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Palestine
Posted by lewisbaston on January 30, 2006 | Comments (0)
Ken Ritchie, Chief Executive of the ERS, gets back from an election observation in Palestine tomorrow, but I've been reading a bit about the election in his absence. Fruits and Votes as always has a valuable discussion. I hadn't realised before quite how flawed the design of the system was. Half of the 132 seats are filled by a multi-member FPTP system (and 6 of those seats are reserved for members of the Christian community) and the other half by a national list vote. However, the list vote is not compensating, as it is in Scotland or Germany, but independent. This apparently technical difference has had consequences.
Hamas (standing in this election as 'Change and Reform' - sarcastic comment supplied on request) won a big victory in the constituencies, with 45 seats to 17 for Fatah and 4 Independents (and 5 Fatah and 1 Independent were in the Christian seats). This was on just under 41% of the constituency vote to 35.7% for Fatah. With the 29 list seats,based on 44.5% of the list vote, this produced an overall majority for Hamas on a minority vote.
Had the proportional allocation taken account of the constituency seats, the overall result would have been something like 58 for Hamas and 54 for Fatah, with 20 others. The electoral system manufactured a landslide for Hamas when a popular majority did not exist.
Fatah cannot complain too much, as it was a system designed for the convenience of the largest single party - which they expected to be themselves. And it will get a Prime Minister with 35% of the vote, and a President who elbowed his way to office in 2000 with fewer votes than his competitor, precisely nowhere to complain about the lack of mandate for Hamas. (The Israelis, for all the faults of their system have a better case...)
For more on Palestine see Fruits and Votes and the full election results from the Central Elections Commission of Palestine.
I saw three ships go sailing by… they started firing, everybody died: Politics, the Media and the Weather.
Posted by pauldavies on January 27, 2006 | Comments (0)
Politics, it appears to me, is very much like the weather. Both, despite being issues that affect us all to some (usually exaggerated) degree, make for startlingly dull conversation. Both are heavily polluted by human beings. Both possess a remarkable ability to disrupt the rail network. And both send the less intellectually privileged parts of the nation into a media-spiced spin every time things get a bit extreme.
Politics and the weather also share a curious relationship with speculation. Political commentators, like meteorologists, know roughly what is going to happen over a given time period, but are often rightly cautious when it comes to explicitly stating anything, for fear of looking like a clown later on. Such is the capricious climate of the air, both in the sky and between the ears of our leaders.
It is through this relationship with the media, however, that the connection between the weather and Westminster breaks down. Not even Rupert Murdoch has yet found a way to control the weather, although the reader is advised to give him time.
The fiery fraternisation between the media and politics has occupied plenty of minds in plenty of pondering over plenty of years. One of the latest to tackle it is the FT's John Lloyd, whose book What the Media is doing to Our Politics
This question of the shifting ground, the changing climate, if you will, was also the focus of a talk Mr Lloyd gave to an audience at the DCA earlier this month. In his talk, and I assume, therefore, in his book, Mr Lloyd argued that the importance of the media has grown considerably over the last few decades, as the hard-edged ideological battle became a murky footprint in a field of history books and governmental opposition became a pallid and ineffective force, crying out for substitution. As stated explicitly by men whose seniority in such matters is marked indelibly in their brows, people such as Humphrys, Paxman and a succession of director generals of the BBC, the media stormed in to occupy opposition territory.
This surge was not intrinsically problematic, but the situation has become strained as the standard of political debate has, over time, gone the way of both Robert Kilroy-Silk and our civil liberties. The media may be keeping a check on the politicians, but who's keeping a check on the media? Who can keep a check on the media and their pernicious nurturing of cynical alienation?
Add in some comments about how the power of both politics and the media are in decline (party affiliation down; "some newspapers will disappear soon") and you pretty much have Mr Lloyd's speech. I shall refrain from quoting any more, as the seminar was apparently under Chatham House Rule.
Whether the weakness of the opposition is a corollary of the media-inspired spread of democracy—did it fill a void or shunt its way in?—went undiscussed.
The struggle for power, be it Robin Day providing John Nott's political epitaph, or David Cameron telling Paxo that his chosen line of questioning demeaned the Newsnight man's profession, is an inevitable side show of modern-day politics; but as I've asked before, is it getting out of hand? Is it detrimental to the country as a whole?
It is no doubt foolish to try to formulate an answer for either of them, because even were one to decide that things were in a mess, what could one do about it? How do we tame these beasts? The answer, sadly, is that we can't.
In any human society, there will exist mass organisations designed to impose themselves over the canaille. We can't legislate against the media: not only that would only fan the flames, but it would also just be silly. We can hope for journalists to do as we all should do, and take some personal responsibility for themselves, but then we get caught in a prisoner's dilemma situation where the Pareto-optimal solution of all journalists being upstanding decent folk is unattainable thanks to the rewards on offer for selling one's soul, integrity and dignity to the mob. The public, lest we forget, love a bit of sensational rubbish.
Furthermore, the logic behind the call for a 'better journalism' (better journalism=better informed citizenry=better choices=better polity) may be nice and cosy, but it could have a downside. A better informed electorate is also a more demanding electorate, and an uneducable (old dog, new tricks) demanding electorate demands sensationalist rubbish, getting us precisely nowhere.
As easy as it is to point out that much of one's life and one's happiness and the effectiveness of one's democracy, for example, is, like one's health, one's own responsibility, it is very hard to pitch. The health of democracy, like climate change, is too abstract for most people to care about, whether they realise it actually affects them or not.
Ergo, the issue is, and will forever remain, stuck well inside a Somebody Else's Problem Field, left to rot, being routinely mulled over until it gets fried along with everything else when global warming finally delivers its big 'told you so' kick to the planet's privates.
What does Geoff Hoon do all day?
Posted by pauldavies on January 27, 2006 | Comments (0)
Because clearly he doesn't pay attention to important constitutional reports.
Mr. David Heath (Somerton and Frome) (LD): [m]ay we have a debate on the Arbuthnot [sic] report? Many see it as a missed opportunity, but it is nevertheless of great importance to many Scottish Members. It would be useful if the House had the early opportunity—[Interruption.] The Leader of the House does not know what the report is about. That is unfortunate, but no doubt he will be briefed if I carry on talking long enough.
Mr. Hoon: When I find out what the Arbuthnot [sic] report is, I will ensure that the hon. Gentleman is written to about it.
Listen to what the man said
Posted by pauldavies on January 26, 2006 | Comments (0)
What's this? Some actual evidence? A balanced, informed view about the difference between FPTP politics and MMP politics? Bonus.
"Graham Kelly, a former MP and New Zealand's High Commissioner to Canada Âwho has seen both systems up close explains how it perfomed in his country."
As they say: read it in full.
As they don't, gist:
Better Things: there is "better legislation under PR"; the voters are more involved; MPs work harder for their constituencies; the cabinet no longer has effective authoritarian power; greater representation of women, minorities etc; small parties make big parties more honest
Indifferent things: early on, the smaller parties tried to exert disproportionate influence, but the voters punished them for it later; turnout has fallen, but why this is so can't be determined; transparency hasn't increased; MPs are still immature idiots; voters who voted for the winning party are annoyed that they don't have almighty power
Badder things: a bit more complicated (still not total public understanding even after almost a decade); less confidentiality, as smaller parties often leak what's going on in order to appear to be making a difference
Wake me up in 2009
Posted by pauldavies on January 25, 2006 | Comments (0)
Sitting in front of the hypno-box last night, I let out a deep guttural groan. With the new England manager due in but half-a-freakin'-year's time, the prospect of months of speculation from men with lard for brains and undiminishable reserves of spittle masquerading as journalistic endeavour affected my head, my heart, and finally my stomach, in a way that could really only be expressed through the medium of a tortured sigh.
With body (stomach and all) transposed from sofa to desk, the feeling hit again, and in a manner that makes waiting for Sven to depart just a little more bothersome than waiting for a bus with some actual space in it. For what is a few months of footie banter compared to another four years of the same tiresome political guff? The only advantage, as I see it, of the incessant talk of what's going to happen in the next election, is that it takes column inches away from the rampant authoritarianism of the goons in charge at the moment. Hey ho, it's time this went somewhere.
According to Peter Riddell, the public are remarkably well-informed about what's going to happen next time we're all lucky enough to pretend we have a say in things, for they all know (and I use all in the purely artistic, i.e. untrue, sense) that we're going to have a hung parliament. To fill up some more space, he goes on to say, rather nicely, I think, that this will be fun for fans of FPTP, who get rather perturbed when one side isn't granted almighty power within a few hours of the votes being cast. The uncertainty scares them, you see (not as hardy as them Canadian folk), the poor impatient bundles of antagonism and insecurity. Either that or they can't count to three. Anyways, if the experts, the Lib Dem leadership candidates and now even the public now except this, can we put it behind us for a while? It may be distracting, but it's also dull.
Speaking of dull, Menzies Campbell is hoping that the Lib Dem MPs (so long as they don't all defect to Cameron) will move into the ground recently vacated by Tory MPs, and opt for the nice old avuncular fellow to lead them merrily into electoral pointlessness. The voters, you see, would, as they tend to do, coming from such an image-saturated swamp, go for Simon Hughes, apparently. It's easier to tell that he's actually still alive at any given point in time, they claim. Which seems like as good a reason as any on which to base a political decision. You only waste time if you try and base such things on anything more ambitious. But, as the bookies tell us, it's probably not going to happen; according to William Hill, as quoted in The Times, and adjusting for the overround (without, it has to be said, factoring in the favourite-long shot bias) Sir Menzies has a 55 per cent or so chance of winning the contest, followed by Huhne on about 23 per cent and Hughes on just under 20. Fascinating.
Elsewhere in Simon Hughes land, he reckons that we'll see electoral reform in his political lifetime, and that as Lib Dem leader he'd be happy to work with either side. Which again sounds a tad familiar.
Ack, back to familiarity, there's that groan once more. Ordinarily I wouldn't play with this nonsense any longer, but with today showcasing the distressing news that the chap in charge of work in this country is dumb enough to believe in the dignity of it, we must be in need of some amusement. See if this clown can help:
(10.) Finally, this election proved again the advantages of a first-past-the-post electoral system. No mathematical formulas, no votes which may lead to the opposite result of what you intended, no backroom lists. If you want to change the government, you vote the bastards out. It's so simple and profound, and such a real exercise of democratic choice by voters, that the elites are dying to change it into some abortion of a system devised by mentally-ill political scientists engineered to remove any hint of uncertainty and real choice.
Egad! I knew things were a bit crazy over the other side of the Pond, but they let these people run free? There must be a couple of padded cells left. Still, it can claim to be entertaining. And, I think, original: who else has ever philosophised on the profundity of FPTP? Give that man a banana and a prime time show on Fox. The amusing outpourings of his confused little mind demand to be put to better use. He could start a chat show with Kilroy. I'd watch it, and with a smile instead of a groan.
Short quiz
Posted by lewisbaston on January 24, 2006 | Comments (3)
In which country:
Do they use an electoral system that is so hopelessly unreliable that it has failed to produce a stable majority government in half of the last 16 elections?
Have there been two elections in the last two years, neither of which produced a decisive result?
Has a party just taken office with only 40 per cent of the seats and 36 per cent of the vote, and no likely parliamentary allies?
Is there likely to be a year or two of desperate political manoeuvring before the weary electorate are summoned to the polls again?
If you said GERMANY you would be wrong. In Germany they use a proportional system, 15 of the last 16 elections have produced a clear result, and politicians from the two main parties are sensible enough to have come to an agreement after the indecisive 2005 election.
If you said CANADA, where they use FPTP, you would be right.
Can you hear the British and American press and commentariat bemoaning the Canadian electoral system now?
Mr Hain and evidence... the encore
Posted by pauldavies on January 24, 2006 | Comments (0)
Peter Black is (or rather was, for he posted it on Sunday) fantastic on Peter Hain's disdain for evidence gained through rigorous research.
As if to underline his cavalier attitude to evidence Mr. Hain then tried to rebut the findings of the Arbuthnott Commission in Scotland, which argued that a restriction on candidates fighting both in the constituency and on the list would be "undemocratic and unacceptably limit the choices available to voters." To do this he quoted a piece of 'research' carried out by the Bevan Foundation, which, he said, unequivocably proved that the Welsh public backed Labour's plans to introduce a pre-counter-revolutionary Ukrainian system into Wales.
The Bevan Foundation's researchers had apparently herded 46 unsuspecting voters into a room, spend an hour or so explaining how undemocratic the Assembly's voting system is and then asked then to give a view as to whether the Government of Wales Bill is taking the right approach to reforming it. If this is the sort of evidence-based policy making Peter Hain relies on then no wonder he is making such a mess of his dual jobs of Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and Wales. This survey has all the statistical validity of predicting the climate change by putting ones finger in the air, as was proved by Dragon's Eye, who interviewed 47 people in a Caerphilly street and found only one who actually cared.
He also tells us something else quite interesting about our old pal Peter. Read to find out what.
[...insert title here...]
Posted by pauldavies on January 24, 2006 | Comments (0)
Apologies for the light blogging of today and yesterday. The news outlets, in their wisdom, have decided that nothing is happening that doesn't involve spies or invasions of privacy (must be our seedy gossip-hungry culture, I guess). Also, my brain has frozen, so making up my own news isn't happening with much haste.
Things are happening in the crazy world of electoral reform, of course. Things like this. Make of that what you will. If things do appear a bit sleepy, it's probably because everyone is taking so much time reading the Arbuthnott report, and then trying to guess how it will be fobbed off by the powers-that-be. Or perhaps not. Who knows. In the meantime, have some Boris.
On an icier note...
Posted by pauldavies on January 20, 2006 | Comments (0)
Save buying Blazin' Squad records, there are few graver sins than that of unoriginality. Unfortunately, it is a crime even uglier and more widespread than the works of the erstwhile juvenile noisemakers.
It is also somewhat unpropitious, therefore, that the coverage of the Big Issue of the Week, (which, for those of you as yet unversed in the last few entries on this blog, is the report of the Arbuthnott Commission) has all been so painfully homogenous.
If everyone who had read—or was planning to bother reading—the report, had got together early on to release a general statement that read: "overall, quite happy: some good changes that rightly empowers the electorate; doesn't go quite far enough; let's hope the government pays attention", a lot of time, and trees, could've been saved.
Before going any further, it should be noted that the above is, more or less, the official position of the Electoral Reform Society. The Make Votes Count line is similar but doesn't care so much about STV, and is thus that bit happier in places, and that bit more nonplussed in others.
However jolly this little menagerie of reaction may be, there are some subtler sides to the report that for a variety of reasons, ranging from political expediency to blissful ignorance, have gone unreported.
Never being one for heeding to such trivial political amenities, I feel like I should take the opportunity to expound on some of the sadder tales of the Arbuthnott Report.
To start, what the Commission has to say about STV, both for and against:
Exhibit A: Paragraph 4.34 (Full report, p45)
The Commission has acknowledged that the single transferable vote has some advantages over a mixed member system, and that its introduction could go some way to addressing the problems associated with the existing Scottish Parliament electoral system:Under the single transferable vote, all members are elected in the same way, thus removing the problem evident within the existing system of having two categories of elected member.
Electors casting votes in order of preference removes the potential for confusion over the use of a "second" vote to correct the disproportionality of the constituency vote, and would resolve the legitimacy problems associated with the ranking and election of regional members.
Of all possible voting systems, the single transferable vote gives the maximum power to individual voters over the choice of their local representatives.
It might strengthen the link between communities and electoral representation, as the existing local authority boundaries provide a sound basis for multi-member wards.
So it eradicates the problems that have been causing MPs, AMs and MSPs such consternation and making some of them look so stupid, it maximises the power of the voters, and might well strengthen the link between the people and their representatives. All remarkably good and desirable things, I'm sure you'll agree. Things that might, arguably, offer a real change to the political world, dragging it out of its traditional murky swamp.
Yet, we know that these arguments weren't wholly convincing. Why? Exhibit B, your honour.
Exhibit B: Paragraph 4.35 (Full report, p45)
However, the single transferable vote also has a number of weaknesses when compared to a mixed member system:Casting votes for candidates in order of preference complicates the act of voting. The process by which votes are translated into seats would also be made more complex and lack transparency, potentially undermining confidence in the voting system.
Although it enhances voter choice over the election of individual candidates, the link between an individual's vote and the election of the government is less clear than in a mixed member system.
In some parts of Scotland, especially in the Highlands and Islands, the multi-member constituencies created by the system would be so large that elected representatives might not be accessible to voters, and the link between individuals, communities and elected representatives might be undermined.
The single transferable vote makes it more difficult for political parties to use positive action policies to promote gender and ethnic minority representation.
By making individual members entirely dependent on where they are placed in voters ' order of preference, the single transferable vote might encourage localism, foster clientelist politics, and make it more difficult for parliamentarians to pass legislation for the benefit of the country as a whole.
Now I've spoken about the supposed complexity of voting under STV enough times before, and I, like the rest of you I imagine, am getting bored of it. So instead, I'll quote a member of the Arbuthnott Commission, John Lawrie, from his dissension to paragraph 4.35.
It would be a mistake to exaggerate the complexity of voting; the only difference is that voters could (but would not have to) rank candidates in order of preference. This is in any event no more than those who participate in council elections will become used to. The process by which votes are translated into seats is indeed more complex, but we heard no evidence in the Republic of Ireland that this undermined confidence in the system.
If someone can find me evidence that the Scottish people as a whole (so nothing from the People's Front of Caring About Useless Tat) actually give a toss exactly how their votes translate into seats, do tell. My guess is that they're more concerned that their vote counts towards something and that their representative cares more about them than their career-bestowing party head.
The point about the remoteness of some parts of Scotland is more valid, but again, it's hard to see a convincing case why this is important enough a reason to not use STV. As John Lawrie goes on to say:
The geography of the Highlands and Islands can be a complicating factor under any electoral system (including first past the post). The difficulties are not unique to the single transferable vote; indeed, both the region and the individual constituencies in a mixed member system will cover a large area.
The point about political parties not being able to enforce ethnic representation is harder to talk about, because it boils down to one of STV's strongest points, as championed by both its fans and its detractors: voter choice. A closed list can be stacked by a party to pretty much ensure minority representation; under STV it's up to the voters, who may turn out to be a bunch of racist, homophobic, anti-woman bigots. Yet this seems a minor point, even more so when one considers that the closed lists are to be replaced with open ones.
Localism is a much more valid point to make. Now a cynical man might well contend that this is actually a positive anyway—politicians, if we insist on tying them to a constituency, should logically be well-equipped to deal with local issues and scrap like a fighting cock to get them heard and get something done about them. Leave the national issues alone—they only tend to get buggered up anyway. "Better for the country as a whole" may be lovely, but it's also laughably insincere.
Even leaving uncomfortable political realities aside, the only evidence of 'localism' that seems to crop up is that it makes representatives work harder for their constituents. Which as John Lawrie rightly points out, is no bad thing:
Irish electoral politics have often been tarred with the brush of excessive localism. I have seen no convincing evidence that this phenomenon is attributable to the single transferable vote. Localism can also occur in other systems: the sometimes uneasy relationship between regional and constituency members of the Scottish Parliament is no different from that which can exist between fellow members in an Irish multi-member constituency, and in both cases it is about competition to be seen as the best champion of local interests.
In all, then, one has to wonder why the Commission was reluctant to press for STV, given that it solved the problems they were otherwise only able to offer incomprehensive 'tweaks' for and given that the arguments against it are noticeably thinner. Perhaps they knew, for they do appear to be nothing if not rigorously intellectual, that arguing for an almost across-the-board switch to STV would make it much easier for the government to dismiss all their hard work out-of-hand.
It may appear crude to suggest that a government is predisposed to chuck STV regardless of any argument, but I don't believe it is. Pretend you're a politician. Having fun yet? Now, to get into character, imagine what you had to do to get here. The best guide is probably H.L. Mencken's, but for those of you more rushed for time, I'll offer a hasty version of my own.
First up, and this is technically optional, but it really does help, get bullied/repressed/generally shat on by the world. This should equip you with both the necessary thirst for revenge, insane need to impose your will upon others and few enough friends to allow you to pursue your goals.
Next up, you need some Power. According to the undisputed Quantity Theory of Power, there's only so much to go around, so in order to get your own piece, you need to steal/charm it off someone who already has some. Now, because people who own Power are totally bewitched by it, they don't give it away easily, especially not to normal people. However, this actually makes your job a little easier. Because Power can only be won by cunning or flattery, you have fewer people to con or flatter.
And this is where STV comes in. Under STV, you, the politician, have to rely on the constituencies to elect you and bestow your much-desired power upon your pretty little head. Under pretty much every other system, especially First Past the Post, (unless you are unfortunate enough to land in a marginal, of which there are precious few) Power comes from being appointed by those on high. So join a party, spend your entire time licking the right arses (beware, some of them are really rather nasty) and with a bit of luck, you'll soon be sat in the Commons.
Now think about it—which way do you prefer? Licking a few arses, or licking many? What's worse, under STV, the Power at the end is distributed more thinly, meaning more arses, less end product. It hardly seems worth it for a person of your special talents.
If 'the people' genuinely don't want STV because they perceive it as being too complicated and the government don't want it because it totally screws with their arse-lick-end-product balance, where does that leave us?
One can talk about worthiness, integrity, fairness, decency and optimality all one likes, but these are qualities distrusted or resented more than they are embraced. In the end, politics will probably always be the same, unoriginality will always triumph and people will always buy crap music, and damn us all for being so dumb.
The Politician, by H.L. Mencken
Posted by pauldavies on January 20, 2006 | Comments (0)
I need this in a bit, but you might as well enjoy it all now.
From A Mencken Chrestomathy, pp148-152. January 4th, 1940.
After damning politicians up hill and down dale for many years, as rogues and vagabonds, frauds and scoundrels, I sometimes suspect that, like everyone else, I often expect too much of them. Though faith and confidence are surely more or less foreign to my nature, I not infrequently find myself looking to them to be able, diligent, candid, and even honest. Plainly enough, that is too large an order, as anyone must realize who reflects upon the manner in which they reach public office. They seldom if ever get there by merit alone, at least in democratic states. Sometimes, to be sure, it happens, but only by a kind of miracle. They are chosen normally for quite different reasons, the chief of which is simply their power to impress and enchant the intellectually underprivileged. It is a talent like any other, and when it is exercised by a radio crooner, a movie actor or a bishop, it even takes on a certain austere and sorry respectability. But it is obviously not identical with a capacity for the intricate problems of statecraft.
Those problems demand for their solution - when they are soluble at all, which is not often - a high degree of technical proficiency, and with it there should go an adamantine kind of integrity, for the temptations of a public official are almost as cruel as those of a glamor girl or a dipsomaniac. But we train a man for facing them, not by locking him up in a monastery and stuffing him with wisdom and virtue, but by turning him loose on the stump. If he is a smart and enterprising fellow, which he usually is, he quickly discovers there that hooey pleases the boobs a great deal more than sense. Indeed, he finds that sense really disquiets and alarms them - that it makes them, at best, intolerably uncomfortable, just as a tight collar makes them uncomfortable, or a speck of dust in the eye, or the thought of Hell. The truth, to the overwhelming majority of mankind, is indistinguishable from a headache. After trying a few shots of it on his customers, the larval statesman concludes sadly that it must hurt them, and after that he taps a more humane keg, and in a little while the whole audience is singing "Glory, glory, hallelujah," and when the returns come in the candidate is on his way to the White House.
I hope no one will mistake this brief account of the political process under democracy for exaggeration. It is almost literally true. I do not mean to argue, remember, that all politicians are villains in the sense that a burglar, a child-stealer, or a Darwinian are villains. Far from it. Many of them, in their private characters, are very charming persons, and I have known plenty that I'd trust with my diamonds, my daughter or my liberty, if I had any such things. I happen to be acquainted to some extent with nearly all the gentlemen, both Democrats and Republicans, who are currently itching for the Presidency, including the present incumbent, and I testify freely that they are all pleasant fellows, with qualities above rather than below the common. The worst of them is a great deal better company than most generals in the army, or writers of murder mysteries, or astrophysicists, and the best is a really superior and wholly delightful man - full of sound knowledge, competent and prudent, frank and enterprising, and quite as honest as any American can be without being clapped into a madhouse. Don't ask me what his name is, for I am not in politics. I can only tell you that he has been in public life a long while, and has not been caught yet.
But will this prodigy, or any of his rivals, ever unload any appreciable amount of sagacity on the stump? Will any of them venture to tell the plain truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about the situation of the country, foreign or domestic? Will any of them refrain from promises that he knows he can't fulfill - that no human being could fulfill? Will any of them utter a word, however obvious, that will alarm and alienate any of the huge packs of morons who now cluster at the public trough, wallowing in the pap that grows thinner and thinner, hoping against hope? Answer: maybe for a few weeks at the start. Maybe before the campaign really begins. Maybe behind the door. But not after the issue is fairly joined, and the struggle is on in earnest. From that moment they will all resort to demagogy, and by the middle of June of election year the only choice among them will be a choice between amateurs of that science and professionals.
They will all promise every man, woman and child in the country whatever he, she or it wants. They'll all being roving the land looking for chances to make the rich poor, to remedy the irremediable, to succor the unsuccorable, to unscramble the unscrambleable, to dephlogisticate the undephlogisticable. They will all be curing warts by saying words over them, and paying off the national debt with money that no one will have to earn. When one of them demonstrates that twice two is five, another will prove that it is six, six and a half, ten, twenty, n. In brief, they will divest themselves of their character as sensible, candid and truthful men, and become simply candidates for office, bent only on collaring votes. They will all know by then, even supposing that some of them don't know it now, that votes are collared under democracy, not by talking sense but by talking nonsense, and they will apply themselves to the job with a hearty yo-heave-ho. Most of them, before the uproar is over, will actually convince themselves. The winner will be whoever promises the most with the least probability of delivering anything.
Some years ago I accompanied a candidate for the Presidency on his campaign-tour. He was, like all such rascals, an amusing fellow, and I came to like him very much. His speeches, at the start, were full of fire. He was going to save the country from all the stupendous frauds and false pretenses of his rival. Every time that rival offered to rescue another million of poor fish from the neglects and oversights of God he howled his derision from the back platform of his train. I noticed at once that these blasts of common sense got very little applause, and after a while the candidate began to notice it too. Worse, he began to get word from his spies on the train of his rival that the rival was wowing them, panicking them, laying them in the aisles. They threw flowers, hot dogs and fivecent cigars at him. In places where the times were especially hard they tried to unhook the locomotive from his train, so that he'd have to stay with them awhile longer, and promise them some more. There were no Gallup polls in those innocent days, but the local politicians had ways of their own for finding out how the cat was jumping, and they began to join my candidate's train in the middle of the night, and wake him up to tell him that all was lost, including honor. This had some effect almost as powerful as that of sitting in the electric chair. He lost his intelligent manner, and became something you could hardly distinguish from an idealist. Instead of mocking he began to promise, and in a little while he was promising everything that his rival was promising, and a good deal more.
One night out in the Bible country, after the hullabaloo of the day was over, I went into his private car along with another newspaper reporter, and we sat down to gabble with him. This other reporter, a faithful member of the candidate's own party, began to upbraid him, at first very gently, for letting off so much hokum. What did he mean by making promises that no human being on this earth, and not many of the angels in Heaven, could ever hope to carry out? In particular, what was his idea in trying to work off all those preposterous bilebeans and snake-oils on the poor farmers, a class of men who had been fooled and rocked by every fresh wave of politicians since Apostolic times? Did he really believe that the Utopia he had begun so fervently to preach would ever come to pass? Did he honestly think that farmers, as a body, would ever see all their rosy dreams come true, or that the share-croppers in their lower ranks would ever be more than a hop, skip and jump from starvation? The candidate thought awhile, took a long swallow of the coffin-varnish he carried with him, and then replied that the answer in every case was no. He was well aware, he said, that the plight of the farmers was intrinsically hopeless, and would probably continue so, despite doles from the treasury, for centuries to come. He had no notion that anything could be done about it by merely human means, and certainly not by political means: it would take a new Moses, and a whole series of miracles. "But you forget, Mr. Blank," he concluded sadly, "that our agreement in the premisses must remain purely personal. You are not a candidate for President of the United States. I am." As we left him, his interlocutor, a gentleman grown gray in Washington and long ago lost to every decency, pointed the moral of the episode. "In politics," he said, "man must learn to rise above principle." Then he drove it in with another: "When the water reaches the upper deck," he said,"follow the rats."
Another quickie from Berlusconi
Posted by pauldavies on January 20, 2006 | Comments (0)
Below the fold, another addition to the 'Silvio Berlusconi or why electoral systems and other such things should be kept out of the hands of politicians' file, courtesy of The Economist.
SILVIO BERLUSCONI, Italy's prime minister, is ending his current term of office as he began it in the summer of 2001: with an assault on the judicial system. In one of its last acts before the election in April, the Italian parliament has passed a bill sponsored by Gaetano Pecorella, Mr Berlusconi's lawyer, who is also a deputy for his political party, Forza Italia. In July 2001 Mr Pecorella, who chairs the lower house's justice committee, also sponsored a law to downgrade the crime of false accounting, for which the prime minister was then on trial. That law shortened the statute of limitations after which charges are time-barred, a provision that directly benefited Mr Berlusconi.
The new bill would abolish the prosecution's right to appeal against acquittals by the court of first instance. By chance, a court in Milan is due to begin hearing just such an appeal, of a case in which Mr Berlusconi was acquitted on four charges of bribing judges. On one charge, the acquittal came because the crime was time-barred after extenuating circumstances had been granted; on two others, it came for lack of sufficient proof; on the fourth, it was because he had not committed the offence. But the prosecution appealed against all these verdicts, which were delivered in December 2004.
Cesare Previti, a Forza Italia senator and business colleague of Mr Berlusconi, might also benefit from the new bill. He has been found guilty in two cases of judicial corruption and faces a prison sentence should the verdicts be upheld. One of the cases, involving a company owned by Mr Berlusconi, was due to be decided by the supreme court this week, but the hearing was cancelled because of a lawyers' strike. Under the new bill, Mr Previti might be able to submit direct evidence to the supreme court, whose role is currently limited to ruling on points of law.
Arbuthnott again
Posted by pauldavies on January 20, 2006 | Comments (0)
Unsurprisingly, there's been a fair bit said about Arbuthnott in the papers today, thus a round-up seems in order. I'll be back with a couple of other thoughts later...
The Herald
PR is the way forward
Never mind the party… vote for the candidate
Labour MPs hoist by their own desire to keep party in power
Edinburgh Evening News
Voters need more say in choice of list MSPs, says poll commission
The Scotsman
Voting commission redraws battle lines
Alex Salmond, the SNP leader, called for the findings to be delivered by Holyrood rather than Westminster. Mr Salmond said: "The dinosaurs of Scottish politics - Scottish Labour MPs at Westminster - should take note and stop their small-minded attacks on Scotland and our parliament. "Their plans have been branded 'undemocratic' and they are rightly criticised for being driven by narrow party advantage. "They should not be given the chance to interfere with or overturn the recommendations in the report. "Instead, the Scottish Parliament should have primary responsibility for delivering these changes to Scotland's electoral system."
Evening Times
Move to change Holyrood voting
BBC News
Call for voter education campaign
Mixed views on voting reform plan
Politics.co.uk
Issue of the day: voting reform
The noble Lords on Arbuthnott... introduction
Posted by pauldavies on January 20, 2006 | Comments (0)
Nothing of startling interest, given that the report had only just been published, but the Lords always makes for good reading.
11.29 am
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock asked Her Majesty’s Government:
What is their response to the recommendations of the report of the Arbuthnott Commission on Boundary Differences and Voting Systems.
Lord Evans of Temple Guiting: My Lords, this Question gives a wholly new meaning to the term “topical question�. As I rise to answer it—or rather not answer it—Sir John Arbuthnott is still on his feet in Glasgow launching his independent report. As my noble friend well knows, it would, to put it mildly, be unusual for the Government to respond to a report before or during its launch. Or is there an important point I’m missing?
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for recognising my prescience in tabling this Question today. Does he recall that the reason for this commission is the confusion and chaos we face in Scotland with four different voting systems—for local government, Holyrood, Westminster, and European elections—and also separate boundaries for Holyrood and Westminster? Is he, like me, disappointed at reports that this commission has not come up with a coherent set of proposals to deal with those problems? If they do nothing else arising from the commission, will the Government at least consider legislating to stop people standing both for constituency and list seats in the Scottish Parliament, thereby turning losers into winners?
Lord Evans of Temple Guiting: My Lords, I must congratulate my noble friend on one thing: being first past the post with his question on this report. A mere 15 minutes ago my right honourable friend Alistair Darling issued a press statement, and with the permission of the House I will read a short part of it:
“The report contains a number of interesting recommendations and proposals. I will consider these carefully and respond in due course. There is now an opportunity for full consideration and debate on these proposals�.
That statement makes my position, at the Dispatch Box now, absolutely clear.
Baroness Carnegy of Lour: My Lords, the report was recently published, but it seems that the commissioners listened to pleas for fairness to voters outside Scotland’s central belt and to pleas for smaller political parties. In the careful consideration I am sure the Government will give, will they look particularly carefully at the arguments for the present system, with its faults, over other systems? In particular, does not the quality of candidates in Scotland depend on the highly desirable measure which stands at the moment that candidates can stand for both constituency and list?
Lord Evans of Temple Guiting: My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Baroness for making that point. Of course what she says will be part of the debate that we will now have. The report, which is now available in the Printed Paper Office, has an appendix showing how wide the consultation was. As the noble Baroness said, it extended beyond the Scottish boundaries.
Lord Maclennan of Rogart: My Lords, does the noble Lord agree that there is a great deal to be studied with care and that it would be wrong to jump to conclusions? The underlying support for proportionality in representation is clear throughout. To strengthen the position of the individual in the substitution of open lists for closed lists is a particularly welcome recommendation. Although it is clear that this House will not want to pass a rapid verdict on the case, as Sir John Arbuthnott puts it, for introducing a proportional system for Westminster elections, should we not come back to the subject soon?
Lord Evans of Temple Guiting: My Lords, the noble Lord has an advantage over me as I see that he has a copy of the report in his hand, so he has actually read it. His point is that there are a number of issues in the report which he thinks need to be fully discussed. As the Secretary of State said, this will happen over the next period.
Lord Sutherland of Houndwood: My Lords, does the Minister agree with me that my noble friend Lord Foulkes shows perhaps less prescience than a taste for the pre-emptive strike? Nonetheless, he has raised a number of important questions and it would be good to have the opportunity to debate them in this House in due course.
Lord Evans of Temple Guiting: My Lords, as I have been reminded by the Chief Whip, that, of course, is a matter for the usual channels. The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, has brought to the attention of the House an important matter which I am sure will be debated when the Government give their response to the Arbuthnott report.
Lord Sewel: My Lords, can I seek assurance from my noble friend the Minister that the Government in reaching a judgment on the recommendations of the Arbuthnott Commission will not only give consideration to its impact on Scotland but also to the possible implications for the rest of the United Kingdom?
Lord Evans of Temple Guiting: My Lords, my noble friend makes a very good point. It is now on record and will be part of the discussion that we are going to have.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean: My Lords, will the Minister take rather more seriously the criticism by his noble friend Lord Foulkes of the chaos and confusion that have been created in Scotland? Does he acknowledge that this is entirely the result of measures introduced by this Government? On the issue of whether candidates who are on the list may also stand for constituencies, how is it possible to have completely different systems in Wales and in Scotland? Is that not another example of muddled thinking leading to confusion throughout the whole of the United Kingdom?
Lord Evans of Temple Guiting: My Lords, it is quite the contrary. It is a very good example of clarity of thought by this Government. The remit for the Arbuthnott Commission was based on the very points that the noble Lord has made: there are problems; what do we do to solve them? The Government set up a commission; we have the report and we will discuss it very shortly. That is precisely what the noble Lord seems to be asking for.
Baroness Wilcox: My Lords, may I just—
Lord Grocott: No.
Baroness Wilcox: My Lords, I think that it would be helpful.
Lord Grocott: My Lords, everyone tries to be helpful here but we have run out of time on Questions.
Arbuthnott's Westminster implications
Posted by pauldavies on January 19, 2006 | Comments (0)
I think this qualifies as quite good news...
From the Overview of the full report, page 7:
para 2.17'... We have not directly addressed the question of voting systems for the Westminster Parliament but do believe that the case for introducing a more proportional system for those elections is now very strong, since after 2007 they will be the only ones held in Scotland which do not involve a significant degree of proportionality. We note the research which suggests that the Scottish public shares this view.'
(Quotes Scottish Social Attitudes survey 2003, with over 50% agreeing
and around 10% disagreeing with a more proportional system)
Arbuthnott Commission report out today
Posted by pauldavies on January 19, 2006 | Comments (0)
From 11am, assuming the appropriate people are out of bed, the final report from the Arbuthnott Commission, which has been looking at the rich (complicated) world of Scottish electoral stuff will be up on their website, here.
I'll have a quick look at some point today and report anything exciting. In the meantime, an ERS press release from yesterday about what it hopes will be in the report.
UPDATE: It appears the Arbuthnott chaps were only about 15 minutes late getting up... early indications (i.e. the summary) show that they recommend tweaking the current system, because STV is just too darn complicated, although STV is good enough for European elections, and should be introduced. Far be it for me to comment negatively on this great body of work which I haven't yet read, but is a voting system whose biggest problem is that it makes it slightly trickier to work out how votes translate into seats really worse than one whose biggest problem is intra-parliament bickering leading to more time arguing and less time serving the electorate?
UPDATE 2: BBC Report
Does Italy need First-Past-the-Post?
Posted by pauldavies on January 18, 2006 | Comments (1)
Usually if one were to read the sentence 'Silvio Berlusconi is barely human', one would think of his allegedly disreputable ways, or perhaps his pseudo-plastic face. One would not instinctively think of it in the sense of a power-restricting: 'so he is human after all, albeit just about'. Yet it appears that is the current state of play in Italy, where a proposed change to the rules governing political parties' media access (that would've further benefited Berlusconi's 'Forza Italia' gang), has just been scrapped. Either that or Silvio's simply getting cocky.
Given that Signor Berlusconi's centre-right coalition is still six percentage points behind its centre-left rival, blithe cockiness seems a little way away just yet, even though this is Silvio, and even though that poll lead could well translate into a centre-right victory, thanks to Berlusconi's cheekily rapacious change to the electoral system.
The more likely interpretation is that Berlusconi was forced to backtrack due to the misgivings expressed by some of his coalition partners, who would've been worse off under the planned change.
First time for everything an' all that.
In truth, it's a minor legislative setback for Silvio & Co. The slick-haired one is still to Italy's media what that big black rock in Mecca is to the world's Muslims, thus slanting political broadcasts shouldn't be too tricky.
More interesting perhaps than Silvio (and here obviously I'm talking about the implications of electoral systems; nothing's more interesting than Silvio generally) is the state of the centre-left coalition under the new (or old, given that it's a reversion) system of 'crazy PR'. Yesterday I drew attention to the continuing problems Romano Prodi is having uniting the centre-left in order to successfully navigate the obstacles Silvio keeps plonking in Prodi's path. Yet with so many parties, the biggest obstacle may not be anything to do with Silvio. The competing demands of all the one-step-from-insignificance parties are doing a pretty good job derailing the opposition cause by themselves. These party-political shenanigans arguably contribute as much to Italy's ongoing political farce as the blatant corruption at the top.
Under these circumstances, one can see how an argument for FPTP in Italy could be grounded. And given that intellectually speaking this whole electoral reform issue is soporifically one-sided, it's definitely something worth working with.
Under FPTP, the smaller parties, if they wanted the sort of power that they are now vying for via a coalition, would have to moderate some of their views and work with each other under a big banner, much like Prodi is trying and failing to achieve at the moment. With so many parties, it's not like the voters would be deprived of too much of their say—how they're supposed to know which bits of which party manifesto will be implemented at the moment is beyond me. There's clearly no way of knowing who is ultimately responsible for any stupid legislation that makes it onto the statute books during the course of a parliament, thus votes can't be cast on much more than media propaganda and instincts completely unrelated to the running of the country.
And yet… that's where the argument starts to get a bit tricky… it's just as hard to say how such problems would be solved by adopting a system based on geographical spread of votes, one that encourages cronyism and plays right into the hands of people like Signor Berlusconi. In terms of the current circus, he may be a no bigger problem than the squabbles of the little parties, but that doesn't mean he, and the power he is allowed to wield to his own gain, not giving a damn about his country, isn't a huge problem itself.
Italy's political problems, like every other country's, lie not in how to clean up the politicians themselves—that's never going to work, they're like hydras: decapitate one corrupt suit and another will spring up in its place—but rather in taming the power that we necessarily have to bestow upon them. It was this need to 'tame power' that arguably gave rise to Italy's foolish almost-full-PR system in the first place. Much like Weimar Germany, the system was designed to not let any one man or party get too powerful. Yet, again like Weimar, they went a bit far, and thanks to Italians being, as Eddie Izzard told us, too busy driving around on Vespas saying 'ciao', no one did much about it.
Furthermore, a full-PR system doesn't do the best job of taming the power of the people at the top, because the power still resides, quite comfortably, if with a little less authoritarian pomp, in the upper echelons of the political domain. All a fragmenting system means is that the ruling castes are pulled apart by inter-party bickering as opposed to the intra-party type that we get under FPTP. In short, where there is power, there are fights to collect it, like kids in a playground scrapping over Pokemon cards. And like those kids, in the nastier areas, knives can get involved. Nothing like growing up, is there?
The only way to make politicians fight over the voters rather than amongst themselves is to give the voters a real choice. Which inevitably means a choice between different members of the same party. It's the same everywhere, from Rome to Romford.
Something for you Lords reform fans
Posted by pauldavies on January 17, 2006 | Comments (0)
The ever-eloquent and well-thought-through Unity with some thoughts on Lords reform. I would comment, but I started writing about what we should do with the Lords, and the more I read (which I think is actually everything now) the more I wrote (7,000 and not yet half-way through) and the more I wrote the more I was told that I couldn't publish it while having any attachment to ERS. So it's on the backburner. I bet you're all dead excited.
The Lib Dem leadership and future coalition talk
Posted by pauldavies on January 17, 2006 | Comments (3)
So apparently there's a Lib Dem leadership contest going on, which is all rather fun. It could quite easily slip away at the slightest hint of real news, however, given that whoever wins isn't likely to make too much difference to the running of the country. Yet that sort of talk doesn't go down well in Libland. But that's okay, because the Lib Dems can hook themselves into The Power by means of coalition talk. We're going to have a hung parliament after all.
So where do the four gang leaders stand on the prospect of getting cosy with either of the two big boys? Let's see shall we:
Simon Hughes
The Independent claims that Simon may be willing to help out Gordon Brown, but won't work with David Cameron. However, he told the BBC that "there won’t be any coalition talks by me". The news agencies summed this up by saying that "party president Simon Hughes effectively ruled out a coalition with either Labour or the Conservatives but said he would chew over electoral reform with both parties if they were to listen to ideas pertaining to a "modernizing" agenda."
He went on: "However, if the Labour or Tory leader, whoever they are, come to me and say, 'we are willing not just to be modernising on other things, but we are going to modernise this building we work in, we are willing to have a system means that what people vote for they get', then I will start talking."
So all in all, a bit wishy-washy.
Menzies Campbell
Ming decided to similarly shirk the issue, plumping instead for a "maximising votes and maximising seats" strategy. If only they'd thought of that before.
Mark Oaten
Mark Oaten was a little more forthright, which I suppose he has to be given he doesn't have a hope. As one seemingly quite keen on obtaining some of The Power, he talked of a possible "arrangement" with either party, lasting a full Parliament.
Chris Huhne
When asked, Chris Huhne opted for speaking from experience, drawing comparisons to the EU parliament, where parties can get together over single issues, without the need for any grander overall plan.
And in other news, Vince Cable told the Sunday Times that Gordon was "quite open about finding common ground" with the Lib Dems. Presumably this is in the same way that Tony Blair was equally open about finding common ground with Paddy Ashdown (more so, in fact) before forgetting about it when he didn't need him.
Silvio's going to win
Posted by pauldavies on January 17, 2006 | Comments (0)
Autocratic plutocracy is truly alive and well in Italy, it seems.
So while Berlusconi's coalition may be lagging behind Italy's combined left, there is very little reason to expect Italy's left to operate as a combined party. So long as that remains the case -- and bear in mind that forming a 10-party coalition in Italy is harder than herding cats -- Berlusconi is a shoo-in to become the first Italian prime minister to win re-election.
Back shortly
Posted by pauldavies on January 16, 2006 | Comments (0)
Thanks to the degenerate souls who broke into our offices over the weekend, we are without Internet (I write now from an expensive emergency back-up...) thus for your fun today, I recommend the links on the right.
Back soon (I hope)
Better government for Wales. No, really.
Posted by pauldavies on January 13, 2006 | Comments (0)
with early apologies to Ben Elton and Richard Curtis
"Without destruction, all change is modified continuity." —Jiddu Krishnamurti
"There is no act of treachery or meanness of which a political party is not capable; for in politics there is no honour." —Benjamin Disraeli
One has to feel sorry for Wales. Aside from an inspired performance or five from their boys in rugby shirts last year, life is a bit tough. Not only are the permanently-rain-soaked valleys terrorised by unruly gangs of close-harmony singers, who if you get too close cover you in phlegm, Wales is also so poor that its qualification for EU Regional Aid was almost unaffected by the accession of the more recognisably pauperised nations of central and eastern Europe.
In a bid to do something nice for them—to provide some succour if you will—they were given their own form of devolved government, the Welsh Assembly. This even came with something which, at first sight, resembled a not-completely-stupid voting system. However, as the days drew on, and the rain kept on falling, it became ever clearer that there were problems—arguably intractable ones—whose only observable upside was in keeping Peter Hain busy (if not necessarily out of trouble).
Suspicions were of course raised early on—this was a voting system decided upon by party-political types after all—but realising it was better than nothing, and something that could be worked on later, it was adopted without too much fuss.
Well now is later, and it's being worked on. Sort of.
The main problem, and the one that has seen the biggest proliferation of crèche-like behaviour among the arguing 'debating' MPs and assorted others, concerns the issue of 'dual candidacy'. Dual candidacy has been discussed on this blog before, first (relatively) genially by Lewis and then somewhat more crudely (and stupidly) by me. However, it can't hurt to go over the basics one more time.
Wales elects Assembly Members via an Additional Member System (AMS), where some seats are filled up 'on top' of the usual constituency ones in order to increase the proportionality of the legislature; candidates can therefore be elected through a constituency or via a regional list (of which there are five). There are twice as many constituency seats as there are regional ones. 'Dual candidacy' is, quite simply, standing as a candidate both in a single constituency and on a regional list.
Labour, headed by Peter Hain and Rhodri Morgan, wants to ban this practice. Everyone else wants to see a reason why first. Thus the bickering starts.
That rival MPs are arguing over changes that have an impact—any impact—on the relative levels of power that are exercised over the electorate and over each other ranks up there alongside "people are tired in the morning" and "addictive gamblers suffer from cognitive errors" in the premier league of pointless non-news. Equally shouldn't-need-to-be-said is that such a situation, where the all-important ability to walk around the corridors of the Palace of Westminster feeling slightly more puffed up than usual is at stake, will descend into a quasi-faith-based verbal altercation whatever the evidence; gentlemanly expostulation this is not.
The most childish aspects of this merry little charade have centred around the concept of what exactly is 'evidence'. Hain and Morgan have converted their prima facie repulsion at the idea that list AMs (none of whom worship at the altar of Tony, remember) are elected having already been 'kicked out' by the electorate in the constituency vote into "a mountain" of evidence (albeit hearsay) that everything is bad and wrong and must be changed forthwith. This demonstrates both a complete inability to grasp quite how and why the 'top-up' seats are allocated, and also the ground for the thinking that gave birth to the proposal in the first place.
The list AMs are there to ensure that the Assembly is broadly proportional in its make-up. For this proportionality to have any practical purpose, the List AMs must have the same status as the constituency AMs. This is, or at least should be, axiomatic. Sadly, there are many—including Hain and Morgan—that don't believe this to be the case.
There is somewhat scarily constant talk of the regional AMs having got in "through the back door". Labour MP for Alyn and Deeside, Mark Tami, sees them in stark contrast to the "proper" (constituency) AMs, a thought (and another over-used phrase) echoed by many on the government's side. With the Bill still in relative infancy, we are yet to see whether the (generally) more articulate Lords are prone to the same lack of vocabularic unimaginativity.
This attitude is encapsulated in the Bill not only by the proposal to ban dual candidacy, but also by new restrictions on the role of the list AMs. In redefining the purpose and scope of the "backdoor" members, the Bill mentions no positives, preferring to concentrate on telling them what they can't do (which is pretty much anything that gets in the way of Labour business). Rather than appreciating the aforementioned axiom, these proposals show a determination to class list AMs as second-rate representatives, which is a little odd given that one of the professed goals of these measures was to lessen intra-Assembly animosity.
As well as heightening enmity between Labour AMs and the rest, a ban on dual candidacy could serve to engender ill-feeling among candidates from the same party, as the indelicate situation would almost certainly arise where candidates on the list know they will only get elected if their colleagues fighting constituency contests lose, which, I'm sure the bright ones among you will agree, isn't especially edifying.
The whole thing appears even dafter when one considers that a party is most likely to put its best candidates (in the honourable use of the term, i.e. the candidate who would be best for the people they want to represent) forward to the constituency list. These superior souls might then fail due to nothing more than a deep-seated, irremovable party bias in their favoured constituency, only to see a less able member of their party elected later on via the list.
So far, then, we have seen how a ban on dual candidacy can foster all sorts of bad relations (which never translates well to voter confidence, I hear). But what about the positives? Why, exactly, is valuable time and money being spent conjuring up these crazy solutions?
The problem which requires solving stems from competition. List AMs, free to set up shop wherever they feel like it within a fairly wide area, tend to do so in more marginal constituency seats, so that they might try to show up the sitting AM, and thus have a better chance of beating them at the ballot box next time round. This clearly isn't fair. British democracy has long worked on the principle that once elected, the powers of incumbency are bestowed upon the victor such that they may get to relax a little after some arduous campaigning. Competition doesn't help this in the slightest.
More seriously, we are also left with a relic of First-Past-the-Post, viz. the problem that some areas of the country are arbitrarily deemed more important than others, with the elected members, be they list or constituency, working disproportionately hard to improve them at the expense of the rest. Obviously STV preserves the beneficial competition as well as virtually eradicating 'safe seats', but we'll get to that later.
Back to the Bill. How will the proposed changes rectify this problem? Will it stop list AMs setting up their offices in marginal constituencies? Will it therefore stop the constituency AMs getting all aggrieved? Will removing the link between list members and a region bring those AMs, and the work they do closer to the people they're elected to work for? Will it bollocks.
The only way to combat the seedier side of an AM's life is to have all members elected on an equal basis. What Rhodri Morgan claims is "a small change that solves a substantial problem" is nothing of the sort, and it's quite disconcerting that he believes such fallacious bunkum.
Even if we leave aside the obvious jokes that go with Hain's statement that he's going to make Wales "world-class", the words 'intellect' and 'integrity', however close they may be in the dictionary, are metaphorical miles apart in his head.
Technically, the things Hain has been saying, (despite even my own efforts to paint a picture to the contrary) are not false, per se. He's not actually lying, in the same way that a shady estate agent selling you a house but not mentioning that the place acts as a homing beacon for every rat within 30 miles ever summer is not actually lying.
Take, for example, his cheeky oft-repeated assertion that the idea of banning dual candidacies had been discussed in New Zealand. (N.B. this was in opposition to claims that it is virtually without international precedent). Despite mentioning this a not inconsiderable number of times, he fails to pick up on the outcome of these Antipodean analyses, which were, somewhat inconveniently for Mr Hain, wholly against the idea; indeed, the Committee that looked at it was "unanimous in its view that dual candidacies should continue". When informed of this, Mr Hain simply utilised his position of power, and resorted to name-calling. Tut tut Peter; as George Bernard Shaw said, "the power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it."
Bereft of scruples as that episode was, the more troubling abuse of common decency and the noble art of inquisition surrounds the so-called 'Clywd West question'. Clywd West was indelibly etched onto the map of electoral geekery after three of its defeated candidates in the constituency run-off were subsequently elected via the regional list. Cue much highfalutin confused moralistic caterwauling from the cheap seats.
However, to ask, as many troubled souls have, "how did this happen?" is to miss the point. The more pertinent question is "what did you expect to happen when you designed this system?" If you maintain single-member constituencies and aim to achieve proportionality by allocating some more seats in line with the national—rather than each individual local—vote, this sort of thing was always going to happen. Add this to the "unexpected" (that is, political) way in which regional AMs set up their offices and you have to wonder what the architects of the system were doing (in any sense you may wish to interpret the word) before its implementation.
It's all very well saying "we didn't anticipate this" but they might as well have just said "we were stupid back then." Furthermore, given that these people are a) politicians and b) of that age where educating oneself is of less importance than securing a decent pension, what evidence is there that they are no longer stupid? Why are we listening to stupid people?
As happens to an extent to stir the invective flames in even the more placid people, the problem is in the roots, and the obvious solution that tackles this has been completely overlooked in favour of blithely trying to squash a chosen symptom, ignoring that such action produces invidious effects of its own.
Why dealing with this properly has been ignored, or rather—given that the Richard Commission was asked to (and indeed did) look at it properly—paid scant attention to, is due in large part to a reason which Hain and Morgan denounce with equal vehemence, i.e. partisanship.
I probably wouldn't go as far as Conservative MP Cheryl Gillan, who said that "the truth is that this is a spiteful and anti-democratic measure that should have no place in a Government of Wales Bill and may not even survive a challenge under Human Rights legislation", but she's not completely without justification. Professor Robert Hazell of the Constitution Unit was only a little nicer in reaching the conclusion that the proposals were "nasty, spiteful and seemingly driven by partisan motives." David TC Davies (Con, Monmouth) was, in my opinion, nearest the mark in saying that "it is a great shame that the sort of tricks that we might have seen in South Africa in the 1970s to prop up a failing regime are being imported into south Wales."
True. If this had taken place in Italy, the very same politicians defending the scheme here would be making sicky-sicky gestures and calling for Silvio to be shot down in a pro-democracy onslaught.
The refutation of this line of argument is apparently contained in the following, again from Mr Hain:
The comments and evidence that I have cited demonstrate that the claim that the measure is partisan is entirely without foundation. I shall explain why. I remind the House that there are six Labour Assembly Members, including three Ministers, who would be defeated by a swing of 3 per cent. against them—a very small swing. They will no longer have the safety net of the regional list. This reform will affect Labour candidates, just as it applies to candidates of other parties. Candidates must make their choice, then the voters will make theirs.
Which is all very lovely, I'm sure you'll agree. The problem is, it's all completely irrelevant. Because of the way the Labour vote is set up in Wales, they'll always have a large number of seats—for the Assembly, like for Westminster—to which they can appoint their most efficient orators and obfuscators. Smaller parties don't have quite such a luxury, and are more reliant on a few chosen ones to get their points across most efficiently. Moreover, the Welsh AMS is only mildly proportional: with twice as many constituency seats, and an inherent Labour dominance over the three smaller parties, the chaps in red can secure a majority on a relatively small slice of the vote. For example, in 2003, Labour scooped 30 out of 40 constituency seats, thus handing them a majority in the Assembly, on 37.6 per cent of the constituency vote.
Those Labour members with small majorities that Mr Hain mentioned might not be individually 'protected' by the list, but no one was arguing on their behalf—accusations of partisanship relate, in this context, to the party, and these "excessive, unnecessary and undemocratic" measures work to the sole benefit of the Labour party.
There is, as I mentioned earlier, a solution to the Assembly's problems that is more than the equivalent of sticking a plaster on a headache.
If the Assembly is going to enjoy both a modicum of harmony and profit from the benefits of having a broadly proportional composition it needs STV. This is what the independent Richard Commission recommended after its as-comprehensive-as-such-a-thing-can-be study.
However, we have seen that for Hain & Co., evidence like this is but a mere professional inconvenience, as he dismissed the calls in an impressively succinct manner, stating only that "The Government does not agree that [switching to STV] is the right way forward."
When asked why STV had been "dismissed out of hand very abruptly", Mr Hain responded in his usual belligerently hazy way.
"We did not dismiss anything out of hand, we do not dismiss anything out of hand abruptly or non-abruptly… Once you move to a single transferable system you lose the individual relationship between the constituency and the elected member, that is what you do. It may produce a more proportional result but it breaks that link which I think is a terribly important feature of parliamentary democracy and, as it happens, of the emerging Assembly democracy of being able to vote in or vote out the Assembly member or the party as you choose. You would lose that under a multi-member STV system."
As I've said before:
What strong link is that again? The constituency link, as it exists, is something that all MPs publicly love, privately resent, and are at all times glad that it doesn't actually count for anything unless they're in a marginal seat. This mythical connection can logically only become reality if voters have a choice between candidates of the same party, otherwise there's as much an MP-constituency link under FPTP as there is under a party-list system; for when it comes to safe seats, MPs are more appointed than they are elected. It would also demand that MPs did more work for their community. This is one of the reasons MPs in Ireland have tried to get rid of STV in the past: they don't want strong links with—and reliance on—their local people; it's harder to butter up a whole town than it is one influential party potentate.
Rhodri Morgan at least went as far as admitting that STV "works extremely well in Ireland", before forgetting that instantly and saying it's still rubbish.
The idea that voters lose the ability to dismiss Assembly members is simply wrong, but I do think I understand where the confusion occurs. Hain is no doubt thinking that if a candidate comes third in an STV contest, they get elected, whereas under FPTP, only the top one does. Except he seems to be forgetting that under STV, the constituencies are bigger, so the top three getting elected is like having three FPTP constituencies lumped together, only thanks to the bigger scope and the increased voter choice of being able to both rank candidates and choose between different candidates from the same party, it's fairer, more sophisticated and likely to improve politics for the drenched, deprived and phlegmy people of Portmeirion.
Canada: land of the weird
Posted by lewisbaston on January 12, 2006 | Comments (2)
I love Canada, in a slightly baffled way. A lot of people think it's boring, but like Belgium there is a deep vein of strangeness below the surface. They are having an election at the moment under a wacky system called First Past the Post which gives majorities to parties even though only a bit over a third of people vote for them.
I saw (hat tip to FairVote Canada) on their Electoral Commission's website this Frequently Asked Question:
Is someone allowed to eat a ballot?
Frequently asked?
The answer, by the way, is an emphatic No (or Non, this being Canada).
The hidden talents of STV elections
Posted by pauldavies on January 12, 2006 | Comments (0)
Some actually-sort-of-interesting research crossed my path this morning concerning the use of STV in Northern Ireland, where it has been used for local government elections for over thirty years. It's interesting, because it highlights another way in which STV can be beneficial, in doing something that has puzzled psephologists and other assorted political geeks for years: how to combat the imbecility of certain sections of the electorate. I have a 5,000-word essay on this already written, but I'm not sure I'm allowed to post it yet, so in the meantime let's see what the real world can tell us.
BACKGROUND: Research refers to Northern Ireland elections May 5th 2005, both for local government via STV and for Westminster via FPTP.
Spoilt ballots
FACT: 0.8% of FPTP votes were spoilt, compared to just 0.3% across the UK as a whole. Most ballots were spoilt by people voting for more than one candidate.
FACT: 2.1% of STV votes were spoilt, “the vast majority due to a lack of understanding of the single transferable voting process.�
FACT: Of the local government ballot papers rejected, half had tried to indicate a first preference for more than one candidate while a quarter had not indicated a first preference (eg starting at 2,3 etc). So three quarters of all spoilt ballots were because voters did not vote properly under STV (as opposed to no official mark or uncertain).
LESSON: It really can't be too hard to follow the instructions on a ballot paper. Given how idiot-proof these things are usually made, there probably isn't much scope for making things clearer. Thus anyone still getting it wrong is getting it wrong for a reason, namely that they're too stupid to be listened to under any circumstances, let alone in deciding who gets to piss away the tax money. STV: with in-built idiot filter; buy yours today.
Having elections on the same day
FACT: 60% support having combined elections; 25% do not
FACT: It takes longer to count, as the local count starts when the Westminster count has finished.
FACT: The less literate get confused and start ranking candidates on the FPTP ballot, despite clear instructions not to.
LESSON: Going to vote is boring. There are plenty of better things to be doing. Most people understand this, so let's not force them to go out more than once. It might even be raining the second time.
LESSON: Counting votes is also boring, but in the long run it really doesn't matter in the slightest how long this takes, so long as it's less than a week.
LESSON: Holding an STV election at the same time as a FPTP election has the felicitous effect of rubbing some of STV's idiot-filtering powers over onto FPTP. Good idea.
Lessons for Scotland, and their 2007 STV local elections
FACT: Scottish observers were concerned that despite using STV for over three decades, understanding still wasn't great.
LESSON: Educating the Scots in the ways of STV will be like trying to sell them fitness advice.
Godwin, PR and the Nazis
Posted by lewisbaston on January 12, 2006 | Comments (1)
Godwin’s Law states that:
As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.
A usual corollary of the Law is that said online discussion comes to an end and the side making the comparison is deemed to have lost. I would like to extend the Law to discussions on proportional representation, because sooner or later someone starts talking about how PR brought Hitler to power, and I am heartily sick of this sordid little political libel. Let me explain.
For a start, many – most – countries have used PR systems, and only one, at one specific juncture, has produced Hitler. Like analogies drawn from biology, a single case can be used to show more or less anything. Compare the devoted and selfless parenthood of penguins to the student-like lifestyle of the spadefoot toad, that sleeps most of the time, only getting up to eat and have lots of sex when the rains come to its desert homeland. Rather than making the glib comparison outlawed by Godwin, people making this case need a more elaborated account of why they link PR with the rise of Hitler.
There is a tiny foothold of fact on which this edifice of supposition rests. The Nazis received a foothold in parliament in the 1920s under the Weimar PR system, as extreme parties with small levels of support sometimes do. Sometimes extreme parties remain a festering presence, as currently in Belgium under PR and France with its majoritarian system, and sometimes they fade away as in the Netherlands or Australia. The difference is less in the system than in the broad social and economic conditions of the society in which they operate, and the behaviour of the other parties.
In the German case, Weimar was born under a bad sun, in the trauma of defeat and revolution in 1918-19, with at best half-hearted support outside the ranks of the social democrats. There were attempted coups in 1920 and 1923, hyperinflation and the occupation of part of the country in 1923-24 and of course the great slump after 1929. Political violence in Weimar Germany was not just a few fights at public meetings, but a simmering state of civil war, in which even the constitutional parties had private armies and the Nazis in particular used murder and terrorism to control the streets in the early 1930s. Weird and unsavoury ideas about how to restore German power were common currency in the country’s universities in the 1920s. What was remarkable about Weimar was how much relative stability and progress there was in the brief good years of 1924-29 against this background.
Under FPTP, the Nazis may not have been in parliament in the 1920s but the prior existence of a small parliamentary group was not the most important factor in their breakthrough election of 1930. Support for the traditional right wing parties collapsed in the elections of 1930 and July 1932, and so did the vote of a range of special interest parties such as the Farmers’ Party and the Middle Class Party that had polled relatively well in 1928 and 1930. This support switched in massive numbers to the Nazis. Support for the Catholic Centre Party, and for the parties of the left, was relatively unaffected by the rise of the Nazis, although within the left the Communists gained at the expense of the Social Democrats. By 1930, any system would have made the Nazis the biggest right wing party – and under FPTP the July 1932 results would have produced a large Nazi majority.
In no Weimar election, including the ugly and coerced election of March 1933, did the Nazis obtain a majority of votes cast, and therefore they never obtained a majority of seats in the Reichstag on their own. The Nazis were put into power not so much by PR as by the contemptible behaviour of what passed for the respectable right wing of German politics. They had never really been reconciled to the Weimar system and after 1930 became progressively more anti-democratic in a lame attempt to stop their vote bleeding over to the Nazis. They were willing to overlook the Nazis’ brutal disregard not just for constitutional law, but things that are normally considered less contentious, such as not approving of murder. By the time the worst of the slump in 1931-32 was upon Germany, the extremes – Nazis and Communists – were effectively colluding to build a revolutionary climate. They would periodically agree to pass parliamentary resolutions giving amnesties for political violence.
The reason Hitler became Chancellor in January 1933 was essentially the stupidity and malice of the conservatives. One faction feared that another faction, under General von Schleicher, was actually going to make a success of government. The Nazi vote had fallen in the November 1932 election and von Schleicher was planning to split the party and install an authoritarian military regime (which was more or less the best that could have been hoped for from the situation). His aristocratic predecessor, von Papen – one of history’s prize idiots - instead did a deal with Hitler under the impression that he could control the ugly little Austrian corporal (an illusion shared by some in Britain, with less excuse, a few years later). So weak were civil institutions and democratic norms that within a few months the Nazis had banned all the other parties and started to ‘co-ordinate’ the rest of civil society.
The real faults of the Weimar constitution were not so much in the electoral system (although it was undoubtedly flawed) but in other clauses. The dismantling of democracy started in 1930, when the government started ruling by presidential decree, and proceeded apace in 1932 when another government suspended devolved rule in Prussia. The ability of the Reichstag to pass an Enabling Act giving all power to the government in March 1933 killed off the system. A more entrenched constitution, with fewer get-outs and trap doors, could not have been dismantled like this. However, faulty constitutional engineering does not guarantee a slide towards dictatorship: other countries, including our own, have dangerous constitutional trap doors without falling so disastrously down a hole.
To expose the fallacy of the ‘PR gave us Hitler’ argument beyond doubt, just do a thought experiment. Imagine a German constitution which imposed FPTP in 1919. The result would have been, at that stage, a majority government for the Social Democrats on a minority vote. The forces of reaction and nationalism would not have wished the SPD the best of luck, formed a loyal opposition and waited patiently for the next election to see if they could do better next time. PR in 1919 offered the best chance of integrating the middle classes and the right into a constitutional system; the fact that it proved impossible and that a uniquely poisonous strain of extreme nationalism emerged is a complicated question. Historians distrust monocausal explanations, particularly ones as indirect and feeble as blaming PR, for complex phenomena like the rise of Hitler.
Godwin’s Law is about the tendency to introduce irrelevant emotionally charged material into what should be a rational debate. It’s important to discuss Nazi history (though perhaps not quite as important as commissioning editors for TV documentaries seem to think), and there are sometimes valid reasons to suspend Godwin’s Law. For instance, the dark political talents of Slobodan Milosevic, and his policies of blood and soil nationalism plus mass murder pursued while bamboozling the western democracies, do have some uncanny echoes. But it’s sheer ignorance, or wilful manipulation, to reach for that convenient swastika to plug a hole in a faulty argument.
Meanwhile, back in Communist Italy
Posted by pauldavies on January 12, 2006 | Comments (0)
Romano Prodi until now valiently fighting the forces of Silvio Berlusconi now has troubles closer to home.
It appears that trying to staple together a 10-party coalition isn't all that easy, especially when it stretches all the way along the political spectrum to the Communists.
Senior politicians in Communist Refoundation, a hardline communist party, denounced a draft election programme prepared by moderate strategists close to Romano Prodi, who will challenge Silvio Berlusconi for the premiership.
The communist offensive, if sustained, would be a disturbing development for Mr Prodi, because the communists’ refusal to align themselves with other centre-left parties contributed to Mr Berlusconi’s election victory in May 2001.
But Marco Ferrando, a former Trotskyite and current member of Communist Refoundation’s national leadership, said the centre-left’s draft programme contained too many concessions to liberalism and capitalism and his party should not support it.
“It demands an increase in the pensionable age, the continuation of temporary work contracts, the relaunch of privatisation of state assets, fiscal ‘rigour’, and an Atlanticist foreign policy – in other words, everything that our party has fought against for years in opposition,� he said
It was [Communist Refoundation’s leader] Mr Bertinotti who brought down Mr Prodi’s 1996-98 government by not offering parliamentary support for the premier’s economic programme, which he regarded as a betrayal of the working class.
In the 2001 election, when Communist Refoundation took 5 per cent of the vote, Mr Bertinotti’s refusal to join the other centre-left parties in a common front against Mr Berlusconi proved disastrous.
Undeterred by the communist’s tactics, Mr Prodi wants his Union coalition to transform itself before the April 9 election into a single entity, to be known as the Democratic party.
This step could counter the impact of far-reaching changes to the voting system that Mr Berlusconi and his allies rammed through parliament last month. Under the changes, Italy will use full proportional representation, a system likely to penalise the centre-left in April because some of its parties are too small for their votes to count.
"Never smarten up a chump"? Okay, maybe just this once
Posted by pauldavies on January 11, 2006 | Comments (6)
"Nature abhors a moron" —H.L. Mencken
Normally, when my eyes have the misfortune to fall across something truly stupendously ridiculous, my mind invokes Zarathustra, and is thus guided by his maxim:
"Flee, my friend, into your solitude and to where the raw, rough breeze blows! It is not your fate to be a fly-swat."
This has served me well, and saved many a slice of my soul from being scorched while setting upon sick, specious gibberish like a rabid dog on an especially appetising child.
However, I'm also a professional. And as First-Past-the-Post is shit, it inevitably attracts flies. And if the noble name of electoral reform is going to win the ultimate Battle of Westminster, it's going to need some professional fly swatters.
Thus like an attacking baddie minion in an old kung fu flick, my arms are flailing, my mouth is screaming and the taste of studio blood is tantalisingly intoxicating my thoughts. The only difference, in fact, is that I'm going to trample on through victorious, rather than be kicked through a door and off a balsa-wood balcony by a man with a big sword and an enviable ability to fly.
My target today may not be able to fly, but he does have his head in the clouds, and his hand on his GCSE History textbook.
I don't honestly know if Andrew Todd, for he be the infidel, is actually a child in the middle of some dumbed-down excuse for examinations, although the location and the solecistic nature of his nonsense would imply that he is. Some people may argue that it's mean to pick on children, but our education system refuses to teach the little buggers, thus someone has to. And mockery is a great teacher; I'm performing a public service.
But enough of this pretentious preamble; step forward Andrew and let the world hear your wisdom. Unfortunately, we do take marks off for poor spelling and grammar.
In recent years many have questioned the existence of the First Past The Post system as the UK's major electoral system. They say 'How can Labour have won a decisive majority in the last election with only 35% of the vote?'. Many question why the Liberal Democrats only won 62 seats in comparison to Labour's 356 with only 13% less votes? Yes, these are the quirks of a flawed system. However, behind them we have a strong, reliable system that produces a strong single party government. The winning party is able to implement their manifesto, the public gets what they vote for.
Fewer votes dear boy, fewer. But I didn't quote that big chunk just to be able to unleash the pedantry. It is an important passage that sums up the main 'means to an end' argument that First-Past-the-Posters fall back on when they tacitly acknowledge that they've got little else in the arsenal. 'We got what we voted for, and the winning party can twirl towards freedom with our full backing, happy as a penguin in a microwave'.
If only. Let's harbour the delusion no longer: a strong government is not synonymous with a good government. Clearly no other definable definition of government is analogous with good governance either, but with so many of today's (and yesterday's) ills bearing direct relation to the excessive majorities produced by FPTP, there is a strong case for us, the opposition.
Let's also quash that other party-political sin: that we vote for a clear, unambiguous manifesto and the governing party then works to implement its promises, if not exactly, then at least in the general spirit. Indeed, readers: as a brush.
Once you remove the racists, the congenitally stupid and the loons (Lembit aside), party manifestos are pretty much indistinguishable (especially if you factor out the policies that stand a chance of being implemented). But ignore that; your average manifesto claim, like your average voter, doesn't matter. The voters don't actually know what's in a given manifesto anyway, or if they know something about it, they can never be sure which party what they know belongs to. (An 'unknown known' in Rumsfeld speak?)
This is a consequence of a system that deems only certain geographically fortunate souls worthy of being bribed and then tries its best not to offend them in any way.
Moving on, in the cut-and-paste warts-and-all style that further indicts our privately-educated scamp:
Take a look at the alternative. The Independent newspaper, the Electoral Reform Society and, rather unsurprisingly, the Liberal Democrats have been lobbying hard for introduction of Proportional Representation at general elections. What sort of electoral impact would this have? With a PR system we would quite probably end up with a coalition government. It would be equally possible that a minority party such as the Lib Dems (with only 22% of the vote) would hold the balance of power. God forbid it might even be possible that parties such as the Democratic Unionists or Scottish Nationalists might wield some kind of influence as the bigger parties scramble around for votes in the chamber.
First up, I'm glad he's mentioned ERS. That means he's arguing against STV. Brave man. I'm also glad (if a little struck by 'oh-no-not-again-ness') that he mentioned the Lib Dems holding the balance of power and (God forbid!) that the more incendiary ends of the political whacking stick might have their flames unwittingly fanned by the poor suckers championing democracy.
Does anyone really think that if the Lib Dems were seen to hold the country to ransom for a few unentitled bites of the political pie, that people would continue to vote for them above and beyond their core? Of course they would have a bigger say on a few policies – but if we take a people's votes as an indication of what they want to see (a bit of a leap I know, but work with me here) then what's so wrong about that? It's surely no more wrong than giving a big chunk of extra power that nobody voted for to the 'winning' party, so that it can get away with whatever it likes. Andrew disagrees. He thinks that those mandates are more important, and compromise in government is just plain wrong.
A coalition government would also means that there could be no mandate. As the coalition parties would have to compromise for one another, therefore the voters don't have what they vote for. For example, the Lib Dems had to compromise on their policy to abolish tuition fees in Scotland when they had to share power with Labour in the Scottish Assembly.
To be fair to the lad, it is a big ask requesting politicians to act like grown-ups, and you are flirting with trouble in doing so. However, to politicians, self-interest is stronger than the need to engage in childish posturing, and sooner or later, they'll realise, (especially if they're forced into it) that talking gets one further than bickering.
As for the extremists… if they get the support, they deserve a say, and damn us all for being so evolution-defyingly stupid. Aside from that, under FPTP, the natural policy to deal with extremists is that of a middle-class Englishman sat in a train carriage with some rowdy youths: ignore them and hope they get off soon. It does nothing to discourage them, or potential others like them. It foments discord and disharmony and social polarisation, and for all the chat about the consequent problems, you can't kill a root cause by replacing hoods with ASBOs and misunderstandings with platitudinal tat.
Speaking of tat:
We would also lose the strong link that the local community has with its MP. With FPTP the MP has sole responsibility of that area and he represents all within the community, not just those who voted for him. This and other functions such as parliament and the House of Lords are fundamental parts of the jigsaw that have shaped and formed British history and tradition and could be lost or changed if we change to PR.
What strong link is that again? The constituency link, as it exists, is something that all MPs publicly love, privately resent, and are at all times glad that it doesn't actually count for anything unless they're in a marginal seat. This mythical connection can logically only become reality if voters have a choice between candidates of the same party, otherwise there's as much an MP-constituency link under FPTP as there is under a party-list system; for when it comes to safe seats, MPs are more appointed than they are elected. It would also demand that MPs did more work for their community. This is one of the reasons MPs in Ireland have tried to get rid of STV in the past – they don't want strong links with – and reliance on – their local people; it's harder to butter up a whole town than it is one influential party potentate.
By lodging all the power at the top, parliament suffers and the people suffer. In recent years, the House of Lords has suffered too. Andrew doesn't appear to want this "fundamental part of the jigsaw" to be damaged or go missing. Nor do I: incomplete jigsaws piss everyone off. But what is one of the main reasons the Lords is losing its power? Is it that the ruling government has so much of the stuff that they're trapped in a vicious circle of forever demanding more more MORE? In a camp Hong-Kong-Phooey stylee… "could be".
Being scared of change is nothing new, and it's certainly nothing special, but it's also no good as an argument for not doing something, in the same way that changing stuff for the hell of it is also foolish.
Another one of the main criticisms of FPTP is that it is a two or three party system and therefore discriminates against smaller parties. I believe that this is not necessarily a flaw. Because this stops extreme parties winning power at times of crisis such as the Nazis in a PR system getting into government in Germany in 1933. In the UK if there was an election just after the July bombings and we were using a PR system there may have been a significant rise in the extreme vote such as the BNP.
Told you he had his hand on his GCSE History textbook. The Nazis! Using the Nazis as an example in the PR debate is like using the words "15 per cent interest rates" as a reason to keep the Tories out of power. It's heartening in a way; I thought that the waterheads that used to use the Nazi argument had all moved on to citing Israel instead, crawling out of the stupid-argument swamp one misconceived piece of spittle at a time. People don't tend to not vote for the BNP because they're not going to get into power (of any sort), therefore prophesising a 'significant rise' in their vote, had there been a PR election after the July bombings, is tosh. Any increase in their vote would've been attributable to mass hysteria, not PR.
Also, with a PR system the turnout would be lower as not only would there be political apathy but also people wouldn't understand the system and there would be no quick decisive result like we have at the moment. Take, for instance, the chaos in Germany. A close election results in both main party leaders claiming the Chancellorship as the horse trading begins to form a coalition. The whole concept of manifesto and mandate goes out the window.
Oh hush now with the manifesto and mandate nonsense. That's almost as laughable as invoking the spirit of Hitler. And he clearly didn't read much around the German result. Otherwise he would've seen this.
The turnout question is always a toughie, simply because so many factors affect it, from the chance of one's vote counting to the clemency of the weather on polling day. But just as people may be put off by something they don't understand (and if they can't count to five, we should probably be actively encouraging them not to vote) they may be encouraged to turn out in higher numbers if they could vote for a candidate they came close to liking or thought that their vote would actually contribute something to the result.
Ack, this is getting tiring. Thankfully, we're almost there. Indeed, we get a 'therefore' and an 'in conclusion'. Woo yeah.
Therefore, in conclusion, the First Past The Post system clearly has flaws. The alternatives, however, are equally flawed, if not more so. The one huge point in favour of FPTP is that it works and has done for a very long time. We have been provided with largely strong, stable government that works roughly along the lines of the manifesto that it was elected on. And as the old saying goes 'If it ain't broke...'
Nothing much said here that hasn't already been covered, but I was a little puzzled by the second sentence. It's a bit tame for the conclusion to the strongly-expressed views earlier on. Perhaps it's just piss-poor writing failing to get the passion across. That, or in trying to actually come up with points in favour of FPTP, the poor fool got a bit stuck. Hell, it's probably both. In encapsulating both the fear of change, cliché-as-argument and yet more derisory grammar, the last sentence serves as a perfect summary of the whole argument: worthless.
An area the size of Wales is covered in bitter, angry nonsense every 30 seconds
Posted by pauldavies on January 10, 2006 | Comments (0)
I am currently working on something fairly substantial to do with Wales; a lighter version of the Electoral Reform Society's latest contribution to the debate on dual candidacy (PDF), most probably.
My stupidly extensive and thoroughly professional research takes me deep into Hansard territory, and in case any of you are into a spot of valley-tinged masochism, the relevant script is below the fold, in which you get a fascinating (if slightly unbearable) insight into Peter Hain's character and enough pithy tat to make you want to hack your own head off. (N.B. Formatting was considered unnecessary)
UPDATE: Having now read almost a third, I feel free to give you the gist:
HAIN: I'm right.
OPPOSITION: No you're not.
HAIN: Yes I am.
OPPOSITION: B*ll*cks are you.
HAIN: Moron.
OPPOSITION: Self-serving tart.
HAIN: Look, which one of us is in government? Exactly. Me. Therefore I'm SO in the right, so shut up.
Etc...
Hansard's great, they should chop out the best bits and sell it as a children's book.
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Mr. Nigel Evans (Ribble Valley) (Con): I am not here to fight old battles, but neither am I here to listen to history being rewritten. Why is the Secretary of State glorifying what he thinks are the Welsh Assembly's achievements when he knows that only one in four Welsh people voted for it in the referendum? He is talking about the voice of the people of Wales and their feeling closer to the Welsh Assembly, but he knows that at the last Assembly elections, the turnout was miserable. What is he going to do to reconnect the Welsh Assembly with the Welsh people?
Mr. Hain: Unfortunately, as the hon. Gentleman knows, turnout in all elections in Britain has been falling over the past few years and, arguably, since the second world war, and that includes the elections for the Welsh Assembly. I am not clear from the earlier part of his question—perhaps the shadow Secretary of State will respond to this later—whether he is trying to turn back the clock. The Conservatives fought and lost that referendum.
Mr. Evans: Only just.
Mr. Hain: There speaks the true voice of the Tory party, and we see that from the reasoned amendment. The Tories have not really learned the lessons. They lost the argument on devolution, and they should accept that.
Huw Irranca-Davies : Will my right hon. Friend note the words of the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan), whom I, too, welcome to her new role? She was quoted in the Western Mail of 17 December as saying:
"I have said I want to build on what has been achieved with the Assembly."
Does my right hon. Friend see anything in the Opposition's amendment that would build on what has been achieved by the Assembly, or does he suspect that the Opposition are tearing down the whole devolution process?
Mr. Hain: I suspect that it is exactly the latter. It is a wrecking amendment. The Conservatives, at the first opportunity, are asking us to kill the Bill. They could have achieved a debate, vote and decision on their concerns by tabling three new clauses on a referendum on bringing into force the part 3 Orders in Council, and an amendment to clause 7 on dual candidacy. If they were acting in the spirit of consensus promised by the Leader of the Opposition and echoed by the shadow Secretary of State, that is what they could have done. Instead, they have chosen to try to kill the Bill at the first opportunity; the same old anti-devolution, anti-Welsh conservatives.
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Mr. Ian Davidson (Glasgow, South-West) (Lab/Co-op): My right hon. Friend may not have been sufficiently bold on the question of democratic accountability. In the second ballot at the last elections, 310,658 Welsh voters voted Labour and got not a single candidate elected. Given that we have already heard that the turnout in the Welsh Assembly elections was low, does not that clearly demonstrate that proportional representation is unfair and has not worked?
Mr. Hain: You will know that my hon. Friend represents a Scottish constituency, Mr. Speaker, but I do not intend to draw you into the debate. What can I say in answer to that question?
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An unwelcome development since the 1998 Act was passed has been the problem of defeated constituency candidates being elected through the backdoor on their party's regional list. Politicians are placing an each-way bet on constituency elections, with the electorate losing out. As a Government, we are determined to put the voters back in charge, restoring their democratic right to reject a constituency candidate. We have a clear manifesto commitment and will press the case for reform.
The Bill delivers a lasting settlement that will settle the constitutional argument in Wales for a generation or more. Instead of constantly revising and returning to the issue of its powers and electoral arrangements, the Assembly will now be able to focus on policy development and delivery, in education, health and all the other devolved fields. The constant demand "More powers" will be redundant: they will be on the statute book when the Bill receives Royal Assent, ready for implementation after a successful referendum. Instead of powers, the real question will be: are the Welsh Assembly Government delivering or not? What are the future policies necessary to build a world-class Wales? Political arguments over policies will replace political arguments over powers, so that Welsh political culture gains full maturity.
Adam Price (Carmarthen, East and Dinefwr) (PC): What is the Secretary of State's response to the Electoral Commission's view that the changes proposed for the voting system are perceived as politically partisan and could lead to less participation in the Assembly elections?
Mr. Hain: I think it is wrong and I shall cite alternative evidence later in my speech. The hon. Gentleman might consider experience across the world,
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in Canada, New Zealand, Mexico, Thailand and a number of other places, where the issue has arisen but the abuse that has taken place in Wales has not occurred to the same extent. I shall come back to that point.
Mr. Grieve: The possibility of people both standing for a seat and being elected from the list when they were defeated was inherent in the system set up in 1998, and is an inevitable consequence of such a system of proportional representation. Indeed, it exists in other parts of the United Kingdom, so on what basis has the Secretary of State suddenly decided that Wales should not have that system, which is common throughout the world, even if it has come in for criticism? Why has he decided that Wales uniquely should not have it, and why has he done so in a manner of which the Electoral Commission has been very critical?
Mr. Hain: I was about to come to that point. The problem with being so generous in accepting interventions is that they come before the arguments have been made.
In 1997–98, I stood at the Dispatch Box with my colleagues and took the Bill through—indeed, the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald) was on the Opposition Front Bench at the time, opposing it, as Conservatives always oppose devolution progress in Wales—but none of us foresaw a situation in which the system would be so widely abused. People in Wales say to me, "If I want to defeat a constituency candidate because I don't like them, why should they pop up on the list?" That is the fundamental point. We are putting the voters back in charge. If they do not want to elect somebody, they do not have to do so. There should not be a situation where people can decide to place a both-way bet, stand in both categories and win even if they are kicked out by the electorate.
Mr. Angus MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP): Does the Secretary of State concede that with first past the post somebody could be elected merely on 26 per cent. of the vote, with four parties? The list system compensates for the inequities of first past the post.
Mr. Hain: The hon. Gentleman has only just wandered into the debate and his point is rather wandering as well. All we are saying is: the list system will remain and people can make a choice. They can decide—as Labour Members are doing. As I shall explain later, half a dozen Labour Members will be faced with a tough choice. They face swings against them of less than 3 per cent. Going by the general election performance last year, their seats will be vulnerable in the next Assembly election. They have to face that choice; they do not have the lifebelt of being able to stand in the list, any more than candidates of any other party.
Mr. David Jones (Clwyd, West) (Con): Does not it operate to the advantage of those Labour constituency Members that a softer candidate will be standing against them on a first-past-the-post basis? The more able candidates will stand on the regional list rather than on first past the post. Is not that precisely what the Secretary of State is hoping for?
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Mr. Hain: There we have it in its full glory—the real Conservative face of Wales exposed. Why have the hon. Gentleman and other Welsh Conservatives joined an unholy coalition on the issue with Plaid Cymru and the Liberal Democrats? Why are they so afraid of taking their choice to the people? Are they afraid that they will lose constituency elections and therefore opt for the lifebelt of the list? If so, they might as well not bother to stand in the constituencies in the first place. The hon. Gentleman represents the constituency of Clwyd, West, where at the last Assembly elections, three of the candidates who were defeated ended up winning on the lists. Three of the people in Clwyd, West who were booted out by the electorate ended up as Assembly Members, competing against the winning Assembly Member, Alun Pugh.
Mr. Llwyd: I am not in an unholy alliance with anyone, as far as I know—at least, I was not until just now—but all the extrinsic and academic evidence concludes that the proposal is partisan, in favour of new Labour. In coming to that formulation, did the Secretary of State take advice from President Leonid Kuchma of Ukraine?
Mr. Hain: No, but I studied what has happened in Mexico and Thailand, and in Canada, in New Brunswick, among other provinces, and what is being studied in New Zealand. I will quote alternative evidence later in my speech, including from a much more respected academic commentator on Wales than those who have been quoted.
Mrs. Gillan: Will the Secretary of State give way?
Mr. Hain: Since I am in a charitable mood, of course I give way.
Mrs. Gillan: On this occasion, there could be a holy alliance between hon. Members, because certainly some people have to think straight. The Secretary of State seems to be taking advice from people throughout the international arena, but I do not understand why he ignored the advice of the First Minister, Rhodri Morgan, who when giving evidence thought that the problems could be dealt with by using a protocol along Scottish lines. Why has the Secretary of State ignored the First Minister? Can we expect these electoral changes to be introduced in Scotland shortly?
Mr. Hain: I do not know where the hon. Lady has done her research, but the First Minister is fully signed up to this policy. At a special Welsh Labour conference on 11 September 2004, he voted for and backed the manifesto on which we stood in May last year that unanimously endorsed the policy. He is enthusiastically backing the policy and she should not take his name in vain in that way.
Although the proposals in the Bill were in Labour's manifesto for an historic third term, it is right to acknowledge the part that people from all parties have played in the debate on the future powers and electoral arrangements of the Assembly. Those people include Lord Richard of Ammanford and the members of his commission who submitted a detailed report to the Welsh Assembly Government in 2004. I pay tribute to
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Lord Richard for the strength of his advocacy. He remains a tribune for Welsh reform, and we look forward to his contributions when the Bill reaches the House of Lords.
Members of the Select Committee on Welsh Affairs, under the chairmanship of my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon (Dr. Francis), have provided expert analysis to inform the debate about the Bill, as have members of the Assembly committee, chaired by the Presiding Officer, Lord Elis-Thomas.
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Philip Davies: Given the narrow result of the referendum that set up the National Assembly for Wales in the first place, and the low turnout, what evidence does the Secretary of State have that people in Wales want the Assembly to have more powers?
Mr. Hain: I do not know the hon. Gentleman's majority, but a victory is a victory under our democracy. If one wins the vote, one wins. The Welsh people voted, although, admittedly, the result was uncomfortably narrow, as I remember well. These repeated attacks—the hon. Member for Monmouth (David T.C. Davies) made one in his best Rottweiler fashion—on the verdict of the Welsh people show that the Welsh Conservatives have never accepted the devolution settlement.
Let me now deal with our proposals to reform the electoral system for the Assembly. In 1998, the Labour Government established the additional member system for elections to the Assembly. Broadly speaking, that electoral system has been a success: it has preserved the strong tradition of individual constituency representation that is fundamental to our democracy while delivering a system of fair votes that has improved democratic accountability in Wales. It has even thrown a life belt to the Welsh Conservative party, although that is not something that I would celebrate. However, although it has worked well in ensuring fair representation in the Assembly, I, as one of the Ministers who took the Bill through the Commons, never imagined the abuses that have resulted.
The system as it has operated in Wales has a major weakness. A widespread practice since the Assembly was established has been that candidates who are rejected by a particular constituency have secured back-door election as Assembly Members through the regional list and so have been able to claim to represent the constituency that rejected them. In Clwyd, West in 2003, three of the four defeated candidates were subsequently elected to the Assembly through the regional list. That practice clouds political accountability and denies the voters their right to reject a particular candidate at the ballot box. The change made by the Bill—requiring candidates to choose whether to stand for a constituency or a regional list—will put the voters in charge.
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Mr. Andrew Pelling (Croydon, Central) (Con): Is the Secretary of State saying that that abuse is peculiar to the Welsh political culture or that dual candidacies per se are bad news? Do the Government believe that the practice should be ruled out in, for example, London assembly elections?
Mr. Hain: The Bill is about Wales. One of the things that Conservatives find difficult to understand is that devolution allows different parts of the United Kingdom to operate in different ways. Circumstances have arisen in Wales that have allowed widespread abuse and we are correcting that.
Mrs. Gillan: Is the Secretary of State prepared to place in the Library details of all the objections and problems that have arisen from the present electoral system? He constantly refers to a body of evidence that appears not to exist. I do not know how many letters he has had, but academics and those who have examined the system, including the Electoral Commission, say
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that there is no great body of evidence to justify the changes that he is proposing. Is he prepared to put the evidence in the Library and show us how overwhelming the demand for change is?
Mr. Hain: I shall certainly reflect on the hon. Lady's request, but I am about to explain the circumstances that justify the policy set out in the Bill.
It cannot be right for losers to become winners through the back door, despite having been rejected by the voters. That is an abuse of democracy, as is the practice adopted by 15 of the 20 list AMs of using taxpayers' money to open constituency offices in the seats in which they were defeated and targeting those seats to win next time by cherry-picking local issues against the constituency AMs who beat them.
The hon. Lady asks for evidence. Criticism of the existing system has been widespread. Lord Richard recently told the Welsh Affairs Committee:
"There is something wrong in a situation in which five people can stand in Clwyd, none of them can be elected, and then they all get into the Assembly. On the face of it that does not make sense. I think that a lot of people in Wales find that it does not."
The hon. Lady asked for evidence and I am now about to give it to her. The eminent Welsh academic, Dr. Denis Balsom, said in evidence to the Richard commission:
"Candidates use the list as an insurance against failing to win a constituency contest. This dual candidacy can also confuse the electorate, who may wish to consciously reject a particular candidate only to find them elected via the list. It should remain a basic democratic right not to elect a particular candidate or to be able to vote a Member out."
Lord Carlile, the former Welsh Liberal Democrat—[Interruption.] This is not against a list system. It is saying to candidates, "Make a choice." Why are they so afraid of making a choice? Stand and face the verdict of the people in the constituency or stand on the list, whichever they wish. It is—[Interruption.] I have been asked for evidence and I have taken up a great deal of time in interventions.
Lord Carlile, the former Welsh Liberal Democrat leader, has said:
"many in Wales will welcome . . . the removal of the absurd dual candidacy opportunity."—[Official Report, House of Lords, 15 June 2005; Vol. 672, c. 1217.]
The former Conservative Secretary of State for Wales, Lord Crickhowell—the Conservatives want evidence—has said that the
"present arrangements are really pretty indefensible."—[Official Report, House of Lords, 15 June 2005, Vol. 672, c. 1216.]
In the consultation on the White Paper, I received only one formal response from the Conservative party, but it was a most significant one. It was from the Preseli Pembrokeshire Conservative association. The hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Mr. Crabb) is swelling with pride as the association's representative. It said:
"We agree with the proposal to prevent individuals from simultaneously being candidates in constituency elections and being eligible for election from party lists."
Game, set and match.
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Mr. Grieve: Will the Secretary of State give way?
Mr. Hain: I will give way for the shadow Attorney-General to disagree with the Preseli Pembrokeshire Conservative association.
Mr. Grieve: Given the importance that the Secretary of State attached to this issue as a matter of principle, when will we have a statement from the Prime Minister that the other systems of proportional representation in the United Kingdom that the Government have set up will be altered? Does the Secretary of State understand that asking the House to treat something in isolation can be perceived, however great his vehemence, as gerrymandering? We are not prepared to tolerate that. If he wishes to change the system, it should be changed as an issue of principle throughout the country and not for the convenience of the Welsh Labour party.
Mr. Hain: I am glad that I took that intervention. That is because I have further evidence explaining exactly why it is not in any sense gerrymandering or partisan. The hon. Gentleman asks why there should not be a statement by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister. The abuse has happened in Wales and we are correcting it in Wales. The Bill is about Wales. I know of no similar complaints about London. Indeed, I know of no similar complaints on an equivalent scale anywhere else to those that have existed in Wales.
Huw Irranca-Davies: Does the Secretary of State share my immense regret that we have to discuss these matters today? We do so with deep regret because those of us, with the best intentions, who supported the Government of Wales Act 1998, did not foresee the level of abuse that we have had. I would welcome a strong Liberal Democrat presence in my constituency to bring the fight to me, but regrettably that presence in adverts, local constituency offices and surgeries is in the target seats that the Liberal Democrats hope to win in the first-past-the-post system.
Mr. Hain: Exactly.
The comments that I quoted earlier from Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, independents, academics and even from the Preseli Pembrokeshire Conservative association, a fountain of wisdom in the Conservative party alone on this matter, show that there is a body of evidence, and there is much more, putting the case for—
Mr. Roger Williams: Perhaps the Secretary of State will help us on Northern Ireland. Is dual candidacy a feature of the Northern Ireland election system, and has he any views on that?
Mr. Hain: Different parts of the United Kingdom have different—[Interruption.] I expect the Conservatives to scoff at devolution. That is what they have done all along and they always will do, as they are doing today. They are seeking to kill the Bill. However, I do not expect the Liberal Democrats to deny that different parts of the United Kingdom can develop in different ways—indeed, that is the purpose of devolution—and embrace different practices.
Hywel Williams (Caernarfon) (PC): The Secretary of State cited as an abuse that he wishes to remedy the fact
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that list Members set up constituency offices. How would his proposal stop them doing so in constituencies in which they intend to stand?
Mr. Hain: It would not stop them setting up constituency offices. However, I think that the Assembly may make a decision in its standing orders to stop that practice, and I hope that it does so. I am glad that a member of Plaid Cymru has asked me about this, because only today I received a press release from Helen Mary Jones, in which she describes herself as the "Llanelli-based Assembly Member". She complains about money spent on a hospital in Carmarthen instead of one in Llanelli. However, as a list Member, she represents both areas, and is the Member for Mid and West Wales. Yet again, a member of Plaid Cymru has been caught red-handed. Of all the parts of the list area that she represents, she targets the one place where she narrowly lost last time, and describes herself as the Llanelli-based Assembly Member. The Bill will stop her describing herself as the Assembly Member for Llanelli in future, because she was defeated there by Catherine Thomas in 2003.
Mr. Llwyd: Surely the right hon. Gentleman understands that Helen Mary Jones is saying that she is Llanelli-based? She lives there—she does not say that she is the Member for Llanelli. If that were the case, he would have ground for complaint. Perhaps more importantly, the right hon. Gentleman says that the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Caernarfon (Hywel Williams) may be addressed by standing orders in the National Assembly. Will he oversee those orders, or will he allow the Assembly to deal with them itself?
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Mr. Hain: They will be drawn up by the National Assembly itself. In his party's interests, may I discourage the hon. Gentleman from making such interventions, as he has provoked me to produce even more evidence? I have it on good authority from my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, West (Kevin Brennan) that Helen Mary Jones lives in his constituency and is one of his constituents. We have a leaked memorandum—[Interruption.] I can see Plaid Cymru Members writhing—
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst): Order. I apologise for interrupting the right hon. Gentleman, but we must not have continual sedentary interventions. That applies across the House. There is a long list of speakers who wish to speak in the debate, and they may be sacrificing their chances of being called.
Mr. Hain: I will take that as an instruction to make progress, Mr. Deputy Speaker. It is significant, however, that Plaid Cymru Members are writhing in embarrassment, along with many other Opposition Members. I am not surprised, given the statement made in a memorandum by Leanne Wood, another Assembly Member. I could read out the entire statement, but I am pressed for time.
Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab): Go on.
Mr. Hain: My hon. Friend may wish to know that, yet again, a member of Plaid Cymru has been caught red-
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handed, and advocates the targeting of Assembly office budgets in target seats. She says that her party's list Members will only do case work where it will benefit Plaid Cymru in those seats and will only attend civic and other events in the constituency if they think that there are votes in it. What a terrible advertisement for a Plaid Cymru Assembly Member.
The comments and evidence that I have cited demonstrate that the claim that the measure is partisan is entirely without foundation. I shall explain why. I remind the House that there are six Labour Assembly Members, including three Ministers, who would be defeated by a swing of 3 per cent. against them—a very small swing. They will no longer have the safety net of the regional list. This reform will affect Labour candidates, just as it applies to candidates of other parties. Candidates must make their choice, then the voters will make theirs.
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Mrs. Gillan: The second major flaw in the Bill is the blatant alteration of the electoral system in part 1 to favour the Welsh Labour party.
The proposed rigging of the electoral system will, despite the protestations of the Secretary of State, prevent candidates who stand in one of the 40 single Member constituencies and who fail to be elected from also standing on the regional top-up lists in any of the regional constituency areas.
Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab): Will the hon. Lady give way?
Mrs. Gillan: Let me make a little progress, please.
The prime motivation for this appears to be the political interests of the Labour party in Wales. The Secretary of State and the First Minister have both said that, in respect of full law-making powers, we have to wait for the consensus. That is fine, but clearly there is no consensus whatever for the proposed change to the electoral system.
Mr. David : It was in the manifesto.
Mrs. Gillan: I do not believe that the changes to the electoral system for all elections throughout the UK were featured in the manifesto. Or did it apply only to Wales? This is an issue on which the Welsh Affairs Committee divided on party lines.
Mr. Hain: It was in the Welsh manifesto.
Mrs. Gillan: It may have been in the Welsh manifesto, but it was not in the Scottish and London Assembly manifestos.
The Electoral Reform Society has spoken out about its profound doubts on this change, saying:
"There is no evidence at all to back up this proposal and therefore we come to the conclusion that we do not think that the case for change has been made".
The Commission also made the point that such a change needed to be considered in a UK rather than just a Welsh context. Perhaps the Secretary of State could tell the House when he expects his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland to adopt the same procedures for elections to the Scottish Parliament. Why did such changes not form part of the Scottish Parliament (Constituencies) Act 2004?
Mr. Hain: Since the hon. Lady has raised the issue, I shall tell her that the measure appeared in the UK manifesto. A more extensive description appeared in the Welsh manifesto, but the specific commitment appeared in Labour's UK manifesto, which was fought on by every candidate throughout the UK.
Mrs. Gillan: Does that mean that the Government will apply the measure to Scotland, in which case why
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did it not form part of the Labour party's representation to the Arbuthnot commission? If it is a principle, which the Secretary of State has said it is, it should apply right across the UK.
The truth is that this is a spiteful and anti-democratic measure that should have no place in a Government of Wales Bill and may not even survive a challenge under Human Rights legislation. In December, the Secretary of State boldly asserted that, in his view, the Bill would settle the constitutional question in Wales. In his own words:
"What I hope this will do is settle for a generation—if not more—the whole constitutional obsession we have in Wales about the powers and status of the Assembly".
He knows that the Bill as drafted will do no such thing. Rather than settle the constitutional question, it simply leaves it wide open.
The Bill offers little prospect of long-term constitutional stability. It proposes a hybrid system of enhanced legislative powers that weakens Parliament and the role of Welsh MPs, while fundamentally changing the 1998 devolution settlement without giving the people of Wales a vote or a voice. Further, it seeks to rig the electoral system to the partisan advantage of the Labour Party.
If the Government thought that the time has come to make further devolution to Wales, the honest way of going about it would be to consult the people of Wales now, through a referendum, and not wait until some intermediate point along the path, by which time important changes will have been introduced under the guise of this Bill. The Secretary of State had the opportunity to improve the operations of the Assembly simply by separating the Assembly Government from the Assembly Members. Instead, I am afraid that he has chosen to pursue his political interests at the same time, jeopardising the legislation and compromising the people of Wales by adding provisions for partisan, party purposes. I am sorry that he has made that choice.
We have had no choice but to table a reasoned amendment, and I ask the House to support it in the Lobby tonight. I will not vote against Second Reading if a vote is called because there are elements of the Bill that we Conservatives support, but because the Secretary of State has chosen to include partisan, party proposals, I had no choice but to table a reasoned amendment and to include it in the Order Paper. I ask my hon. Friends to vote with me on it.
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Mr. Alan Williams (Swansea, West) (Lab): conclude on a point that has been touched on and which is profoundly important. The House of Commons is sleepwalking and does not quite understand what the devolution process is about, and I suspect that many of my English colleagues have not understood what it might mean for them. Scotland already has its devolution. As Wales spreads its devolutionary catchment, increasingly larger parts of the legislation going through the House of Commons will be England-only. It will not apply in Wales or in Scotland.
I abstained on tuition charges because I felt that I should not vote on them, but we have an anomalous situation whereby Scottish and Welsh Members, who are not answerable to English constituencies, will vote to impose on them measures that will not apply in Scotland or Wales. That affronts my concept of the democratic accountability that I thought existed in our country.
In the atmosphere that has been partially created by the act of devolution—making the Welsh more Welsh and the Scots more Scottish—there is a seeping effect of making the English more English. I suspect that there is a limit to how long the English electorate will put up with a situation where Welsh and Scottish votes determine what they get, especially if there was a Government with an overall UK majority but only a minority of votes in England. I do not think that the Government have even considered the possible repercussions for my party in the future, when the English rumble the effect of what we are putting through the House. There will be a backlash, and at some stage the issue and the policy will come back to bite us.
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Lembit Öpik (Montgomeryshire) (LD): Polls suggest that the Welsh public support such a move, and all but one of the major parties seem wholly to support moves toward primary powers. The Richard commission set out a clear path for a proper devolution settlement. Having surveyed all the issues in unique detail, Lord Richard and his colleagues concluded that the best way forward for Wales was, first, to create an 80-Member Assembly, with primary law-making powers, elected by a single-transferable-vote system.
The Richard commission also said that law-making powers would be more effectively dispatched by an 80-Member Assembly. That is the model that Welsh Liberal Democrats want to see put in place. Not only would it create a powerful and professional Welsh senate and a proportional political body with the responsibilities and capacity to move Wales forward,
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but it would also resolve the issues that the Secretary of State for Wales was trying to grapple with in terms of the frictions that he observes between list Members and constituency Members of the Assembly.
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That perhaps explains the evident friction between what Labour Ministers say in this House and what Labour Assembly Members say at the other end of the M4, in Cardiff. That transparently seems to be the case on the issue of dual candidacy, on which there is commonality among all the Opposition parties. The issue has attracted considerable attention and will, I am sure, be discussed in Committee. Labour's policy of banning dual candidacy does not put our Secretary of State on quite the same moral level as Robert Mugabe, as somebody suggested, but there is little evidence that the measure is anything other than politically motivated.
Academics and non-partisan organisations, such as the Electoral Reform Society and the Electoral Commission, have all condemned the Government's proposals. Such people have found no evidence that dual candidacy, in the words of the Secretary of State,
"devalues the integrity of the electoral system"
or
"acts as a disincentive to voting in constituency elections"—[Official Report, 15 June 2005; Vol. 435, c. 264.]
Mark Tami : Would the hon. Gentleman describe the Electoral Reform Society as a non-partisan organisation or does he think that it has a certain agenda to pursue?
Lembit Öpik: Anybody who believes themselves to be a democrat and to be passionate about free speech will view that organisation as independent. Hon. Members can draw their own conclusions.
Mr. Paul Murphy (Torfaen) (Lab):There might be a case in years to come for holding another referendum, on the way in which we elect Members to the National Assembly for Wales. The present system is confusing to our electors, and if an electoral system confuses the electors, it is not a good electoral system. I would prefer to have two-Member constituencies using an alternative vote system. That is what I argued for in the mid-1990s, but it did not happen. I doubt that it would be acceptable now, but it remains my preference. I would like to see a first-past-the-post system, but I do not think that that is likely to happen because it would fundamentally change the system on which people voted. If we want fundamentally to change the electoral system, there is a case for giving people the right to vote on that, because that would be meaningful.
The change in respect of dual candidacy is necessary. I do not think for one second that it would give any party an advantage. Different parties might have different rules on who should stand for what, but in terms of who is eventually elected, it will make no difference. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said, six of our Labour colleagues in the Assembly could face defeat on the smallest of swings, but will not have the safeguard of standing for the top-up list.
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David T.C. Davies: It will never happen, but a candidate on a list would have a vested interest in ensuring that his colleague standing in a winnable seat did not win. Would not that cause problems to the parties that currently benefit most from regional lists?
Mr. Murphy: It is for the individual parties to sort out how they select people for election.
That is a problem of the system. The additional member system that we have as a result of the 1997 settlement is fundamentally flawed. People do not understand it. They do not understand how an individual can stand in two ways for the same body on the same day in the same election and be defeated, then get elected a matter of an hour or two later. Equally if not more confusing is the fact that, in my constituency and in those of my right hon. and hon. Friends in the south Wales valleys, thousands upon thousands of people vote Labour on their second vote, yet none of those votes is counted. I do not understand the logic of that. I can understand the technicalities, because I taught the subject many years ago when I was a teacher in a college of further education, but as an elector or as an elected representative, I think that it is terribly confusing and ought to be changed.
How can the system be changed? We should keep the 40 first-past-the-post AMs and the 20 top-up AMs should be elected on an all-Wales list based on strict proportionality, so that people are elected according to the number of votes cast throughout Wales for their party. That would be easily understood by the people of Wales. In the months and years ahead, there is a debate
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to be had about what changes might be made. If none is made, the top-up system will become increasingly discredited.
Mr. Grieve: The method that the right hon. Gentleman proposes has something to commend it, but if such a system were to be adopted, there would be nothing to prevent the mischief about which the Secretary of State is so exercised, of someone on an all-Wales list identifying himself with a particular locality, which he wanted to seize in future under first past the post. Does not the argument advanced by the Secretary of State debase the debate that we ought to be having on the matter, on which the right hon. Member for Torfaen (Mr. Murphy) is making an important point?
Mr. Murphy: Someone on an all-Wales list standing in a strictly proportionate election going to a particular constituency and fighting it would be much less of a problem than it is now. Now, elections are fought on electoral subdivisions of Wales and in those much smaller divisions it is more than possible—indeed, it is happening—for individual list Members to go to a constituency and campaign to get elected as a candidate under first past the post. That is wrong, because the 20 top-up Members should bring something different to the Assembly and thus enhance it. That would be more likely if they were elected as I have suggested.
I hope that the Bill receives its Second Reading today, because the people of Wales are served by all of us who are elected for that purpose, whether we serve in the House of Commons, the Assembly or local government. We are all there to serve those whom we represent and I believe that the Bill gives us an opportunity to improve the quality of life of all Welsh people.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmhansrd/cm060109/debtext/60109-20.htm
Dr. Hywel Francis (Aberavon) (Lab): As readers of our report will see, there was no consensus on the Government's proposals for electoral reform. The majority support, as I do, the Government's proposals, and it should be noted that there was no minority report. My personal view is that, whatever the merits of the arguments on each side of the debate, the Government and all parties need to proceed on a cross-party basis. Electoral reform should not get caught up in internecine party politics. The Secretary of State may well wish to consider whether, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen said in his
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contribution, the present system is an unloved and confusing creature that causes more grief than it is worth. I believe that, as he suggested, a national list may be a better option.
It is incumbent upon all Members to take the heat out of the debate on electoral reform and to find a way forward that gains cross-party consensus. Without that, the many welcome proposals in the Bill could be drowned out by the argument on what is for many of us a very minor part of a welcome improvement to the devolution settlement for Wales. The Secretary of State has it in his gift as the sponsor of the Bill to give serious consideration to other proposals.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmhansrd/cm060109/debtext/60109-22.htm
Mr. Elfyn Llwyd (Meirionnydd Nant Conwy) (PC): My major criticism—I have some sympathy with the reasoned amendment in this regard—concerns the self-serving nature of the ban on dual membership. I will not go through all the evidence, which other Members will have seen, from the Electoral Reform Society, the electoral commissioner and many independent commentators who are in a position to make cogent comments. Many people believe that there is abundant evidence to show that there is no case for change. I am sure that there will be much debate in Committee about this partisan provision, which was involved in pre-orange revolution Ukraine, but has been seen nowhere else. What an endorsement. No doubt Leonid Kutchma has been advising the Secretary of State, because he is the only person who would have any real experience of it. The right hon. Gentleman said earlier that it was looked at in New Zealand and in New Brunswick, Canada. Indeed it was, but it was rejected: he did not quite finish the story. It has been rejected in many areas, and there are good reasons why that should be. Some ambitious apologist will remind me that it was in the manifesto. Yes, it was, but new Labour's vote was 35 per cent. UK-wide and 42 per cent. in Wales—hardly an overwhelming endorsement. Given that no one mentioned it during the entire election campaign, not to me anyway, it was unlikely to have been uppermost in the minds of those who did vote for new Labour.
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Yesterday, I took part in a radio discussion in which the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr. David) said that he wished that Plaid Cymru's lukewarm support for the Bill could have been much stronger. My response is this: we have the privilege of considering the contents of every Bill instead of nodding them through regardless, as he does. In this case, there is a lot of amending to do—that is why we are lukewarm. The Bill represents a step forward, but it could have done much more. I trust that the debates in Committee will be productive so that ultimately we have a Bill that is worthy of far warmer support.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmhansrd/cm060109/debtext/60109-22.htm
I turn to the highly controversial question of regional Members and first-past-the-post Members. I note that Lord Richard, the chair of the commission, stated:
"There is something wrong in a situation in which five people can stand in Clwyd, none of them can be elected, and then they all get into the Assembly. On the face of it that does not make sense. I think a lot of people in Wales find that it does not."
Many Members who were supportive of the PR settlement in Wales have become disenchanted with it. The problem is the type of PR that we have imposed on the Assembly. I challenge Conservative Members to say that the system has not been abused. I will happily provide examples, and will do so in Committee if I am chosen to serve on it. There has been abuse and that is the problem, and Lord Richard recognises that.
Under the Bill, regional and constituency Members will have to describe themselves more accurately. That is not political niggling. At the moment, regional Members have the ability to cherry-pick and to promote themselves as local in one area or as supporting a popular or a good campaigning issue but to hide from tricky issues. That is not promoting democracy; it is an abuse of the democratic system. Let them be a regional Member and take the rough with the smooth. Let them put their office not where they think they will win a seat—it could be an Assembly first-past-the-post seat or a Westminster seat—but in the areas of most need. That is where my offices are. There seems to be no interest in doing that. If regional Assembly Members seriously intend to tackle problems where, in their wide constituencies, there is greatest need and the most challenges, let them take their offices there and let us test that. At the moment, that is not happening. We have been accused of gerrymandering, but I throw that straight back. Too often we have seen the use of newspapers and the placing of advertisements and offices.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmhansrd/cm060109/debtext/60109-23.htm
Hywel Williams : I ask the hon. Gentleman the question that I asked the Secretary of State earlier: how would the Bill remedy what seems to concern the hon. Gentleman and other Members? It seems to me to be part of the rough and tumble of politics—perhaps he does not like that.
Huw Irranca-Davies: I point out to the hon. Gentleman that I do not suffer any great disadvantage
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under the present system, but there are two equal but slightly different types of Assembly Member. A regional Assembly Member masquerading as local here and local there as he chooses is not the rough and tumble of politics but misrepresentation. Missives and memos, which have now been discarded, have said that that could never happen and that it was a case purely of an Assembly Member putting forward some ideas, but the very putting forward of those ideas is testament to the fact that an Assembly Member thought that the current system could be abused. That is what we are trying to change.
Mr. Grieve: I want to take up the hon. Gentleman on his point, because he clearly takes the view that there should be two categories of Assembly Member. Although there may be two routes into the Assembly, it is dangerous to say that members of a corporate body have a different status in relation to each other. That is why I am troubled by the Government's approach, although I am sympathetic to some of the hon. Gentleman's points. I am a believer in first past the post and always have been, but the tinkering around the edges of the PR system that he and the Secretary of State are proposing is iniquitous. If there is to be a PR system, it should be on a national basis, and not just for Wales.
Huw Irranca-Davies: I return to the point, and I think that the Bill envisages the situation, that Assembly Members should be equal but different. A local constituency first-past-the-post Assembly Member has a specific constituency interest and a right to describe themselves as local and to campaign on issues specific to that constituency. It is regrettable and it was never envisaged that regional Assembly Members would choose to make use of the system to make political capital rather than to work on behalf of the area. Unfortunately, as we saw in the memo that was circulated, one Assembly Member envisaged where that could easily be done. It can, and I am afraid that the evidence is there for everybody to see.
Lord Richard talks of how, the morning after, Assembly Members who had been denied the chance of first past the post were suddenly resurrected. That causes immense confusion. It is a Lazarus-like resurrection, except that he had the decency to wait at least three days. Assembly Members who have been rejected outright by their electorate are suddenly back in place. As the Secretary of State said, the question of choosing one or the other is not simply to the advantage of one party. It will also be the case for Labour Members.
David T.C. Davies: Is it not the case that under our system members of the public have a chance to reject people? Under the system that the hon. Gentleman proposes, they will not have that chance but the Assembly Member may still pop up the next day. Should he not have the intellectual honesty to admit that the proposals set out in "Llais Dros Gymru" in the first place were incorrect? If he wants to do away with proportional representation altogether, he might be surprised at where the support for that comes from.
Huw Irranca-Davies: There is a perfectly coherent proposal in the Bill, which is to choose one or the other. It is the same for all political parties and every Member will have that choice.
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This Bill should be supported on Second Reading. Conservative Front Benchers know that they can raise their objections during subsequent stages. If they choose to push their amendment to a Division and to reject the Bill out of hand, they will be objecting to the principle of devolution. If there is one thing on which the other parties are united, it is that the Welsh public should be given the opportunity if they wish to take forward devolution. It should not be rejected out of hand as the Conservative amendment seeks to do.
Mr. Stephen Crabb (Preseli Pembrokeshire) (Con): It is worth reminding ourselves just how divided the Welsh nation was over the original devolution question in 1997. Wales was split down the middle on whether to create the National Assembly. Eleven of the 22 Welsh local authority areas returned no verdicts, while just 559,000 people—a mere 25 per cent. of the Welsh electorate—voted in favour. At the time, many of us believed strongly that that was a flimsy basis for the creation of an Assembly that could command popular legitimacy and interest, but we in the Conservative party accepted the fact of devolution, and, as many neutral commentators have said, the Conservative group in the Assembly has perhaps worked harder than anyone else to make the institution work. Nevertheless, we cannot ignore the fact that large chunks of the Welsh electorate are disengaged from devolution.
At the first Assembly election in 1999, there was a 46 per cent. turnout and just over 1 million people voted. In 2003, only 850,000 votes were cast. There was a 38 per cent. turnout, about the same as the United Kingdom turnout for the 2004 elections to the European Parliament, an institution that is supposed to represent the very paragon of remoteness to the people of this country. That is a dreadful record for such a young institution, which was set up to satisfy some unmet desire for devolution on the part of the Welsh people.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmhansrd/cm060109/debtext/60109-24.htm
As a member of the Select Committee, I want to record my disappointment at the way in which the Government produced the Bill without even waiting for the Committee to publish its report on the White Paper. That makes a mockery of pre-legislative scrutiny. Perhaps I should not be surprised, however. At no point during his appearance before the Committee for the inquiry did the Secretary of State appear to be in listening mode. That was particularly evident when he and the First Minister were asked about the proposals for altering electoral arrangements for constituency and regional list Members. Committee members will recall their double act when they sought, outrageously, to trash the reasonable and considered concerns put by the Electoral Commission and by Dr. Richard Wyn Jones and Dr. Roger Scully of Aberystwyth university, who said that the new arrangements could be seen as serving
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partisan interests and could therefore undermine confidence and participation in the electoral process. The First Minister laid into them, saying
"I think this is not their finest hour",
and claiming that their statements were "poor and unsupported". The Secretary of State himself then accused the Electoral Commission of being out of touch with political reality. It was all very unsavoury. Those tactics only served to reinforce the impression that deep partisan motivation underlies the changes in the electoral arrangements, and that the Labour party has no desire to achieve any cross-party consensus on the issue.
Albert Owen: The hon. Gentleman has been very honest in his answers to earlier interventions. Does he agree with his own Conservative association? He has named academics that gave evidence, but is he listening to his own constituency association, the only Conservative association in the UK to give evidence? Does he support it, yes or no?
Mr. Crabb: Pembrokeshire is a very independent-minded place and, as much as I try to train my association, we take different views. The person who wrote the submission to the consultation takes a different view from me and I have discussed it with her. I am happy to be transparent about that.
To conclude, I want to see a strong, effective Assembly that is an expression of a vibrant political culture and embraces the full breadth of Welsh society, making decisions that deliver real value to the people of Wales. I would prefer to see such an Assembly rather than a remote and irrelevant one that has been designed and shaped by an ivory tower Welsh policy elite, far removed from the preferences of Welsh people. Yet that latter scenario is exactly where I think we are headed with the Bill. It must be for the Welsh people alone to dictate the pace and direction of devolution.
Mr. Dai Havard (Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney) (Lab): Constitutional affairs is not top of the queue in Merthyr. People do not talk about it on the bus very often. I do not have people coming up to me and saying, "What about this Government of Wales Bill, Dai?" What they do say is, "How can Mike German come third in an election in Caerphilly and then, a few weeks later, end up as a deputy, running the whole outfit?" I have to say that the reason for that is the stupid and twisted electoral process that we have in order to populate the assembly. It is not rocket science, but it is some form of science to which I may return later.
Hywel Williams: To refer back to the hon. Gentleman's constituents on the bus, would they, or the hon. Gentleman himself, have given evidence to Mr. Glyn Mathias at the Electoral Commission, who told the Welsh Affairs Committee that this was not an issue for Mr. German or any of the other candidates in that election as far as it could find out. Does the hon. Gentleman have any superior knowledge?
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmhansrd/cm060109/debtext/60109-25.htm
Mr. Havard: The last time I saw Mr. Glyn Mathias was in Carmarthen castle at an event for the Historical Society. I have had plenty of opportunities to talk to Glyn Mathias, but I do not think that he is instrumental in this.
I do not demur from the idea that it is daft to have someone standing on a list and also in a constituency. It is political gerrymandering of a sort, which does nothing at all for the legitimacy of the institution and does not do anything partisan for the Labour party. It also goes to guts of the proportional representation system that populates the institution. My right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Mr. Murphy) talked about different processes to deal with some of the issues.
Personally, I will not vote for PR. However, I also do not favour referendums. Since the time of Harold Wilson back in the 1960s, it seems to have become the
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thing to have referendums on constitutional issues. The test that I applied earlier was whether the measure was required now. It certainly will be required later, and what is good about the Bill is that it institutionalises the idea that there will not be primary powers unless a referendum takes place.
We are not dealing with my worries about the current electoral process. My concern is that I might not get the opportunity to deal with them later either. The Bill talks about "the question"—not "the questions"—which will be whether we have primary powers or not. Where is the question about the electoral process? Does the Bill actually debar that from happening at that point? That is the crunch for me and it will make the difference at Third Reading as to whether I support it. That question underlies a lot of the problems that have been talked about in terms of the interim measures on the electoral process.
I was in favour of devolution and I still am. The Welsh people—narrowly, as the hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Mr. Crabb) said—voted to democratise the powers of the Wales Office. They did not vote for much more than that. We therefore have to be very careful, which is why the power for extension has to remain here. That is where the Welsh people wanted it to stay. Unless and until that changes, that must be the point at which a referendum takes place. In that referendum, we will also have to deal with the electoral process. I want to know whether, by voting for the Bill, we will avoid that—by default, design or some sleight of hand—or whether that is the point at which the debate will take place.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmhansrd/cm060109/debtext/60109-26.htm
Albert Owen: The hon. Gentleman touches on a very important point about scrutiny by the National Assembly. Is not the fact that it sits only two to three days a week one of its downfalls? Would it not be better to extend its sittings? Of course, if that happened the hon. Gentleman would be in a very uncomfortable position, because he would have to stay there to scrutinise such legislation, rather than being here. Would he be prepared to give up his dual mandate for the sake of better legislation in the National Assembly?
David T.C. Davies: The hon. Gentleman will be aware that I am doing what the Government of Wales Bill
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allows me to do. Perhaps he should have foreseen the possibility of people winning in two places; indeed, many did: many Labour Members of Parliament went on to become Labour Assembly Members. I shall deal with the question of the number of days that the Assembly sits in a moment, if he will allow me. In my opinion it would be completely unconstitutional and undemocratic to overturn the wishes of the people of Wales, who in a referendum clearly voted for an Assembly, not for a Parliament.
The changes to the voting system are being made for only one reason, and we all know that. They are being made for the benefit of the Wales Labour party. That is the only possible reason for the changes, and I thought that the flimsy excuses about Assembly Members who were worried because someone had opened an office in their constituency were pathetic. It has been my
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experience that whenever people want to protest about anything, the first person they go to is their constituency Member of Parliament and the second person is their constituency Assembly Member. Only if they meet with no luck from either will they find out who their regional list Members are. What is really annoying the Labour Assembly Members is not that they are at some sort of electoral disadvantage but that they have lost the huge advantage that comes with incumbency. That must be making many of them very worried.
Mark Tami: I take the hon. Gentleman's point, but is it not the same old argument that additional list Members should not be given the same staffing and office costs allowances as properly elected Members?
David T.C. Davies: There is a huge argument to be had about the relative merits of all sorts of different proportional representation systems, but we should not have a governing party using its majority to push forward changes from which it will gain electoral benefit. The hon. Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Mr. Havard) was right to say that PR is not an issue on the omnibuses of Merthyr Tydfil, in the hostelries of Monmouthshire or in the supermarkets of Cardiff. Nobody is interested in proportional representation and the Government will get away scot-free. But everyone in this Chamber who knows about PR knows why the Government are doing this, and the Electoral Commission knows why they are doing it. It is a great shame that the sort of tricks that we might have seen in South Africa in the 1970s to prop up a failing regime are being imported into south Wales.
Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab): The person who did most to deliver devolution in the United Kingdom was Margaret Thatcher. She alienated the people of Wales and Scotland so profoundly that she created the circumstances in 1997 that led to the setting up of the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly. We know from history that devolution referendums had been held before and had been unsuccessful. It was only because the Conservatives alienated people in Scotland and Wales so much by the manner in which they ran their Government between 1979 and 1997 that devolution was ever established.
Mr. Evans : The hon. Gentleman sets a dangerous precedent with his argument. Does he not appreciate that even at the last general election the Labour party lost to the Conservatives as a percentage of the vote? The valid point was made by the right hon. Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Williams) that resentment will
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grow in England because Scotland has a Parliament and Wales has an Assembly, now with increased powers. The only part of the UK that has been totally ignored is England.
Ian Lucas: I am very conscious of the relationship between England and Wales, England and Scotland, and England and the UK, because of the nature and position of my constituency, which I discuss regularly in the Chamber and will touch on in my speech. We have made progress with referendums on a regional basis. We had had approaching eight years of Labour Government before the referendum in the north-east. In those circumstances, the people said no. They said, "We've got a Labour Government, so what do we need an assembly for?" The position would have been different if the north-east had been asked that question in 1997.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmhansrd/cm060109/debtext/60109-27.htm
Ian Lucas: My second essential point was about the proposed provisions relating to the electorate and changes to the electoral system. I strongly support the proposal to disallow regional list Members from standing for constituencies. I would like the Bill to go further. Under the present Assembly electoral system, we have two votes. At the last Assembly election, I was able to vote for the Labour Assembly candidate in my constituency and on the regional list.
Mr. Evans: He lost.
Ian Lucas: Yes, that is correct. My regional constituency candidate lost, yet the strange thing is that the largest party at the Assembly election for the north Wales region was Labour, which gained 55,000 votes from individuals such as me—more than any other party in north Wales—but on the regional list, the Labour party gained no Members at all.
Mr. David Jones: It is called proportional representation.
Ian Lucas: It is called defrauding the electorate; it is called wasted votes—something about which the
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Liberal Democrats have a lot to tell us. In 2003, they talked about wasted votes in their election literature, which I have with me. They said:
"If enough Labour voters switch to the Welsh Lib Dems with their 2nd vote, we can have a Tory Free Wales . . . Our region has 2 Tory AMs. Don't waste your 2nd Vote—Back the Welsh Liberal Democrats to beat the Tories!"
I thought about that and it was true. I voted for Labour because it is my party, but I wasted my second vote and so did 55,000 other people in north Wales. We have an electoral system that is defrauding the people of north Wales and a political party that wants to exploit their views by trying to suggest that they should not vote for the party in which they believe. That is dishonest. That is gerrymandering and it should not be allowed.
Mrs. Gillan: I should have so much more sympathy with the hon. Gentleman, and would share his views, if the system were not one that his party brought in. I do not understand how Members on his Front Bench can ignore his strongly held views, but it was the Labour party's mechanism that was introduced.
Ian Lucas: I understand that point. I am expressing my views to my Front Bench colleagues and I am sure that they are listening to them carefully. The same views have been expressed by other Labour Back Benchers today and I am sure that they will also be listened to carefully.
There have been many accusations today from Opposition parties about Labour party gerrymandering, yet the Labour party is the only party to create an electoral system that disadvantages it. That is exactly what it did in 1999 when it set up the Assembly and allowed the introduction of proportional representation. It sent the Tories a lifeboat and a lifebelt. It gave the Liberal Democrats more representation th
Issue of the day (In Scotland at least)
Posted by pauldavies on January 10, 2006 | Comments (3)
What's more important at election time - getting the result out on the night, or not being a farce?
That is, in short, the debate (or rather the minor question, as the only places to care about it are the BBC and some Scottish papers) about the introduction of STV into Scotland in 2007.
Because I'm a curious soul, if anyone can come up with a reason or two that getting the result out 24 hours earlier is more important than how the regions are governed for the next few years, do tell.
Topicality is overrated
Posted by pauldavies on January 09, 2006 | Comments (0)
Before I forget for good and thus lose the link into the vast foggy darkness of blogland, discussion from last month of how MMP works over at Fruits and Votes.
So long and thanks for all the mumbling
Posted by pauldavies on January 09, 2006 | Comments (0)
While perusing the accumulated drivel and assorted conceits that make up the morning papers, a strange feeling came over me. I felt like a Lib Dem. It was just for a second or two, but the effect was bordering on the profound. I was, you see, confused.
As part of me applauded Two-double-brandies-and-a-pint-of-bitter-gate for livening things up and delivering some top-notch shady-corridor political intrigue into the front line of Westminster dispatches, another part of me (n.b. an other, not the other, thankfully this merry little circus is far from overwhelming) realised what all this meant for the dead-tree output for the next few weeks: it's going to be even more hoity-toity, even more sickening and full of even more pointless speculation than normal.
We will be awash with 'what do we believe in' nonsense from prominent Lib Dems, translating the thoughts that keep them awake at night into money to keep them well-fed; there will be—and indeed, already is—enough columns about who should be the new leader, and why, covering everything from a chance encounter with Menzies Campbell back in 1847 to Mark Oaten's favourite dish at the Hotel du Vin.
It's enough to make watching Gorgeous George on the telly seem enticing.
However, with everything being 'as you were' in the swampy marshes of Labour and Tory ("I'll keep plugging away" vs. "I'll be here when he goes") the Lib Dems are, for once, going to enjoy a prolonged period in the spotlight. If nothing else, it'll probably remind a few people that they actually exist.
And amid all that, we get to feel all important by reading the words 'electoral reform' in every political obituary of the little ginger scamp, while the candidates (speculative or otherwise) try to work out whether crying about it is a help or a hindrance in taking over. Personally, I doubt it'll get much more than lip service, as being party policy, it's not exactly a divisive issue. Overall, it's probably one of those classic Lib Dem schemes (i.e. very Charlie K): popular, although not entirely understood, by the party masses, supported by the more quiescent MPs and no more than another item in the toolbox-for-personal-advancement of the appointed core due to battle it out over the next few weeks.
More on Approval Voting
Posted by pauldavies on January 09, 2006 | Comments (0)
Remember this?
Well, via an otherwise private email exchange, involving him, ERS top dog Ken Ritchie's response to Approval Voting is as such:
Approval voting? Simplistic nonsense.
Let me first deal with an easy objection: it is not a proportional system. (While proportional representation is usually considering in terms of being fair to parties, the concept equally applies when candidates are divided by other issues - hanging, hunting, etc.) You can only guarantee a measure of proportionality if several candidates are elected simultaneously - in a single-member district/constituency there can only be one winner no matter what the distribution of voters' opinions. Now you could use Approval Voting in a multi-member election - electing, say, 4 candidates the winners would be the 4 receiving most votes. Suppose there are 4 candidates for party A (or issue A) and 4 for party B and support is split 51% for A and 49% for B. A sensible result would be two seats for each. But if 51% vote for A1, A2, A3 and A4, while 49% vote for B1, B2, B3 and B4. So all the A's get more votes than any of the B's, so only A's are elected. Not good.
However, even as a system for electing one candidate Approval Voting has its failings. Voters can list whom they would tolerate, but cannot express preferences between them. As a result it can give strange results and is very dependent on voter tactics rather than voter preferences. To give an easy example, suppose the votes of all but 2 voters give
A 100
B 99
C 90
D ....
If the remaining two voters strongly favour B it seems reasonable that B should win, but if the last two voters would tolerate A they might vote A and B allowing A to win by 102 to 100. For them to get the result they want, they need to artificially suppress their vote for A, voting only for B. It makes the whole thing a bit of a lottery. It does not necessarily allow a Condorcet winner to win (a Condorcet winner is a candidate who would beat any other candidate in a straight contest).
I know that advocates of Approval Voting (who are extremely rare in the serious field of electoral reform) claim that the UN Sec General is elected by Approval Voting, but that ignores the reality. The Sec Gen is 'elected' through a process of negotiation, arm-twisting, bribery and worse.
Why go for Approval Voting when you could equally well choose the Alternative Vote (AV)? AV allows voters to vote for as many candidates as they want, but ranking them. If a voter's first choice candidate is not in contention, then the vote switches to the second choice, and so on. As a single-constituency system it cannot be proportional, but at least it uses people's choices more intelligently, makes tactical voting (almost) impossible and produces a winner that more voters want than any other candidate. For example, where 30% favour Labour over the LDs (hating Tories) and 30% favour LDs over Labour, the Tory candidate wins at present because the anti-Tory vote is split, but with AV the winner would be either Labour or LD.
Spoilsport.
How to save a country
Posted by pauldavies on January 06, 2006 | Comments (1)
What is it about the words "The Government is to review the ability of the House of Lords to block its legislation in a move seen by critics as an attempt to neuter the second chamber" that stirs the stomach acid so?
Is it:
a) the content
b) the future consequences
c) the crushing inevitability or
d) all of the above?
Score ten points for d), before going out to buy some palliative drugs, if for no other reason than to get you through what is probably going to follow below.
In the interests of fairness, and because this is almost certain to veer off into some strange and bile-sodden swamp of silliness, the 'review' as mentioned offers no concrete evidence that the House of Lords is about to be castrated, ready to take its New-Labour-dictated place as a subservient minion at the feet of a power-crazy Commons. It states no specifics relating to the powers of the Lords, or how they have their say over their legislation-scrutinising inferiors in the Lower House.
However, if we ignore the Clinton-defence aspects of the motion, and pay attention instead to the underlying nature of government and the recent historical evidence, the 'critics' (viz. everyone not in the government) have a hell of a point.
If the aim of a government is to impose their/the voters' will (depending on your level of delusion/cynicism) upon the nation, then they're never going to be best pleased with those that try to stop them. Thus it is quite plain that New Labour doesn't like the Lords, because those cheeky elitist know-it-alls have cruelly utilised their extant power to denounce literally hundreds of pieces of New Labour legislation on the grounds of the twin enemies of practical politics: common sense and common decency. The scamps.
But it's okay, because what a government doesn't like, a government can do something about, be it toffs, Craig Murray, or the Lords.
However, it's hard sucking up every remaining vestige of power in a country. It's not like we're in America, where they have God to do their work for them. Or even somewhere that makes Pat's boys look like amateurs.
All this makes efforts to tame power, and thus redirect it towards cultural and welfare enhancement rather than the myopic enlargement of one's personal fiefdom, a tad tricky, and ultimately futile, as we should all very well know.
Yet in a game as sordid as this one, one doesn't get to the top without a healthy (unhealthy?) dose of dogged perseverance and a complete lack of moral scruples. And with Tony's tenure coming to an end, and his current tactic of giving peerages to his rich friends a handful at a time still failing to make much real headway eight years on, don't be surprised if the Lords is indeed 'neutered' (or at least set irrevocably on the path to the operating table) within the lifetime of this parliament.
So, what to do about it? Even the most die-hard Labour supporters had probably had enough of the intrusions before they voted for more of the same in May, more out of hope and fear than anything else. We can't blame them for that, it's what people do, and any other government would likely be following an equally perverted course if it had been granted a flimsy mandate to do whatever it happened to conjure up over boozy lunches for the best part of a decade. If we assume (and I think that logically and historically we probably can) that a government will spend the majority of its time in power trying to play God and mould the country in its own image, (which inevitably means wedging the fat arse of government into the poor nose of the lives of its people), the only way to stop it happening, (as one of the fabulous quirks of British democracy as it stands is that once voted in, accountability becomes nothing more than a word to trot out now and then for the papers, while being used to raise a laugh in the Commons' bar) is to stop a party from governing for too long.
So amid the yo-yoing talk of fixed-term parliaments, should we introduce the notion of a fixed-term government (or rather executive) to go with it? Give them four years each, they can run about and enjoy themselves, the MPs can try to be personally good towards their bit of the country, knowing that clamouring for a higher-powered cabinet job is not so important, as it would never last, and with a bit of luck no one would have the time to implement anything as rash and reckless as we let them get away with now. The economy would be a bit tricky, as running that in four year cycles is never a great way to exploit its potential, but years of using it as a short-termist bribing tool have left it in a right state anyway, with no real reason to suspect that a lack of long-term action would really be noticed.
"Merda" quoth Prodi, as Silvio strikes again
Posted by pauldavies on January 06, 2006 | Comments (0)
You'd think, that if you were the leader of an opposition in a country where everything was going wrong, and with an election on the horizon, all would be well.
Well, it would be, unless you're fighting the world's most resourceful PM and happen to find your side embroiled in scandal too.
Poor Mr Prodi. Mr Kennedy's problems are nothing compared to Romano's.
It could be you (theoretically)
Posted by pauldavies on January 05, 2006 | Comments (0)
Perhaps the most readily observable drawback of First-Past-the-Post (FPTP) is the enmity it nurtures among those who wonder why they are deemed so unimportant relative to the chop-and-changers in Cheadle or the old folks in Dorset. If they weren't quite so stupid misinformed, Tory voters would also probably resent the fact that they aren't nearly as important as Labour ones in deciding who gets to govern the country. But they are, so they don't, and number crunching like this is dull anyway.
Giving all votes equal value, or at least something approaching that, is thus one of the main goals of, and driving force behind, the campaign for a less-crummy voting system. In this respect, most alternatives surpass FPTP, some better than others.
Yet talk of such systems is like the aforementioned number-crunching: it offers a sometimes welcome distraction and temporary amusement, occasionally, but by no means always, leading to something more substantial, but mess about with it too much and you will, or perhaps should, start to question your sanity.
Therefore, it's always refreshing to see something a bit different, especially if it's more entertaining than the intricacies of d'Hondt. Unfortunately, 'refreshing' requires thinking, and thinking is, on the whole, either unwittingly shirked or unwarrantedly indulged.
So it is that I direct you all to Ben Saunders's blog, Praesidium, which comes to you from the noble home of the poor man's Cambridge University, viz. Oxford. Young Ben is doing a PhD on 'Lottery Voting', inspired by some unknown faceless academics of a bygone era (the eighties).
Quoth Dr (pending) Saunders:
The proposal is that elections are held as at present, but instead of votes being counted up and the side with most votes winning, one vote is drawn at random to determine the result. This is sometimes known as ‘random dictator’, for an arbitrarily chosen person is taken to decide the outcome, regardless of everyone else’s votes.
Whatever else one may say about such a proposal, it certainly sounds like fun. There are obvious, prima facie, problems with such a scheme, such as the existence of a chance, however small, of electing the amoeba-brained thugs of the BNP into government, but I assume, for I haven't yet read much into it, that there are numerous safeguards against cocking everything up completely. Some of them may even be plausible.
There are also equally obvious up-sides to such a scheme: no more safe seats, incentives for parties to keep pressing for extra votes, whatever level of support they are on, less predictably interminable election night television…
It would do Ben's work a disservice to offer up a pithy columnist-esque dissection of his thesis, so I won't bother, but I will be watching with something akin to interest.
Israel: is that coffee I smell?
Posted by pauldavies on January 04, 2006 | Comments (0)
I've heard it said that the coolest thing in the whole wide world is to quote oneself. Thus welcome to a little jaunt to the land of the "crazy half-arsed democracy" and "nutjob" electoral system, Israel.
According to the, I assume accurate, reportage of the Jerusalem Post, "President Moshe Katsav has appointed a national commission to recommend changes in the structure of government and elections in Israel."
"About bloody time", I hear you cry, with the tone of a mildly-aggravated posh English lady 'having words' with a foreign waiter. Well, quite. Yet one must never be too hasty with these things. Appointing a commission to look into the way a country conducts elections is one thing, paying any attention is quite another.
The easiest way to observe the failings of the Israeli electoral system is simply to look at it.
As the nice folks at Wikipedia inform us, Israel's 120-member parliament, the Knesset, is elected via "the highest averages method of party-list proportional representation, using the d'Hondt formula."
Ah, 'party-list': driving a stake into the hearts of people who understand what it means. It's like a euphemism for 'legalised political corruption'. Of course it doesn't have to be that way, and there are some sound theoretical arguments for a party list, but in practice it is like having an entire country-full of safe seats, where the MPs are appointed by the ones on the top of the political climbing frame, rather than being elected by those making do with the hopscotch. And as we have seen all too often before, good politics, in the sense of making the country better, is not too well facilitated when MPs, or whatever they may be called in other tongues, rely on their skills of being oleaginous arseholes to get to the top.
So how did they end up like this? It's cut-and-paste time…
The State of Israel inherited the rigid system of proportional representation from the political system of the yishuv (the organized Jewish community) in mandatory times. This system was based on the zeal with which the various political parties - in which ideology and personalities played a major role - fought to preserve their independence. The justification given for the large number of parties resulting from the system was, that in a period in which major, far-reaching and rapid changes were still taking place in the population make-up as a result of immigration, it was important to enable maximal representation for various groups and opinions.
This is done by the division of valid votes given to the lists which passed the qualifying threshold, by 120, in order to determine how many votes entitle a list to a single seat. In the elections to the second and seventh Knessets the excess votes (the votes received by a list which passed the qualifying threshold [now set at 2 per cent, having previously been first 1 per cent and then 1.5 per cent], but are not sufficient for a whole seat) were distributed to those lists which had the largest number of excess votes (the Hare method). In the elections to the first Knesset, and since the elections to the eighth, the excess votes are distributed to the lists with the largest number of voters per seat - a method known in the world as Hagenbach-Bischoff (de-Hondt), and is known in Israel as the Bader-Ofer method - named after MKs Yohanan Bader (Gahal) and Avraham Ofer (Alignment) who proposed its adoption. Two lists can reach an agreement regarding the distribution of excess votes between them before the elections.
As Lewis wrote on here back in November:
It was the least-worst option at first, because Israel's borders were still fluid, large numbers of people were in the armed forces and therefore away from home, and there were a huge number of national, religious and ideological elements to accommodate.
And why do they still have it? As Lewis added, they "ended up sticking with it out of vested interests and an inability to agree on what would be better."
That doesn't mean, of course, that change isn't needed.
There are many reasons Israel could do with a new electoral system. More so than Britain, in fact, but the Israelis do have a rather more incendiary political culture to inspire such things. Staying true to the old journalistic tenet that the high-level corruption that accompanies The Power, always makes great copy, the Jerusalem Post article cited earlier focuses on one issue in particular: criminality.
Most seriously, because of the voters' inability to express disapproval of persons who may be associated with corruption or scandal, closed lists may permit criminal elements to seep into government.
This is not a theoretical consideration. During the last election campaign there were widespread allegations of attempts to bribe politicians, of corruption and vote selling. Losing candidates complained that a party's Central Committee members had offered batches of votes for a price. There were reports that known criminals had been active in membership drives and in elections to the Central Committee. Elsewhere, there were allegations were made of union funds being used, and of falsified signatures of new party members.
Israel, being a relatively teen-aged country, clearly has issues. Barring some miracle to rival the works of The One largely responsible for these issues, it's not going to get better too quickly. A new voting system certainly isn't going to make the inhabitants of the area forget their differences, kiss and make up and usher in a new era of Edenesque harmony.
It could help make the politicians less horribly corrupt, however. And a country where the men in charge are geared towards helping the people in order to help themselves is more likely to succeed than one in which they pander to their bosses in order to aid their advancement.
The fairest of them all?
Posted by pauldavies on January 04, 2006 | Comments (0)
I assume, being sentient, sagacious, beings, that you have all already read Simon Hoggart's column of Christmas Eve. However, allowing for inevitable festive vicissitudes, I understand if perhaps it passed you by. For those of you yet to catch up, he mentioned, amid his usual array of anecdotal amusement, apparently the fairest way to hold elections. Quoth he:
With the possibility of two party leadership elections in the next year, I was fascinated to learn from Professor Steve Jones that the fairest possible way to decide on one candidate in a field of any size is to give every voter as many choices as he or she wants. So if there are, say, eight candidates, you can pick one, three, six, or all eight if you wish, and they are not in order. Every vote cast has equal value. It sounds ridiculous, but it's how the American Mathematical Association chooses its president, and it works very well.
The effect is that whoever wins is the candidate who is most acceptable to most people. If it seems unfair to have multiple votes, it isn't, because everyone you don't pick is a negative vote, and the more people you support, the fewer people you can help veto. It would work ideally here. A Guardian reader, faced with, say, Tory, Labour, Lib Dem, Green, Ukip and BNP candidates could plump for Labour, Lib Dem and Green, not minding hugely which one won. His omission of the other three would count as a positive vote against them.
'Hmm...' thinks I. It seems entertaining enough. It would certainly lessen the need for mud-slinging, which could possibly translate into thinking about policies and the like. It could encourage wish-list politics. But then we have that anyway, so no real problem there.
The Tories would never go for it, because it is written into their souls to be too stupid to think of changing things. New Labour would never go for it, because FPTP works THAT well for them. The Lib Dems wou... sorry, drifted for a second there. Some of the Lib Dems would champion it, others would not, none would be listened to. And as for the people. Well, it's obviously terribly complicated, for starters, which never goes down well. "Tick as many boxes as you feel like, you say, does that mean I have to vote for UKIP?" Okay, perhaps not even the hordes of the intellectually underprivileged can fail to grasp this one. Years of filling in those privacy-invading market-research forms should've equipped enough people with the capacity to participate.
Welcome to bat country
Posted by pauldavies on January 03, 2006 | Comments (0)
Ladies and Gents, may I introduce the Four MPs of the Apocalypse: Kevin Jones, Fraser Kemp, John Spellar and Tom Watson.
In front of me is their collective (well, it would be, wouldn't it ;)) response to an editorial in Progress last month which advocated PR for the Commons (or something like that. I haven't read the original, but such things didn't stop MPs passing judgment on Brass Eye, so...)
Anyway, it's all fairly predictable, so I give it to you in brief:
1. Editorial advocated PR to keep the Tories out of power. This is bad and cynical and misses the most important point, that Labour wouldn't have a stonking majority ever again. Which means we couldn't re-invent the NHS, re-introduce the minimum wage or do loads of other cool things that would inevitably be shouted down because no laws ever pass ever without a stupidly large majority. (subtext: politicians are too dumb to come up with clever laws, thus all laws are silly and only get passed/blocked for party-political reasons, thus nothing would ever get done under PR)
[for what it's worth, the first point is a good 'un - people who sully the good name of electoral reform with cheap tribal tat are fools.]
2. Look at Germany! Damn those voters Look at all that horse-trading. In public! How dare they! That stuff's our private business. And it's doubly bad because the nice lefty Germans have been "forced" into coalition with the baby-eating minions of the ginger uberlord, in a roughly-proportional power-sharing agreement that sort of reflects what the country voted for.
3. PR campaigners are delusional tits. They want all our elections to be like the elections to the European parliament. They want to destroy the constituency link and rob Labour of our hard-won almighty power to wage war and curtail civil liberties.
4. The Lib Dems are a "thoroughly dishonest and opportunist franchise". They want PR. Ergo PR is thoroughly dishonest and bad and wrong and eeeeeevil. Oh yes. They also might share power with the Tories. [Shudder, spit].
5. Look at us! We're great! We keep winning! Go team!
Prospects for 2006
Posted by clarejones on January 03, 2006 | Comments (1)
Happy New Year! And welcome Back.
As we enter 2006, so we ask what sort of excitement this year is likely to bring, and question whether the talked of potential for so much political upheaval will in fact materialise? Could it in fact be the case that Brown's development of new constitutional priorities , in reaction to the rejuvenation of Tory policies will in fact refresh the political agenda of 2006? Mr. Brown's proclaimed commitment to tackling the undemocratic nature of the house of Lords, as well as his interest in re-establishing local authority accountability will in no doubt highlight many issues of electoral reform. This paragraph by Polly Toynbee in today's Guardian succinctly summarises the possible implications of this inter-party contention over the coming months:
'As Sir Menzies Campbell looks set to take over from Charles Kennedy, the Liberal Democrats are most in peril from Cameron, so make that historic pact between the two parties of the left. Let Lords reform usher in PR with at least the alternative vote for the Commons as a first step, preserving the MP/constituency link while giving voters a 1,2,3 choice on the ballot paper. Can the Tories swallow that? Opposing voter choice would put them in a bad light.'
