I am giving Janice Small a guest spot on my blog to highlight the question of electoral reform, is it really an impossibility? Would it help 
Conservatives sweep to power? Would it encourage more people to vote?
Janice was motivated to write about it after meeting Keith Best, who is championing the cause as Chairman of Conservative Action for Electoral Reform and Director of Electoral Reform International Services. He is also ranked as one of the 100 most influential people in public services in the UK.
Other supporters have included Chris Patten, Michael Ancram and Douglas Hurd. They cite the February 1974 election when Conservatives won more votes than Labour - yet fewer seats, and Harold Wilson became prime minister.
Is proportional representation becoming increasingly desirable as we are faced with the possibility of a hung parliament? This would have been an interesting topic to debate at the Party conference. Here is what Janice says:
“Last week I met Keith Best, former Conservative MP for Anglesey, charity worker and lone campaigner for the Conservative Action for Electoral Reform.
“Keith’s campaign for electoral reform – to promote the single transferable vote (SVT) also known as proportional representation – will have to be examined by the main political parties as there is a possibility that there will be a hung parliament at the next election.
“With lower voter turn out and people feeling that their vote doesn’t count in a large Party majority area he thinks that STV will turn the tide against voter apathy.
“In the 2005 election in England we polled 35.7% of the vote gaining 194 seats and Labour gained 35.5% of the vote but gained 286 seats. Stark reading. However, Keith argues that when Conservatives claim to ‘Speak for England’ having narrowly “won” the election here, is only a debating point unless we concede the case for electoral reform.
“He explained that the Conservative Party has to re-examine the pro-Labour First-Past-the Post (FPTP) electoral system currently in use and that the Conservatives hoped that the new boundary changes would help them; it did in part but not enough to win an outright election. FPTP has weakened the Conservatives in the big cities – where we need to win seats. He cites the counties and cities where STV would gain us many seats. He looks at areas where we are under-represented in 16 areas from Avon to Merseyside to West Yorkshire where we currently have 38 seats. In the 2005 election under STV we would have gained 78-80 seats.
“Current thinking is – and Francis Maude is saying this – that at the next election if we gained an 11% majority and Labour and the Lib Dems gained a similar percentage of the vote, that there would be a hung parliament.
“We suffered even worse treatment in Scotland under FPTP where we polled nearly a sixth of the vote but had only one MP out of 59 to show for our pain. Interestingly, in the 2007 local elections Scotland will be using the SVT system. We should watch and analyse the outcome.
“There are many arguments against SVT but electoral reform would ameliorate some of the problems caused by differential turnout. Votes would count everywhere, the incentive to focus solely on the marginal seats would lessen and ‘safe’ areas would become competitive. Under both systems we would still need to propel ourselves into the 40%+ range of support but under STV Labour would also require this level of support in a reformed system. This is food for thought and not a policy suggestion.”
Is there any reason why the question of electoral reform can’t be thrown into the melting pot, even Jack Straw believes our voting system is antiquated and says any changes would be decided on a referendum, despite Lord Falconer’s dismissive comments. Or is the reality that it might benefit Lib Dems, or even UKIP, more than us?
