Although I’m in favour of Proportional Representation, I’m also worried about the emphasis sometimes placed on it as a solution to the UK’s dysfunctional politics and democratic deficit.
While I think PR is better than FPTP, I don’t think it changes much in itself. FPTP systems produce a duopoly of ‘broad church’ parties that tend to take turns at government; PR systems produce lots of smaller parties, that indeed more accurately reflect the electors’ views, but which generally only get into government as part of ‘broad church’ coalitions. If you look at what governments have actually achieved under the various systems in Europe over recent decades, I’d say it’s true that PR has led to better government – but not actually that much better.
Reforming the funding of political parties would do more, I think – and many of the countries seen from the UK as better-governed are different in this respect, as well as voting systems – but I’d say equally important are facilitating media impartiality (by which I mean true impartiality – telling the truth regardless of vested interests – not the BBC idea of balancing opposing views) and decentralisation – passing far more funding and spending power, and decision-making, down to local levels.
