It can sometimes surprise people that someone who is involved in politics can be agnostic about a big political issue, and the person who can be most surprised is the activist who finds himself in this position.
I could go on about capital punishment where sometimes I’m worried about the wrongly convicted, but then my mind changes when I confront anti death-penalty campaigners, or at least the non-religious ones, who really don’t seem to realise what anti-social scum most murderers are, and seem to think that any criminal is better than any victim. Or I could go on about climate warming where I’m not really agnostic but my views are so nuanced that I always make a hash of explaining them and sound agnostic.
The Alternative Vote is one of those questions. I am one of those very rare Tories who is persuaded of the case for Proportional Representation. I think coalition governments force politicians and voters to act like grown ups. and I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I also don’t accept the left wing fantasy that the left will always line up against the right. I can see the case for single member council wards where the councillor would be closer to his or her constituents and I don’t like the closed party lists that we have in the elections to the Belgian Empire’s parliament. Apart from that proportionality is good and its fine to have a few small parties in the tent.
But the Alternative Vote is such a bad system. It still means that almost half the constituency gets unrepresented, it is less proportional than first past the post and it is so cumbersome could be the death of the manual counting of votes – which may sound like a nerdish point but it is a vital safeguard for democracy as people (usually competing activists) can audit an election. On the other hand first past the post is an undemocratic practice and encourages a distance between the electors and the elect.
I really don’t know which way to go.
Related articles
- Alternative vote: Loved by no one | Editorial (guardian.co.uk)
- Stick it to the Eurocrats: vote yes in next year’s AV referendum (blogs.telegraph.co.uk)
- Labour’s dinosaurs shift the odds against electoral reform (newstatesman.com)
- The danger for Labour if it supports AV reform (liberalconspiracy.org)
- Alternative-vote referendum: I’m backing the no campaign | Margaret Beckett (guardian.co.uk)
- Tory and Green seeking PR option (bbc.co.uk)
