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Weekly update 5/7/2010

Posted by Jacob Rees-Mogg, MP for North East Somerset, at 14:52, Fri 9 July 2010:

Any system of representative democracy is a compromise on pure democracy. Even the direct kind developed in Athens was not fair as it excluded non citizens and women. Any voting system is, therefore, equally part of this compromise in an effort to achieve a form of government acceptable to the people, which translates their will into clear decisions. The risk is that strong government becomes undemocratic but pure democracy is too weak for effective government. This is the Scylla and Charybdis that the electoral systems have to navigate.

The British system of ‘first past the post’ has done this well up until 1997. The two main parties achieved at least three quarters of the vote and the mandates that governments received matched the mood of the country. In 2001 and 2005 this was less true and in 2010 there was no clear winner. This has encouraged the Liberal Democrats in their demand for change.

However, the unfairness in the system is overstated. It is true that the Labour Party receives more seats for a given number of votes that the Conservatives. This is not primarily because of different sized electorates, the boundary reviews when they are carried out leave only a small number of unusually sized seats. The reason for the difference is lower turnouts in safe Labour seats. First past the post has three key advantages.

• It is simple with very few accidentally spoilt papers.

• Voters can see directly how the result is calculated.

• It values each vote equally but once.

Next week I will review the Alternative Vote.