Many of us working in the elections found ourselves overtaken by the Your Britain timetable. The Labour Campaign for Electoral Reform urges people, before this Friday 13 June, to add their ideas to the democratic reforms needed to create Better Politics.

LCER links citizenship education and votes at 16 with the arrival of individual electoral and electronic registration. The government’s plans only ensure ‘low hanging fruits’ count. Forget about people on the move, particularly the young, students and those living in multioccupation. So we suggest that equalisation of constituencies, which Tories wrongly claim will tackle the fact that they have to get more votes to get the same number of members of parliament, be based not on registered voters but on the actual population. And loosening the electoral quota will allow boundary commissions to reflect local communities.

We have something to thank Nick Clegg for. When the Tories defeated his plans for reform of the House of Lords, he dropped the boundary changes and reduction of MPs to 600. But as democrats, Labour needs to complete the changes to the unelected second chamber. If this is to be democratically elected there should be proportional elections, single transferable vote or open lists based on the nations and regions.

When Raymond Plant was given his remit to change voting systems in 1990, Labour left local government out. However, Scottish adoption of STV has refreshed politics and given Labour voters a voice in areas that have not traditionally had Labour representation. So LCER argues for local pilots or referendums for STV in local elections in England and Wales so local people can choose their own voting system.

Labour electoral reformers still hope to see a voting system where the number of MPs broadly reflects the votes cast. Now, with four or five parties contesting seats, where two horse faces were once the norm, we are likely to see tactical voting going any which way, as it did in Newark.

Labour supported a written constitution in its 2010 manifesto. It would mean a constitutional or people’s commission or convention to tackle the issues where there is no consensus inside or outside the next government. School students could then be taught ‘Our Democracy’.

For us, One Nation politics means a new political culture based on diversity of representation, cooperation and pluralism. A politics which will be less adversarial, which reflects the new ways we communicate in society: the lack of deference; the importance of listening, and of problem solving, rather than always of claiming to have ‘answers’; where consent is sought rather voices ignored.

We need diversity in every decision-making body which mirrors today’s society; an equality which is not about sameness; a respect for difference; a new collectivism, whereby people join together to challenge structures which are insensitive or unresponsive to their needs; subsidiarity in the knowledge that decisions are best taken by the people whose lives are most affected.

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Mary Southcott is parliamentary and political officer at the Labour Campaign for Electoral Reform

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Photo: synasthaesia