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.
Low turnout and party membership is the tip of the iceberg. The truth is the public are increasingly turning to their shopping trolleys rather than the ballot box to express their opinions. Electoral reform and party renewal alone will not restore the diminishing faith the public now has that politics can and does change the world. We need to address the cultural shift in our society that has taken place and which now means pop stars are considered more worthy proponents of social change than elected representatives. As we watch protestors in Burma fight for their basic human rights we should acknowledge our nation has become complacent about its own democratic culture. Focusing only political parties or the voting system for this outlook serves to reinforce the sense this is all simply someone else’s fault.
Nye Bevan once challenged those who were “pure but impotent”; individuals who demand only one solution to social challenges and refuse to countenance even discussing anything else. This in turn enables them to avoid responsibility for acting themselves. The time has come for our debates about constitutional and democratic engagement to move forward. All of us need to fight not just for a fairer electoral system but also the value of political engagement in itself. This is uncomfortable territory for the public – and for campaigning organisations of all persuasions. We all need to let go of our scapegoats and instead ask what we can do to salvage politics and the practice of democracy. Britain will not find salvation to the disengagement we now experience in our public realm through new structures or reformed political parties alone. To suggest otherwise is to watch as Rome burns and blame the olive trees for being flammable.
Comments
[...] voting system is the root cause of public disengagement from politics? As Stella Creasy has argued elsewhere on OurKingdom, electoral reform will not restore the diminishing faith the public has in [...]
I really think we are talking at cross purposes here. I don't understand how you can consider electoral reform to be a moral imperative if you don't think it will change anything. There are lots of things I consider to be moral imperatives to, but only because of their effects.
I could - and have - written about changing political culture until the cows come home, but the brute fact is that the room to change it is incredibly narrow under our current system. I'm not suggesting that electoral reform will cause a change of political culture, merely that it will enable a change. What individual actors do is up to them.
No one is claiming that electoral reform is a cure-all; the argument is whether or not it is necessary for transforming our political culture, not whether it is sufficient. It is tiresome to constantly have to make that distinction as no-one has ever suggested otherwise, but there you go.
I've seen how party politics has become a debased caricature of itself, with parties chasing ever decreasing numbers of people with ever increasing sums of money. The solution can't be found in the way we do politics when as far as most parts of the country are concerned, there is no-one doing politics at all. The economics of politics is inescapable, and I notice you aren't you are evading rather than denying it.
Yes, we need to change our political culture. But that culture is dominated by a system of winner-takes all, negative politics. That will not change while the system has an inbuilt vested interest for all politicians to play that game.
Rome is burning, in part, because people would rather come up with convoluted solutions rather than simply start throwing on the water which is right there in front of us.
Dear James
Thanks for taking the time to respond to my post. You’re right to say that I don’t doubt electoral reform is important or vital. As I said, to me it is a moral imperative. What I take issue with is the presumption that somehow it will be a palliative to any of the problems facing our democratic culture. To suggest so is to misread the British public and their feelings about politics and indeed the evidence of what difference any form of electoral reform makes to participation. If only we could resurrect British political engagement through changing the voting system- both your organisation and mine would be obsolete! If it were simply a matter of the electoral system then why are the majority of western European democracies that have proportional systems suffering the same problems as the UK in falling turnout and participation in the public realm? Why have we not seen a surge in participation in Scotland or indeed in engagement in London regional government where electoral reform has been introduced? Why is turnout still low even in marginal seats if it’s just about the way in which political parties campaign and target resources?
Furthermore, as well as not matching the evidence, I also believe it’s potentially a stance that can end up feeding the problems it identifies by implying there’s little point in participating anyway because it isn’t a level playing field. As an activist in local and national politics I know it’s easy to lay blame for anything and everything onto politicians and political parties who rank lower than journalists, big brother contestants and estate agents for popularity in our cultural lexicon. Yes I agree with you that money matters so I’d like to see caps on spending at a local and national level along with some kind of electoral reform as part of a healthy democracy. But I’d also like to see all of us who care about politics upholding its role in our society and acknowledging that there is a bigger problem which cannot be solved by any one of these measures alone. Whether we find specific aspects of political parties or the voting system wanting, the scale of the challenge we face is such that we all need to ask what we are actually doing to promote engagement in politics and the idea that it can be the forum to find shared solutions to shared problems.
Why do I believe this? Because ultimately experience on the ground teaches me the brutal truth, namely that whilst both you and I may feel aggrieved about the slow pace of constitutional reform in Britain the public stopped thinking any of this matters to them a long time ago. Until we are able to reverse their disinterest in the practice of politics as a whole, engaging campaign techniques or fairer voting systems will make little difference to participation and will simply be dismissed by a population that increasingly sees their shopping trolley rather than the ballot box as the place to express an opinion. Classical scholars are divided as to whether Nero really did play his lyre as Rome burned or in fact tried to direct efforts to stop the fires. Either way, the real analogy here is that no one person – or party- can save civilisation; it requires a joint effort by all citizens and that means we have to ask everyone to contribute. After all, we get the parties, the politics, the policies and the politicians we deserve.
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