Electoral reform is not the cure to Britain’s political ills - Yorkshire Post Letters
From: Roger Backhouse, Orchard Road, Upper Poppleton, York.
Calls to end the present electoral system appear regularly in The Yorkshire Post and Sean Hagan (July 23) is the latest to advocate replacing ‘First Past the Post’ .
It isn't simple. If replacing First Past the Post, please note that the many varieties of so-called proportional representation systems all produce different electoral results.
The 1991 Labour Party Plant Report into electoral reform analysed anomalies. For example the Single Transferable Vote system in a three member constituency could lead to the election of one member from each of Conservative, Labour and Liberal parties despite the first preference votes being 4,000 Conservative, 2,500 Labour and just 1,000 Liberal.
A simple list system giving party seats in proportion to the votes cast is used in Israel for the Knesset. It appears ultra democratic but in practice multi-party coalitions are needed and small parties then exert undue influence on the government so formed.
Currently Bezaleh Smotrich leads a party representing extreme Israeli settlers currently driving Palestinians from their homes. He is under sanctions from the UK government. With just six out of 120 seats, his party exerts undue influence on the government, prolonging the war in Gaza and ethnic cleansing elsewhere.
Allowing minority parties to hold a government to ransom is surely not what democracy is for. A former MP with links to the Israeli Labour Party once told me most Israelis hate their electoral system for this reason.
When Labour were out of office between 1979 and 1997, the party had a strong electoral reform campaign group. Strangely, when elected in 1997 with a large majority, interest in electoral reform vanished.
Currently the Lib Dems, Reform and Greens are the most vocal supporters of electoral reform. I predict that if Reform wins a majority of seats in the next Parliament, as they could, their interest in electoral reform will fade equally rapidly.
Should electoral reform enthusiasts wish to look further into its merits and drawbacks I recommend reading Peter Hain's book Proportional misrepresentation if it can be obtained.
Replacing the present electoral system may sound fair but disillusion with politics goes far deeper than its systems. No-one should delude themselves that it will be a cure for Britain's political ills.