When Fair’s Unfair

Well we’ve coaxed the government into action, but it’s not over yet.

No sooner had we extracted Brown’s pledge then the fight back commenced from the opposition. The tone was set on Tuesday’s Newsnight, when Tory Chair Eric Pickles said - with what we can only assume was a straight face - "we're for fairness" while defending (although astutely avoiding giving one real positive for) our First-Past-the-Post voting system.

David Cameron put his on spin on things this morning, with an opinion piece in the Telegraph. He said – and we’ve got 40,000 odd people at hand who might want to prove him wrong - "people don’t want a new voting system – they want a new politics."

Well we're not quite sure how you can change politics when most of our votes don't even count.

The funny thing is Dave used many of the same arguments we’ve made. He argues that in his ideal world “every vote weighs the same.” Yes we all could do with the power enjoyed by a few hundred thousand voters in the marginals. But equality on polling day is a distant dream under first-past-the-post, a system that ensures some votes are more equal than others.

His solution is redrawing the political map of Britain, with fewer MPs (and if the critics are right fewer Labour MPs for sure).  Sadly playing about with boundaries can only achieve so much when our votes fail time and again to deliver the goods.

The Tories are facing a three line whip next week to vote down the government’s referendum proposals. We’re working to ensure Dave gets a few gentle reminders beforehand.