As May 5th approaches here in the United Kingdom, the British electorate is faced with a referendum on a new voting system. The Alternative Vote (or AV). Its supporters say that it will be a much fairer system than the current First Past The Post (FPTP) system which has been responsible for MPs having 'jobs for life' in safe seats so therefore do not have to work for their constituents. General elections under the current system are decided by a small number of swing districts and, as a result, do not reflect the will of the people. AV, it is said, will put an end to that.Well, not quite. A number of supporters of AV have said that while it is definitely an improvement on FPTP it is still not fully representative of the British people. It is, in the words of Deputy Prime Minister and AV advocate Nick Clegg a "miserable little compromise". With this sentiment I completely agree. This is especially true given my current circumstances.
My constituency is a rural one (the most rural in the country apparently). As a result it is also a deeply conservative constituency. How conservative? On June 11th 1987 it elected a Conservative MP and has continued to do so ever since. To be clear: the constituency I currently live in has had a Conservative MP longer than I have been alive (exactly a month longer to be exact). In fact, from that election up until 2010 it was the same MP. The only reason we have a new MP now is because the last one retired. A perfect example of a job for life.
So, with that in mind, AV should help, right? Wrong. In my constituency during the last general election the winning Conservative majority was 16, 425. Their total was 26,862. Even if every single Labour voter picked the Liberal Democrats as their second preference (very unlikely now) and vice-versa, the vote total against the Conservatives would be 19,711. Not even close to unseating the Conservative stronghold.
But that leads to another problem with my constituency. I have not counted the second or third preference votes of the other parties in the area. Can you guess which side of the political spectrum they fall on? If you said the right, you get a gold star. The other choices were the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), the English Democrats Party (committed to an exclusively English parliament) and the British National Party (BNP, an overtly racist organization). I would assume that those voters would prefer a Tory over a Labour or Lib Dem MP, so the Conservatives winning margin would remain unassailable.
I am a left leaning individual. I consider myself a democratic socialist in the mold of author George Orwell and Vermont independent Senator Bernie Sanders. As a result, my vote will never be represented in the British parliament because I am in a deeply conservative area. I am stuck. AV will not make a difference to that. Seats like mine will remain unchallenged by AV and all it will do is increase the number of potential swing votes across the country.
That being said, I still intend to vote in favor of it come May 5th. I genuinely believe that it is a step in the right direction. If AV is defeated, the Conservative led government will take it as a sign of approval for FPTP and a new, accurately representative system will never be implemented. AV is, in my opinion, a very small step that needs to be taken if we are ever to achieve a fully representative parliament in Britain. Also, the childish part of me wants AV to win because it will really piss of David Cameron.
