London, May 8, IRNA – Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg is being urged not to miss the opportunity of a hung parliament to ensure that Britain’s “broken” electoral system is reformed.
The Electoral Reform Society (ERS) said it was clear from the unrepresentative result of Thursday’s general election in Britain that “we can’t return to business as usual.”
“Progress towards electoral reform must be a precondition for a coalition or support for a minority administration,” said ERS chief executive Ken Ritchie in a statement obtained by IRNA.
The call, which is being supported by many other campaign groups, politicians and academics, comes as the Lib Dems hold the balance of power in Britain and Clegg is being courted by the country’s two main parties to help form the next government.
“A General Election should deliver a parliament that represents the public. But what we have is a lottery where Labour can be only 5% ahead of the Lib Dems but walk away with five times as many seats,” Richie said.
“Our next parliament will remain unrepresentative of the people it’s meant to represent, but our next government won’t be able to hide behind a fake majority. Neither Labour nor Conservatives can pretend to be a national party,” he warned.
Under the country’s first-past-the-post system, the Conservatives took 36% of national vote but ended up with 49% of the 650 parliamentary seats, Labour 29% of vote and 42% of the seats and the Lb Dems of 9% of the seats despite winning 23 per cent of the vote.
The ERS, which has been campaigning for electoral reform for more than a century, is joining other organisations to demand a fair voting system in a series of Take Back Parliament (TBP) demonstrations being held around Britain on Saturday.
“This Parliament does not represent us. We demand fair votes now. There must never again be an election under this broken system,” says a TBP online petition so far signed by 16,000 supporters.
Clegg is currently considering an offer from the Conservatives for a pact with the Lib Dems to help stabilise a minority government but which so far only includes setting up an “all party committee of inquiry on political and electoral reform.”
Prime Minister Gordon Brown has gone further in pledging to hold a national referendum on a new voting system but a Lib Dem coalition with Labour is much more difficult after the government was badly wounded at the elections when losing nearly 100 parliamentary seats.