of the whips”. This strikes me as a very selective and misleading representation of PR. Single Transferable Vote using multi-member constituencies, the PR system favoured by most electoral reformers requires no party list and many would argue actually puts even more power in the hands of the voter than open primaries as part of the actual election. What are your thought on this?

I'm increasingly open-minded about multi-member constituencies. Choice and competition are good in politics as well as business.

The key thing, however, is to recognise that with 7 out of 10 MPs coming from safe seats, we don't have enough choice and competition in our politics. I fear that some PR proposals would mean we ended up with a system where 9 out of 10 MPs stood zero chance of losing their seats.

But as I said, STV with multi-member constituencies avoids the list problems. I am very encouraged to see you being receptive to multi-member seats. Would you be willing to update a future edition of "The Plan" to include consideration of this?

Not sure there's going to be a Plan B! In October, I introduce a Bill in the Commons to allow open primaries in every constituency - and the right of recall. That's my number one priority for reform because it's a change we can bring in right now. And it'd change our rotten political system for the better right away.

So if there was to be a referendum for electoral reform to STV multi-member, would you support it and help to campaign for a "Yes" vote?

Yes - I think so. I'd want to see the detail first, but if done properly, I would campaign for change.

Part of the “A return to law, order and accountability” section focuses on the idea of locally elected Sheriffs (which I think would be a very good idea – I am certainly a fan of devolution). This reminded me of a book I read a few years ago by Jonathan Freedland called “Bring Home the Revolution” which coincidentally includes a 10 point plan for Britain too. Freedland includes radical ideas for devolving real power along the lines of the USA and popular sovereignty (as you do in “The Plan”) but he wants to go further than you wishing to change the UK to a Republic and creating a written constitution amongst other things. There are many potential changes like this that are not covered at all in your 10 points. Do you think “The Plan” is really radical enough?

I'm an admirer of Freedland. Like him, I also admire the United States greatly. But it is, as Freedland reminds us, an English system!

Public disgust with the political status quo in Britain is now so great, we stand a real chance of achieving some significant reforms. But the one way to guarantee that nothing changes, however, would be for the reformers to be overly ambitious. Rather than utopia, let’s actually achieve some bankable changes.

Instead of far reaching electoral reform, why not have open primaries right away to ensure our self serving politicians are held to account? Instead of a written constitution, why not do some pretty simply things that would ensure that those we elected held government to account properly?

The whole point of writing The Plan was to show what can realistically be done right away.

Some would argue that one of the reasons we are in such a mess now is partly because we do not have a written constitution and successive governments have been able to fiddle with no need for a blueprint or even a coherent idea of where they are heading with their changes. Isn't it therefore important that any changes that are made are at the very least properly codified as Freedland suggests?

I don't trust the kind of people who'd inevitably dominate the process. They'd be leftists and Guardianistas. So no.

We need to radically change our constitution in order to achieve the revolutionary aims that English radicals like the Levellers sought. It's not the American revolution we need to bring home - but the English revolution that we need to complete.

Starting from scratch with a written constitution wouldn't complete the English revolution. It'd put the vile elites - the quangocrats, human rights judges, Europhiles, remote technocrats and latter day Whigs - in control.

There are sections of the book where it seems to get dangerously close to describing what could be construed as right-wing revenge for perceived left-wing impositions. An example is in the section “Parliament should be supreme” where you claim that a “genteel coup d’etat” has been wrought on Britain by judges. You describe it as “Slow moving, genteel and from the Left.” There is also a list of right-wing dictators who have been subject to international indictment against left-wing dictators who have not. Do you recognise the potential problem here in trying to garner wide consensus (which you would surely need for the fundamental changes you propose) when the motivation for some aspects of your programme appear to read like this?

Actually the one thing The Plan never reads as is a narrowly Conservative work. Re-read the first few pages. It simply isn’t written as a Conservative book. It is very specifically not just aimed at a Tory audience.

It is aiming for something bigger than that. It is not saying this is what Conservatives need to do. It is saying this is what our country needs.

But it does recognise that the Left – as Gramsci recognised would happen - has captured key institutions. The Left’s long march through our institutions explains the leftist disposition of so much of the quango state – from the criminal justice system, to the BBC to the educationalists. The default settings of the quango state are well to the Left of the British people. That is why we need direct democracy – to recalibrate the state and undo the left’s creeping victory.

I think there is merit in a lot of your ideas in the “True localism” chapter. However some would argue that a land value tax would be a more fair and equitable way to raise local finance than a local sales tax. What are your thoughts on this?

How one localises control over tax revenues is less important than the fact one does it.

Fed up with old guard Tory centralisers, who said “it can’t be done”, “remember the poll tax” blah blah, I wrote an academic paper called Paying for Localism to show that it is possible to devolve control over finances. In my paper, I suggested turning VAT into a local sales tax. Doing so would ensure local councils became more or less self financing – and it’d not mean any new tax.

Have a look at it and let me know if you can come up with an even better model.

(Note: Link opens PDF document)

I found your ideas in the chapter “Putting patients in control” very interesting and I think they make a useful contribution to the debate which Mr Hannan has recently made ultra topical. However there are some (for example here) who say that the Singaporean model only works there because of its unique political situation where the government owns or very tightly manages most aspects of their economy and society. How do you respond to this?

I disagree. It’s not Singaporean exceptionalism that explains their better survival rates. Their system is better at ensuring that finite resources are allocated in a way that ensures everybody gets the medical care they need.

I particularly liked the part in the “Neighbourhood Welfare” chapter where you point out that benefit cheats would be much less likely to be as tolerated as they are by neighbours if the effect was felt in a local tax bill; I had not heard this expressed in this way before. Do you agree that if you want to try and sell your message more widely that you need to zero in on points like this that will resonate with people?

Yes. We need to keep showing that big, remote, central government actually harms the most vulnerable folk most of all. It’s made our country less compassionate and tolerant that it ought to be.

I think your “Direct Democracy” chapter where you call for the ability for referenda to be triggered by petitions of enough citizens is the best one in the book. However I feel that you do not go far enough. You spend time explaining how it will all work but you then pull back and say that parliament would retain an ultimate veto. If this was implemented, why should parliament be able to override the will of the people?

Because I still think you need a legislature. I want radical change to that legislature – so that you have citizen lawmakers, not professional politicians. I want the voters to have the ability to sack lazy, self-serving MPs by triggering by-elections. I want the people to help set the Commons agenda, and veto politicians and their endless folly. But I still think you need a legislature.

Once you’ve made the Commons properly accountable to the voter - and government properly answerable to the Commons – good luck to any MP who ignored what their local voters thought.

Ignoring voters is the default setting within our present rotten Commons.

I appreciate what you say and certainly agree with your final point about the Commons ignoring voters but you are still saying that ultimately parliament should be able to override the will of the people. There are places where a model similar to what you advocate is already used (such as Switzerland) where the legislature has no veto and it seems to work perfectly well; the government has to bow to the wishes of the people clearly expressed. Why should we be any different and instead have a compromised system?

The Swiss model allows referendums to veto what politicians want to do. As such the job of holding the executive to account has been democratised - its not just the legislatures role, but the citizens'. That is something I'd like to see in the UK, too. I'd also like people to be able to propose new laws - a right of initative.

But what I don't believe is that you can have a legislative process that starts with a right of popular initiative, followed by popular referendum - without the legislation passing through a legislature at some point.

Why do I think so? Well, look at my wiki-Bill experiment. I've used the wisdom of the internet to allow everyone to help me draft a Great Repeal Bill. It has been a tremendous success so far. A real Bill has been drafted by hundreds of citizens on-line - and the wisdom of the crowd has exceeded that of Westminster.

But even so, I think the wiki-Bill would need to be debated and scrutinised by a legislature in order to iron out one or two inconsistencies. Have a look here to see for yourself.

And my final question – if the Conservatives are in power after the next election, how much of your 30 point plan do you think will have been implemented after the first 12 months?

David Cameron has taken various ideas straight out of the book – open primaries or elected police chiefs, for example. His recent Milton Keynes speech about the need to decentralise power borrowed not only from the books ideas, but read as if it took from the actual text.

So far, so good. But never underestimate the power of the Sir Humphrey Appleby-types.

Hattip to Wikipedia for the image of Douglas used above.

Fisking the Working Class Tory on FPTP

Working Class Tory has written a post today where he tries to argue that the expenses scandal has actually strengthened the case for First Past the Post.

It's not often when I see a bullet pointed blog post where I disagree with every single bullet point but with this one I do. I thought this merited a quick fisk:

Something you don't hear too often is that the expenses scandal has strengthened the case for the First Past The Post system of voting (our present one), which it undoubtedly has.

Why?

If an individual MP has committed an offence, you can get rid of him/her. How is it that the voters of Luton South now have the choice of Esther Rantzen's sham campaign? Because she can go and appeal to the 75,000 or so constituents (please excuse the back-of-a-cigarette-packet arithmetic, based on voter turnout in 2005), and ask them to vote specifically for her. Not on any lists, but one vote, for one candidate.

There are two things to note here. Firstly, it is not at all easy to get rid of sitting MPs who are in safe seats. The example of Martin Bell in Tatton in 1997 is often cited but Labour and the Lib Dems stood aside for him which is very unusual. The distortions of FPTP militate against change in all but the most extreme circumstances. How many independent MPs have we had in the Commons in the last 50 years for example? Hardly any. Secondly, WCT is using the usual canard that Proportional Representation must mean a list system which of course it does not. The system most serious electoral reformers advocate is Single Transferable Vote in multi-member constituencies which is much more open in terms of candidates than FPTP and allows parties to run multiple candidates in constituencies.

It keeps a link between you and your local MP. Yes, MPs got out of touch, elevated from their constituents by an arrogant sense of self-importance, as shown with the ludicrous expenses claims and the wilfull ignorance towards the wishes of their voters. However, this is not going to happen for a long time - Expensesgate was the watershed. For about a generation, MPs are going to be held under breathtaking, but necessary, scrutiny, and will not be allowed to be self-serving party robots.

STV would keep the constituency link but it would be even better because the voter is much more likely to be able to be represented by an MP that are of the party they voted for, unlike at the moment where there is a less than 50% chance of that happening. As for the charge that we will no longer have party robots, in two thirds of commons seats it is extremely unlikely that the MP will lose their seat as they are "safe". Therefore their loyalties lie with their party who put them in the safe seat, not the voters who the MP knows will re-elect them time after time. Therefore it will be party that comes before constituents in their considerations helped along by the whipping system.

It keeps the nutters out. Let's stick with the example of Luton South. Luton South is a classic example of a "bellweather" constituency - it has elected an MP of the winning party since 1951. In other words, it's also a seat you need to pick up if you're going to win nationwide. So there aren't massive majorities. That means fewer votes here can win than in, say, Camberwell & Peckham. Margaret Moran got 16,610 votes in 2005, out of a 38,918 total, or 42.7% I reckon turnout will be higher in the next election, by 10%, give or take 2%. Let's suppose that Luton South will have a turnout increase of 15%, because of its marginal nature. Again, back-of-a-cigarette-packet stuff, but if we suppose the turnout is now 43,000, and 42% is the amount necessary for a candidate to win, they require just over 18,000 votes. Now, I don't believe that at General Election time, any constituency has 42% of the voters voting for any extreme party, whether it be the BNP or the SWP. I can see the Greens splitting the left wing vote in some places, but not winning.

But STV requires fairly broad support in a seat in order to be elected which would make it unlikely the BNP for example would get in. They may get say 8% or 10% or so of first choice preferences in a small number of seats (as we saw in the Euro elections which under the D'Hondt system allowed them two MEPs) but with a 5 member STV seat they would require around 20% of first choices or enough second, third etc. choices to make the difference. The BNP are widely revilved and are very unlikely to get all these further choices from voters who opted for other parties for their first choice.

However, if the BNP manage to jump the democratic hurdle then why should they not have representation? WCT's argument seems to be to gerrymander the system to make it almost impossible for all but the largest parties to get representation. He high-handedly dismisses parties like the Greens as "nutters". Does he feel the same about UKIP? Why should the system make it impossible for these more minor parties to get in and for this to be seen as a good thing and an argument for retaining FPTP? Can he not see how utterly disenfranchising this is?

MPs owe their allegiance to their voters, not their party whips and party selection boards and the countless other internal bureaucrats. If we brought in electoral reform, somewhere along the line, an MP owes their job not to voters, but to the selection team. I wonder whether this will drive them to be more, or less, independent of their party whips. Hmm.....

Rubbish. Most MPs owe their allegiance to their party and their selection team within their party constituency. Under STV there would still need to be selection but the parties are actively encouraged to select multiple candidates and to have a broad spread of candidates (gender, ethnicity, background, wing of the party etc.) in order to maximise votes. The voter has much more power under STV and that is why many politicians do not like it.

It is simple. One person, one vote, one candidate.

But the simplest argument is not always the best one. Recent polls have suggested that people want more proportionality in the electoral system. When their attention is drawn to how unfair the current system is they do not like it. I did a post a few days ago which examined what could happen if the Tories got 36% of the vote, Labour got 35% and the Lib Dems got 17%. Under these circumstances, Labour could have a small working majority (i.e. more than 50% of the seats) even though the Tories "won" the election. That is completely and totally unfair to the Conservatives and I say that as a Lib Dem supporter.

FPTP is a broken system and it needs to change.

Now that is what I call simple.

The Conservatives are hypocritical on PR

As Paul reported on Liberal Burblings on Friday, two senior Tories (Andrew Tyrie and Sir George Young) have authored a report where they are advocating a system of proportional representation for a mainly elected second chamber. Here is a snippet:

We favour a system of Proportional Representation for elections to the chamber. We believe that the First past the post system, with its ability to deliver clear party majorities, works well for the Commons and entrenches its role as the source of legitimacy for a government; however, the second chamber requires a demonstrably different system

Elections for the chamber should be on the basis of the regions that are used for European elections, although the electoral system should favour greater voter choice than a pure party list approach.

As you would expect, I completely disagree with what they are saying in the first paragraph but what I wanted to focus on was the fact that they are advocating PR at all, for any chamber. It would seem from what they are saying that they are favouring some sort of Single Transferable Vote system for the second chamber (exactly the system that most electoral reformers including myself think should be used for the House of Commons). But just a few weeks ago at the start of June David Cameron wrote a piece for the Evening Standard which did its best to rubbish any arguments for PR at all. I did a blog post at the time which exposed the 4 main canards that he came up with.

What has happened in the last few weeks to change the Tories mind on this? What about Cameron's 4 main arguments (canards) from the Standard article:

1) PR is a move to faceless politics where all too often you find yourself voting for a party, not a person.

2) It gives smaller parties an unfair and disproportionate boost.

3) It leads to weak and unstable administrations.

4) It inevitably creates coalitions that degenerate into back-room deals.

It seems to me that if the Tories really believe Cameron's arguments then 2, 3 and 4 would still apply here to the upper chamber. Surely they would want FPTP to deliver a strong and stable revising chamber with no chance of small parties getting in and no need for deals in "smoke filled rooms" as they would doubtless characterise it (see my above linked post for my ripostes to these canards by the way).

What is most astonishing though is to discover that the Tories are after all aware that a system of PR exists that does not require party lists (STV). Judging by Cameron's comments where he said:

PR comes in many forms but more often than not you find yourself voting for a party rather than just one person.

I thought they were not aware if its existence.

OK, enough with the sarcasm already. What's happening here is that the Tories favour FPTP for the House of Commons because it suits them and will likely give them a decent sized majority on a minority of the vote when they are on or above 40% (as they are in polls at the moment). They also support proportional systems in the Scotland Parliament (where it has led to a Tory resurgence that would never have happened under FPTP) and the Welsh Assembly. It so happens that in those parliaments PR favours them so they support it.

An FPTP system would probably favour them in the second chamber as well but they know full well that to try and introduce a system that effectively gerrymanders things in their favour would not wash for any reform so they are talking up PR for the second chamber but trying to pretend that the fairness it brings is unneccessary for the House of Commons.

The system used in the House of Commons is an accident of history. If it was being created now, there is no way the system used would be as it is now with all its unfairness and inherent advantages for the major parties. The Tories (and Labour) can only get away with advocating it because it is the incumbent system, and boy do they advocate it.

The thing to remember, and it is starkly underlined here, is the Conservatives will advocate whatever system is most politically expedient for them. So for the House of Commons it is FPTP (they get a decent majority on a minority of the vote in a good year). For Scotland and Wales it is a form of PR (helps them maintain a foothold in those parliaments that they would likely not get under FPTP due to their unpopularity there). For the Second Chamber it is a form of PR (that under other circumstances they pretend does not exist) because they know they will not get away with advocating an antiquated system.

Remember all of this the next time you read an Op Ed piece from David Cameron earnestly trying to persuade us of the merits of the FPTP system for the House of Commons. They only favour it when it suits them and they can get away with it.

There is no principle here, only political expediency of the most cynical and hypocritical kind.

LDV readers vote for AV over FPTP!?

Acronyms!

A surprising result from the Lib Dem Voice poll on whether we should back Alternative Vote over First Past the Post (assuming it was to be on offer). Apparently 51% (out of 345 votes overall) think that we should.

As I have blogged about before I want Single Transferable Vote. I was dubious about Alternative Vote Plus (AV+) as are a number of other Lib Dem bloggers (e.g. here and here) but at least that would be more closely proportional than FPTP. There's no such guarantee with AV. It may even end up being less proportional than FPTP. It can exagerate landslides if the second placed party is unpopular. It would have given Labour an even bigger majority in 1997 for example.

So why would LDV readers support it? Here are a few theories:

1) They think that it would be a "step in the right direction". AV does at least have the distinction of ensuring candidates get 50% of the vote in their seat after all the transfers are made. And it gets the electorate used to listing preferences. The reasoning would be that after this move, it would make campaigning for a further move to STV easier. I think this is completely wrong. The electorate would not stand for further changes after a change to AV for a very long time probably decades. It would actually set back the cause of those of us who want a proportional system.

2) Perhaps lots those who responded are not Lib Dems. This would make sense as I am sure LDV is much more widely read than just the party membership and there was no restriction on who could vote. It would be interesting to see what the results of a similar poll that was only open to party members (as LDV have the ability to do I think) would be.

3) Lots of Lib Dems favour a system that would likely work against the party's interests. Whilst I like to think that we Lib Dems are not as brazenly partisan as other parties but I very much doubt they would actively vote to make the situation any worse for us!

4) Perhaps not all respondents understood the distinction between AV, AV+, STV etc. It can get very confusing and sometimes politicians deliberately obfuscate by for example saying AV when they mean AV+.

Or maybe there are other reasons. What do you think?

MPs cannot be allowed to prevent electoral reform

I am a big fan of This Week. I always try and watch it and have generally been very impressed with Michael Portillo in the last few years. He seems to have his finger on the pulse of most political issues. That's why I listened with particular interest last night when the discussion was about electoral reform.

Portillo seems to be under the rather odd impression that anything except the First Past the Post system is crazy. He was arguing that the only reason the BNP got MEPs was because of the "crazy" PR system. Andrew Neil tried to press upon him that it might be the fact that almost a million people voted for them but he was having none of it.

I am very disappointed with how unwilling the political old guard are to engage with the idea that FPTP might not be fit for purpose. We are a much more pluralistic country now than we were 50 years ago and our electoral system just does not reflect that.

Another thing that really hit home with me was when both Portillo and Diane Abbott talked about the political reality of getting a referendum on electoral reform through the House of Commons. They are both clearly of the view that irrespective of whatever Gordon Brown or Alan Johnson might wish to happen, many Labour MPs and virtually all Tory MPs would be against such an idea, thus they would not even allow a referendum on it.

This has had me thinking even more deeply about this issue. I have heard people say what I am about to say before but the whole expenses debacle brings it home even more clearly.

MPs as a group cannot be trusted to act in the best interests of democracy or of the country when it comes to the system that is used to elect them. They have too much vested interest in the existing system. Whatever they might say, they have already proved themselves incapable of doing what is right for the country/taxpayers with the expenses debacle. They were in charge of their own system of claims and remuneration and it is now abundantly clear that it was stacked massively in favour of them being able to claim almost anything they liked to their own personal advantage. They came up with all sorts of arguments against changing the system for years and years, tried to cover up the truth of what was going on and the only reason things are now changing is because all the information got out into the public domain. Now all political leaders and virtually all MPs accept it has to change and they could not, after all be trusted.

Exactly the same situation applies to the electoral system for the House of Commons. the First Past the Post system is completely unfair. It allows governments to be formed with 55% of the seats on 35% of the vote. It disenfranchises millions of people across the country. In fact the only people who really count at election time are the 100,000 or so swing voters in the marginal constituencies. I am afraid that having listened to the arguments from the MPs who are opponents of electoral reform they are mostly spurious and designed to fit into neat soundbites that can be used to shoot down the arguments of reformers without properly engaging with the issues.

What is missing from the debate on electoral reform is the sort of huge spasm of revulsion that the expenses scandal has caused. That is why the parallels between the two situations need to be highlighted at every opportunity.

Why should we take MPs at their word that FPTP is the right system when it massively favours many of them and effectively gives them tenure for life? They are in complete control of the terms and conditions of their own employment. They have already proved that they cannot be trusted when it comes to deciding these sorts of terms.

The solution is for a citizens convention populated by ordinary people chosen in the same way as juries are chosen (but with more than 12 members) who are given the time and space to look at all the different systems and come to a conclusion about which is the best one to change to. This can then be put to the country in a referendum. I favour Single Transferable Vote but I am happy to go with whatever the convention chooses.

I repeat, we should not trust MPs as a group to do what is right for the country on this issue. They are only human and they have too much of a vested interest in the current system. the time has come for this to change.