Weighing a vote

Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg is not auctioning his party yet,though he may hold the key to the next UK government. LibDem grievances against the current electoral system run deep. The first-past-the-post system the Westminster model India too employs apparently heavily biased towards Labour and which the pre-David Cameron Conservative Party had been even more loath to alter could produce an outcome where Labour gets the least votes,and yet takes charge in the House of Commons by winning most seats; with a hung parliament a mere impediment. The LibDem vote is evenly distributed; Labours heavily concentrated in urban and industrial constituencies; and the Tories get their goodies from the shires. As long as the character of most constituencies didnt change,the fight was concentrated in the marginals,with parties vying for the few floating constituencies.

Therefore,even as all parties talk of some electoral reform,Clegg has made commitment to his blueprint for proportional representation mandatory for his support. But what hes calling for is the Single Transferable Vote,not the strict Dutch proportional representation,while Labours been harping on Alternative Vote,so that every MP is supported by the majority of their constituents. Officially,the Tories go as far as equal value for each vote by reducing discrepancies in electorate sizes.

The British electorate has changed,with old class-based party loyalties disappearing and votes becoming more fluid,altering the democratic dynamics. Thus its argued that the mismatch between parliamentary power and political reality must go. Under a more proportional system,some say,the Tories would have had fewer seats in 1979,and Britain would have had a more diluted Thatcherism. But even LibDems perhaps fear a fully proportional system which,while introducing full-scale coalition politics could make the same almost unworkable,as the experience of Holland and constituency-less Israel shows. This is an epic,Westminster-changing UK election one India,especially,would do well to observe closely. Whats uncontested is that some form of fairer representation is necessary.