I agree with you very much with the point, as you say elsewhere, that the PR has to be the STV system. The current crisis is not about proportionality, it’s about people feeling that politics and politicians are remote from them. STV is the only system which gives the individual choice between candidates that goes some way to remedying this. AV doesn’t (because there’s only one candidate per party – although it offers the very limited remedy of a like-minded independent standing and not splitting the vote if the incumbent MP is really awful), and list systems don’t and a cobble-up between he two doesn’t. So AV+ has almost nothing to deal with why people are so anti-politics now, and it is hypocritical of us to offer it pretending it does. Saying that does not mean, as you seem to be implying, that I believe PR is worthless even in a debased form such as AV+.

However, the point I am making is that the REAL remedy to the current crisis is to change the way politics is presented. This does mean considering the sort of literature and campaign material we put out, the way we present ourselves. We MUST find a way to make political parties seem on the side of the people against the big established powers, rather than being one of those big alienating powers. Now when I joined the party we were starting to do that with “community politics”, but that became ossified and the original very radical intentions that its pioneers had were never taken forward and it became just an election-winning technique. I don’t think what we do with it now can be particularly built on (I don’t want to write any more patronising Focus leaflets), but I do want to get back to what we wanted to do back in those days when it was new.

So, we do need to do things like having an image which is more about ordinary people joining us and finding it and empowering mechanism and less about Big Chief Clegg handing down wisdom from on high. I know I have this image of someone who is fanatically anti-Clegg, but believe me it is because I feel we really are going down the wrong path to think the way forward is just to have a fancy national image based around a smoothie charismatic leader. I want us to be a party which is about people, not a party about leaders. I am pushing this really firmly and with increased urgency, because I am becoming more fearful that we may end up with people’s detachment from politics leading to something horrible happening, and I mean 1920/30s stuff. We MUST get this right, and just saying “a referendum on AV+” is not enough at all.

Of course it won’t solve everything. What it – or rather a responsive electoral system such as STV – does do is ensure that MPs are more accountable. That is what people are demanding at the moment and only electoral reform can do this.

I haven’t defended the state of Irish politics – quite the opposite. But in Ireland there isn’t that sense of quiet desperation that characterises politics in England that you are being systematically ignored by the political system.

It would be very nice to think that if only we had voting by STV and a written constitution, politics would all be wonderful and everyone would think democracy was working really well and we wouldn’t have to worry about something fascist coming along shortly and sweeping the whole lot away on the “Damn the lot of them, let’s get rid of politics” line.

But I beg to dissent – do people love their politicians and is there no divided between the political class and the people in, say the Republic of Ireland?

For all the sound and fury, David Cameron flunks that test, saying to the BBC:

But Mr Cameron rejects any change from the current first-past-the-post system.

“Instead of voters choosing their government on the basis of the manifestos put before them in an election, party managers would choose a government on the basis of secret backroom deals. How is that going to deliver the transparency and trust we need?”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8067505.stm

We need to deal with this attitude otherwise PR will never pass in a referendum. Even the citizens of British Columbia rejected STV, despite having suffered ludicrous near-wipeouts of parties under FPTP: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Columbia_electoral_reform_referendum,_2009

I think you mean “26,000 people per seat/TD”! Personally I don’t see the problem with multi-seat constituencies. Indeed, they would more often be natural communities than the current seats. Large cities such as Sheffield would be one constituency, and small counties like Cambridgeshire (also Oxfordshire if we have 6-seater constituencies or reduce the number of MPs) would be one constituency. Makes much more sense than saying that “Sheffield Central” or “South Cambridgeshire” are a natural community (South Cambridgeshire contains the part of Cambridge city that doesn’t fit into the Cambridge seat as well as a swathe of countryside – no logic there!).

In counties with a large city the simple solution would be for the city to be one constituency and the rest of the county another. Bring on STV!

But there is an interesting question attached to STV: how large should the constituencies be? Irish constituencies range from three to five seats each, which hurts smaller parties such as the PDs (who are in the process of disbanding, sadly). In a British context the losers would be the Greens and, conceivably, UKIP (though I’m not sure whether UKIP would attract many votes in Westminster elections). If we want more proportionality we should raise the upper limit to seven seats (lower limit should still be three because of the Highlands).

The way parties behave is a direct consequence of the electoral and political system.

If you have a system which invests so much power in the executive and depends on the votes of a handful of swing voters in marginal constituencies, politics will always be fought on the basis of personalities slugging it out rather than political ideals.

Even the best electoral system can’t eliminate that entirely, but it certainly would mitigate it.

We need to get away from this idera that parties are top-down Leninist/Tory type tools of their leaders, and rediscover the idea that they are bottom up associations of people who get together in order to promote some of their number to political positions.

Why, for example, are all or PPBs so focussed on the Leader? Why don’t we have PPB which have the theme “join us an empower yourselves” rather than “vote for us and we’ll do good things for you”? Isn’t the latter more liberal? Aren’t we liberals?

On party funding, I really like your idea of using large donors to provide party funding.

On ministers being Parliamentarians, Mandelson was given a life peerage just prior to being put in charge of DBERR. He indirectly replaced Digby Jones who was also given a life peerage and remains in the House of Lords despite only being in government for a year.

In terms of democratic accountability, currently the only accountability lies in the Commons’ nuclear option of passing a vote of no confidence in the Prime Minister. Surely subjecting each minister to an approval process and allowing Parliament to no confidence individual ministers would lead to greater accountability – even if they weren’t parliamentarians themselves?

Regarding party funding, I think that donation over a certain cap should be taxed in such a way as to provide for the matched funding you suggest. That way, large donor are not just supporting a party, they’re supporting democracy.

When you say “ministers must also be parliamentarians” – I was under the impression that Peter Mandelson wasn’t a member of Parliament – or am I confused?

While I like the idea that a future energy secretary holds a Nobel Prize it would mean that there would be no democratic accountability. We’d be reliant on the ruling party to discipline any wrong-doings.

What I find amusing about electoral reform is all the parties support it… for their own use! The election of the Tory leader and the Speaker are just two examples where FPTP have been removed for something better. If it’s good enough for them…

Finally, you’re right about the constituency link. Not least because high ranking ministers can’t be expected to manage local, national and international work.