We all know that the Alternative Vote isn’t the panacea. It’s not going to cure all the ills of our democracy. Only true proportional representation can do that. But since it’s the best we have on offer, it deserves fair consideration on its own merits. I support AV because I believe that in a democracy, [...]
It has been an odd few days for the campaigns around electoral reform. This whole exercise, supposedly, is about making our electoral system fairer, and our Parliament more properly representative of the population. Yet both the pro-AV camp, and the supporters of First Past the Post, have been falling over themselves to demonstrate that their [...]
In a couple of months we will be taking a vote on the most basic aspect of our democracy – the way in which we elect our government. Yet one could be forgiven, over the past few days, for forgetting that such politically important matters were at stake. First we had the much trumpeted revelation from [...]
So, Power2010 has been criticised on the grounds that it won’t have the massive reach and appeal that it’s aiming for. This seems likely to be true, but how much does it matter? I don’t think that in order to revive mass popular interest in our political system it’s necessary to have a campaign which [...]
The Third Estate is brought to you today by the letters DEMOCRACY and the number 2010. In just one month the Power2010 campaign has received over 2000 ideas to reform our political system. To highlight their launch, I invited Guy Aitchison to set out the campaign’s stall in a piece that was met with mixed [...]
