"This is really the heart of the problem facing the left ─ linking the formulation of a broad left policy with an electoral presence able to put this policy forward to the British people so that they can make a real choice rather than the largely cosmetic policy differences which currently divide Labour and the Conservatives. In fact that should really be amended to be the English people as the transformed electoral systems in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales do, to a degree, offer such possibilities. What these show is that recognisably left positions are popular particularly in Scotland.

One conclusion which can be drawn from this is that electoral reform providing some genuine form of proportional representation ought to be given a much higher policy priority on the left than, currently, it is. The suspicion accorded PR on the left is now a genuine historical relic rather than any basic principle".

Mike is pretty pessimistic about the chances of the main party's being persuaded to move on PR - but as he rightly says, it would be "a genuinely popular policy, one that might reverse the corrosive cynicism that engulfs the whole political process in Britain".

Clearly, people on the Left have different strategies in terms of how to begin rebuilding a meaningful sense of political representation on the Left. Some believe that PR encourages Labour to think much more about how to win votes in its core heartland constituencies. Others think that Labour is dead as a party of the Left, and that we need to back another party like the Greens or Respect. Still others want to create a new party altogether to fill the vacuum left by Labour.

Unlike most European countries, the Left in Britain has never really "done" coalition politics. But can it make itself relevant any more without a more pluralist approach? Instead of fighting like ferrets in a sack, is it not worth uniting around campaigns where objectives are shared in common? Since our electoral system is obstacle common across our different strategies, isn't the campaign for PR something that we can unite around?

Unite Against Facism's analysis of the LA elections states that "The BNP only got elected because such a small percentage (5%) is required in the top up list section". If this is the case then what is an appropriate threshold? If the BNP achieved 7.6% of the vote just narrowly surpassing a threshold of 7.5% would we have to raise the threshold again? If this wasnt the BNP but a less offensive, less extreme minority party would we be asking these questions? Probably not.

It is not the threshold we need to address but the reasons why 130,174 people voted for BNP?

The meeting, on Tuesday 10 July, was a lively affair, discussing AV and the possibilities of progress on it. There seemed a reasonable consensus from the 50+ audience as well as the panellists that if there is any opportunity to go for AV for the Commons - whether in a manifesto commitment or even before the next election - that should be explored. Many people would prefer if that was the case to see AV included as part of an 'Aussie Rules'-style package of measures, along with PR for the Upper House and any of these weekend voting / voting incentives ideas the MoJ is thinking about. It just makes more sense that way. Even if AV was on offer, we'd still be pushing the case for some element of proportionality for the Commons, with AV only ever a pragmatic first step towards that route rather than a satisfactory goal in itself.

Below are a few photos from the event. Speakers were Peter Hain MP, Kevin Maguire (Mirror) and Paul Smith (Australian Labor Party). John Grogan MP chaired.

1) More than one in four of all eligible voters participated in a primary or caucus. This is a rate not seen since 1972, when the voting age was lowered to 18.

2) Voter participation in Democratic primaries was up 112% and caucuses by 223% compared to 2004 - ie.the turnout in Democratic primaries doubled and tripled in the caucuses.

3) Youth participation rose at a faster rate than any other age group. Turnout by voters ages 18-29 went up for the third consecutive national election year (2004 and 2006).

But alongside these startling facts, there is a salient message: besides competitive elections (which are very important) or the date of the primary, a number of factors influenced voter turnout. Election Day Registration and Early Voting most likely contributed to higher turnout in many states.

"Election Day Registration (EDR): Allowing voters to register or fix their registration at the polls ensures that more voters can successfully participate. Of the states with some form of Election Day Registration, most held caucuses. The three states with primaries, Wisconsin, New Hampshire and North Carolina, had high participation. Voters in North Carolina, normally a lower turnout state, benefited from the state letting early voters to register and vote at the same time up until 3 days before the election."

"Early Voting: Allowing voters more and better opportunities to vote early can raise turnout in contests with traditionally lower turnout, like primaries3. Four of the ten states with the highest 2008 voter turnout - Oregon, Illinois, Florida and California - have broad early voting systems in place."

Maybe both are measures the Ministry of Justice should be more seriously considering within its Governance of Britain discussions and consultations, rather than just the tinkering round the edges that constitute its proposals on weekend voting and giveaways at polling stations.

And perhaps the main lesson to take away from the report is that:

"The 2008 election provides fresh evidence of the difference made by meaningful competition and a diverse field of candidates and the higher levels of voter mobilization and participation this engenders."

Meaningful competition. A diverse field of candidates. Those phrases are right out of the electoral reform playbook. To continue with the sports analogy, the MoJ really should be allowing these discussions onto the field of play; rather than leaving us - and logic - shouting from the sidelines.

The White paper presents detailed modelling of the following systems

FPTP / AV / STV / Open/Semi-Open lists

The choice of system open to discussion and submissions welcome. So still some work to be done there. Ruling nothing in or out is the official line. It would have been nice for the Government to have shown a bit of bite and boldness by challenging the Conservatives to support some form of PR for these elections. After all, a number of senior Tories, Ken Clarke at al, are on record of supporting STV for elections to the upper chamber.

“But she’s right: the most deprived parts of Britain are safe Labour seats - today’s equivalent of rotten boroughs. You don’t mean a thing if your seat is not a swing, so people in places like Glasgow East are never canvassed. The views of swing seat voters, however, are treated as utmost priorities in Westminster. This is a huge drawback to our system. Those in sink estates are regarded as being devoid of political capital for any mainstream party. The welfare ghettos are, for Westminster, terra incognita."

Hat-tip to Mark Thompson for pointing out the article. In his email to me, Mark says:

"Fraser points out that the FPTP system leads to areas like Glasgow East being effectively shut out of the political system. As we in the electoral reform movement well know this is a natural consequence of our current system and actually applies to the majority of seats. Fraser does goes on to say it is one of the main drawbacks of the current system. Maybe I am wrong but I was not aware of The Spectator being in favour of PR."

Indeed. But Fraser did speak on a Conservative Action for Electoral Reform fringe event last year, so is not afraid of engaging with the issue. Even if, as you can see from this quote from that meeting, he is in two minds about what the solution should be.

"Britain has a rotten voting system, with an outageous built-in bias against the Conservartives who need a ten-point lead to win a simple majority. England is fast becoming a Tory country governmed by a Jockocracy. But rather than invite the Liberal Democrats into perpetual government with proportional representation, we should fix the current system."

The somewhat ironically titled paper "Communities in Contol" acknowledges that the "structure and culture" of politics sometimes alienates voters and there is a need to "shift power, influence and responsibility from the centre and into the hands of communities and individual citizens." Good so far, however, none of the proposals go far enough to really achieve this goal. Some of the ideas are a step in the right direction such as encouraging more directly elected mayors or the legal obligation for local councils to respond to a petition if it is signed by more than 5% population. Other proposals such as a £70 million communitybuilders scheme which allows members of the community to shape their public facilities are also positive measures but overall the paper fails to address the fundamental reasons why voters feel so disenfranchised.

So far the government have only offered up a series of small reforms that primarily deal with peripheral issues, if voter apathy is to be extinguished the government needs to address representative demoracy in conjunction with encouraging participation. The lack of voter choice, the attention that is given to marginal constituencies and the unrepresentative nature of the outcome are the real problems effecting participation, not when, how or for what luxury item people vote. Once these issues are resolved, participation will follow.

There has been a lot of press comment on the white paper and the general issue of voter participation in the past few days with many, such as Jill Sherman and Terence Blacker, deploring the ineffectivness and insulting nature of the proposals. Notably, Peter Riddell writes in The Times that "Nationally, the priority is to reinvigorate representative democracy".

Update: This from Luke Akehurst adding to voices calling for the electoral reform to be added into the mix of reforms:

"I'm disappointed that there hasn't been recognition that one of the major drivers of public disengagement and disempowerment from local councils is that we have an unfair electoral system which makes many councils one-party states with no incentive for voters to turn out or for councillors to be responsive to their electors. We need a more proportional voting system to elect councillors."

I'd like a doughnut for voting - it would set me up for work that day. But I'm going to vote anyway. Such a measure is not exactly going to change the fundamental problems we have on turnout - espeically that voters don't feel they are being listened to or can have a real influence on the result. Their votes in many cases and wards don't actually matter. None of the good things and also gimmicks proposed by Blears will change this fact.

Considering the White Paper is based on the independent Councillors' Commission report that was published last year, it is disappointing that the Government has chosen not to go ahead with one of the Commission's key recommendations: allowing councils to pilot STV (or other forms of voting system) for their elections. More on this from ERS.

Though the Government - from Hazel Blears to Michael Wills - seems to be asking the right questions on representative democracy, it is choosing to answer by tackling minor aspects or going for participatory forms of democracy (all good fo themselves) rather than by looking properly at how to improve our representative democracy - at local and national levels - and how a fairer more representative voting system may well be part of that.

At the end of last week the Government rather quietly put out a report on the progress made in the year since its publication of the Governance of Britain Green Paper.

Ministerial Statement and Report (pdf).

Scroll down the report to the bit on voting systems and there is a complete absence of any next steps. As far at the Ministry of Justice is concerned, it wa sjob done with the publication of the review of voting systems. End of story. No mention of any ongoing conversations, or what happened to the talk of AV which they admitted had started being discussed too.

Also, despite a detailed and impressive analysis of responses received to their official consultations (pdf), there is no mention about any of the responses received to the more general questions about the governance of Britain which the MoJ first asked of the public back in December. And also no mention whatsoever of any responses received to the Review of Voting Systems. None of the letters, postcards, petitions or anything else sent in during our 'Democracy isn't Deskbound' campaign - or sent in by anyone else - are officially or publically acknowledged. Disappointed doesn't even do my reaction justice.

MVC is planning what our - and your - next steps can be. So stay tuned. In the mean time, read ERS and STV Action responses.

So starts Lesley Abdela, in her Comment is Free piece 'Where on earth are the women in British politics?'.

According to the World League of Women in Parliament, which she cites, women's representation in politics is not linked to whether a country is rich or poor.

"One look around the world shows that in politics, no actions, let alone exhortation, will ever succeed without some form of quota as a perhaps temporary breakthrough measure. The 20 countries with more than 30% women in parliament share two things in common: their electoral system uses some form of proportional representation and they use quotas."

"[In the UK there is currently] only one woman in every five MPs. ... if the Conservative party wins the next election, the percentage of women in the mother of parliaments is likely to tumble even more shamefully lower down the league."

"There is only one way most of us will live to see gender equality in the British parliament: speedy reform of the electoral system to PR, combined with a gender balance quota. The big questions is, do party leaders Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg have the political commitment and courage to deliver equality for women in parliament and a more democratic political system?"

"The byelection in Scotland's largest city is going to give the people of its East End a rare few weeks of fame and power. I hope they enjoy their days in the spotlight of national attention. No one has put much weight on the opinions of these voters over the many decades that they have been sending Labour MPs to Westminster with stonking majorities. David Marshall had a majority of 13,507 at the last general election and a crushing 61 per cent of the vote. So predictable were Labour victories in Glasgow East, more than half of the voters saw no point in visiting a polling station."

"Precisely because the seat has been so impregnably Labour for so very long, no one had any political incentive to pay much attention to the people of one of the most deprived places in the United Kingdom. Suddenly, these folk matter to the politicians."

"The Labour malaise in its historic heartland is exemplified by the moribund condition of the party in Glasgow East. One minister tells me that the local party has fewer than 200 members. I hear from another Labour MP involved with the byelection campaign that the Glasgow East party has no canvassing records at all. They have been so accustomed to taking their support for granted that they didn't see the point of finding out who was voting for them. There are members of the government who find it inconceivable that they could lose here. 'These people are lifelong Labour voters,' one minister told me last week. That sounds dangerously complacent to me."

Liberal Democrat Nick Harvey, a member of the estimate committee, response to this afternoon's vote:

"It was a total own-goal on the part of the House of Commons. An opportunity to put our house in order and be seen to put our house in order has been passed up. They took all the nice bits of the package but not the ones they didn't like. They took the spoonful of sugar but refused the medicine."

To be fair, the Commons did finally vote to end the power they have to decide their future pay packets. Virtually no one else has the power to do that, so why should MPs? That change is about time. But it does lead on to the wider question of why it is that MPs are still, in this day and age, allowed to freely decide any such aspects of their employment terms and conditions.

Many MPs, because of the safe seats they represent, have jobs for life. Or at the very least jobs until they are too ill to continue or a once in a generation electoral landslide happens. These MPs are highly unlikely to ever want to seriously debate - let alone actually vote on - anything to do with the electoral system for the Commons. That way they can go on unchallenged, with little or no competition for their job. That is surely unreasonable. Do any of us (who are not self-employed) have jobs where we can so dictate the length of our contract and the way and terms that contract is renewed? It is time that we made all our elected representatives more accountable and more accustomed to the prospect of Christmas.

"One of the first ironies presented by Glasgow East is that it is a classic Labour rotten borough. One of the most rotten of the rotten, in fact. For generations, its inhabitants have been treated as cannon fodder; their votes taken for granted, their poverty contained but largely untackled. Vote Labour? It's what they do, along with drinking, drug taking, bad diet and Irn-Bru. Why should politicians spend money on people who are going to vote for them anyway? Much better to invest it in marginal seats.

In election after election, Glasgow's poor automatically did what their parents had done, with 60 per cent or more of the vote consistently cast for Labour. Corresponding generations of Labour politicians, both local and national, used such loyalty to secure their positions but singularly failed to reward their people.

The final irony, of course, lies within the boundaries of Glasgow East, where the massed poor have perhaps not so much shifted their allegiance from Labour as ceased to have any allegiance at all - other than to Celtic FC. Will their lives change, whoever wins the by-election? Doubtful. Very doubtful. Sitting on the slow bus back to the East End, surrounded by drunks and junkies, the constituents inhale the ever-persistent whiff of broken promises."

Sound familiar? Aren't MPs upto the same kind of trick with their consensus that we musn't break up the "constituency link"? Why should we allow them to hold onto their own 'like-it-or-lump-it' monopolies of parliamentary representation which give voters no choice over who gets to represent them between elections? Why is it that the monopoly service providers in all other areas of the public sector are derided as "dinosaurs" resistant to modernisation, when the MPs themselves insist on having a monopoly of representation in their constituency? If allowing consumers to shop around increases competition and incentives service provides to continually improve their service, why should the same not also apply to MPs themselves?

This is far from unthinkable - multi-member constituencies work well in local government, and in Scotland under the proportional STV system, voters are finding not only they get a better representation in terms of the party composition of councils, but also over the individual councillors from within that party. Councillors are now kept on their toes, because they know that if they are unwilling or ineffective in dealing with a voters' concerns, then one of their rivals might prove a good deal better. Maybe it's inevitable that vested interest groups will try to resist change and protect their monopoly privileges. So in Westminster too we find that a "gentlemens' agreement" limits choice. And I do mean an agreement that suits men over women, since as ERS research demonstrates, single-member electoral systems tend to mitigatae against womens' representation, which is one reason why only 4 out of 5 MPs are male.

But it's high time that we turned the MP's logic about choice and competition leading to a better quality of service back against the "dinosaur" tendency in Westminster, too.