preview

Electoral reform is for anoraks - votes don’t matter whatever system you use

Apathy is a serious force in modern British politics - only 65% of the electorate bothered at the last UK general election. So when deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg announced that there will be a referendum next May on voting system reform, did you groan at the irrelevance of it or rejoice at the prospect that Britain might finally get a fair voting system? Matthew D’Ancona writes in the Telegraph, that the question “manages to be both irrelevant and horribly technical” – that is, just for the anoraks, people involved in a particular hobby to the point of obsession.

So is this a hugely important potential change to British politics that everyone needs to know about? Or is the apathetic moaner actually right that voting is an irrelevance?