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.
Yesterday, the Prime Minister announced that there would be a commitment in the next Labour manifesto to hold a referendum on changing the electoral system for Westminster to one that uses the “Alternative Vote” method. But it is not a proportional system and can actually be less proportional than our current First Past the Post system.
Nick Clegg’s speech at the Liberal Democrat conference yesterday contained a fascinating section on the unfairness of the British electoral system: “Nearly half of Britain’s constituencies have elected the same party in every election since I was born?”
There is an interesting story in today’s Independent, flagged in Left Foot Forward’s Politics Summary, which reports that a group of government-appointed drug experts are to call for a nationwide network of “shooting galleries” to provide injectable heroin for drug addicts following successful trials. The current Government is on record many times insisting that their policies will be based as far as possible on evidence. In the area of drugs policy, however, there have been two recent occasions when the government has gone against their own advisory body.
There has been much coverage recently regarding the comments from the UK Drug Policy Commission who have suggested that “smarter” drugs policies are required. The crux is that there is currently too much focus on seizure and arrests and nottest
