The election result, with Labour dominating parliament despite only having won just over a third of the vote, has rightly brought electoral reform to the forefront of the national debate (Labour divided over calls to scrap first past the post after landslide win, 17 July). But the debate is in danger of being dominated by a false dichotomy: between first past the post and proportional representation. This is unhelpful, not least because PR is not going to happen – not with a Labour government that FPTP has blessed with such a luxurious majority.
The choice is not between FPTP and PR. As I learned as a member of the Jenkins committee on electoral reform 25 years ago, there are as many electoral systems as there are apples on a tree.
If you want to soften the adverse affects of FPTP, you could go for the alternative vote, where electors choose the candidates in order of preference, with their votes redistributed if their first choice candidate is eliminated. This gets rid of the complexities of tactical voting. More radically, you can choose a system where most MPs are chosen by FPTP, but in addition there is a top-up list for those voters who are left underrepresented by FPTP.
The committee, as it happened, went for a variant of the latter with a small number of top-up candidates chosen for individual counties. This had the main virtue of FPTP – that most governments would probably get a majority or a near majority. It would also have the main virtue of PR – that voters for parties whose support is evenly spread around the country, such as the Greens, would at last get a fairer share of representatives in parliament.
David Lipsey
Labour, House of Lords
• Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.
