Kieran Lawrence looks at autonomous weapons and the effect they could have on modern warfare
Continuing a series on world leaders, Miles Deverson takes a look at Angela Merkel
Ben Bland examines the fallout from the Iowa caucuses and looks forward to the New Hampshire primaries.
In the first of a series on world leaders, Miles Deverson takes a look at Nicholas Sarkozy
As the founder of the Electoral Reform Society on campus, I am very passionate about the way we choose our leaders. This pursuit of a better electoral system is often looked upon as dull and devoid of political importance, even by hardened political analysts. Many look at arguments over tuition fees, public service cuts and the welfare state and will tell you that these are the arguments that will affect most people in this country, not the system under which our votes are counted. Yet this is a view which I feel is short-sighted; electoral systems are so closely linked to quality of governance that it is the precursor for so many of the debates raging in the UK today.
Let me explain my argument further: by giving people greater control over who is elected to Parliament, you get better governance. Yet the ‘safe seats’ created by First Past the Post take that control away from people. Take the York Central constituency: in 2010 Hugh Bailey got 40% of the vote and 6,500 more votes than his nearest challenger, Conservative Sue Wade-Weeks. There would need to be a massive 7% swing from Labour to the Conservatives in order for the Tories to take the seat, the equivalent of the Conservatives getting more than 40% of the vote nationally and Labour dropping to just 20% - it ain’t gunna happen. Now whilst Hugh Bailey wasn’t embroiled in the expenses scandal, MPs in safe seats were twice as likely to abuse the expenses system as those in marginal seats. This is quite a mathematical argument but the point stands quite clear, where MPs have greater electoral pressure on them and it is easier for people to change their elected representative, you get better and more responsible governance.
Obviously there are exceptions to this rule, in both marginal and safe seats, but I think it highlights a need for a change. A change to a system which returns power to the people is therefore in my eyes absolutely necessary. The upcoming referendum on the Alternative Vote system (or AV for short) provides that opportunity. AV is a small change which will make a big difference. Instead of placing a cross, you order candidates 1, 2, 3 in order of preference. What this means in practice is that MPs have to work harder for every vote – it simply isn’t good enough to turn up at the election and rely on your core vote, they will have to get the support from people of other political persuasions. They’ll have to work harder and provide better governance in order to get re-elected.
Another factor is that your vote will count for more. At the last General Election, 15.7 million people voted for a candidate who didn’t win in their area. Therefore their vote had no influence whatsoever on the result. An additional 5.5 million people voted for a candidate who didn’t need their vote in order to win. In all, more than 21 million people (out of an electorate of 30 million) did not influence the result of the General Election. Whilst AV won’t solve this problem, it will make your vote mean more. Less people will see their vote counting for nothing as their second and third preferences can make a real difference to the result.
There have been spurious arguments made against AV by its detractors. The most notable, and disturbing was the advert put in the Birmingham Mail last week by the ‘No to AV’ campaign which pictured an ill baby with the strap line “She needs a new cardiac facility not an alternative vote system” with a tag line suggesting that changing the voting system would cost the country £250 million. Not only was this figure untrue, the treasury has affirmed the cost of the next election is fixed at £120 million – regardless of whether it is run using the Alternative Vote or First Past the Post, but more worrying was the implicit, fictional, suggestion that voting ‘no’ would lead to a new cardiac facility in Birmingham where it is desperately needed.
We also have seen on The Yorker the argument that AV takes the passion out of politics, as ranking candidates is no definitive choice. I disagree with the use of the word passion. Adversarial, ‘Punch-and-Judy’ politics is one of the things which most turns people off from their representatives. Negative campaigning and leaflets telling you that you shouldn’t vote for what you believe and vote tactically instead decrease voter interest and vote participation. By introducing AV, MPs can’t just stick to negative attacks on their opponents, because they need 2nd preferences from their opponent’s supporters. I truly believe that the dawn of new politics won’t arise by voting for one party or another at a General Election, but by supporting AV.
Britain is famed for being the birthplace of democracy – but who wants to spend their whole live in the delivery room. British politics needs to keep up with the changes we’ve seen in our politics over the last 170 years. That’s why I believe that if you’re passionate about politics, you have to support AV and why I would urge you to vote ‘Yes’ in the upcoming referendum.
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