Tuesday, February 09, 2010

Fair votes or last gasp failure?

Gordon Brown has announced his answer to the malaise affecting democracy in this country. He will put through legislation to force a referendum during the next Parliament on whether Britain should have the Alternative Vote (AV) instead of First Past the Post. Well whoopee Gordon. I suppose it's a case of (to almost quote) One small step for Britain, one giant leap for Gordon Brown.
Chris Huhne has written a very good piece over on the Guardian's site "Comment is Free" which I won't attempt to summarise here. Suffice to say that he explains clearly why AV is not enough and we need the Single Transferable Vote. If Gordon and his pals don't understand the reasoning put down by Chris, can I suggest they just think of fairness - what's good enough for Scottish local elections, most of Northern Ireland's elections and all of Eire's should be good enough for the rest of us. If it's not then I want to know why not?

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