Tatchell calls for new voting system

Friday, 22 October 2004 2:59 PM

The gay rights activist turned Green Party member, Peter Tatchell, has launched a scathing attack on the current electoral system.

The human rights activist - famous for his attempt to perform a citizen's arrest on the Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe - joined the Green Party this year after 22 years of Labour membership.

In a key note address at the Green Party conference, Mr Tatchell urged the party to work for a "second Chartist movement" to "remedy the democratic deficit at the heart of the British parliamentary system".

This year's Green Party conference has been ranging more widely than its core environmental message, in debating crime, pensions, transport and the democratic system. The party currently has two MEPs, two London Assembly members and is hoping to gain its first MP at the next general election.

Speaking today, Mr Tatchell said: "It is time to end the corruption of the first-past-the-post voting system, whereby Labour won a majority of 167 MPs at the last general election, despite securing only 42 per cent of the votes cast and winning the backing of only 24 per cent of eligible electors.

"We need a new parliamentary reform movement to end the disgraceful discrepancy between votes cast and seats won, and to ensure democratic representation for the millions of people who support minority parties but are denied parliamentary representation.

He went on to argue that: "The rigging of the electoral system in favour of the three biggest parties disenfranchises millions of people who want to be represented by MPs from smaller parties like the Greens.

"This political corruption echoes the rotten boroughs of nineteenth-century England. It means the House of Commons is unrepresentative of the full range of political opinions in British society. The absence of genuine democracy is fuelling political apathy and alienation.

"The Scottish and London election systems provide practical models of a fairer, more representative electoral process. They combine constituency members and list members."

The Greens point out that under the current system, even if they replicate the European election result of six per cent of the vote, they would end up with no MPs.

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