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Our current electoral system isn’t working.   Rather than allowing voters to determine the composition of the Commons, often it is the party machines that decide who gets to be an MP.

Not merely undemocratic, the system we have currently helps explain why the Commons has grown quite so bad at holding government to account.

With seven out of ten constituencies “safe seats”, most MPs are more likely to lose their job because they are sacked by party bosses in SW1, than by local voters.  Not surprisingly, this is reflected in the behaviour of some in Westminster. 

We have reached a situation where sitting MPs are in some instances, in effect, deciding who gets to sit in the legislature.  So much for people power.  No wonder people feel so detached from a remote political class. 

Radical change is needed to bring real choice and competition to politics.   If every member of the Commons faced a genuinely competitive contest to remain there, it would raise standards and productivity – and ensure our MPs answered outward, rather than inward.   

The single most effective way of achieving this would be to allow locally sanctioned open primaries in safe seats.   Yet bizarrely, open primaries – in so far as the Coalition is championing them at all - are being presented as something that would strengthen the power of the party machines – giving party bosses power to trigger them, rather than local parties and people. 

Multi member constituencies , like Disraeli’s idea of three member boroughs, might ensure that all MPs faced a real contest to sit in the Commons. So why aren’t we being asked to consider that?   

I have yet to see how AV would make politicians more accountable to the voter. If anything, I imagine sitting MPs would be able to rely on second preference votes, further insulating themselves from the views of constituents?   

Politics in the age of the internet is becoming more niche. The generic is giving way to the particular, the distinctive and the local. Far from making the political system more responsive to this appetite, AV means that whole swathes of opinion expressed in first preference votes can simply be disregarded.

If we are going to have a referendum on electoral reform, people need to be able to chose from all the options; the status quo, AV, AV+ or multi member choice. You cannot renew democracy by leaving it to the politicians to decide on what changes to make on the basis of what suits them.     

AV could give us generic, analogue politics in a niche and digital age.