Clegg challenged to wear purple

I knew Clegg would sell out proportional representation in order to form a coalition government with the Conservatives. From takebackparliament.com:

Clegg challenged to wear purple in support of fair votes

Guy Aitchison: Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg promised a "power revolution" to change British politics for good today in a speech at a sixth form college in North London.

The current first-past-the-post voting system is a "block on change", he said, with half of seats "safe" and millions of votes wasted. Spot on!

"New politics needs fairer votes", he said, before going on to outline the merits of the Alternative Vote, the system the coalition have agreed to put to voters in a referendum.

But here's where things get tricky because the Alternative Vote isn't proportional and falls far short of what the Lib Dems want.

I asked Clegg whether he'd be pushing for a proportional option on the ballot paper to give voters a "fair choice on fair votes" as thousands of us demanded on streets up and down the country on Saturday.

Brandishing a piece of purple cloth I challenged Clegg to wear purple to show his support for this demand.

Although Clegg assured me he had a nice collection of purple ties (though he was wearing an orange one at the time!) he refused to be drawn on whether he would be pushing for full PR.

More's the shame. AV is an improvement on first-past-the-post, of course, as Clegg says. But if we're going to have a referendum on the voting system let's have a fair choice with the option of fair proportional system.

Why should the public's choice be limited for the convenience of political parties? It should be up to us to decide how we select our politicians, not the politicians themselves.

Take Back Parliament will be keeping up the pressure to demand a fair choice on fair votes.

Sign our petition for fair votes today and join the call for change!