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If Westminster was seriously worried about our decaying democracy, reform would be a hot issue, not a dusty topic left to political nerds. We need a great convention with widespread public consultation. Here are eight reforms I would propose.
1. Start with the practicalities. Make it easy to vote, with electronic voting. If it’s safe for banking, it’s safe for voting.
2. Let voters register on election day, as the young and the poor keep moving on short-term tenancies.
3. Make voting compulsory.
4. Give votes to 16-year-olds, compulsory for first timers, so schools and colleges register them and take them down to polling stations: those who vote once keep the habit.
5. Bring back the citizenship classes Michael Gove abandoned, as a compulsory GCSE – more useful than hanging gerunds. Candidates would spend as much time bribing school students as Saga cruisers.
6. Next comes restoring the credibility and reputation of politics. Clean up corruption with state party funding, apportioned by voters choosing on election ballot papers where their share of funds should go. No more plutocrats buying favours, nor union funding.
7. Seats in a new elected Lords would not be for sale, nor would 26 bishops make law in this unbelieving nation.
8. Make every vote count equally, with a single transferable vote: in a group of seats, most voters would end up represented by an MP they had chosen, with many more women than the current 29% and more minorities. Everyone could vote for the party of their choice, with a backstop vote for their least worst. How utterly inept Farage has been in failing to rouse up outrage among his 3.8 million voters who only secured one seat, as did the Green’s 1 million voters.
9. There should a national convention to draw up a new great reform act – with people adding their suggestions.”
East Devon Watch 