Last week I pointed out that AV is being used for both the Labour leadership contest and for the election of select committee chairs in the Commons, which could make for the fun sight of Labour MPs who have happily used it in both those contests then turning round and explaining how they think it’s really a terrible system for the public to use.
What I missed then (but now realise) is that the election for the Commons Deputy Speakers will also see two features in use because MPs have adopted them but which I suspect a fair few MPs will happily argue shouldn’t be used in elections that the public get to vote in. These two are STV (the Deputy Speakers are elected in one contest, so it’s like a multi-member STV constituency) and also gender balance (of the three at least one must be male and at least one must be female).
Remarkable really what voting arrangements some MPs will back – as long as it’s not for elections the public get to vote in 🙂
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3 Comments
I think your charge of hypocrisy does not really work.
Labour now support AV. Their objection to STV – in my opinion not strong enough to oppose it – is that it needs very big constituencies and the MPs are not locally elected anymore. However when you are organising elections where geography does not matter, then that reason for opposing STV no longer applies.
Well this does seem to flatten the argument that alternative voting systems are all too complicated, which is often based on “I can’t understand it, so how could the public?”. They obviously can understand it, maybe they think that they are smarter than the public, it would be fun to see them trying to convince the public to believe that in a referendum.
“Labour now support AV…”
The Labour Party supports a referrendum on AV, but there are many within it that are bitterly opposed to any form of electoral reform and would not support the Yes campaign. Tom Harris, for example, interprets the Labour manifesto as binding him to supporting the referrendum, but leaving him free to campaign against any change.