The Key To The House

Away with talk of recall elections, which would be nothing but a Lib Dems' charter for expensive nuisance. Those who secured one ought to be required to pay for it out of their own pockets.

Now, to serious matters.

That Toby Young is still in his jobs at this hour tonight proves beyond reasonable doubt that the Daily Telegraph and The Spectator are owned by his family.

Oh, well, the Labour vote at Wythenshawe and Sale East went up by 11 points, UKIP took no votes from anyone apart from the Conservatives and the BNP (this was UKIP's worst result since Croydon North in November 2012), it took fewer than one in five of the votes cast, and the Lib Dem candidate lost her deposit, that party's ninth lost deposit in the course of this Parliament.

None of that came as the slightest surprise to those of us who are not on that parallel Welfare State for the better class of unemployable, the paid right-wing commentariat.

UKIP must now realise that it is never going to win a Westminster seat, and the Lib Dems must now consider the serious possibility that they are going to lose all of the Westminster seats that they have now. I have a proposition for both of them.

First, each of the 11 mainland regions would be divided equally into 30 constituencies. Each constituency would elect one MP by means of First Past The Post. Northern Ireland would be divided into 15 constituencies, each voter would vote for one candidate, and the two highest scorers would be elected, with First Past The Post retained for by-elections.

Secondly, each of the 12 regions would elect 15 MPs by means of party lists. Candidates would have to have been registered voters within the region throughout the previous 15 years, and each of us would vote for one party. The highest-scoring party would receive five seats, then next four, then three, then two, and then one.

Casual vacancies would be filled by the next candidate on the list. Loss of party membership would constitute forfeiture of the seat. And no party would be permitted to contest the list election in a region unless it forbore to contest constituencies in that same region.

And thirdly, each of the 12 regions would elect five Independent MPs, with each of us voting for one candidate, and with the five highest-scoring candidates elected. When a vacancy arose, there might be a by-election by First Past The Post, perhaps if enough people requested one in writing. Or the highest-scoring candidate who had not been elected might fill it. In view of this specific provision for Independents, they might reasonably be precluded from contesting constituencies.

This would give a total of 50 MPs per region, and of 600 overall.

The Lib Dems would opt to contest the list elections everywhere. UKIP would do so in Scotland (although they would stand little chance even by that method there), Wales, London, and each of the three Northern regions, while taking the fight to the Conservatives at constituency level in the South-outside-London, where Labour would prefer the lists, just as the Conservatives would in Scotland, Wales and the North. Whether the Conservatives would choose the lists or the constituencies in London would be very telling indeed.

Only in the two Midland regions would Labour, the Conservatives and UKIP face each other. It is just about possible that some kind of UKIP-aligned ultra-Unionist faction would pick up the fifth spot on the list in Northern Ireland. At least one of the Independents from each region would also be broadly of that mind.

The Alliance Party would always have thus third spot, and thus three seats, in Northern Ireland, while the SDLP and the reunited-for-the-purpose UUP fought it ought for first place, with the other coming second, and while the Greens and the latest vehicle for irreconcilable Unionism fought it out for fourth place, with the other coming fifth.

Labour would be the big winner under this system. But that is already the case under the present one, and will be shown spectacularly to be so next year. This would save the Lib Dems. It would include UKIP as one of the formations that were thus able to enter the House of Commons, and, since there is already one Green MP, as by far the largest such formation so to enter only as a result of this change.

And it would turn the Conservative Party into a body which relied on seats merely for having turned up in Scotland, Wales, the North, and possibly even London (seats required to be filled by local people in those areas), as its base from which to fight for its life against UKIP in the South, while reasonably expecting to come third behind Labour and UKIP in most of the Midlands.

What's not to like?