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Disraeli Room

Three good reasons to support a change to AV

Any voting system is fundamentally a way of combining a lot of individual choices about who should be elected into one single group decision. As such the quality of an election result depends both on the system used and on the choices people make. Under our current system voters tend to make choices in one of two ways: positively, where they pick the candidate they like the most, or negatively, where they eliminate possible candidates, either because they dislike them or because they believe they could not possibly win and vote for whoever is left.

Simon Beard
45
Three bad reasons to support a change to AV

Apparently, at least according to No2AV, I do not exist. Why? Because I am a long standing supporter of the Alternative Vote method of holding elections, end of. Nick Clegg may have called AV a ‘miserable little compromise’ but he also said he would vote against raising tuition fees. For me AV is, and always has been, the best method for holding elections and it is the right system for the UK.

Like most supporters of AV I first became aware of the system whilst at university where it was the dominant method for holding elections for clubs and societies.

Simon Beard
3
Why Conservatives should support AV

As a Conservative Party activist, I support the Alternative Voting system (AV). This, it is safe to say, is fairly unusual.

One of the biggest problems our country faces is our broken political system. Even prior to the expenses scandal most people had lost trust in our political system, realising that the views of most people are not listened to. Many things can be changed to improve this situation such as a big devolution of power to local communities, regular Swiss style referendums and the introduction of open primaries for the incumbent party in all constituencies.

Richard Sykes
20
What problems will AV solve in the UK?

This week I’ve asked a number of our regular contributors to weigh in on the Alternative Vote, “the referendum that no one wants”, debated by wonks, decided by Celts and amounting to a sort of high-stakes, low-interest confidence dual between the Coalition party leaders.

The bizarre outcome of this situation has been a choreographed series of Cabinet-level “outbursts,” with third party Labour calling for electoral reform - which would severely weaken their long-term electoral interests, but which they must suspect will never be passed or i

Adam Schoenborn
6
An economy for the three Fs

Over the past month, the Blue Labour project has surfaced in the public (or at least political) consciousness, mainstreamed by Ed Miliband’s push to make Labour the party of “family, faith and flag.”

Adam Schoenborn
4
Can localism save Britain's small retailers?

It’s incredibly exciting to be – at the time of writing – at the heart of a Twitter war between two modern Tory icons. Guido Fawkes is slating the ResPublica report The Right to Retail, while ResPublica’s founder and “Red Tory” Phillip Blond is, fairly obviously, fighting back and defending it.

Some of the discussion seems to be about who paid for the report, and I can confirm that we did.

James Lowman
12

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