Alex Massie Alex Massie

Does Cameron Understand How PR Works?

This is, I’m afraid, a real question and one to which the answer would appear to be no. Today’s text comes courtesy of John Rentoul and his colleague at the Independent on Sunday, Jane Merrick. On the matter of voting reform here’s what David Cameron has to say:

JM: Is it true you once said if you had to have electoral reform then STV [Single Transferable Vote] would be better than AV [Alternative Vote]?

DC: My problem is I don’t see AV as effective reform, because you keep the constituency link, but you could end up with a more disproportionate result. It seems to me AV doesn’t really do it. I remember from my studies when I was studying under the great Vernon Bogdanor: STV, you can make lots of arguments for it because you are able to choose between candidates of a party so there’s some choice involved. The problem is you lose the constituency link. I think of my own county of Oxfordshire, this is exactly what would happen with STV – everyone would spend all their time in Banbury and Oxford and little old Witney and Carterton and Chipping Norton would never get a bloody look in. So you lose the constituency link. And that I think, in all that’s wrong with our politics, something really to hold on to is this link. Even as Leader of the Opposition, there’s not much that happens in Chipping Norton or on the housing estates of Witney or in the RAF mess at Carterton that I don’t know about. That’s the great strength of our system. And also being able to throw out the Government. So I am, have been, for as long as I can remember, opposed to electoral reform.

So, as you can see, it would seem that Cameron has barely the faintest idea of how STV works.

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