o first of all, does it really surprise anyone that the old political establishment does not want to change a system that has kept the two (and a half) main parties in power consistently since democracy began in the UK?
With my dwindling faith in political parties in general, I know Labour are only backing AV because the Conservatives aren’t and the Liberal Democrats probably only came up with the policy because it would give them half a chance at getting into power. But, nonetheless, AV is a good step towards proportional representation.
The argument that continually sways me towards AV is the simple maths that makes first-past-the-post (FPTP) unfair. Example:
Party A: 40% of the votes.
Party B: 30% of the votes.
Party C: 30% of the votes.
Party A wins because they have a ‘majority’ of the votes. But they don’t, do they? They have the more votes than anyone else, yes, but the majority of people (60%) do not want Party A in power.
Next, FPTP allows MPs to hold life-long jobs in safe seats because a party only needs to gain 1/3 of the vote to win, this led to the 2010 election being decided by 450,000 voters who happened to live in marginal constituencies.
A ‘yes’ vote for AV means that MPs will have to gain 50% of the vote to win, meaning MPs will have to work harder and will not be able to ignore the voters that they supposedly represent.
For those forced into tactical voting, the preference system is brilliant! It means that your vote for a minority party is not wasted.
So, on May 5th I will be voting ‘yes’ in the AV referendum because although it is not full proportional representation, it’s a step in the right direction, way from unfair traditions.
Also, local elections, yay.
Finally, in our constituency of Great Yarmouth, we have one more referendum, which has been terribly publicised by the way. It is on whether we should have a directly elected mayor or if the mayor should continue to be elected by the council. I have a problem with this.
The mayor has no real power. One of the arguments is the Mayor of London is directly elected, but he has lots more power especially over the Greater London Assembly. The GY Mayor is just a figure head who cuts ribbons to open stores and stops the council from arguing. The council is ultimately dictated to by central Government anyway through budgets etc, so the point in having a Conservative/Labour Mayor or council in general in basically pointless.
