On the AVes and AV-nots

Just a quickie really. There is a lot of confusion in the non-wonk world about "PR". Of course there are two meanings for the "P" in "PR": "Preferential", in which candidates can be ranked and which tend to ensure that the one least out of favour with the most electors actually gets elected, which in itself has some good points - very few UK MPs and English & Welsh Councillors can claim to have the confidence of at least half their electors and this would give them that; and "Proportional", in which the aggregate votes across a number of candidates tend to result in a number of people being elected fairly closely related to the overall share of the vote a party gets - they have such a system in Northwrn Ireland and in Scotland for local government and, even on relatively small constituencies of three or four members seems to have produced a fairly proportional result in council chambers.

The apparent proposal due from Gordon Brown is to use "Alternative Vote" which is one of the purely Preferential types of PR, with no pretense to Proportionality at all. It has the advantage mentioned above of ensuring that in single member constituencies someone has to get 50% support and so, I suppose, is slightly better that being fed to alligators in a Florida swamp, but not by much.

However, given that a general election is less than a year away, assuming no attempt is made to invoke some of the Civil Contingency powers to grant Gordon permanent rule without parliament (which cannot be ruled out of course!), it would be impossible to rearrange constituencies in my opinion to accommodation my preferred method of multi-member "Single Transferrable Vote" which is the Scottish local government system and certainly not, God help us, any list based system, or even "AV+" in which the constituency is decided by Alternative Vote then some top up regional members are allocated according to the overall share of the vote for each party in all the constituencies in that region.

So, I would support the Alternative Vote suggestion for ONE ELECTION ONLY and with an automatic clause that after that the relevant body (is it the Boundary Commission any more or has it been subsumed into the Electoral Commission?) immediately begins to reform constituencies in preparation for STV the next time round. The primary legislation preparing for this should be included in any imminent Bill proposing Alternative Vote so there can be no doubt that it will happen.

If that cannot be achieved, then I agree with those who say that AV is too small a step which, once taken, may set back the cause of true reform for another decade, and we should not in such a case support it at all. We must secure a firm commitment to proper reform. It is the proportionality of the UK parliament that is all wrong. AV can make a small difference in that, but it can also have the opposite effect.