Electoral reform - time to make every vote count‏

Back in September an under reported but highly significant policy decision was made in one of the final debates of 2009 Trades Union Congress. The PCS amendment to motion 83 on ‘democratic renewal’ (from the FDA civil service union) was carried on a show of hands. The amendment stated that: ‘democratic renewal also requires elected politicians to be properly representative of, and accountable to, their constituents and therefore calls on the General Council to instigate a debate within the trade union movement on change in the current parliamentary electoral system towards a system of proportional representation.' http://www.congressvoices.org/2009/83-democratic-renewal/

UNISON Active reported on this decision as a ‘welcome development’.
http://unisonactive.blogspot.com/2009/09/tuc-to-consider-electoral-reform.html

Yesterday on its Touchstone blog the TUC launched the debate which the General Council initially had resisted back at Congress.
http://www.touchstoneblog.org.uk/2010/01/time-for-a-new-electoral-system/

The question of electoral reform has been much neglected by most trade unions including UNISON particularly since Labour’s landslide victory in 1997 when first past the post delivered a massive majority many on the left thought was beyond Labour’s reach during the worst days of Thatcherism.

The TUC report sets out four basic principles which should inform the debate and General Secretary Brendan Barber states in his foreword that ‘the evidence suggests we need a major clean-up and reinvigoration of our politics. It is very unlikely that there is a single measure that can do this, and it will take action in a number of areas. Electoral reform may or may not be part of what is required, but unions – as the largest mass democratic organisations in our society – must make their contribution to analysing what is wrong and helping reinvigorate our political system.’

This timely publication will now lead to a debate involving all affiliated unions and coincides with the final phase of the UNISON review of political fund effectiveness. The 2010 NDC – both in the main hall and on the fringe – presents an opportunity to have this overdue debate in UNISON. Within the union there is extensive experience of alternative voting systems in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as well as the pseudo democracy of the ‘European Parliament’.

The big questions to be answered is how sustainable is a voting system which as in 2005 delivers a 66 seat Parliamentary majority on a 35.3% minority of votes cast?

And does a first past the post system give unions - with their mass membership and unique UK wide national reach (in the case of UNISON well beyond the membership base of all UK political parties combined) - the best possible opportunity to mobilise independent political influence?