Hardly a big surprise from a long time indirect minority rule party--- ------- U.K. Conservatives Oppose Any Change to Voting System Bournemouth, England, Oct. 8 (Bloomberg) -- Britain's main opposition Conservative Party said it will oppose any moves to change the country's first-past-the-post voting system into proportional representation. Delegates at the party's annual conference said they reject any change and backed a statement saying the present system best serves ``broad proportionality, voter choice, stable government and constituency link.'' The Labour government has commissioned a report on the issue, due at the end of the month, from Lord Roy Jenkins, former Labour cabinet minister and later of the old Social Democratic Party, now the minority opposition Liberal Democrats. Today, the incoming chairman of the Conservative Party, Michael Ancram, said the Jenkins Commission was ``rigged. Roy Jenkins has worked all his political life to shift the political landscape, to tilt it towards a permanent center- left alignment.'' He said Jenkins wants a system ``which will always tend to produce hung results and lead to coalitions so that political parties can then deliver the center-left government which the voters will not. He can't trust the electorate to do it for him, so he need to find a system which will.'' Prime Minister Tony Blair has said he's not convinced of the merits of proportional representation over the present system and has pledged that any change would be subject to a referendum of British voters. 08:21:56 10/08/1998
