A new start: Liberal Democrats for Electoral Reform

On Saturday, 10th March, at Spring Conference in Gateshead, we launched a new organisation – Liberal Democrats for Electoral Reform. At the moment, LDER has over 70 members and is aiming to gain the status of an Accredited Organisation (AO) at the earliest possible opportunity.

Electoral reform is not exactly a new cause, you might think, and the voters have told us exactly what they think about it. As I went around the conference centre asking Liberal Democrats to sign up for LDER, I was asked repeatedly: ‘Why electoral reform?’ ‘Why now?’ – ‘Haven’t we done that and failed?’ – ‘don’t we have better things to do?

But we must not give up just because of the AV referendum: Liberals and Liberal Democrats have been advocating electoral reform for well over a century; it’s in our party’s DNA, and surely, one setback cannot change that! Lord Rennard spoke at the meeting and outlined priorities and strategy: reforming the system we use to elect our MPs should remain an important goal, but there is so much else to do; in fact, we must not forget that in government our party is advancing aspects of electoral reform: Lords reform, party funding and recall are all on the agenda.

At a moment when Liberal Democrats are actually closer to achieving some improvements than we have been in decades, the party should remain at the cutting edge of advancing this agenda. For example, we need to pursue more proportional systems in local and European elections: STV is already in use for local elections in Scotland and in Northern Ireland councillors, assembly members and MEPs are elected by STV; so why not in England and Wales?

Most party members will have other policy priorities, but we must not forget that a fight for fairer elections remains as important as it has ever been. LDER is committed to providing information and debate about these issues and we aim to develop policy, too. Members at the meeting decided that our immediate priority should be reform of the system used for European elections: closed list PR should be unacceptable, and STV should be our goal, ideally by 2014.

Watch out for LDER at future conferences or sign up now to receive updates and help shape our agenda. Membership costs £10 (reduced rate: £5). Please visit our facebook page or contact LDER@pretzler.net for further information.

* Maria Pretzler is a Lecturer in Greek History at Swansea University. She blogs at Working Memories , where ancient Greekery and Libdemmery can happily coexist.