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June 11, 2009
Welsh Voices for Reform
Owain Llyr ap Gareth, the campaign officer for the Electoral Reform Society Wales has an excellent article published in today's Western Mail. In it he outlines just how important a radical shake-up of the voting system could be.
Below is an abridged version:
It’s not how votes are counted that is the exciting thing about making votes count. Rather it is what changing the system does that is exciting – a potential transformation of politics in Britain.Electoral reform has suddenly come into vogue in British politics. There have been calls for a new politics, for widespread constitutional reform. There have been renewed calls for a referendum to change the voting system, a pledge in Labour’s 1997 manifesto.
The expenses scandal crystallised the very problems to which changing the voting system offers a solution. It illustrated the complete disconnection of a political class completely cut off from the people they supposedly represent.
The UK is the last European bastion of “first past the post” (FPTP) – the way we vote for our MPs by placing a cross next to a candidate in particular constituencies.
This system creates results that are wholly unfair. It gives massive majorities to a party that has won only a third of the vote. It gives enormous power to parties to parachute favoured candidates into safe seats. Indeed, this is such an antiquated system that even we in “provincial” Wales have chosen a far more sensible option for our National Assembly!
The FPTP system deepens the gulf between the political class and the people into a chasm. In reality, people have a very narrow choice when voting. About two out of every three Westminster seats are safe. Most MPs know that, even if there were a political landslide such as those of 1945, 1983 or 1997, their seats are safe. The disconnection of the political culture of the Westminster village, coupled with a system that is less than transparent, led MPs to adopt their own standards in their rarefied world. Creating a position so cut off from the people’s wrath has created a bunch of navel-gazers preoccupied with their own interests.
Electoral reform, by changing the rules on how we elect our MPs and holding them properly to account, offers an escape for both politicians and the public from the dark cloud which hangs over British politics at present.
So what are the alternatives? No system is perfect and it is necessary to balance different elements. These include: that the amount of seats won reflect the votes cast (proportionality); that there is a link between politicians and the people who elect them; and that it allows for stable government. However, any of the other voting systems on offer is better than the FPTP system we currently have.
Gordon Brown has announced that proposals will be brought forward on voting systems, and is attacked by David Cameron as advocating proportional representation, which Conservative central command opposes. However, the Prime Minister also emphasised the necessity of the constituency link – that is the link between a particular area, representative and voters. No system in which a single member is elected to a constituency can be proportional, as this is a winner-takes-all system and votes for the other parties do not count.
The constituency link, more beloved by MPs than voters, is not the only important factor in voting systems. There are different ways to link people and representatives. Indeed, voting for many different members to single constituencies can be a better link between people and their politicians: people are much more likely to have voted for one of their representatives, can choose between them, and indeed competition between them makes politicians more likely to address local concerns. The idea that there can only be a constituency link between elected and electors if there is one person elected is a fallacy, especially in the current system, where it is possible for a person to be elected despite 70% of voters voting against that person.
Proportionality is a vital ingredient in any proposed reform. Parliament would be a fairer reflection of the population at large. If we want to curb the excesses of a too-powerful government, it would at a stroke abolish massive artificial majorities and so encourage debate and better scrutiny, rather than a single party shoehorning in ill-considered legislation. It would demolish safe seats, making our representatives properly accountable.
The current crisis requires more than mere tinkering from the politicians themselves. As we have seen, an unresponsive and unrepresentative majoritarian parliament creates its own instability. The huge problems of accountability, corruption and winner-takes-all machismo that our current system encourages require a radical response. We need proper representation.
View the full article here
Posted by philconnor on June 11, 2009
Comments
What the Tories said about PR (in the form of STV ) in a pamphlet issued by the Tory party to the people of Northern Ireland in 1973 cannot be repeated too often. Here is what this pamphlet (which incidentally has the sub-title "PR is as easy as 1,2,3…") said in the first two paragraphs:-
"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."
These two extracts alone highlight the hypocrisy of Cameron’s attitude. "STV is all very well for the provinces but not for us in Westminster: we were elected under FPTP and we’re jolly well going to keep it that way. After all if we had had PR of any kind we would not have had the joyous victory of our dear Lady Thatcher in 1983 when the LibSDP got 23 seats instead of the 165 or so, that a PR system would have given them. 1983 was indeed the ultimate justification for a system which has kept us in power for most of the 20th century! The fact that it took over 380,000 vots to elect one LibSDP MP as against 38,000 to elect one Tory MP really has nothing to do with the case!"
Gordon Brown’s defence of the single-member constituency, as the only means of preserving the constituency link, is equally hypocritical. It must be as obvious to him as to anyone else that STV actually enhances that link. But he represents the other half of the cosy Tweedle Dee/Tweedle Dum duopoly under which the expenses scandal - and many other abuses - have developed.
Posted by: Joe Patterson at June 12, 2009 11:38 AM
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