Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill (Money) (No. 3)

I am more than happy to explain for the hon. Gentleman's sake. We have never had any MP elected on 6 per cent. in this country, but plenty of Members of the current House of Commons were elected on less than a third of the vote, and one was elected not so long ago on just over a quarter. Why are we frightened of the simple majoritarian principle that MPs should have majority support? Some of my colleagues in Scotland complain about the systems used in the Scottish Parliament and Scottish council elections, but AV has nothing to do with those systems. AV is not proportional representation; it is just 1-2-3 voting. It keeps the constituency link, it is no more likely to lead to hung Parliaments and it makes it even more difficult for extreme parties to get elected, because they need majority support. AV is also proportional to what voters want, because it looks at their first and second choices, and it does not lead to the danger of having MPs elected with only a third or a quarter of the vote. I would invite any colleague to find a voter who objects to being given a second choice. On the contrary, the public seem to love it. For instance, ““The X Factor”” is a long, drawn-out version, over several weeks and several rounds, of a preferential system. Indeed, if ““The X Factor”” had been run on first past the post, the Jedward twins would have won, because they came top in the first round, albeit admittedly with only 10 per cent. That would have been a travesty—not only a musical travesty, but a democratic travesty, because they got only 10 per cent. of the vote. The reason we are frightened of a system that gives us simple majoritarian rule is that we are all transfixed by calculations of party advantage. We are not just asking, ““Will AV be good for the voter or fairer?””; we are asking, ““Will AV help me?”” I should point out that there are two very different ways of calculating what would happen under a different voting system. First, there is the static analysis, whereby past elections are rerun, assuming that people would vote the same way, even with a different system of toting up their votes. I am sure that we have all seen those analyses. However, I shall not rehearse them here, because they do not help us at all. Then there are the dynamic analyses, where we look at what happens under different systems or in different elections in different countries. I have spent a fair amount of time writing about elections—mainly in newspapers, but sometimes in books—and I would caution hon. Members very much against believing the static analysis of what would happen. AV is a different ball game, and how people would vote would change quite a bit. Candidates with a strong tactical vote could find their first-choice vote unravelling, because there is no point in voting tactically under AV. Simply putting someone's results at the last election through an algorithm does not tell us what will happen. What we should look at is the dynamic analysis. Let us look at the elections held under AV—mayoral elections, Australian or French elections, or Scottish council by-elections. In all those elections, it is impossible to see any particular advantage to any party. The only clear advantage is to the voter, who gets a clearer choice. What happens in AV elections is that candidates and parties act in a slightly different way, paying more attention to the other people's second choices, and that is surely no bad thing. Under AV, it is no good being a Marmite candidate—one whom the minority loves, but the majority hates. Candidates need more of a rainbow appeal. Frankly, when we look at the history of British elections over the past 20 years, is that not the lesson that we should learn from our electoral system?