Electoral reform

An OurKingdom conversation [History: Jeremy Gilbert > Rosemary Bechler > this post > Rosemary Bechler (part one; part two) > Jeremy Gilbert]

Guy Aitchison (London, OK): A record response to the MoJ's public consultation on weekend voting says that first-past-the-post is a barrier to voting, according to the electoral reform group, Make Votes Count.  Question 9 of the consultation asked ""Are you aware of any barriers which prevent individuals from voting?  What are the issues and how can they be overcome?".  Almost all of the responses seen by Make Votes Count answered this question by referring to first-past-the-post. The consultation, which ended yesterday, also found that many people would rather the Government prioritised reform of the electoral system rather than change the day on which people vote. You can see a selection of the responses on the Make Votes Count website.

The responses show that the public understands the issues and provides yet another reason in favour of dumping the absurdly disproportional f-p-t-p in the skip where it belongs along with all the other embarassing relics of our constitution. In some parallel world where public consultations had some impact on policy we might expect this to happen. But as Stuart Weir noted yesterday in relation to the proposed changes to the rules of royal succession, the Government's constitutional reforms are little more than cosmetic: the fundamentals of the royalist constitution remain sacrosanct.

Weekend voting? Possibly. PR? Don't hold your breath.

James Graham (Unlock Democracy): The latest Lords reform white paper is both a step forward and a step back.  It is positive in that for first time ever an official government document is unambiguously in favour of second chamber which is either mostly or fully elected.  It also nails the lie about an elected second chamber being a threat to Commons primacy:

The Government welcomes a confident and assertive second chamber. It sees this as further enhancing our democracy and something that is entirely consistent with the primacy of the House of Commons. That primacy rests in the fact that the Government of the day is formed from the party or parties that can command a majority in the House of Commons. It also rests in the Parliament Acts and in the financial privilege of the House of Commons. The Prime Minister and most senior ministers are also drawn from the House of Commons. A more assertive second chamber, operating within its current powers, would not threaten primacy.

Stuart Weir (Cambridge, Democratic Audit): James Graham and I are in the same boat so far as electoral reform is concerned. The boat unfortunately is crewed by MPs and members in the two largest parties who are viscerally committed to first-past-the-post elections to the House of Commons because it gives either one of them near exclusive political power in Westminster and Whitehall for periods of time in return for periods of exclusion. Also for a shifting majority of them in safe or safe-ish seats it more or less guarantees the MPs lifetime security. My old history master used to bang on about "rotten boroughs". We have progressed since 1832. We now have a "rotten Parliament", in more ways than one, and frankly I see scarcely any chance that this will change unless, as Sunder Katwala suggests, the whole edifice sinks under the weight of its contradictions.

Stuart Weir (Cambridge, Democratic Audit): If we are realistic, the chances of electoral reform for elections to Westminster are now at least a generation away – unless first-past-the-post (FPTP) elections topple in confusion under the weight of the system’s distortions and contradictions. What can be done to try and rescue the opportunity for change, short of Gordon Brown seizing the moment for overall constitutional change by holding a Citizens Convention that embraces electoral reform as part of his near lost Governance agenda?

Well, I am a convert to the idea that the ice-breaker has to be the Alternative Vote (AV), even though it is even more disproportional than FPTP. The Combining All Our Strength alliance for civil society organisations, in which OurKingdom is a key player, this week held a high-level seminar on the prospects for change, involving electoral experts and Labour and Lib Dem MPs. My sense was that there was a consensus, reluctant on the part of some, around the argument that AV represented the best way forward, almost certainly because it was clear that it was the only likely starter.

Sunder Katwala of the Fabian Society opened a discussion that was held under Chatham House rules (for Sunder's argument for AV see his post in OK) . He argued that reformers had to unite around a first choice rather than continually debating systems; that AV would be no worse than FPTP; that it retained the constituency link that voters liked; and that it was an “honest” system in that it reduced the need for people to vote tactically. He suggested that at least Labour should be encouraged to put a change to AV for elections to the House of Commons in their next manifesto, along with the single transferable vote (STV) for elections to a reformed House of Lords and a written constitution. Hopes that a hung Parliament might lead to electoral reform were misplaced. “It will soon be the anniversary of the People’s Budget and then the Parliament Act. Make these anniversaries the occasion for another Great Reform Act”.

This is a response to Sunder Katwala's post on proposals for the AV voting system.

Stuart Weir (Cambridge, Democratic Audit): Electoral reform is another of those democratic issues where the interests of the major political parties (or more correctly, their perception of those interests) and the personal interests of MPs block any realistic chance of delivering a properly representative and modern democracy in Britain. The encomium from Sunder Katwala, of the Fabian Society for the Alternative Vote in the place of first-past-the post (FPTP) elections for the House of Commons is yet another example, first, of a major party's search to consolidate its electoral position, and secondly, of the weakness of campaigning bodies to oblige the parties to open up an honest debate about the alternatives to FPTP.

Sunder Katwala (London, Fabians):The British electoral system is broken. Few people have noticed because close general elections are so rare. 2005 was the first election for over 30 years where the major parties finished within five per cent of each other (and the narrow defeat of an unelectable opposition by an unpopular government was hardly a genuinely competitive contest).

Guy Aitchison reviews No Overall Control? The impact of a Hung Parliament on British Politics edited by Alex Brazier and Susanna Kalitowski, Hansard Society (with contributions from David Butler, Vernon Bogdanor, Philip Cowley, Helen Margetts, Mark Gill, Rosanne Palmer, Stephen Thornton, Mark Cowley, James Mitchell, David Docherty, Austin Mitchell, Simon Jenkins, Simon Hughes and Philip Norton).

(Hansard Society, March 2008, 116pp)

Stuart Weir (Cambridge, Democratic Audit): With an electoral system that diminishes, inhibits and fractures their election results and the traditional two-party mindset of the political class (politicians and journalists alike) being reinforced by the close rivalry between Brown and Cameron, it is easy to understand how readily their tormentors patronise the Liberal Democrats; less easy to understand why their leaders so often down play electoral reform. It is therefore interesting that Chris Huhne has chosen to make a distinct political identity for himself by emphasising electoral reform along with social justice as his themes in the contest with Nick Clegg for the Lib Dem leadership. By contrast, Clegg emerges as a regular good guy, and handsome to boot, and by implication a young and vigorous replacement for their "aged" predecessor. Clegg's image is further enhanced by whispers that Huhne's challenge to Campbell in their contest for the leadership was contaminated by yet more whispers. (Has there ever been a political contest sans whispers?) Then the Sunday press took whispering into a new dimension, as I wrote yesterday. Who is whispering, who is playing tricks here, and why?

Moderator: This is a response to this post by James Graham.

Stella Creasy (London, involve):

Dear James,

Thank you for responding to my speech to the Make Votes Count fringe. Like you I am committed to democracy as the process by which we find shared solutions to shared problems. That’s why I believe political parties are vital; they are the vehicles that bring individuals and groups together to work for a set of common priorities for social action. The alternative is a world in which only the loudest voices or largest wallets determine outcomes. Electoral reform is a moral imperative to ensure a fair and open process by which we choose between those competing agendas. That only a minority of the public consider themselves to have talked about politics in recent years to me suggests it is not the fairness of voting they question, but its very relevance.

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): Not only was I on 18 Doughty Street's blogger TV last night, I shamelessly hung on and contributed to Talk Politics afterwards. You can see each programme again on their website, they are an hour long so I am not expecting a vast audience. We all had to choose our best three recent blogs and one of mine was a strong call for fixed term parliaments by Lynne Featherstone MP who blogged about the manipulation of opinion over the timing:

Peter Facey (London, Unlock Democracy): As someone who watches the debate about our electoral system with a keen (if not nerdish) interest and tries to read the tea leaves of what it means for our future, two things are becoming clear. Firstly support for reform of our political institutions and our electoral system is growing among Labour thinkers and leaders. And secondly it’s not a proportional reform but a majoritarian one that is gathering momentum.

James Graham (Bournemouth, Unlock Democracy): Last night's Make Votes Count fringe meeting at Labour conference was slightly disappointing because none of the speakers seemed compelled to actually make the case for proportional representation.  Stella Creasy from Involve in particular made the claim that although she accepts the moral case for electoral reform, campaigners should resist the temptation to claim that it would lead to greater participation levels in the electoral system and that if we want to see increased participation parties should change the way they campaign.

Jon Bright (London, OK): As Alex Parsons indulges in some blue sky thinking over reforms to the UK's voting system below, Sunder Katwala mixes the art of engagement with the art of the possible over at the Fabian Review today. It's worth a read. Calling our current system "not fit for purpose" he sketches out the potential price of doing nothing:

Alex Parsons (London, Feeding the Fish): The idea of democracy implies that each of us has an equal say in elections. But this is hardly true in our current system. As a result of variations in constituency size and turnout the true value of our vote changes from constituency to constituency: the value of your vote and my vote could be very different.

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): Have just returned from an afternoon at the Fabian 'Democracy Day' with Guy Aitchison who'll come in with his view. Martin Bright himself chaired the final Question Time session having plugged it in his Statesman column which I queried for its celebration of the left's new thinking welcoming Brown's premiership. About 120 people were remaining from the 200 plus who registered. We listened to Hazel Blears MP, Shami Chakrabarti, Simon Hughs MP and Gerry Stoker. There was no evidence of new thinking or, more important, energy and hunger. There was some good discussion about the need for electoral reform, as Gerry put it in some parts of the UK in 2005 you might not even have known that an election was taking place at all: the concentration on the marginal constituencies means that elections have ceased to be a "universal" event for the population as a whole. There was also some real passion and evidence about the need for very much better representation of ethnic communities in local and national politics. But... imagine that things were the other way round and the Tories were in power with a clear majority of English seats despite Labour winning an absolute majority of votes in England in the last election - the passion and anger about the sheer unfairness of the system would have been high indeed. The national question would have been hotly debated too, instead today it was not mentioned. ID cards? Citizens Juries? How to replace the Lords? A referendum on European? None of the above stirred any passion or debate. It was a sedated gathering, if not totally anesthetised thanks to Shami and Simon, neither Labour members of course. Its not that any of the above represent new thinking. Even old-fashioned democratic radicalism was deflated. I'm told that Ed Milliband spoke well when he opened the event, with a call to reach out and involve etc.

Stuart Weir (London, Democratic Audit): Anyone who wishes to comprehend the dark well of ignorance, prejudice and insularity at the core of this country's political culture need go no further than to read The Times's report on the review of electoral systems carried out by officials of the former Department for Constitutional Affairs, now part of the Ministry of Justice.  It is hard to be sure what the full document might say, since this is a report of a leak, but in essence these officials have warned that proportional elections to Parliament would de-stabilise British politics, introduce an era of minority governments and coalitions and bring our glorious tradition of  'effective' government to an end. So far as I can discern, they have been very selective in their assessment of proportional elections within the UK and even more so in their appraisal of PR elections abroad.  But what sticks in the craw, after Britain's experience of the policy disasters that litter the recent history of electoral duopoly, or dictatorship, culminating (so far) in the illegal and disastrous invasion of Iraq, is the idea that our disproportionate elections to Parliament deliver 'effective' government. Nick Herbert, the Conservative spokesman, apparently fears that Gordon Brown might yet water down the report, due to be published in December, and imperil the 'tried and trusted'  electoral system just to keep the Lib Dems on side should he need them - adding stupidity to ignorance, prejudice and insularity.  

Tristan Stubbs (London, ERS): Gordon Brown knows that in policy announcements, presentation ranks as highly as substance. One early demonstration of his avowed change from Blair is the new PM's unwillingness to use that nettlesome adjective - ‘historic' - to describe government plans. His predecessor's famous ‘hand of history' phrase remains for the former prime minister's critics a deliciously quotable example of Blair's suspected hubris.Brown was therefore wise to leave it to others to underline the significance of the constitutional reforms he announced on July 3 (pdf). According to the Guardian, a Bill of Rights or written constitution (the green paper promised a consultation on both) would ‘transform the historic settlement of the state'. It was, enthused the Power Inquiry, an ‘historic constitutional moment'.

Guy Aitchison (Bristol, OK): The Canadian province of Ontario is gearing up for a vigorous, hard-fought political campaign ahead of a referendum on electoral reform on October 10. Ontarians are being asked to vote on recommendations made by a Citizens' Assembly to replace first-past-the-post with a mixed member proportional (MMP) system. This article in the globeandmail, a Candian national daily, has some humorous discussion of how the campaign is likely to play out, finishing with the call for a fair but lively ice hockey-style battle of ideas: "So keep your nose clean and your stick on the ice. Game on."