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November 18, 2008
Necessary but not sufficient
So the Guardian titled its editorial about the Speaker's Conference yesterday.
With turnout in the US election overtaking turnout in the British general election of 2005, as it did on November 4, this is not a moment too soon. American voters had a choice between a middle-aged black man and a white pensioner (with his white female running mate); yet in 2010 British voters will almost certainly again have to choose their leader from among three white, middle-aged, middle-class men.
The new conference is charged with identifying reasons for the under-representation of black and minority ethnic people, women and disabled people, and devising ways to overcome them. Creating representational diversity is a necessary precondition to constitutional renewal. But it is not enough.
Parliament is notoriously reluctant to reform itself, perhaps because MPs tend to assume that they are the best candidates available. The Speaker's conference should provide an impetus to overcome reservations about positive action. The conference should [also] explore the link between class and low turnout, particularly in inner cities, and ask if the nature of the candidates is relevant.
Traditionally, Speaker's conferences are reserved for settling great questions of the day. It is beyond dispute that fair representation on the basis of class, gender and race is such a question. Yet it is perverse that such a mighty constitutional engine is not simultaneously able to consider the no less pressing question of electoral reform. The evidence that this would reinvigorate democracy is inconclusive (turnout for both Scottish and Welsh assemblies is declining). But the failure even to consider its contribution to democratic renewal risks making this the Speaker's conference that brought forth not a lion, but a mouse.
Posted by malcolmclark on November 18, 2008
