The demands for electoral reform continue apace even if the Take back Parliament campaign isn’t really a grass roots campaign. Apart from the groups acknowledge as being behind it on the website a quick whois lookup shows the campaign is being handled by Blue state digitial which must be costing someone a pretty penny. But that aside a campaign for electoral reform is a good thing, though purely electoral reform without more general parliamentary reform is going to leave things really quite messy. As I muttered earlier I’m against any system (such as the currently mooted AV) which either breaks the constituency link or makes it more difficult for small parties or independent candidates to win seats. Due to the horror of the BNP maybe getting a few seats under some hypothetical PR system some people have proposed that the thresh hold to getting seats be set above the level they currently achieve (so about 10%) which would do in almost all new entrants to the political system just due to finance alone – starting in just one place wouldn’t really be a viable option anymore.

Despite all the campaigning what I can’t seem to find anywhere is an explanation of just what counts as “fair votes”, though someone did suggest it was “when the one you are cheering for wins“. I’m not actually sure which system will allow for everyone’s vote to count any more than it does now – other than the electorate as a whole suddenly waking up and not voting tribally. As I don’t expect that to happen any time soon I think I’d rather leave things as they are, unless we can have a very thorough and open debate about the matter -with all the pro’s and con’s of the various systems explained after which a referendum can happen and the electorate will vote as tribally as ever for the system that most favours their party. Which in almost every case will mean goodbye small parties and independents. As an aside, what method do you use to choose a new method of voting, as inherent in the question is the assumption that the current method is broken so it would be perverse to use the broken method to choose the new method.

In the meantime all the various parliamentary reforms are at least uniting both labour and conservative bloggers in condemning the new “55% to dissolve parliament” rule that the ConDem coalition seems to be terribly eager to push through. As blogged elsewhere and vaguely commented upon myself it seems that without asking the country the ConDems are planning to fix the term of parliament at the maximum allowed of 5 years – rather than the more normal 4, and whilst leaving the vote of no confidence the same same introduce the 55% rule for actually changing our Parliament. So that’ll be 5 years of musical chairs as can you really see 55% of our honourable representatives ever voting to have to try to get re-elected again earlier than they have to? After all why risk all those lovely allowances and final pensions when with enough no-confidence votes you may get a chance to get a cushy ministers job without any danger of losing your seat.

What currently worries me most is that the public campaigns for “reform” will allow the new boys during their “can get away with more” phase, to push through some very unwelcome parliamentary reform and then “graciously” give in to public opinion and give us a choice between the status quo or some new system which makes the grip of the incumbents on the levers of power even stronger and harder to challenge. Campaigning for reform is a good thing(tm) and I’m quite heartened by people increasing interest in what our Parliament is doing and how it operates, but before throwing away hundreds of years of history it would be nice if someone stopped to thing about how the whole mess hangs together and then asked the public at large just how we’d like things to change. Rather than the far more likely, I fear, option of a headlong rush to “do something” pushing in an even less representative system that we’re then stuck with for several more generations. Oh and if they could spare some time from “looking” at electoral/parliamentary reform to sort out that rather huge deficit that none of them really seem to want to talk about – well that’d be nice.

Bookmark to: