Iain Dale lost his campaign to become the Conservative party's prospective parliamentary candidate on Saturday night. Instead, Dr Philip Lee won the vote. But the voting system used revealed a contradiction in Conservative policy.
Iain Dale lost his campaign to become the Conservative party’s prospective parliamentary candidate for Bracknell on Saturday night. Instead, Dr Philip Lee won the vote. But the voting system used revealed a contradiction in Conservative policy.
Reports from the “open caucus” show that the electoral system used was a round by round elimination method which strongly resembled the alternative vote. The only difference was that, rather than listing preferences at the start, those present had to keep on voting in each round as the candidate with the lowest number of votes was eliminated.
A move to AV is now the policy of the Labour party. As has been pointed out previously on Left Foot Forward, it could lead to “even less proportional” results than the current first-past-the-post system. But the Conservative party oppose any move away from FPTP.
The Conservative party organisers kept the totals in each round private throughout Saturday night’s voting so it is not possible to know whether FPTP would have resulted in victory for Dr Phillip Lee. But it is fair to speculate that things could very well have been different if they had used this system. For example, Iain Dale speculates that, “I knew my best chance was to win on the first or second ballot.”
These facts highlight the inconsistency at the heart of the Conservative’s approach to electoral systems and perhaps undermine their argument that no change at all is needed from FPTP for Westminster. If that’s the case why don’t they trust it for their own party elections like this?
6 Responses to “Bracknell shows Conservatives are inconsistent on electoral reform”
Jack Storry
Mark – I do think it is a interesting disparity but at the same time I think using a different electoral system for candidate selection is less consequential than using it for electing a parliament and thus a government.
At the end of the day when using a different system for candidate selection all you are changing is who the candidate is. When using it for a parliamentary election you can end up fundamentally changing not just who governs the country but how it’s governed i.e. whether the system of governent is majoritarian and single party or consensual and multi-party
Therefore, while I think the Conservatives shoud certainly be more open when it comes to electoral reform it does not surprise me that they are prepared to experiment with different systems when it comes to candidiate selection.