By Matt Strong
This morning Hilary Benn suggested that the road to restoring trust will be long and hard. That old survivor Ken Livingstone has declared that a new speaker is just the start. It is easy to agree with both. Even before this latest episode in nihilism, trust in politicians was on a par with those well-perceived professionals: estate agents and journalists. On Saturday, I will be canvassing for Labour in the run-up to the Euro elections, and I can only imagine the hostile reception some people will give me. People are angry, people feel let down. And they’re right to feel that way.
So what is the solution? Changing the speaker is not enough. Even changing the way expenses are allocated isn’t enough. Too little, too late; but both options are certainly necessary actions in the road to restoring public trust, if not wholly sufficient. What’s really needed is a complete overhaul of our parliamentary system. That has to start with giving the British people a referendum on how we elect parliament and introducing a single transferable vote system now must be seen as a serious option.
For those who aren’t as geeky as myself when it comes to electoral systems, that bastion of knowledge, Wikipedia, gives an explanation of STV in fairly lay terms here.
The STV method has all the hallmarks of a solid, effective voting system with none of the risks or drawbacks associated with truly proportionate systems. Giving power back to voters through ranking candidates in order of preference means such candidates become responsive to their communities more than they are currently. How many MPs - from all parties - in safe seats become complacent and lazy thanks to the ‘job for life’ their constituency parties or associations have awarded them? I’m sure we can all name names. It is important too for MPs to have a direct link to the local communities that have elected them, and indeed multi-member constituency of three to four MPs would strengthen that rather than weaken it.
As we are all too aware, the BNP could get a foothold in the European Parliament thanks to a proportionate regional list system being used next month. Within an STV system, the transferal of votes rewards consensual and moderate politicians whilst simultaneously punishing extremist ones. Electoral reform does not mean allowing fascists into parliament through the back door.
Until now, I thought that the opportunity to implement electoral reform had passed us by following the government’s refusal to accept the flawed recommendations of the Jenkins Commission. That report suggested a switch to a form of electoral system similar to the ones used currently in the Welsh Assembly and Scottish Parliament. Personally I don’t think such a system offers the safeguards of STV but it would certainly have been an improvement on the status quo or other suggestions such as an appalling national list system as used in Israel.
As the old cliche goes, every cloud has a silver lining and the MPs expenses row could prove that. We have reached a crisis point and part of the healing process should now be to bring in an electoral system that will allow voters to remove rotten candidate without punishing the party they support. In recent days senior politicians from across the house have called for a review of how we elect parliament. From Alan Johnson to the current speaker’s nemesis Douglas Carswell, calls for reform are growing louder. When cabinet members and now even Tories are talking constitutional reform, you know the time for change must be near.
Trust in politicians is surely now at an all-time low. The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is quite right to speak out and accept that the road to restoring trust will be long and hard. But why make it longer and harder than it needs to be? Surely there has never been a better time to take electoral reform to the people than now.
Delicious
Digg
Reddit
Facebook
StumbleUpon
I'm not keen on STV as it doesn't help you in a completely safe seat but it might help us as people who vote 'Gordon Out' or 'There all rotten' may put Labour, reluctantly last rather than have a Tory in. Then again, if the people realise that the Tories are actually pro-EU and choose UKIP instead STV might harm the Tories less than FPTP.
I prefer AV with the AV making up half the House of Commons or better still every seat joining the AV group unless its winner gaining a higher proportion of the seat's electorate than half the national turnout. I may have put this forward somewhere else on this site.
Can we not have an elected House of Lords - I favour a single chamber system or have a Lords that comments but has no say. If it has no say it could then have an elected component but who would want the job? Have a good look at the US system, votes need the approval of both houses so only the lowest common denominator gets through - often policies that help the rich or moral majority and nobody else. It looks like Obama will only get climate change through because using the Clean Air Act would be worse for big business. Also having two elected houses fighting each other brought down Argentina and looks like it's about to bring down Arnie in California.
Jonathan , please enlighten. what system will suit the tories least? thanks.
Using PR in this cynical 'last resort' way you suggest is very noble. Oh yes.
I honestly tried to read the Wikipedia article linked and I got totally confused - and turned off.
Unless there is a simple explanation that can demonstrate STV's alleged benefits to us proles, it's a non starter.
Meanwhile, until convinced otherwise, 'first past the post' remains, like democracy, the worst possible voting system - except all the alternatives.
NOT a good idea !!!
Did you even read the post?
As things stand, we're not going to have the £££ to do anything else.
Let me preempt the inevitable -
and who's fault is that / bloody Gordon Brown / didn't fix the roof / etc etc etc
There was analysis done on the MPs who had been named and shamed in the recent expenses scandal and it highlighted that three-quarters of the MPs involved were in the safest parliamentary seats. Quite clearly, security with power breeds complacency and corruption. That aside, I think that the argument for electoral reform is growing all the time and as Barack Obama's Chief of Staff, Rahm Emmanuel, recently uttered: "never let a serious crisis go to waste."
As to the heart of the issue, currently no MP enjoys the active support of over 50% of constituents and only three have over 40% support. Three MPs have fewer than 20% of registered electors voting for them, the most high profile being George Galloway in Bethnal Green and Bow with 18.4%. However, in term of votes, only a third of MPs were elected in 2005 with over half the votes in their constituencies. That was the lowest proportion recorded in British electoral history.
The 2005 general election threw up statistics that I have found hard to ignore then or since. It is the often recited electoral fact (unsurprisingly, it has already been mentioned in a post below) that Labour won a comforable third term majority on 35.2% of the votes - an active support of only 21.6% of the electorate. No other government has been elected with so little support from the ballot box since franchise reform in 1918. Amongst the large democracies, only Turkey has a majority government with a smaller share of the vote.
FPTP produces such vast regional variances as to totally disenfranchise parties and electorates whilst wholly enriching other. Examples include East Sussex, where Labour won the most seats but came third in terms of votes. In Surrey, the Conservatives got half the votes and all of the seats. In Cornwall, the Lib Dems got 44% of the votes and all of the seats. This just simply isn't democratic and wastes vast, vast numbers of votes.
A variant of proportional representation that I am open to is the one currently used in Germany. Elected for four years, half the MPs by simple majority in one member constituencies and half made up from Regional Party Lists so that the number of members is proportional to the party's total votes. Parties gaining less than 5% of the vote do not get seats, which may act as a filter to the more extreme parties.
The German system is as pretty close to a fair system as I have come across, but what is certainly necessary is a serious look at electoral reform as apart of the process of MPs re-engaging with the electorate.
As for the rubbish about how it gives "power to the voters rather than politicians" it will likely do completely the opposite. If it led to elections with lots more minority governments instead of manifesto pledges being met we'd have more deals struck between partie in the old "smoke filled rooms".
This is just more of the same old nonsense. The issue at hand isn't about how you elect an MP, it's about what an MP does, how much he is paid for it and how transparent it all is.
Fortunately the Tories will be completely opposed to this and any attempt by Labour to go for it (and I can't believe they would) will be seen as a desperate attempt to mitigate being chucked out by the electorate.
It does have two drawbacks though. One is bigger constituencies. Not a big deal in London, but think of the size of a 3 or 4 member STV constituency in rural Scotland or Wales.
The other is that the way our parliament works is very much based around the idea that one party will nearly always have an overall majority. We just don't have the rules and ways of working in place to cope with hung parliaments, and they rarely work well.
The constituency size issue might just be something we have to live with (rural MPs might choose to split up the constituency for casework purposes, for example) and the parliament issue can be fixed easily enough by changing the rules, but we shouldn't underestimate the challenges of a more proportional voting system.
(If anyone is desperately interested, I've written more at http://bit.ly/8K7fh )
Not all electoral reformers like the single transferable vote system and it has plenty of problems with it - intense parochialism, party confusion as rival candidates from the same party do each other down, never giving a government a majority to make radical change, and so on.
I would recommend a "brainstorming session".
on the subject of constitutional/electoral reform.
Please can this blog organise this. We could use the "Live PMQ chat" as the tool - to achieve. what says you, Mr Editor!
I also don't see how a discussion on electoral reform can't take place without highlighting the fundamentals of the differing systems, putting the one party state on the table, and outcomes of the competing systems. Sure, the one party state is a hobby horse of mine but seeing PR just get a free pass is irritating.
charles,
If , as I think , anyone who wants to get elecetd /re-elected, then they need to join a party of the "clean and virtuous". With that in mind, perhaps you will get your wish..... ?!
Elected by 22% of the electorate with a leader with no electoral mandate.
Hardly a good qualification is it?
Come on, Mike. It may interest you to know that a lot of people here, though counting themselves left or centre-left, actually are democrats first and foremost, and even at the cost of loss of electoral power, would prefer a country where the populace feel connected to their representatives in Parliament and have faith in the political process again.
I'm sure you can do better than this. Just for an experiment, let's start again from scratch and imagine that you're on a cross-party board on enquiry to reform the Parliamentary system. What would you say about the ideas in the article above? How would you improve them? What needs to be done for the sake of Parliamentary democracy as a whole?
If you just reply "sack all the Labour politicians" I'll know my attempt to start a rational debate really is wasted.
What I can see is a opportunistic and increasingly desperate political party with evaporating popular support looking to use what remaining voters it has left to maximise that return into electoral seats in Parliament.
Is it just pure coincidence that these proportional systems return more seats to minority parties?
If you want an electorate to feel connected, how about telling them the truth? Or are we going to get more interviews by the Chancellor telling us that the recession is going to be over by Christmas.
Labour are very poorly qualified to speak on any matter of reform, their track record with House of Lords reform speaks volumes and many of the Cabinet have been resoundingly caught with their fingers in the till. After all, when Labour had a 160+ seat majority, it paid mere lip service to PR and Roy Jenkins' report - probably because it didn't want to lose seats.
Brown was never elected as PM, he has no popular mandate and if this government was really keen on cleaning up Parliament, good governance and connecting with the people it would call an election.
If it looks like a duck, waddles like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck.
If your levels of delusion are so attuned to think that anyone is remotely interested in what the left has to say on the issue - don't expect universal agreement.
Labour are not setting the agenda this time.
At least we now know that you're just interested in the status quo ante 1997. Reform, demanded by the country, is obviously not going to come from this section of the right.
I think the House of Lords reform is far from complete, but it's much better than the atavistic hereditary system that was in place.
Labour and the Liberals have consistently been the parties of Parliamentary reform for over 150 years now, with the Tories kicking and screaming all the way. Good to know some things haven't changed.
Labour may a mixed record of Parliamentary reform - but at least they have a record. The Tories have none.
If you are going to try, try getting it right. Blair campaigned saying he would not seek a fourth term and when pressed he said that he would resign at the next general election. We got a putsch and Blair was pushed, not in the same spectacular manner as Thatcher (at least they had the courage to say it to her face and conduct a vote) but Blair was booted out by the Brownites.
Also, Major sought a mandate in 1992 and got one, Major also stood in a leadership contest. Brown was crowned and bottled his mandate.
There are still hereditary peers in the House of Lords.
As for parliamentary reform - who's campaigning for a smaller Parliament with fewer MPs now?
As for public clamour for reform, I haven't seen of heard anyone on radio or TV asking for a change in voting system. The public just want these outrageous expenses claims stopped and they want some heads too.
In terms of succession strategy I think I know which is the preferable route. The turmoil of the Thatcher assassination condemned the Tories to three successive landslide defeats.
Brown should have sought his mandate in October 2007. He will pay the price for that. My guess is that Labour will more quickly reinvent than the Tories did, but we'll see.
Regardless of all this party politicking, I've believed for a long time that Parliament needs reforming and updating (I'm not talking about changing the voting system though). This Labour government did some good things, and then stalled. The current debacle is a product of that insular Old Boys Club network. It's become more remote from other people's lives, and needs to change itself or be held in even more contempt.
Just my opinion of course. But I think the chorus is growing.
But then there's the electoral calculations of the PLP. If a new leader either a) saves a few marginal seats or b) looks like losing more, they'll make their calculations in their own self interest I guess.
Meanwhile Brown will happily bring the temple down around his ears, muttering all the while that the Labour Party deserved to be destroyed as it was not worthy.... (Oh no - I've gone and stolen a scene from Downfall and thus once again transgressed Godwin's Law!).
Its all a question of perspective. To the young under-graduate that looks into the rich history and ideology of the Labour Party, things seem to be working okay. But the 81 year old life long Labour supporter who has spent the winter months wondering why their local Labour Club has been abandoned and why they have to stand outside in the freezing cold for a cigarette, their view may well be something different.
I've seen changes I like, but I've also seen changes that have completely destroyed communities, venues that once saw people of all ages mixed together have been abandoned and the people who are left behind feel disenfranchised. They won't vote Labour again, but more importantly, neither will their families or friends. To those people, they may well view GB as a genocidal maniac. He may not be butchering the people, but the communities they had have disappeared in a generation. Sat at home they don't take kindly to the attacks on their cheap supermarket alcohol or the punitive rises in the things like because for some they percieve these as the last few pleasures they work a hard day for.
Every decision, every bit of legislation will have implications on a wide range of people, but be aware that although some changes may be necessary, they can alienate an entire community for a generation. Maybe two.
But carry on. Stretching is supposed to be good for you.
Poor old Samson (blinded in both eyes) cried "Let me die with the Philistines!". AH in his bunker never suffered any self-doubt or second thoughts but blamed everything on 'others'.
You must admit there is a behavioural similarity.
The Labour Party really do need to drop the 'New' prefix and consign it to the dustbin, get to the polls and begin the rebuild. The sooner the plaster is ripped off, the sooner the healing can begin. The damage being done in the meantime could mean that the healing process is lengthened and could push Labour into 3rd place. If that happens... well, think of the way a good deal of people have viewed the Liberal Democrats in the past. A lot of their ideas are very good, but they tend to be bypassed in favour of the other two parties in the House.