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Westminster Reforms
Constitutional Reform is afoot. In the upper house, recent reports suggest Michael's longing for an elected Lords or UK senate may eventually be satisfied . Meanwhile, Michael himself has flagged up rumours that elections to the House of Commons may be shifting towards an Alternative Vote system (think STV for single-seat constituencies).
Elected Lords and Commons Legitimacy
I think I've come round to the idea of an elected Upper House as a 'least worst' option, despite the prospect of the extension of party politics, career politicians and the associated traits that tend to go along with these being an extremely strong counter-argument. Unfortunately I can't see those self-same parties and career politicians who will ultimately be making the decision being put off by my fears so lets assume it's a goer. The debate then moves on to how the upper chamber would be elected. While the obvious option is to elect all the senators, another option on the table is an 80% elected chamber. Where the other 20% of senators would come from I don't know (I hope we're past the idea of government/party appointees).
One of the problems with an elected senate (aside from my personal distaste for party politics), especially if it is to be elected using Proportional Representation, is that it could lead to a challenge to the primacy of the House of Commons, since PR could make the senate more accurately reflective of the wishes of voters. Why then, should it not have more power commensurate with that fact?
Follow up:
The Government’s own report admits that proportional representation has caused voter confusion and not increased turnout. And it says that Alternative Vote would produce even more disproportionate results than any other system.
Nick Herbert,
Conservative constitutional affairs spokesman
The idea of introducing the Alternative Vote to Commons elections is an attempt to mitigate that. Media reports have suggested that the Tories could be quite damaged by AV. This presupposes the Lib Dem voters will transfer to Labour, which may not be automatic, but last August the Tories were or PR, while the Lib Dems would only see AV as an interim step to full PR elections.
Closer to Home
So what does this mean for Northern Ireland? There was a brief discussion on the NI-specific ramifications of the UK Senate proposals at Slugger. At this stage I think, given the proposal of 400 senators, that Northern Ireland should form a single constituency for Senate elections, electing a total of 12 senators every 4 years, but the proposal seems to be for each constituency to elect 3-4 senators who would serve 12-15 years. Given that the plan is to 'gradually replace' the Lords as senators are 'elected in stages every four or five years', that would suggest that rather than PR, what we'll end up with is a First Past the Post contest every 4 (or 5) years with one member elected for 12 (or 15) years. Either I'm getting confused or it's starting to look quite messy.
On the Commons side, I like the idea of AV in principle as it would allow voters to vote for who they want rather than voting against someone they don't. In Northern Ireland, an AV system might allow the smaller parties a bit of a shout, since voters know their vote won't be wasted and they can fall back to the safe option of the big 4 as a second choice. I also wonder if it might not push the more voter-repellent DUP and SF off the edge of the map and put the UUP and SDLP into the driving seat at Westminster, as well as wondering what effect this would have on Assembly elections.