No to AV Disaster

I have been in the North for a couple of weeks, so you have been treated to stunning silence. But now, I must comment on the election results. In the Local Elections, as expected, the Liberal-Democrats have done badly being blamed almost completely for all unpopular government policies. This is very unfair - particularly to Nick Clegg - and is made worse by the fact that in England the Tories have actually gained a few seats. These have been the worst local election results in Lib-Dem history and they have lost a third of their councillors - in some areas losing every single seat on councils. The Tories even took the truculent Lewes off them. Surprisingly, in Brighton, the Greens made great gains and now, although short of an overall majority, they are the biggest party on Brighton Council. The only Green in the House of Commons is, of course, a Brighton MP.

Yet more exciting, was Alex Salmond's triumph in Scotland. Now, for the first time, the Scottish Parliament has a single party with an overall majority. The party gained 12 seats - from Labour and the Lib-Dems. Interestingly, the Scottish Parliament is elected by a system of proportional representation and, such systems are, the anti-AV camp told us, guaranteed to give us continuous coalition governments. Alex Salmond has done a generally very good job in Scotland and he and his party deserve their success.
The referendum on the AV Voting System was lost by 69% to 31% with a turn-out of 41%. It means that only 28.5% of the electorate actually voted against AV but on the same basis, only 12.5% voted in favour. This, surely, is a terrible result. We have a system of selecting our MPs which works fine when there are only two parties but the rest of the time produces un-justifiable results. At the election in 2005, Tony Blair had a comfortable working majority in spite of the fact that he had no more than 36% of the votes cast and was actively supported by only 24% of the electorate. Now, England has the most unacceptable of all electoral systems by maintaining first past the post. England does not have its own Parliament. Ours is a Parliament of the whole of the United Kingdom in which sit representatives of Wales Scotland and Northern Ireland who can vote on matters that affect only England. We in England cannot vote on any matters in the Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish Parliaments. We have already had the nonsense of John Reid, a member of Tony Blair's government saying yes to charging tuition fees in England, while knowing full well that students from his own constituency in Scotland would not pay any tuition fees. Our parliamentary representation is selected by first past the post, while every other part of the UK has a Parliament selected by some form of proportional representation. Now that the Alternative Vote system has been rejected by voters throughout the UK, we will be stuck with this system for years unless some really outstanding unintended consequences hit us in the near future. Why has the electorate done this? Is it simply done to spite the now mightily unpopular Lib-Dems? If so the country will live to be able to regret at its leisure.
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