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May 17, 2005
Lines of least resistance
Everyone should be aware by now of how ridiculously unfair the election result proved to be.
However, there is a worrying tendency for some people, particularly on the Conservative side, to imagine that all that needs to be done is to jiggle around with the constituency boundaries a bit and that would produce a fair relationship between seats and votes between the big parties at least.
This, I'm afraid, is nonsense.
The reasons why it is nonsense are a bit complicated to go through in detail on a blog post, but an analysis piece should appear soon on the Electoral Reform Society website.
In brief, the reasons that the system is biased in Labour's favour are not much to do with boundaries, more to do with intrinsic defects in the First Past the Post electoral system. FPTP rewards parties whose support is 'lumpy' - moderately high in some areas, low in others, as Labour's has been in recent elections. It brutally punishes parties with a middling vote spread evenly across the country, the prime example of this being the Alliance vote of 25.4% in 1983 which netted only 23 seats. Anti-Tory tactical voting has distorted the electoral system against the Conservatives at every election since 1992.
Labour also benefit from 'differential turnout' - that turnout in safe Labour seats is low. If there had been full turnout, and the party shares of the vote in each constituency had been exactly the same as in the real 2005 election, the Labour lead would have been 2 points greater. The system 'thought' Labour led by 5 points, not 3. There's nothing that changing the boundaries can do about this.
The forthcoming boundary review will do a bit towards improving the fairness of the electoral system, but not much - it will abolish a few seats in depopulated urban areas and create a few new rural and suburban seats. But on my estimates this would only reduce the Labour majority to 52, and still leave the Conservatives needing a lead as large as they achieved in 1987 to get a bare overall majority of 2. The Times suggests as much today.
Complaining about boundaries is the classic line of least resistance from those who have realised that there is something very wrong with the way our electoral system works, but who are not willing to grapple with what needs to be done.
Posted by lewisbaston on May 17, 2005
Comments
The following is the text of a draft letter I have e-mailed to the Independent. It probably won't be published so I'm putting it on this thread anyway for consideration by who it may concern!
"You report (17th May) that supporters of electoral reform are considering whether to back a "compromise" that would fall short of full-scale PR - namely the Alternative Vote (AV). Not only is AV not "full-scale" PR: it is majoritarian and therefore not PR at all. I therefore hope that leading campaigners for reform will stick to their guns and come out firmly against this "compromise". AV is fine for the election of individuals (presidents, mayors, and in bye-elections). For general elections however where, in the 21st century, representation at Westminster should fairly reflect national opinion, it is not only not an improvement on first-past-the-post (FPTP) but can be even more grossly unfair.. Some recent notional figures suggest that had the 1997 election been conducted under AV, Labour's majority would have been much greater even than the absurd figure achieved under the FPTP lottery (213 instead of 179).
Thus it is not surprising that it finds favour with Peter Hain and other tribalists in the Labour Party. Once it was adopted it would be represented as "electoral reform" and could perhaps be even more difficult to replace by PR than FPTP itself."
Posted by: Joe Patterson at May 17, 2005 12:25 PM
No one is really advocating AV as a long term solution, but merely a cunning plan to get the Conservatives interested.
If AV were to be tabled, the boys in blue would hvave a fit and fuel the debate, thus leading to PR goodness for all.
Or so the theory goes. I'm sure someone can elaborate, but my plane leaves in a couple of hours, so I should be off.
Enjoy.
Posted by: Paul Davies at May 17, 2005 01:14 PM
I agree, but the boundaries do need reforming so let's do it anyway.
PR, as I have pointed out before, is not the universal panacea that many would have us believe. Even if we had had the same share of the vote under a fair electoral system England would have got more Tory MPs but would still have been ruled by a Government that was formed from a Labour UK majority - England has no government you see.
What we require is for the Government to stop using the piecemeal approach to electoral and constitutional reform and to look at the whole package. We cannot have a fair system until the nations of the UK are constitutionally equal; until we have a system where an individual vote actually means something; and until the boundaries are redrawn.
My preferred option would be to have an English parliament elected by PR (as in Scotland and Wales) and a UK parliament elected by FPTP. This would make every vote count for most matters - sport, education, nhs, transport - but we would still elect the UK Government by FPTP on a constituency basis.
Posted by: Gareth at May 17, 2005 02:55 PM
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