By The public’s disgust at the goings-on at Westminster is being exploited by the supporters of proportional representation (PR). They are trying to suggest that the electoral system is somehow to blame and they put forward PR as a panacea to solve the problems.
New Labour is in a panic, and in their desperation to find something to take the heat off, many of its supporters are also opportunistically talking up the attractions of “electoral reform”. All this ignores the convincing reasons why our Party has supported first-past-the-post (FPTP) for all these years. It is because FPTP produces majority Labour governments. People join Labour because they believe majority Labour governments offer the best hope for a progressive future. In stark contrast PR means coalition governments and little or no chance of majority Labour governments.
Of course, none of this bothers the extreme Blairites. They have always supported PR precisely because they believe it would lead to the break up of the Labour Party, the destruction of the union link and the advent of US-style political parties, with state funding of parties, primaries for selecting candidates, and the dominance of moneyed elites.
Socialists apply a ‘form’ and ‘content’ analysis to political institutions. PR is a classic subject for such an analysis. PR is formally quite democratic, but in reality it is the very opposite. In reality, party apparatchiks decide who is on the PR lists and therefore MPs are totally under central control. Backroom stitch-ups between party leaders decide the arrangements for the coalition governments.
PR produces coalition governments, in other words governments which no one voted for. And under PR often have greatly exaggerated influence within coalitions. If, for the sake of argument, the voting shares obtained by parties at the recent Euro elections were applied to the House of Commons and, if a fully proportional electoral system applied, then UKIP would have 107 MPs and the BNP would have 40. FPTP, on the other hand, almost always produces governments which the largest number of people voted for.
The Brownite wing of New Labour are aware of the threat that PR poses to Labour and to majority Labour governments and, instead fo fighting to PR, some are putting the case for the alternative vote (AV) to appease the chatterati. Under AV, single member constituencies are retained. Each elector is allowed, but not required, to list all candidates in order of preference. Preferences are then redistributed until a candidate emerges who has 50% plus one of the vote.
The following points can be made about AV:
* It is possible for a less-preferred candidate to end up winning. AV would quite often produce Lib-Dem victories in constituencies that are either primarily Labour or primarily Tory.
* AV does not take account of the second preferences of all voters, only those of the least successful candidates. This was a point made about AV by Winston Churchill in 1931: “The decision is to be determined by the most worthless votes given for the most worthless candidates”. In other words, an MP's success could be determined by the preferences of UKIP or BNP voters. This situation could therefore lead to the major parties adjusting their policies, for example on immigration, in order to appeal to the prejudices of these voters in the hope of picking up their transferred preferences.
* AV may not produce a more proportional result than FPTP. For example, under AV in Alberta, Canada, one party obtained 90% of the seats on 54% of the vote.
* AV has been described as an “anti-incumbent” system, which accelerates trends. In current circumstances it could well help the Tories.
* Under AV tactical voting becomes part of the electoral architecture. AV encourages tactical voting in a structured and formalised way.
* AV would make coalition governments more likely.
Labour’s long standing policy is clear. It was restated by Annual Conference in 1993. Party policy is to uphold FPTP for the House of Commons.
Peter Willsman is Secretary of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy and member of Labour’s NEC. For more news and comment, visit www.grassrootslabour.net.
Delicious
Digg
Reddit
Facebook
StumbleUpon
Parliament represents the nation so that (I've made the numbers easy) in a 500 member HoC, if 18 per cent of the nation votes Liberal Democrat, there should be 90 Liberal Democrat elected representatives ; if (as the polls tell us at present) 30 per cent vote Labour, there should be 150 Labour elected representatives and if 40 per cent vote Conservative, there should be 200 Conservative elected representatives. That leaves 12 per cent and 60 representatives for 'the others.' Eternal coalitions .... with the Liberal Democrats probably calling the shots, when a minority have voted for them. Perhaps, true PR would significantly lessen the currently wasted Liberal Democrat vote in 90 per cent of our constituencies.
It is a fact that no party since the end of the Second World War has secured the vote of a majority of the electorate (those who bother to vote, that is) and, indeed, in the last thirty or forty years, more people have voted against the 'winning' party than have voted for it.
FPTP is obviously unfair regarding true proportional representation. What it does do on occasion - 1945, 1979 and 1997 being vivid examples - is to capture the 'mood' of the nation and, I submit, there's something to be said in favour of FPTP on such occasions.
Well that's halfway back to where they started then, not all bad.
With a proportional system, Labour would not expect to win an outright majority so would not feel the need to compromise - the same with the other parties
We may even have a genuine choice rather than a selection of parties who often look and sound remarkably similar
AV is not a proportional system and I don't support it. If introduced, I believe it will set back the opportunity for a general PR system by a generation. So any reasons PW has to oppose it (I share many of them) are not about opposition to PR but to AV. The system that Jenkins suggested (named AV plus, but very different from AV)is a much more acceptable system, and his report bears reading for the de-bunking of many of the traditional, tribal arguements used by Labour to oppose PR.
The Labour Party needs to wake up and commit itself to improving democracy itself. The old argument that we need FPTP to generate a strong labour government confuses ends and means. I thought we had all understood by now that illegitimate means skew the ends.
Many of us are sick of a politics that is only geared towards those few thousand floating voters in marginal seats who under FPTP actually matter when it comes to deciding which party will govern. All votes should count equally, and that means a version of PR.
Indeed, STV can give far more power to individual voters in selecting their MPs. In a multi-member constituency electing, say, three MPs, each local party will put up three candidates. It's then up to the voters to choose which of those candidates is their preferred choice. Voters in Croydon, for example, could choose their preferred Labour MP (or if we're lucky, MPs) from Gerry Ryan, Malcolm Wicks or Jane Avis. At the moment, each voter only has the choice of Labour or not-Labour.
Sweden, PR. US, FPTP on two levels.
Really, really have to take issue with this:
"In reality, party apparatchiks decide who is on the PR lists and therefore MPs are totally under central control."
It's quite clear that under any PR system, party members should be picking the priority order of the list.
This against the general election would represent a principle compromise between the dual interests or party and elector. Democracy both sides of this particular fence should be par de la course for any serious socialist.
The sooner this country gets a written constitution that enshrines the notion of popular sovereignty the better.
I am dismayed and disgusted that any politician or party apparatchik believes that they have the authority to dictate their particular idea of what constitutes a fair and representative democracy.
Frankly, the time for polite discussion has long gone. As someone once said: "Sovereignty is not given. It is taken." Well, it's about time the people took it.
Peter, it would seem you may have your wish. If the Guardian is to be believed, there will be no mention of electoral reform in the Queen's Speech and we can be pretty sure there'll be nothing forthcoming from the Tories if they get in.
Still, a sad day for those of us that believe in an electoral system that reflects the will of the country properly (and proportionately).
I will drink a toast to you this evening Mr Willsman inbetween the game and venison courses. Your good health sir!
At a stroke this would destroy the power of the whips because any threats made about deselecting MPs from the party would always be trumped by the very real threat of being called to an untimely bye-election and being slung out of Parliament within weeks.
How many MPs would have voted for the war in Iraq or the Lisbon Treaty if it only took 10 per cent of their electorate to force a bye-election?
* In order to minimise disruption, MPs could have a minimum term of (say) two years.
* It is also confused in its core argument, in that it complains that PR will produce coalitions not majority governments; then complains that AV is not proportional and will produce majority governments. If the author is strongly against PR, is it an honest argument to rely on PR objections to AV? Surely the author should see these as strengths, by his own argument, though others may think them weaknesses. That inconsistency gives a sense of a "defend FPTP using any argument" piece. I didn't get any sense the author had really thought through the pros snd cons of FPTP or AV from his own (majoritarian) perspective.
* Those who have read the Jenkins report will know that the AV+ system is designed to balance majority governments with greater proportionality. AV+ would have produced majority governments in most post-war elections except 1992 (when it would have produced a hung parliament). So the "Lsbour could not win majorities" objection is misinformed, with regard to AV+ form of PR, as well as with regard to AV.
* Labour does win majorities under FPTP, though if one counts Commons majorities in double figures, the FPTP score between the Tories and Labour since 1918 is 13-5, and was 13-2 (1945 and 1966) between 1918 until 1997.
* On AV, the Churchill objection to "weakest candidates" mattering more seems to me to be bogus in the great majority of cases. A candidate can win on any round (including the first round) when they have 50% of the vote, and no candidate can win until they have 50%, or until they have more among the only two candidates left. In terms of that winning post, there is no decisive advantage in the order by which candidates are eliminated, as it only stops the contest if 50% is secured, so a different order will almost always come to the same place. A different order of elimination is unlikely to affect outcomes, except in some unlikely hypothetical examples, eg a 40-30-30 race where the 2nd/3rd candidates are almost neck & neck, but one's supporters would break 50-50 and the other's 10-90). The arbitraryness of such v.unlikely examples has to be judged against that of the current system in 3 and 4-way contests.
* The "exagerates trends" objection ... this has little to do with incumbency.
- AV is good for parties which are generally popular among the whole electorate, and bad for "pariah" parties which are disliked/feared by those who do not support them. (Both extremist parties, and major parties like Tories 1997/2001/05 or Labour 1983, whether in government or opposition).
- FPTP is good for parties based on the greater geographical concentration of their vote, and worse for those with broadly diffused support. It can be good for parties with intense support which are opposed/feared by a majority, while AV is worse for such parties.
One can debate which of these is better/worse. I think the view of other voters more relevant than the morally/politically arbitrary factor of geography, though suspect on the whole most may think broad rather than narrowly clustered support would be better rewarded, if obe had to be.
* What does a "less preferred" candidate winning mean? I think it is a misleading claim.
The winning candidate would be the first to have 50% of the whole electorate. You mean less first preferences, but is the first candidate to have 50% of voters "less preferred" than somebody with more "first preferences" but less support among all voters? (If you think that is the case, then John and Edward should have won the X Factor a week ago when they had most first preferences in a multi-candidate field; though almost all other candidates would have had more support than them among the whole audience).
In my 20 odd years of door knocking for the party how many voters have ever mentioned ER? a big fat 0.
its such an irrelvance for all but the saddest of policy wonks.
and it isnt the sort of thing the public expects the labour party to be dealing with at a time of recession.
Can anyone not in the chattering class bubble of Islington defend this nonsense at this time?
I would also dispute your assertion that people join the Labour Party for 'majority Labour governments'. I joined the Labour Party because I supported its values and campaigns to end child poverty and create greater equality. I don't think I even knew what a 'majority government' meant, or what form of voting system we had in the UK. What you mean by majority government seems to me to be a desire to ride roughshod over the expressed will of the citizenry. You are scared of an electoral system which more accurately reflects the way people vote, because it takes power away from the Labour Party and gives it to the voter. I am convinced that we need to work harder for our vote and in areas other than marginal constituencies. This could help to strengthen support for the Labour Party, not diminish it. Have the social democrats in Sweden suffered because they are elected under PR? Or the recently elected Greek socialists, or the German SDP?
I also think that you are pretty unambitious in your campaign to make the Labour Party more democratic if you concede right at the start that party lists will be controlled by party apparatchiks. Why do they need to be? Progress is in favour of introducing primaries which would remove the selection of candidates from the control of Party HQ. The status quo of the last twenty years doesn't have to continue in an endless fashion, but sometimes I get the feeling that you relish the fight between left and right, and between the grassroots and the leadership. This system suits you, but I don't think it will suit the millions of people who need a Labour Party which is in touch with their concerns and which remembers that it is the people, not the party, which should be our main priority.
The public don't give a damn about voting systems on the whole, it is a spurious topic pushed by political hacks of all sides.
However, give the UK permanent coalition government with the awful Lib Dems forever holding the balance of power and then see what views the public hold.
FPTP with redrawn boundaries for the Commons and if you have to reform the Lords then make that an elected house with STV or its like.
Scotland can do what it wants by the way, it's of no interest to most of England.
Holyrood just works fine on PR/STV, Scots are happy with it, the system prevents the massive over spends and misdirected funds of the Westminster system. The more daft and extreme ideas go by the wayside (poll tax, its council tax replacement, wealth tax) because a consensus is required and, because politicians at Holyrood are at the mercy of small percentage vote swings, tends to focus their minds on the needs of their electorate rather than political hubris - a point Labour in Scotland still fail to understand. The reality of Labour in Scotland bringing down the minority SNP Government over the budget quickly became a reality that Labour in Scotland and their recent Libdem partners would loose more vote share and even more seats to the SNP in a re-run of the election. Hence common sense prevailed and Labour in Scotland were left looking a right bunch of numpties as they lost all influence over the budget negotiations.
As to the argument that PR / STV is not good for democracy the evidence that 72% of Scots are happy with Holyrood's checks and balances versus the 43% of Scots who have no intention of voting in 2010 for Westminster - rather beats your assertion on FTP into the proverbial cocked hat.
Westminster is failing, FTP is failing the people of the UK at every turn, it is time for serious, deep and rapid reform of Westminster before the status quo leads to the SNP winning their Independence vote by default and the Union is no more.
Evolve or die Westminster, it is as simple as that.
Hi Peter,
I have to politely disagree with this wholeheartedly. The reason I support a more proportional system than FPTP is that the current system is not properly representative of the people. If Labour can't find the right arguments and be on the right side of the national debate, then we don't deserve to be in government - and to maintain a dated system just because it will maintain a Labour majority is not the sort of party I want to be a part of.
PR is about giving people their voice in parliament. Under the current system, a few thousand people in a handful of marginals contributes to a political cycle in which large swings go back and forth and produce huge, unaccountable mandates for overly-strong governments, while other voices are disenfranchised.
This is not about Labour demoracy, it's about national democracy.
And, I'll say it again, I'm no Blairite and one of a number of reasons I first joined the party is to campaign against moneyed advantage.
Alex