On Having Voted Yes

Electoral reform offers the opportunity to get at least some of what we want as the price of other people getting at least some of what they want. The Right, at least, could never govern without a possibly small, but nevertheless permanent, body of patriotic, socially conservative MPs who favoured agriculture, manufacturing and small business over global capitalism. Among other people, but even so. The Left, at least, could never govern without a possibly small, but nevertheless permanent, body of patriotic, socially conservative, social democratic MPs. Among other people, but even so. The one with Tory roots would be a fairly or very Protestant affair. But the one with Labour roots would be largely, perhaps predominantly, Catholic.

Even before the polls have closed, Blunkett has admitted that the £250 million figure was made up out of thin air. This campaign has raised serious questions about the sense in which Britain is really a democracy at all. Broadcast media loyal to the Heir to Blair and print media almost completely monopolised by an off-the-books campaigning arm of the Conservative Party have allowed the No lot to get away with saying absolutely anything, including the ludicrous claim that they were organisationally or financially distinct from Cameron's party machine. Those media have passed no comment as the Prime Minister's party, as such, has lined up with only two other parties, as such, namely the BNP and the Communists.

There are those of you who at least fancy that you are critics of Cameron from the Right, but who have nevertheless voted No. If you win, then, come the next General Election, you will once again be confronted with some teenage Blairite (or, for that matter, with some veteran of Blair himself) in the blue rosette that would guarantee election to a pig's bladder on a stick. And you will have only yourselves to blame.

As for this being only the beginning, quite so. But not the beginning of moves towards any system that would give David Cameron's evil allies the parliamentary representation that AV, of all systems, is most certain to deny them. Rather, the next, and the naturally conclusive, stage would be for each party, in the course of each Parliament, to submit its shortlist of two for Prospective Parliamentary Candidate to a ballot of the entire constituency electorate, and its shortlist of two for Leader to a ballot of the entire national electorate. No MP at all would have dared vote for either of these wars, since they would all have known what fate would have awaited them if they had done so.

Neither under a reformed electoral system, nor under a reformed selection system, would we have ended up with the spectacle of a former Prime Minister appearing on television to state blithely that he had always known his case for war was a tissue of lies, but that he would still have gone ahead with that war regardless of small matters such as truth. Neither under a reformed electoral system, nor under a reformed selection system, would we have ended up at the point where few people noticed that and even fewer cared.

So, a reformed electoral system and a reformed selection system: bring them both on.

If you have not already done so, Vote Yes.