The government should be arguing for voting reform because it is right, not because it is expedient

By Alex Smith / @alexsmith1982

So the Government is considering a referendum on the voting system to occur at the same time as the next general election. It’s a strategy the party believes will “expose David Cameron as a roadblock to sweeping constititutional reform” and cabinet sources are saying such a debate would “paint Cameron as a leader opposed to a wide-ranging reform” and one who would “actively campaign against change”.

Of course, all of that is true. David Cameron is a supporter of the First Past The Post status quo because it has largely sustained powerful majorities – more often than not Conservative majorities – over the last century and more. Fighting to retain that system in the context of an election campaign would strongly negate the Conservatives’ contradictory “now for change” mantra.

But whatever the political expediency of Labour’s apparent new strategy for the general election campaign, the argument for voting reform would surely be better received if it were presented from the off as the best way to fix our damaged democracy for the better, rather than merely as a way to beat the Conservatives.

Like the 50p top rate of tax, this has been wielded after years of promise only when it has become politically advantageous, rather than because of a firm conviction that it is right.

To gain early traction and support for reform of the voting system – or even for a referendum bill – the government should be exploring the positive arguments for what such a fundamental change might realistically achieve and how it might renew our democracy.

In his article in the Observer, Neal Lawson does some of the framing that the government has so far been too tentative to do. Although he, too, concentrates too much on the political advantages of holding this debate now, he also says:

“FPTP is the electoral system of a bygone age, the land that time forgot when two tribes did battle for virtually every vote in the country…In 1951, Labour and the Tories won 97% of all votes cast. By 2005, they got only 67% between them. The system has splintered and fractured. The world has moved on.”

Lawson continues:

“Democracy is only meaningful if it allows competing visions of the good society to do battle. FPTP doesn’t allow any such competition as the main parties huddle on the centre ground. Only a proportional voting system breaks all this up. And through it, democracy becomes an end in itself; valued not because it delivers state power, but because it empowers all of us to take back control over our lives. We can’t stop climate change on our own, the slide to greater inequality or rein in the power of financialised capitalism. We have to do it together.”

While such a fully proportional system is unlikely to be on the ballot paper of any forthcoming referendum, there are a number of credible alternatives for voting reform that require serious discussion. But we are only at the beginning of the debate; no system is perfect and all has as many opponents as it has advocates.

For my part, the most appropriate system for modern British democracy is the AV+.

The top up element ensures that voices are heard more proportionally than they are currently, while the connection between voters and their constiuency MPs is retained. It also ensures that MPs are elected on a majority of the vote through first and second preferences, while no vote is wasted. Meanwhile, voters’ choices are duly heard and applied, and the AV+ facilitates a plurality of voices that would surely make Parliament more represenative and more of a hotbed for debate.

If Labour is going to make the case for voting reform – and I believe it should – it should not be because it is a more plausible route to election victory, but because it is the right thing to do.