29 November 2015

To an MP on the need for Proportional Representation

Here's an email I recently sent to my MP. 

Dear Nick,
As you may know, on 2 December, the bill presented by Jonathan Reynolds, Labour and Co-operative MP for Stalybridge and Hyde, is to be submitted as a Private Member’s Bill to the House of Commons to change our voting system to a proportional one (Additional Member System http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/additional-member-system ). I am writing to you to ask you to support the Reynolds bill.It seems to me and many people that the last general election was a particularly sharp example of the way that first past the post voting is ill suited to a democracy where there are more than two parties attracting significant support, I trust I do not need to rehearse the egregious injustices produced by the fptp system earlier this year to you. The overall misrepresentation of seats to votes cast nationally made comments from other Europeans especially poignant when some, on understanding the British result, described our current system as barely democratic. I can't think of any recently emerged democracy choosing fptp and it is notable that devolved nations in the UK haven't adopted it eithr. Most go for the system Jonathan Reynolds is proposing which broadly speaking New Zealand went for and seems likely to be brought into Canada.
I trust you will recognise that we do need to be mature about recognising that our society with its communications systems and exposure to global forces and ideas has evolved beyond its political needs being satisfied by a bipolar whigs and tories system and needs an adequate way to express multiparty democracy in as fair a way as we can manage as exemplified in the devolved assemblies of the UK.
It seems to me particularly poignant to feel that I have to outline the case to a Labour MP, given both the history of the party and also the way that boundary changes and demographic changes could make it even harder under fptp for us to challenge a government elected by less than 30% of the electorate.

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