Having seen the BC revision go down in flames, reformists can take heart from the fact that there is a flicker of interest now in the UK for changing from the first past the post (FPTP) system to a modified proportional representation one:
"Gordon Brown should hold a national referendum on electoral reform, Health Secretary Alan Johnson has said.
Writing in the Times, he said Mr Brown should offer the public a "genuinely radical alternative" to the current system of first-past-the-post."
The referendum could be held soon:
" Mr Johnson, who has been widely tipped as a potential successor to Mr Brown, urged the prime minister to involve the public in "a root and branch examination" of the political system in order to regain trust following the expenses scandal. "We need to overhaul the engine, not just clean the upholstery," he wrote. "
And a very sensible and elegant system of PR might be in the offing as an alternative to FPTP:
"The new system Mr Johnson favours is known as Alternative Vote Plus and was first suggested by the Independent Commission on Electoral Reform, led by Lord Jenkins, in 1998.
Under AV Plus, voters would have two ballot papers: one for their constituency representative and a second for their favoured political party.
Most seats in the Commons would be filled with locally elected MPs, but the remainder would be allocated by proportional representation according to the number of votes cast for each party.
The Jenkins Commission referred to the second ballot as a "corrective top-up" which would allow the make-up of Parliament to more accurately reflect voters' overall party preferences.
Calling this an "elegant" option, Mr Johnson said: "This is a genuinely radical alternative that only Labour in government can facilitate.""
Go for PR, PM Brown.
Electoral reform might be just the thing to give Labour a chance to be elected government again.
And what a boost to electoral reform it would be if our mother parliament changes to an elegant proportional representative system!
