14 Apr 2009

Cameron's electoral reform plans miss the point

Yesterday I was in David Camerons constituency looking at fritillaries, today I blog about his comments to cut by 10%, the number of MPs and an equalising of constituency sizes.

Photo: "No matter who you vote for all Government is wrong" graffiti on Capel Mill

Make My Vote Count are asking folk to write to him for real electoral reform. See their comments here with a link to Cameron's email address. Here is my email to Mr Cameron:

I completely agree with your comments that the way MPs are currently elected is unfair. Every vote should carry the same weight and every vote should count. However, leveling up the size of constituencies will not achieve this. There will still be marginal seats and safe seats under this system. At the moment there is a bias in Labour's favour, but the solution cannot surely be to retain the old unfairness but just nudge it back in favour of the Tories a bit to compensate? If you are serious about reform of the electoral system you would be looking at the sort of ideas advocated by the Electoral Reform Society and Make Votes Count. Their ideas would enfranchise everybody in the country with real reform using some form of proportional representation. I welcome your contribution to this debate but only in so far as it will allow us to open up the discussion to include potential reforms that will actually make everybody's vote count, not just benefit the Conservative party as your proposals would.

1 comment:

Malcolm Clark said...

Thanks Philip for featuring this story and for taking the time to write to Cameron.