So the Nasty Party is back in power (I told you before, this blog is strictly neutral on political matters) with the help of the weaselly LibDems. I don't really blame the latter, they had little choice given that Lab/Lib was not viable without numerous fringe parties. I don't think there is much chance of it lasting once the economy heads south, but we will wait and see.
The biggest item of interest to me is the possibility of electoral reform, especially as the economy doesn't affect me so much. It has always seemed absurd that the country should have a dominant Govt supported by only about 35-40% of the voters (which means less than 25% of the electorate by the time the turnout has been accounted for). LDs are supposedly set on "proportional representation" but I haven't actually seen them specify this in detail (nor have I looked). Cons have offered a referendum on
Alternative Vote. I think this would be a very big improvement on the current system and think that the arguments against are very weak.
First, those in favour of the current system - usually referred to as "first past the post" which seems bizarre when in fact there is no post, and being first to any specific number of votes is not relevant. Wikipedia calls it "
Plurality" which is also a bit cryptic. The supporters seem to believe that what this country needs is "Strong Government", which they claim is best achieved by awarding over 50% of MPs to the party with the most votes, even if a large majority of the electorate opposes them. To those who say, look what FPTP has done for the UK over the past few decades, I reply, yes, by all means look at what it has done, and do you really think that it's worth defending? Lurching from a dominant right-wing govt to an dominant ultra-right-wing government every few years just means they spend most of their time trying to
undooutdo the damage that their predecessor did. But mostly, I object to its intrinsic unfairness, invitation to tactical voting and the implication that your vote doesn't matter unless you are in a marginal constituency.
Other possible criticisms of PR are that it may remove the local link from voter to MP, and also that it hands too much influence in the hands of fringe parties like the UKIP, BNP and Greens. On the former point, that is true of some approaches, but not AV. As for the latter, obviously
Stoat would like this, but not many others. However, all reasonable proposals like STV generally include a threshold that cuts off the loonies, so this seems like generalised scare tactics rather than a sensible argument. And it doesn't apply to AV in the first place.
I'm disappointed that the Electoral Reform Society has chosen to put such a misleading spin on AV, describing AV as "
very much like FPTP" and making a set of amazingly weak and duplicated criticisms in its list of "drawbacks". Yes, AV is not fully proportional, but since no-one advocates fully proportional systems in the first place, this seems somewhat of a straw man. And although there is a theoretical opportunity for tactical voting (as there is in all systems) this is hardly plausible in reality. As obvious and substantial benefits over FPTP, there are no "wasted votes" for minor parties, there is a strong incentive to vote honestly rather than tactically, and the outcome would in practice be substantially closer to proportional (as
this BBC page shows for the last election). Their preferred option of STV is not perfect either, but they
don't have any list of arguments against it at all!
It should not be overlooked that one large advantage of AV is that it would be simple to implement as a change to the current system. It does not require redrawing boundaries, zoning into regional groups, and (perhaps more importantly) nationally-controlled party lists of top-up MPs that some systems involve. The latter would be an easy target for the press and other critics to oppose.
