[EM] STV democratic arbitration of UK Labour party.

[Richard Lung]

To members and  electoral reformers

STV democratic arbitration of the Labour party (UK).

The hopeless division of the Labour party is of their own making. But 
weak opposition makes for bad government and we should try to remedy it, 
no matter how hopeless it seems.
The basic effectiveness problem with the Labour party is this: They 
wouldn't go to democratic arbitration.
They had an opportunity to do this as far back as, say, the Plant 
report, about 1990.

There they explicitly shunned the democratic arbitration offered, anong 
election systems, specifically by the single transferable vote. This 
allows proportional representation not only between parties, but within 
parties.

No, intolerable! And the Plant report recommended any system but STV.
When Blair came to power in 1997, one of the first things he did was to 
dictate that a closed party list be used for British mainland 
Euro-elections, even tho STV was already in use in Ulster (and Ireland) 
where it had made peace-making power-sharing possible.
A man of principle would have extended STV for the whole UK. But not the 
shop-steward of Westminster, that every PM has been, since the war, 
except Churchill, who asked for PR in 1950.

Again, Blair secretly sabotaged the Jenkins report (See The Ashdown 
Diaries 1997-9). Jenkins privately consulted with Blair, who wouldn't 
give STV.
Hence the mysterious remark by Jenkins, at the time, that Blair was a 
second-rate intellect.
Half a dozen subsequentl commissions (fluctuating with Westminster 
display  of displeasure) more or less recommended STV. Not to mention 
the previous Kilbrandon report on the Constitution.

In the official report, about 2002, on the working of new election 
systems under New Labour, a commenter was quoted as saying that it was 
useless to try for STV because the Labour party would never give it.
Yet it managed to be passed for Scottish local elections, albeit with no 
more than 4 seats per constituency, not very effective for genuine PR 
within parties, as well as between them.

That is why effective democratic electoral reform should follow the HG 
Wells formula: Proportional Representation by the Single Transferable 
Vote in large constituencies.

Richard Lung.




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