electoral reform in the UK squashed

One of the deals that the Liberal Democrat Party in Britain secured as part of their coalition agreement with the Conservatives a year ago was a referendum on electoral reform

The referendum was held on 5 May and resulted in a defeat for the preferential voting proposal (as used in Australia) by 68% to 32%.  The Electoral Commission said a total of 19.1 million votes were cast across Great Britain, giving a provisional turnout of 42%, higher than many had predicted. Only a few voting areas came out with a majority in favour, including Cambridge, Glasgow Kelvin, and the London boroughs of Camden, Haringey, Islington, Lambeth and Southwark.

This proposal wasn't very adventurous, all it would have done is adopt the Australian lower house system where voters list the candidates (for single member constituencies) in order of preference.  In the event that a candidate doesn't get a majority 50%+ of the vote, the preferences of those who voted for 3rd and 4th place (etc) candidates are counted and added to the votes of the first and second place candidates.  This has the same effect as but avoids the two round system used in France where the first two placed candidates face off in a second vote held a week later.

Straightforward and simple but the Brits didn't want it.  Was it simply a case of "we don't want the systems of those bloody foreigners"? Probably.  Brits want to keep their own currency and don't want that foreign Euro, despite being part of the EU.  The fact that both the Conservatives and top Labour politicians campaigned against it didn't help; perhaps people felt they were voting Lib Dem or Labour/Conservative again.

You can't help comparing the Brits with New Zealanders who in contrast in 1993 voted for a much more radical change by 53% to 47%.  On that occasion the Labour and National leaders kept fairly quiet, the No campaign was headed by certain big business leaders, notably then Telecon chairman Peter Shirtcliffe (who will be back again this year doing the same). We have commented in an earlier post about that referendum, and expect this year's will have a similar outcome.