Conservatives for electoral reform? Yes, there used to be some, back in PT (pre-Thatcher) days. But they are virtually extinct now, at least publicly. Yet it could be in the Tories’ interests to consider, rather than just dismiss out of hand, the alternative vote (AV). This is a preferential system in which voters list candidates one, two, three etc. In the short term, this switch could hit Labour and benefit the Tories.

For some time, leading Labour politicians have favoured AV as a step towards what they see as a fairer electoral system. Peter Hain has been a leading advocate, while Sunder Katwala, of the Fabian Society, has argued in a post on ourkingdom.opendemocracy. net that it is the best hope for progressive reform.

But now the idea is being floated more officially. Michael Wills, the Constitutional Reform Minister, has talked about AV as a means of reviving democratic legitimacy. Moreover, Jack Straw, who largely sank the Jenkins report on electoral reform in late 1998, is positive about AV, because it preserves single-member constituencies and takes account of multiple candidacies.

AV is seen as fairer, as a winning candidate has to gain the support of at least 50 per cent of voters, at any rate those casting further preferences. It is not a PR system and often produces a less proportional result than first-past-the-post. Patrick Dunleavy, of the London School of Economics, has estimated than in 1997, under AV the Tories would have had only 110 seats, against the 165 they did win, while the Labour total would have risen from 419 to 436, with the Lib Dems up from 46 to 84.

The key to AV is which is the more unpopular of the two main parties. During the 1980s Labour might have been even worse off. And that is probably true now with the Tories well ahead in the polls and Labour lagging. So, while an AV election would probably help the Lib Dems at all times, whichever other party is boosted depends on public opinion at the time.

The Tories oppose fully fledged proportional representation because it removes the single member seat (not true of AV) and is certain to mean coalitions giving the final say to the third party, the Lib Dems. This is true only some of the time (when the two main parties are close), and, indeed, the threshold, in terms of share of the vote, for the Tories to win an overall majority would be lower than at present.

The politics is simple. Labour wants to keep open its options if it fails to win an overall majority and there is a hung Parliament. Floating AV is intended to titillate the Lib Dems, and some are interested as a step, they hope, to full PR. By contrast, the CentreForum think-tank has produced a paper arguing that on key policies, such as “greenery” and civil liberties, the Lib Dems are today closer to the Tories than for many years. The Lib Dems’ voters may be less hostile to the Tories, but most of their activists, and MPs, are still instinctively antiTory.

In practice there are unlikely to be any quick deals in a hung Parliament. As the new series of essays from the Hansard Society, No Overall Control?, points out, it is likely to be a dynamic political situation in which parties manoeuvre for advantage. Only after a second election producing a hung Parliament will electoral reform become a serious possibility.

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