Andy Street, the Conservative former mayor of the West Midlands, urged his party to embrace electoral reform to help it broaden its appeal to voters.
Speaking at a packed-out Conservative Action for Electoral Reform (CAER) fringe at Tory conference last week, Mr Street described how standing under the preferential Supplementary Vote (SV) had convinced him of the need to change Westminster’s First Past the Post voting system.
The former mayor said that having to win second preference votes had pushed him to broaden his appeal to voters, something which he credited with helping him win in an area traditionally seen as Labour.
He said: “It (Supplementary Vote) forces you to think not ‘how are you going to win on First Past the Post or the first round,’ it forces you to think about those transfers.
“It means you have to think in your policy offer about something that actually does provide people real answers and solutions and is not narrow in its appeal.
“You are forced to think about the offer to the public. By its very nature it involves the big tent, the inclusivity.”
Mr Street told the fringe his preference for Westminster was the Supplementary Vote rather than a fully proportional system.
PR ensured fair Conservative representation in Labour-dominated areas
The fringe, which was supported by the Electoral Reform Society, saw more than 80 people pack into the meeting room in the Birmingham ICC to debate the Conservative case for backing proportional representation at Westminster.
The debate was given renewed urgency as it came in the wake of Andy Burnham’s pledge to put electoral reform in the next Labour manifesto and set up a commission to look at options.
Emma Best, deputy leader of the Conservatives on the London Assembly, argued the party should be a part of the ‘conversation’ around changing the voting system. She urged members to remember that the Tories had often been the party of electoral reform, through prime ministers such as Benjamin Disraeli and Stanley Baldwin, who both expanded the franchise.
The GLA member added that she wanted to see a proportional system for Westminster, similar to the Additional Member System used in London, which she argued had ensured the Conservatives had fair representation in a Labour-dominated city.
She added: “Something that makes me upset is when I see areas where we have never been, where we can’t get in.
“So, imagine if we did have a proportional system, that would allow us to campaign in areas where we have never been before, that would allow us to represent people we have never represented before.”
Tories should take ‘pragmatic’ approach to electoral reform
Keith Best, the Chairman of CAER, told party members that there had long been a Conservative case electoral reform. The organisation was founded in the wake of the 1974 ‘wrong winner’ election, where Labour won more seats than the Tories despite winning fewer votes.
However, he argued that the case for backing PR was now becoming one of pragmatism as well as fairness.
Mr Best said: “We are a pragmatic party. We believe in reading the runes, we don’t just follow populism for its own sake, as some other parties do.
“But we do understand when public opinion changes, and when you look now at the British Social Attitudes Survey it shows consistently that a majority of people, disillusioned with our current politics, want to see a change in the voting system.”
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