This week is an exciting week in the Biteback camp because we have a new book coming out (yes, even after all these books it's still an exciting occassion to us, especially when it's one as poignant as this). The book is A Citizen's Guide to Electoral Reform and its author, Alan Renwick, has generously devoted some time to tell our audience why he felt this book needed to be written:
Electoral systems are big news at the moment. We have a referendum in May on whether to keep the ‘first past the post’ system for electing the House of Commons or replace it with the ‘alternative vote’. The government will shortly announce proposals for electing members of the House of Lords. Later in the year, we’re likely to get detailed plans for a new mechanism allowing voters to recall a misbehaving MP without having to wait for a general election.
I know lots of people who really want to engage with the debates on these proposals – they know how much the voting rules matter for the way we’re governed and for our ability to make our voices heard. But they get frustrated because the debate is conducted through endless jargon and abbreviations that obscure the issues.
That’s why I decided to write this book. People are right to think that the choices we make about our electoral system are really important. These choices will be crucial in determining how representative our Parliament is, whether we have single-party governments or coalition governments, how easily we can hold our MPs to account – how our whole political system functions. We need a guide that cuts through all the verbiage and gets to the core of the issue.
Indeed, the jargon isn’t the only problem facing the unsuspecting citizen. Over the next few months, as we head towards the referendum, both sides of the debate will turn up the rhetoric, making all sorts of outlandish claims about the effects of voting one way or the other. The Yes camp will claim that only changing the voting system can save us from a class of corrupt and self-serving politicians. The No camp will retort that a tiptoe away from the status quo will send us hurtling down a slippery slope towards oblivion.
Should we believe any of this? Actually, it’s already clear that a lot of the arguments being lined up on both sides distort the truth.
So I wanted to write an impartial guide that takes the reader through the various options and the arguments that surround them. I don’t mince my words when I think someone’s claims make no sense. But I try to set out the arguments and the evidence as fairly as possible. I don’t tell the reader how to vote: how you should vote depends on what you want. Rather, I aim to help the reader think about what the important questions might be and how we can go about answering them.
The more citizens are able to do this, the better our democracy will be.
A Citizen's Guide To Electoral Reform by Alan Renwick is released this week and you can order it here for £9.99