INSIGHT - Grown-up progressive politics
Neal Lawson, the chair of Compass, the cross party campaigning anti-Tory organisation, has recieved an email telling him he had been expelled from the Labour party after being a member for 44 years. The reason? He had retweeted a Lib Dem MPs' call for some voters to back Green candidates in local elections, to which Neal commented such cross-party cooperation represented 'grown-up progressive politics.'
Why did Neal do what he did? Because he knows that with our 'First Past the Post' voting system, the Conservatives win elections on a minority of votes, again and again. My best - no worst!, most recent example is from May 4th this year where the Conservative candidate for Mayor of Bedford won with 33.1% of the vote, with the previous Lib Dem Mayor coming a close second.
That example is even more poignantly worse because the Conservatives in Parliament last year passed an Elections Act, which not only introduced Voter ID for all elections, disadvantaging considerable numbers of people from voting, but it also changed voting for Mayors and certain other elected posts from a 'Proportional' system to 'First Past the Post'.
Back to the Neal Lawson issue, I throw a challenge to Labour members - is it not better to share power with like minded other parties, accepting some degree of compromise, than especially here in the South East, to let the Tories win on a minority vote?
