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ELECTING a minority Labour government at the next general election opens up the real possibility of gaining proportional representation (PR) for all future elections, a leading world expert in electoral reform has predicted.
“A hung parliament is the best opening you can have,” Canadian political scientist Dr Dennis Pilon told a well-attended online webinar last night, hosted by four pro-PR campaign groups.
“Governments that win a legislative majority are usually not prepared to open the door” to changing the voting system, he added.
The results of recent general election campaigns in both countries back Dr Pilon’s assessment.
In 2015 in Canada, the Liberals under Justin Trudeau promised that the election would be “the last election in Canadian history” to use First Past the Post (FPTP).
In 1997, Tony Blair and Labour also made a manifesto commitment to electoral reform.
Both parties won legislative majorities but neither kept their promise once in government.
Responding to Dr Pilon, Welsh Green Party’s Zack Polanski urged Liberal Democrats to tell their party leader, Ed Davey, that he should make support for PR “a red line” if their party were to support Labour in a hung parliament.
PR, a voting system now used in over 100 countries, aims to ensure that all votes are equal and that seats won in parliament match votes cast.
FPTP does neither and has created hundreds of safe seats. Some parts of England have been represented by the same party since 1832.
Get PR Done, one of the four groups organising the webinar, used the event to announce that it was working with others to organise a picket line over the PR issue at the next Labour Party conference.
The picket will be held at 12 noon on Sunday October 8 outside the Liverpool conference centre.
Over the past few years, there has been a huge outpouring of support for PR in Labour Party ranks.
The overwhelming majority of its members and the largest unions, such as Unite and Unison, all back PR.
But the Labour leadership remain wedded to first past the post — Britain’s current electoral system, in which voters indicate the candidate of their choice, and the candidate who receives the most votes wins.
For more details on the October 8 picket, contact Get PR Done at gprd.zoom@gmail.com. The meeting can be watched here.
