« A Timely Debate on Electoral Reform | Main | Welsh Voices for Reform »
June 11, 2009
Major opponent of reform switches sides
Rare is it that someone who so vehemently opposes a campaign, becomes a public supporter of it. Rarer still, when they seem to do it for intelligent, rational reasons rather than just out of political expediency (though that always plays a part too).
Yet today such a moment has come. We welcome Tom Watson MP to the electoral reform big tent. He was formerly one of our fiercest critics and was co-ordinator of trade union efforts to block the Jenkins Commission recommendations ever being implemented. He still is not backing any form of PR, just AV ... so we will have to continue working on him about that. But he has at least acknowledged that there is "a rupture in the core of British democracy" and the status quo (ie. First-Past-the-Post) is no longer an option. Indeed, he now believes that "the centrepiece of a new reform act should be a change in voting system".
Here are some of the key parts of his Guardian article where he explains his rethink:
The more I became a willing participant in Labour's efforts to prove the iron law of oligarchy, the more trenchant I became in the view that if working people were to retain a voice in parliament, the current system of first past the post should be defended. It was the one issue on which my union completely disagreed with the then prime minister, Tony Blair. The vehemence with which we held our views led, in part, to proposals for electoral reform being held up for a decade.
Yet for the current system there is now a more important challenge, one that has led me to fundamentally reassess my views. Vast swaths of working people in Britain now think parliament is irrelevant to them and their families. MP Jon Cruddas is right when he says that this is as much about policy as it is our democratic framework. But he is also right to say that we can no longer ignore the institutions of representation when it comes to re-engaging working people.
Our voting system is the source code of the power wielded by MPs. It bestows the authority of the people on their representatives. Yet few MPs can claim support from more than 50% of their electors. AV enables preference (ranked) voting, ensuring an MP can claim authority of a majority of their voters. AV also allows voters to protest – through the support of small and single-issue groups, while also choosing to support a larger party, if they so wish. Unlike some other voting systems, it allows the retention of a geographic link between MP and electors.
... But the centrepiece of a new reform act should be a change in voting system and a move to elect our second chamber. And legitimacy should be conferred on these changes through a plebiscite.
Posted by malcolmclark on June 11, 2009
Comments
At last a clear admission that there was a camaign funded by the AEEU to defeat what was an unequivocal manifesto electoral reform commitment. We already know of course that the arch-tribalists in the government like John Prescott, John Reid and Jack Straw were quite ready to betray this commitment without any encouragement from the AEEU.
Even now of course Watson is not supporting a rational democratic system he is supporting AV which is not proportional and through which later preferences would be likely to increase the Labour vote - doubtless his main consideration
AV does have some merits: it would above all eliminate the minority vote MP, going to Westminster with a mere 30% of the vote. So quite frequentlly one gets a right wing Tory MP for instance representing a left-of-centre constituency where the left-of-centre vote is split.
Electoral reform under which the number of seats in parliament actually represents what the electorate has voted for is the very foundation of democracy; but in the face of parties whose aims have nothing to do with democracy and everything to do with squalid vested interest, how to advance towards reform is a problem.
We have the enormous problems of countering the downright lies coming from people like David Cameron WHO ALLEGES THT ANY MOVE FROM FPTP WOULD REDUCE PEOPLE POWER. He knows very well that this is just not true if we were to move to the Single Transferable Vote (STV) in multi-member constituencies as introduced into Northern Ireland in 1973 BY A TORY GOVERNMENT.
Regarding STV this is what that Tory government said in an enthusiastic pamphlet issued to the people of NI before the introduction of STV:-
"What is PR (ie STV)? It is an electoral system designed to make sure that the candidates elected REPRESENT ACCURATELY THE OPINIONS OF THE VOTERS, ie that the strength of each party is in proportion to its support among the people.
Why multi-member constituencies? In a single-member constituency, all the votes not cast for the winning candidate are wasted, since they do not elect anyone. And so are all the votes in excess of a bare majority cast for the winner."
So what Cameron is saying now is in direct contradiction to what the Tories were saying in 1973 (For anywhere except Westminster of course!) .These party lies are bound to affect the results of any proposed referendum (as some of the rubbish seen on the Guardian's CiF suggests) and raises doubts about holding the latter before the next election. Perhaps a better solution would be to support the introduction of AV (ie STV in single-member constituencies) BEFORE the next election with STV in multi-member constituences as the ultimate logical step and for which a campaign should become more aggressive.
Posted by: Joe Patterson at June 11, 2009 03:22 PM
We're democrats and believe in free speech, but we're also committed to civil and rational debate. We reserve the right to delete material posted to our site, but we hope and expect to exercise this right rarely if at all.
