Tag Archives: electoral reform

Sara Bedford

Smaller Commons ‘would hit Lib Dems’

By Sara Bedford | Thu 12th August 2010 - 6:45 pm

The Lib Dems would have been proportionally the biggest losers if proposed changes to equalise constituency size had been implemented at the last election, according to research carried out by independent organisation Democratic Audit for BBC Newsnight.

The report estimates that the party would have lost 12% of its seats – or 7 out of 57. Labour would have lost 25 of 258 (10%), and the Conservatives just 13 of 307 (4%). The research did not make any assessment of the effect of a change in the voting system to AV, but instead assumed the use of FPTP.

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Posted in News | 33 Comments
Nick Lane

Opinion: The Labour Party hold the key to electoral reform

By Nick Lane | Thu 5th August 2010 - 1:20 pm

At the 1997 General Election, Labour swept to power with a mandate to reform British politics. Tony Blair’s cooperation with Paddy Ashdown’s Liberal Democrats from 1995 to 1997 centred around a progressive agreement to introduce a proportional voting system for election to the House of Commons. Unfortunately for advocates of electoral reform and for progressives more widely, the resulting Labour landslide appeared to remove any thoughts this once great reforming party had to lay claim to the 21st Century progressive mantle. Labour could have held (and won easily) a referendum to introduce PR, but they didn’t.

Over a …

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Posted in Op-eds | 46 Comments
Tim Farron MP

Tim Farron MP writes … Labour’s staggering hypocrisy on the Alternative Vote

By Tim Farron MP | Mon 2nd August 2010 - 1:45 pm

The decision by what remains of the Labour high command to vote against legislation bringing a referendum on the Alternative Vote is one of the most hypocritical and staggeringly self-interested political decisions in recent years.

After 13 years of promising reform, in which precious little materialised, each and every Labour MP campaigned at this election on the promise of a referendum on AV. That referendum has now been proposed by the Coalition Government and a Bill to make it happen put forward, yet Labour’s shadow cabinet has now decided to oppose the legislation.

What an astonishing decision.

It is even more astonishing given …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged and | 66 Comments
NewsHound

LibLink: the worst kind of gerrymandering in the world?

By NewsHound | Thu 29th July 2010 - 11:03 am

Writing in the Guardian, Martin Kettle isn’t wholly impressed with Labour’s approach to reform.

It tells you something about today’s Labour party that it is no longer willing to go into the parliamentary lobbies in September to advance the equality of representation for which the Chartists campaigned. Instead it will enter the lobbies with the opposite goals. It aims to block a reform that would equalise parliamentary constituencies. And it seeks to protect an unequal status quo of over-empowered smaller seats of which Labour is the main beneficiary. It will do this, moreover, in the

…

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Posted in LibLink | 35 Comments
The Voice

Hughes attacks Labour’s “naked opportunism” in opposing vote reform bill

By The Voice | Wed 28th July 2010 - 4:10 pm

Lib Dem deputy leader Simon Hughes has not minced his words in decrying Labour’s decision to vote against the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill, which would allow a referendum on electoral reform:

This is staggering hypocrisy from Labour. Labour’s shadow cabinet decision is not about principle, it is about naked opportunism. With most of their leadership contenders claiming to back AV for a fairer voting system, it is astonishing they now wish to block the legislation to make that happen.

“Each and every Labour MP campaigned on a manifesto committing to a referendum. Now they have the opportunity to make

…

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Posted in News | Also tagged and | 76 Comments
Ben Stephenson

Opinion: Why are we campaigning for AV?

By Ben Stephenson | Sun 25th July 2010 - 10:25 am

We have never really been able to call the UK a true democracy. We have an unelected second chamber, made up of Lords Spiritual (Bishops), Lords Temporal (those granted hereditary peerages and selected by unelected party leaders) and Lords Surprising (Messrs Sugar and Prescott). The electorate in this country is allowed to vote for a change in government, so far, only at times that suit the government of the day and we have no codified constitution that outlines, irrevocably, a list of rights and freedoms.

The most obvious and fundamental issue with our democracy, however, is obviously the extent to which …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged | 48 Comments
Mark Pack

10 lessons for winning an AV referendum

By Mark Pack | Wed 7th July 2010 - 6:28 pm

An excellent post from Neil Stockley:

Holding a public vote on changing the voting system is a radical step for the UK. But it has been done before. In 1993, my home country, New Zealand held the second of two referendums to decide how to elect MPs. An established Westminster democracy voted by a 54:46 per cent margin to get rid of first past the post (FPTP) voting and put in its place the German-style mixed member proportional (MMP) system…

Of course, the UK in 2011 will not be New Zealand in 1993 and, for that matter, AV is not a proportional voting system. But I

…

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Posted in News | Also tagged , and | 9 Comments
Mark Pack

The AV referendum: some initial public opinion findings

By Mark Pack | Wed 7th July 2010 - 4:25 pm

From YouGov comes the news:

1) The principle of having a referendum on AV is popular with the support of 69% of the public.

2) Latest voting intentions in the AV referendum are 45% in support of AV, 32% in support of FPTP. 6% would not vote and 17% don’t know how they would vote.

3) However, support for AV is soft. We experimented by presenting people with six arguments in favour of AV, and six arguments against AV and then asking how they would vote in a referendum. This resulted in a significant drop in support for AV to 33% and a

…

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Posted in News | Also tagged and | 15 Comments
Stephen Tall

Should our MPs give Clegg more support in the Commons?

By Stephen Tall | Tue 6th July 2010 - 10:20 am

Yesterday Nick Clegg stood up as Deputy Prime Minister in the House of Commons and announced there would be a referendum to reform the voting system within the next year.

If I’d suggested just a few weeks ago that I would be able to type that sentence with a straight face I imagine most folk would think I’d lost any grasp on reality. Yet it’s what happened.

True, the route to Nick becoming Deputy Prime Minister is not proving easy: coalition with the Tories is forcing uncomfortable compromises on the Lib Dems. And true, the alternative vote is not a proportional …

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Posted in Op-eds and Parliament | Also tagged , , and | 34 Comments
Helen Duffett

Nick Clegg’s statement on political and constitutional reform

By Helen Duffett | Mon 5th July 2010 - 4:28 pm

Nick Clegg has just made a statement in the House of Commons outlining the Government’s proposals for political and constitutional reform, including plans for a referendum on the use of the Alternative Vote system in the UK.

The statement included the announcement of two important dates: the date for the AV Referendum (in the Bill to be introduced before the Summer recess) is intended for 5 May 2011 and the next General Election on 7 May 2015.

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Posted in News and Parliament | Also tagged , and | 22 Comments
NewsHound

LibLink: Edward McMillan-Scott – AV is not the only vote

By NewsHound | Mon 5th July 2010 - 3:45 pm

Over at The Guardian’s Comment is Free website, former Conservative, now Liberal Democrat, MEP Edward McMillan-Scott argues there should be a third option in the coming referendum on electoral reform – the single transferable vote. Here’s an excerpt:

I understand that the Electoral Reform Society and senior Liberal Democrats have concluded that the alternative vote option presented in the coalition agreement is the best that can be achieved at this stage and that any discussion on the issue will cloud the debate. …

Single party advantage has no part to play in what amounts to a change of constitutional significance. Westminster has

…

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Posted in LibLink | Also tagged , and | 7 Comments
Stephen Tall

David Miliband backs Alternative Vote reform, lays down gauntlet to Cameron

By Stephen Tall | Fri 2nd July 2010 - 9:40 am

With Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg set to announce 5th May, 2011, as the date of the referendum on electoral reform, David Miliband – currently the leading contender to become the next Labour leader – was this morning asked the direct question whether he would back the move to the Alternative Vote. His answer was unequivocal: yes, and he would be infavour of Labour members campaigning for it during the referendum campaign:

I think that it’s important that we move to a system where every Member of Parliament has at least 50 per cent of the vote of their constituents.”

It’s …

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Posted in News | Also tagged , , and | 5 Comments
Mark Pack

Timing the AV referendum

By Mark Pack | Tue 15th June 2010 - 9:20 am

When should the Government’s promised referendum on AV be held? That’s the question causing a fair amount of debate at the heart of the coalition.

From the simple good governance point of view, the answer is as soon as possible – because the sooner it is held, the more time there will be if AV is passed to get the law and then the administration right in good time ahead of the next general election. Late changes to election rules have been the bane of the electoral system far too often in the last decade.

The second, and more contentious, argument is …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , and | 40 Comments
Ian Swales

Ian Swales MP’s maiden speech

By Ian Swales | Sun 13th June 2010 - 3:58 pm

This is the last of four maiden speeches presented here this weekend for the interest and comments of our readers.

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for calling me to make my first speech to the House. I congratulate all those who have also made their first speeches today. I am very struck, and a bit awestruck, by the erudition that they have all displayed. As the Member for Redcar, I am proud to be the first Liberal to represent the area since 1923 and also very pleased to hear this afternoon’s debate about potential voting system changes, which might do …

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Posted in News | Also tagged , , , , , and | 4 Comments
Paul Walter

PMQs: Hattie tries to throw a “stinger” in front of voting reform

By Paul Walter | Wed 9th June 2010 - 4:20 pm

Prime Minister’s Questions is definitely becoming more subdued these days. The bellowing and ya-boo atmosphere has reduced by about 80% since the election. The Cumbrian shootings have dominated both sessions so far, which has added to the quietish feeling.

Harriet Harman has suddenly developed an interest in the electoral roll and the fact that “3.5 million people” who could be on it, aren’t. Fascinating. She seems to have suddenly come up with this as a reason to throw a sort of police “stinger” in front of voting reform – or at least constituency boundary re-drawing. She seems to have forgotten that her party was in power for thirteen years. Why didn’t they do something about electoral registration then? And, as David Cameron retorted, the last election was fought on recently redrawn boundaries anyway – which rather kiboshed Hattie’s argument.

Harman then had a go about CCTV. David Cameron went off on one, ending up about rights to enter people’s houses. He did make some good points about civil liberties during which Nick Clegg nodded very strongly. Harman raised an estate on her patch where they want CCTV coverage. Cameron said it was all about proportionality. If only he could say that about voting reform.

Good joke from Cameron:

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Posted in PMQs | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , and | 42 Comments
Mark Pack

The coalition’s electoral reform plans for the Commons

By Mark Pack | Mon 7th June 2010 - 1:39 pm

As today’s Evening Standard reports, the government is planning to put both an AV referendum and reducing the number of MPs in the same Parliamentary bill, thereby making it harder for any possible rebels to unpick this part of the coalition agreement compromise.

For many the Conservatives, reducing the number of MPs and accompanying that with a speeded up boundary review which is completed before 2015 is an important consolation for the risk (as they see it) of the voting system being changed. That’s because on many estimates the net effect on the proportion of Conservative MPs of the boundary …

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Posted in News | Also tagged | 31 Comments
Helen Duffett

The “menu” for political reform – Nick Clegg to outline progress tomorrow

By Helen Duffett | Sun 6th June 2010 - 4:15 pm

I blogged last week about the new set of responsibilities transferred to the Deputy Prime Minister from the Secretary of State for Justice.

It’s a formidable to-do list – principally concerning political and constitutional reform – and tomorrow Nick Clegg will reveal the progress made so far.

Speaking at the Hay Festival in Mid Wales, Mr Clegg said he would detail some of the early developments in his “menu” to change the political system.

He told the audience: “I will be making some announcements tomorrow in the House of Commons about some early progress on the big building blocks in the

…

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Posted in News | Also tagged and | 5 Comments
Mark Pack

The coalition agreement: political reform

By Mark Pack | Thu 3rd June 2010 - 12:25 pm

Welcome to the sixteenth in a series of posts going through the full coalition agreement section by section. You can read the full coalition document here.

The political reform section of the coalition document is the second longest in the whole agreement, beaten for length only by the NHS section. By now the headlines from this section are very familiar:

  • Fixed-term Parliaments
  • A referendum on the alternative vote
  • The ability for voters to force an MP to face a special by-election if they have been found guilty of serious wrongdoing (“recall”)
  • A “wholly or mainly” elected House of Lords, using proportional representation
  • Any petition that gets

…

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Posted in News | Also tagged , , , and | 12 Comments
Mark Pack

Good luck to John Denham

By Mark Pack | Sun 23rd May 2010 - 3:08 pm

I’ve only heard John Denham speak in person once, but the time I did (earlier this month) it was immediately clear why he’s so often been rated by others as one of the better and more thoughtful Labour MPs.

So it’s good to see that he has become the new chair of Labour Campaign for Electoral Reform saying,

An AV referendum is on the agenda because of the work Labour electoral reformers have done. We have to make sure the Labour Party maintains its commitment to the AV referendum and to success in the referendum if and when it comes.

I much prefer …

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Posted in News | Also tagged , and | 2 Comments
Kev O'Connor

Opinion: Let’s switch the P-word

By Kev O'Connor | Sat 22nd May 2010 - 10:20 am

As we start to prepare for a referendum on the Alternative Vote, two words are bothering me. They are Proportional Representation. These words massively simplify the possibilities of electoral reform and unfortunately cloud the issue.

Some talk about ‘Electoral Reform’, but this is far to vague for a referendum and I believe we need a new mantra. Not PR or ER, but PV. Preferential Voting.

This may sound like a tedious matter of semantics, but when it comes to elections and referenda, the structure of your rhetoric will determine the nature of the debate, and the eventual outcome. Switching the ‘P-word’ could …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged | 39 Comments
Simon Dodd

Opinion: And now for the next steps

By Simon Dodd | Thu 20th May 2010 - 11:20 am

It still seems strange to think of the Liberal Democrat party being part of the Government with Liberal Democrats sitting in the Cabinet. The announcement of the coalition with the Conservative party was a bitter sweet moment – at last, we were entering Government, but we were doing so with a party we have long fought against.

It is a fantastic achievement to see long cherished Liberal Democrat policies being part of the Government’s legislative programme. There is disappointment though that other policies are not part of that programme. We must ensure that we continue to fight for these aims, …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged | 11 Comments
Helen Duffett

A power revolution: Nick Clegg’s “New Politics” speech in full

By Helen Duffett | Wed 19th May 2010 - 2:21 pm

Revolutionary Nick Clegg graffiti

Today Nick Clegg made a speech setting out the Government’s plans for political reform, at the City & Islington College Centre for Business, Arts and Technology.

As Iain wrote this morning, the media are viewing Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats as revolutionaries, and drawing parallels with the Reform Act 1832.

Nick’s speech expands on three more R’s: repealing infringements on freedom, reforming politics and redistributing power.

Here it is in full:

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Posted in News | Also tagged and | 25 Comments
Marianne Ibbotson

Opinion: Why the Electoral Reform Society are shooting themselves in the foot

By Marianne Ibbotson | Mon 17th May 2010 - 2:20 pm

Recently, the Electoral Reform Society has released a study claiming to show how the recent election would have gone under the Alternative Vote (and the Single Transferable Vote). This study has been picked up by The Guardian, The Telegraph and the BBC, who all seem to be presenting the results as scientific fact. However, there are massive flaws in this study, which apart from making it plain bad “science”, very possibly end up sabotaging the Electoral Reform Society’s efforts to campaign for Proportional Representation.

The first problem with the study is its assumption that how people voted under …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged | 41 Comments
Charlie Garnett

Opinion: Michael Gove is a banana

By Charlie Garnett | Wed 5th May 2010 - 5:11 pm

Michael Gove is a banana. I’m not being rude, he confessed as much this morning on Radio 4: “If that’s democracy then I am a banana”. This in reference to the potential for a Lib-Lab coalition brought about by our archaic first past the post system.

Well, he might not be a banana, but I should imagine that he would rather argue that he is, indeed, a particularly yellow type of fruit, than admit that our democracy is a sham, perpetuated only by a broken electoral system. For the Conservatives to admit that FPTP should be changed would be a disaster. …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , and | 10 Comments
Anthony Tuffin

Opinion: Go for STV!

By Anthony Tuffin | Tue 4th May 2010 - 10:00 am

I liked it when a woman asked Gordon Brown in a radio phone-in whether he would support the Tories or Lib Dems if no party had an overall majority and Labour came third. However, to be realistic, the chances are with our ridiculous voting system that Labour will come at least second in seats even if it is third in votes. So, if no party has an overall majority, the Lib Dems are more likely than any other to hold the balance. How would they use it? Could they achieve PR by STV with it? …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged and | 20 Comments
Mark Pack

Majority of public say voting system is unfair

By Mark Pack | Thu 29th April 2010 - 9:20 am

So reports PoliticsHome:

A majority of the public believe that the current voting system is unfair, and that it is now time to start thinking seriously about alternatives, according to new PoliticsHome research.

57% of voters said that the current system of voting in the current system is either ‘very unfair’ or ‘generally unfair’, compared to 39% who think it is fair…

In a further indication that voters are dissatisfied with the current electoral system, voters believe that it is more important for an electoral system to reflect the proportion of votes cast nationwide than to produce a clear winner.

51% of

…

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Posted in Polls | 3 Comments
Alex Foster

What challenges might the future bring?

By Alex Foster | Fri 16th April 2010 - 10:40 pm

Challenge #1 – the electoral system

I nearly wrote this a few weeks ago, at which point it would have looked prophetic – writing it now just looks like I’m crowbarring it on the back of the rather sensational Yougov / Sun poll, news of which is breaking on Twitter.

Any number of people have taken the poll figures, Con: 33 (-4); Lab: 28 (-3); Lib Dem: 30 (+8), plugged them into UK Polling Report’s uniform swing calculator, and reeled, aghast at the revelation that our awful electoral system is so completely bust that it’s conceivable that the party …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , , , and | 4 Comments
Mark Pack

A graphical demonstration of just how broken our electoral system is

By Mark Pack | Thu 15th April 2010 - 10:20 am

I’ve blogged before about how if you are under 40, nearly half the seats in the country have never changed hands since you were born. That isn’t a system that gives real power to people’s votes. Nor is it a system in which MPs are held accountable for their behaviour.

Now this great map has been put together illustrating the point (click on map for larger version):

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Posted in News | Also tagged | 1 Comment
Stephen Tall

Forget hung parliaments. This is the general election result which is truly scary.

By Stephen Tall | Wed 31st March 2010 - 11:45 am

For the last month the opinion polls have been suggesting a hung parliament is the most likely outcome of the forthcoming general election. This has spooked some of those “pin-striped Scargills”, who would much rather their Tory friends were able to start slashing public spending without the restraining need to build consensus ahead of what will be inevitably painful cuts.

It’s an odd argument: in previous serious crises, whether war or depression, most people in Britan have recognised the need for petty tribal differences to be set to one side. After all, we are supposed to be all in this together.

But in the last day or so, there seems to have been a slight upswing in support for the Tories on the back of Alistair Darling’s third budget. It’s far too early to say yet that it’s a real trend, but still – it looks more likely this week than it did last week that the Tories will sneak back in with a slim majority.

And that’s the result that should worry everybody.

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Posted in Op-eds | 14 Comments
Stephen Tall

Is this the general election result that would usher in electoral reform?

By Stephen Tall | Sat 27th March 2010 - 8:45 am

So the polls are narrowing, the Tory lead tottering along within the range of 2-7%. As we all know, the Tories need to poll at around 40% to be sure of a working majority, or else they will have to significantly out-perform their national ratings in the key marginal battlegrounds.

And if they don’t succeed? Well, that will clearly be a disaster for David Cameron’s leadership which has been predicated on the fact that he’s the Tories’ talisman. A hung parliament with a minority Labour/Tory government, perhaps with the tacit consent of the Lib Dems, appears at this stage the …

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Posted in General Election and Op-eds | 9 Comments
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