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May 12, 2008
Defending PR - a Conservative MEP speaks out
Charles Tannock, Conservative MEP for London, writes a defence of PR for European elections - against an assault from within his own party - and I feel it is worth quoting at length from his astute observations:
"I can now after 9 years in office see the advantages of the multimember regional list for the European Parliament. Not only does it allow an elector to write to his or her MEP of party choice but also a degree of choice in finding an MEP who sits on the relevant committee with specialist knowledge of the matter in question. In the EP most legislation is highly technical and doesnt always divide on party lines but on national ie UK plc lines and in the area of supranational legislation we have to build consensus across parliament so a spead of political views are necessary to gage public opinion.
I very much doubt with the reducing number of total UK MEPs even if we had our own FPTP Constituency (with 10 westminster constituencies within it) that we could ever be known personally to the million or so population this would entail. Furthermore when we were at our most unpopular the MEPs were a useful backup for local party structures in the large swathes of the country with no elected Tory representation at all.
I do not seek personal recognition in my Regional constituency and am happy to leave that glory to my Westminster colleagues and am keen instead to get on with the job in hand. Furthermore if I did have personal recognition with London's 5 million electors I might be deluged with correspondence without the resources to cope with it which has anyway increased exponentially in the last decade.
There is also the other advantage the closed list for Europe brings that in theory we all stand or fall together and cannot compete with each other once the list is decided whereas a FPTP could mean adjacent Euro PPCs could break ranks and disagree and we have enough of division over Europe as it is.
Lastly I believe that under EU law PR is mandatory for Euroelections and once adopted cannot be returned to FPTP which is permissible pnly intially until a form of PR is settled on. I agree this is wrong but we signed up to this years ago.
I doubt David Cameron will regard this Euro PR issue a prority and besides the Conservative Party is well aware that ultimately parliamentarians are all basicaly elected on a party ticket (MPs are in my view on a closed party list of one and other than in exceptional cases rarely have a large personal vote above a couple of thousand voted) so an incoming Tory government by enjoying a degree of party control of the Euro list will probably happily live with the status quo."
Posted by malcolmclark on May 12, 2008
