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May 10, 2008
Labour must start thinking more like its European counterparts
On the day when the Labour Campaign for Electoral Reform held its annual strategy day, it is apt to see in The Guardian Martin Kettle's timely reminder that Labour must be more 'European':
"Of all Labour's denials, however, none is more revealing of the party's magical thinking than the argument about which voters the party should target. One camp says core voters are the priority. Another says the middle ground. This is a completely false choice. To sustain a governing project, Labour always has to target both. Under first past the post voting in modern post-industrial Britain, there is absolutely no alternative."
"There will be other opportunities to discuss what was wrong and what went wrong with the New Labour project. What was not wrong, however, was the core recognition that the only way for Labour to be elected to government in modern Britain was to be a well led, inclusive, modern European party of fairness, efficiency and liberty. It is as true now as it was in 1997. It will still be true a generation from now."
To be that modern European party may need an extra ingredient that exists across the continent some form of proportional representation.
Posted by malcolmclark on May 10, 2008
Comments
Here are the comments I put under Martin Kettle's article:-
"One camp says core voters are the priority. Another says the middle ground. This is a completely false choice. To sustain a governing project, Labour always has to target both. UNDER FIRST PAST THE POST VOTING in modern post-industrial Britain, there is absolutely no alternative."
"remain a viable, forward-looking party ALONG NEW LABOUR LINES"
This is the first time I have ever seen Martin Kettle so much as mention the electoral system. But he still seems to regard it as a system which has been ordained by the gods specifically for Westminster (and nowhere else in the EU) and therefore unchangeable. Thee is not the least mention of the need to change the system.
Clinging onto first-past-the-post (FPTP) is in fact the reason why NEW Labour ( a confection specifically designed in consultation with Murdoch to gain power in 1997 under first-the-post ) is in its present pickle. It should have got rid of FPTP, as its 1997 electoral reform commitment seemed to indicate as its aim - until the tribalists took over and cynically abandoned this commitment.
Under FPTP the core priority must be to propitiate the comparatively few floating voters in the marginal seats who follow the line of Murdoch and the Mail, and which win or lose elections.This is the constituency which has come to be termed by politicians and commentators as the "centre ground". Incidentally how do we really know where the centre ground lies when under FPTP around 70% of all votes just do not count: hence one reason why there is such huge abstention by voters? And let us not forget that we are judging the state of the parties on a mere 42% of potential council voters)
The very last thing Labour should do is to continue with policy "along NEW Labour lines" ie so called triangulation which effectively is basing policy on what the Sun and the Mail are saying.
A system embracing the largest consensus must inevitably be a PR system not the FPTP party tribalist system. Unforunately there is now not sufficient time before the next election to introduce PR . The introduction of the AV system might be possible. This is no more proportional than FPTP but it would get rid of the floating voter syndrome and might represent more faithfully the true weight of left-of-centre opinion. It would be a simple matter to advance from AV to STV - if the tribalists of the winning party (probably Labour, unless the LIBdEMS move even more to the right under Clegg) allowed it.
Posted by: Joe Patterson at May 11, 2008 05:47 PM
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