Another "Gentlemens' Agreement": The constituency link
Posted by michaelcalderbank on July 03, 2008 | Comments (0)
Health reforms to the structures of GPs practices are meant to produce greater choice for consumers, increasing competition and encouraging each surgery to offer a higher quality of service. But angry ministers yesterday alleged that GPs have been circumventing moves towards greater competition by reaching informal "gentlemens' agreements" not to take on new patients, effectively blocking our ability to shop around. This, it is argued, is a self-interested bid to protect their out-dated status as monopoly service providers, frustrate modernisation and enjoy comfortable salaries and privileges free having to offer improvements in service.
Sound familiar? Aren't MPs upto the same kind of trick with their consensus that we musn't break up the "constituency link"? Why should we allow them to hold onto their own 'like-it-or-lump-it' monopolies of parliamentary representation which give voters no choice over who gets to represent them between elections? Why is it that the monopoly service providers in all other areas of the public sector are derided as "dinosaurs" resistant to modernisation, when the MPs themselves insist on having a monopoly of representation in their constituency? If allowing consumers to shop around increases competition and incentives service provides to continually improve their service, why should the same not also apply to MPs themselves?
This is far from unthinkable - multi-member constituencies work well in local government, and in Scotland under the proportional STV system, voters are finding not only they get a better representation in terms of the party composition of councils, but also over the individual councillors from within that party. Councillors are now kept on their toes, because they know that if they are unwilling or ineffective in dealing with a voters' concerns, then one of their rivals might prove a good deal better. Maybe it's inevitable that vested interest groups will try to resist change and protect their monopoly privileges. So in Westminster too we find that a "gentlemens' agreement" limits choice. And I do mean an agreement that suits men over women, since as ERS research demonstrates, single-member electoral systems tend to mitigatae against womens' representation, which is one reason why only 4 out of 5 MPs are male.
But it's high time that we turned the MP's logic about choice and competition leading to a better quality of service back against the "dinosaur" tendency in Westminster, too.
The Swingometer returns
Posted by malcolmclark on January 29, 2008 | Comments (0)
At last. We have a swingometer which has been updated with the new constituency boundaries. Congrats to the Telegraph for being the first to not only produce one, but to make it so user friendly and well presented.
Ed wants to balls-up the boundaries
Posted by pauldavies on September 14, 2006 | Comments (0)
Boris Johnson is on sparkling form again this morning, as he relates the woe of the Ballses. In short: Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper "were given two lovely safe Labour seats, side by side, his in Normanton and hers in Pontefract." Then, however, the "grim mathematicians" of the Boundary Commission "have worked out that West Yorkshire's population is declining by comparison with other parts of the country. The place does not need 23 MPs. It can manage quite happily with 22, and Ed Balls has been wiped off the map.
"Now you might have thought that this was the kind of well-deserved reverse he would take in his stride. Being a man of supreme confidence, and, indeed, balls, you would have thought that Ed would dust himself down and take himself off to some other part of the country, whence to join his wife in Parliament.
"But the funny thing is that Ed is making a terrific fuss, and together with Yvette and two other Labour MPs he is taking the Boundary Commission to court, to preserve Normanton and his right to sit in a seat adjacent to his wife."
"This legal action", says Boris, "has all the makings of a serious scandal. As is well known, Labour already has far more seats than it deserves."
Which is totally true, as we all know. However, Boris lets himself down badly in the statistics he chooses to illustrate this:
"Labour tends to have loads of small seats (Hackney South and Shoreditch has 57,204 electors, compared with 103,480 for the Tory Isle of Wight), and Tory MPs need about 4,000 more votes to get to Westminster than Labour MPs."
Firstly, individual cases are an abysmal base to an argument, especially when the Isle of Wight comes into play, given that it has way more electors than any other constituency. More puzzling, however, is his assertion that Tory MPs need about 4,000 more votes to get to Westminster than Labour MPs. It's actually nearer 17,000 more.
Statistics aside, "we cannot", as Boris says, "tolerate this kind of jiggery-pokery". It's scandalous gerrymandering to demand that boundaries be drawn not in line with population or natural communities but so that two MPs can sit next to each other. They don't own the constituencies, the constituencies own them. It is a lessen New Labour seem increasingly unwilling to learn. Of course, if we had STV, we wouldn't have this problem, but that is a different tale for a different day.
Also sprach Herr Cameron
Posted by pauldavies on June 27, 2006 | Comments (2)
Thanks to Murky in the comments, I was alerted to a little bon mot from David Cameron on the Today programme yesterday morning.
Quoth Davey: "Your vote should have the same value, as it were, wherever you are in the country"
If you're a fan of David's calm, soothing tones, you can hear him say it in fancy Internet audio from here. It's the 8.10 link, and the choice quote are the last words spoken. Scan to about 15 mins 20 secs to listen, rather than waiting through all the gunk about human rights beforehand.
It is so proposterously duplicitous that I feel like writing to him again. But last time he blithely ignored my masterpiece of educative drivel, so I'm not sure I'll bother. Ah, maybe just a little one...
UPDATE: Email sent. See below. (And once again, personal correspondence, not the words of MVC, ERS, anyone else)
Dear Mr Cameron/Mr Beal/Mr Otherminion
Thank you for your kind fob off to my last email. It's always nice to have expectations fulfilled exactly.
Anyway, I won't trouble you with another long piece of political aid, I imagine you've got plenty to get through, but I am moved to one more email of educative purpose.
On the Today programme on Monday, Mr Cameron displayed either a startling lack of knowledge of what he was talking about, or a level of duplicity that even Mr Blair would have been proud of. Quoth Mr Cameron: "Your vote should have the same value, as it were, wherever you are in the country".
Lovely sentiment, and I might've taken him seriously were he not relating this to all constituencies being the same size. Given the far more important issues of under-registration, differential turnout and inefficient vote distribution, the discrepancies in constituency sizes is almost irrelevant. To illustrate this point, print out the two pretty graphs attached and compare them. Only those with the most severe political jaundice can spot any sort of correlation.
Now you are smarter. Don't you feel better for it?
All the best,
Paul Davies
What do we want? A headline! When do we want it? Now!
Posted by pauldavies on June 26, 2006 | Comments (1)
Congratulations to the The Times this morning. They've kindly informed everyone what we've been saying for over a year.
The boundary changes make it harder for Labour to secure a majority, but make little difference to the Tories' chances of getting in, or anything else for that matter.
Obviously, as they ran it on the front page, their opening spin on it isn't quite so mundane. There has to be a winner, and a loser, after all. But delve in and we get the important stats.
After the changes, a swing of only just over 1 per cent would destroy the majority, while under unchanged boundaries it would take a 1.8 per cent swing.
However, the Tories will still need a swing of 9 or 10 per cent (down from 11 per cent) to win an outright majority
If the changes had been in place last year, Labour would have had 347 seats instead of 355, the Tories 209 instead of 198 and the Lib Dems 64, up two, according to researchers Lewis Baston and Simon Henig.
There is still going to be a big electoral bias against the Conservatives
Ask a mildly-sensible question, get a mildly-subject-changing answer
Posted by pauldavies on November 03, 2005 | Comments (0)
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome back to the 'Oliver Heald letters', one man's crusade to inform and enlighten another through the means of questionably written emails.
Reply number two from the Shadow Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs was surprising in the hastiness of its arrival, if not in its content.
If you have got this far and have no idea what I'm talking about, read this first.
Also before going any further, it should be noted, if it wasn't already blindingly obvious, that this chain of correspondence is entirely personal, and has nothing to do with MVC or ERS. I post it here only in the hope it might entertain a few of you and give the tiniest peek into what's going on behind the scenes.
Righty, back to the important stuff, continue reading for Oliver's reply and my subsequent email back. Gist is that Mr Heald pretty much avoided talking about the points I raised (especially cf the registration bit), which I'm taking as a polite concession until told otherwise.
TO ME:
Thanks for this.
You are right that the immediate priority for our Party is to tackle factors other than disparities in the electoral quota!! Anyway, it is unlikely that the Government would agree to the necessary legal changes to equalise the boundaries. The current Boundary Review will probably add some seats to Conservative numbers and reduce the Labour total, but we believe that a full equalisation would be fairer and could be done so that up to date information is used at all stages of the Review.
As the Labour Government becomes less convincing, the most important challenges for Conservatives are to show that we are a credible alternative government with relevant modern policies and to excite the electorate with our ideas. A proper revival is the priority. This will improve Conservative turnout and lead to voters changing allegiance.
The current distribution of votes suggests that we must do more to target our campaigning.
Anti-Conservative tactical voting is lessening and when the electorate decides to throw out Labour, their voting tactics will change.
We are making progress in Wales, where we have 3 new MPs and came close in several seats. In Scotland, we are very close in a handful of seats. You are right that we need to do much better in the major industrial cities, but we are encouraged by results to think that we are capable of this.
You mention voter registration. Under-registration has been a perennial problem in the cities. There has been no improvement in the past 10 years. The councils in these areas have simply failed to pursue an active campaign of registration. Modern datamatching techniques coupled with doorstep canvassing are the answer. These techniques have worked in Australia, Northern Ireland and elsewhere.
However, there have been criticisms of over-registration too. Councils have failed speedily to remove those who have left, died or been registered incorrectly. This is an invitation to fraud. In addition to an active canvass, we also need individual voter registration to improve accuracy. It is impossible to tell what the overall effect on numbers would be of actively campaigning for registrations, whilst improving accuracy. In Northern Ireland, the registations were 94% of census. Individual registration and active canvassing techniques mean that the register there is very accurate with 92% of census now registered.
Yours sincerely,
Oliver Heald
TO HIM:
Oliver,
Thanks once again for the reply. As you seem to have admirably moved on from the original fallacy I don't have much else to say, so hopefully this should be brief.
There are a couple of quick points I'd like to raise, however.
You mentioned that you've made progress in Wales and that things are looking up in Scotland. Now, it would be crude to suggest that this little fillip is due to fairer Tory representation via the Assembly and Scottish Parliament, so I won't. However, any talk of 'progress' has to be checked with the fact that those three Welsh seats (two of which have Kate Moss-esque majorities) cost about 100,000 votes each, as opposed to the 20-odd thousand Labour get their seats for. As for Scotland, one MP for the 370,000 Scottish Tories also seems a little harsh. But enough of that, we're in danger of getting bogged down in stats again. No one needs that.
The more pertinent point is not to do with the Conservative voters in the parts of the UK located in Jeremy Clarkson's microwave; it's about the chaps that want a career in the Party. What do you do if you're an ambitious Conservative who happens to live in Wales and doesn't want to hawk his sorry ass round the country in search of a more electorally-verdant pasture? Stick on some Bryn Terfel and moan about the rain most likely.
Which is a shame, because one thing that would surely help the Conservatives win back power where most people still see a blue rosette as a subtler version of horns and a tail, is some sort of local voice emanating from Party HQ.
Anyways, that'll do for now, thanks again for the correspondence, it's much appreciated. I look forward to our softly-spoken friend Mr Cameron exciting the electorate into a hung parliament on a 5 per cent lead in the blue vote.
Best of luck,
Paul Davies
En garde, M. Heald
Posted by pauldavies on October 28, 2005 | Comments (0)
Regular readers will recall that I sent a somewhat flippant message to Oliver Heald to coincide with the report on the Conservatives and the electoral system.
To his immense credit, he took the provocative bait, and replied in something resembling proper form (even if he did include the vaguest sentence ever). Well done that man; who would've thought that calling a senior member of Her Majesty's opposition a 'bit of an idiot' and suggesting he wasn't doing his job probably and could therefore end up getting the sack would've proved so effective?
I have, of course, parried and thrusted once more, in slightly more gentlemanly fashion this time (sort of). Click below for the succession so far: the original message, his reply and my subsequent riposte. Watch this space.
ORIGINAL EMAIL:
Dear Mr Heald,
I am writing to help you out, paying attention, is therefore, advisable.
Speaking in the Commons on June 22 you stated that:
Mr. Heald: Would the hon. Gentleman accept that the bias in the system at present is mostly accounted for by variations in size between constituencies throughout the United Kingdom? If we had an equal electoral quota that was properly implemented throughout the country so that constituencies were the same size we would have a much more proportional system and one that did not have the bias within it?
I know this was a while ago, but I assume this is still your view. I write to you, therefore, to save you from making such fallacious comments ever again. The boundaries are as biased against the Tories now as they have always been (or at least since the 60s). The electoral bias, against which you rightly protest, has also, to some extent been around since the 60s, but up until the 90s, it was negligible. Now it is such that to gain a majority of 2 in a general election, the Tories would need an 11.7% lead on the popular vote, which, let's face it, isn't going to happen any time soon, not even if Boris was in charge.
There is little need to go on, all the information you could ever want about how the electoral system screws you over is here, which includes a section especially for you 'The boundary question, or why Oliver Heald is a bit of an idiot'. Perhaps you'd like to respond. I might be wrong, after all.
Now, I know you "love first past the post", but your job is to look at these sort of things, and from your previous statements it's clear you haven't been doing your job very well. Eventually that sort of behaviour is going to get you the sack. So please read the report available via the above link, digest it and learn. After that you are free to go on loving FPTP (although you won't be able to reasonably chat nonsense about the boundaries anymore).
I, and I'm sure the author of the full 'Conservatives and the electoral system' report, Lewis Baston, along with many others would love to hear your response. You've seen what clinging to erroneous statements has done to David Blunkett (ok, he's got a top job, but he'll go down in history as a liar and a fool). Don't go the same way; it just isn't pretty.
Hope I have been of some use, and sorry if any of this is painful, that's just the way some things are.
Yours etc.,
Paul Davies
HIS RESPONSE:
Dear Mr Davies,
All serious commentators agree that the difference in the number of electors between constituencies gives Labour a large bonus from the electoral system. This was reiterated as recently as 6th October by Thrasher and Rallings. It takes fewer voters to elect a Labour MP and rural areas are disadvantaged at the expense of small urban ones. My suggestion of an equal electoral quota is fair, right and would be more proportional. In order to establish fair seats, it would be necessary to change the Representation of the People Act.
I agree that turnout, tactical voting and targeted campaigning are also important to the Conservative position.
I have read the report you refer to and attended the House of Lords' presentation chaired by Lord Alexander. The research was most useful. I have advice available to me from the experts at Conservative Headquarters who have a very detailed knowledge of each parliamentary constituency.
The current Loosemore-Hanby index shows 20.7 and favours Labour. 20 and above is considered disproportional. However, this picture is very different in County elections.
T and R say "one task for the new leader is to discover how and why the party succeeded so well in the shires yet failed so dismally at the national election."
The answer was not PR.
Oliver Heald
MY RESPONSE:
Dear Mr Heald,
Thank you for replying, it's always nice to get more than just a fob-off from within the corridors of the Commons. I also feel that I should apologise for the rather flippant tone of the original email, there are many avenues to provocation, and I suppose given that the chosen one elicited a response, any echo of effrontery was just about justified.
Anyway, as you rightly point out, the difference in size between Labour and Conservative constituencies favours Labour. As the report I mentioned stated, the gap is currently 9.1 per cent, having been 9.7 per cent in 2001 and 8.1 per cent in 1997. However, as the report also stated, and I as reiterated in my original communication, it was also 9.1 per cent in Labour's favour in 1974, when the overall bias was ever-so-slightly in the Tories' favour. In 1979, there was a whopping 13.9 per cent difference in constituency size, in 1987 it was 13.6 and in 1992 it was 15.0, all, again, in Labour's favour, yet the overall bias was nowhere near its current magnitude.
But stats are dull, even if they do make pretty graphs. Even children can spot lack of correlation between two sets of data, however hard our education system battles against such cheek. What should concern us, the partially-enlightened elite, is why this is the case, and ultimately, what can be done about it.
However, this can be a bit tricky, especially with respect to the state of your party.
"I agree that turnout, tactical voting and targeted campaigning are also important to the Conservative position."
Now by this, you could of course mean that you need to work on your New Labour skills of abusing turnout (impossible), tactical voting (very difficult) and targeted campaigning (tried and failed), but I'm guessing not.
I assume instead that by 'position' you mean 'stuck on about 30% of the vote and horribly disadvantaged in relation to Labour', although obviously it goes deeper than that – the second class status afforded to prospective Conservative MPs in Wales, Scotland and the metropolitan areas; the largely irrational and somewhat entrenched 'anyone-but-the-bastards-in-blue' sentiment… but you know all this already, and I'm sure you have plenty of solutions.
Unfortunately, there is very little evidence to suggest that one of those solutions, the "equal electoral quota" is actually "fair, right and would be more proportional." Or rather, that it would actually be at all effective on a scale bigger than adding about a relatively small number of seats to the Conservative total. This is even with a more radical scheme, such as the one you propose, the exact consequences of which are more or less unquantifiable – it all gets a tad complicated when you shift everything about and start to ignore natural boundaries, which in turn erodes FPTP's hallowed constituency link – btw, not as good as an STV constituency link. The most you can hope for, I'm told, via a Tory MP no less, is about 20 seats. This still leaves the overall bias sat well in the 'historic proportions' section. With regard to your info, it would be lovely to know about your sources – a mutual advancement of knowledge if you will; make the world more beautiful.
I don't doubt for a second that you "have advice available to [you] from the experts at Conservative Headquarters who have a very detailed knowledge of each parliamentary constituency." How else are you, as a party, supposed to decide which voters are important and which aren't? I can also think of few more time-consuming and soul-destroying jobs outside of the City, which is why I'm making this effort to help you with the boundary question.
You also mention that "T[hrasher] and R[allings] say "one task for the new leader is to discover how and why the party succeeded so well in the shires yet failed so dismally at the national election… The answer was not PR."
Would you mind clarifying what you mean by PR? We obviously need to be clear on these things. Various waterheads still think that electoral reform people are arguing for some sort of nutjob Israeli system. Even the foreign secretary spouted such nonsense while trying to defend his party's 'mandate'. Actually, to be fair to Jack, he was probably just indulging in some propaganda; he's dumb, obviously, but surely he can't be THAT dumb. Anyway, I digress.
It's an important point, because the debate, which, whether one agrees with it or not, one has to admit is an important one, often gets lost amid a sea of swill about failings of systems which no sane person is advocating, referencing everything from Italy to the European elections, and thus completely missing the point. One would hope that someone untrammelled by the falderal that goes with being part of New Labour would be able to debate the issues like a bright person, one who realises that 'the answer' is rarely one specific thing, not even if that thing is locking everyone up. PR, or more specifically, sensible electoral reform, can quite conceivably be part of the answer, and thus has to be part of the debate.
As you mention the shires, one thing I would very much like to know is how much effort you would make to sort out the electoral registers before equalising the boundary sizes. The Electoral Commission reports that under-registration is about 5 per cent in the shires, compared to 18 per cent in inner London. Getting these folks on the register won't make a jot of difference to the seats, I'm guessing – if one can't be arsed registering, I doubt they can be bothered voting either. It will, however, go a long way to equalising the size of the constituencies, reducing the size bias, but doing damn-all to your deficit against Labour. What then?
We are in agreement that the boundaries give Labour an electoral advantage, and, given that we both have eyes and cognitive abilities surpassing those of certain members of the front bench, we should be in agreement in noticing the fallacy in the statement: "the bias in the system at present is mostly accounted for by variations in size between constituencies". Simply. Not. True.
Thank you for your time. It would be great to debate this further, although not living in your constituency I realise I can’t make any concrete claims on your time. However, if you could spare the seconds, it would be marvellous. I promise it'd be fun.
All the best,
Paul Davies
P.S. something to decorate the office with:
Overall system bias: http://www.makemyvotecount.org.uk/blog/images/bias.html
Difference in constituency size: http://www.makemyvotecount.org.uk/blog/images/constitsize.html
Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right: the Conservatives and the electoral system: a summary
Posted by pauldavies on October 04, 2005 | Comments (13)
Preface
If the Conservatives had drawn level with Labour in 2005, with each party polling 33.8% of the vote, Labour would have secured 336 seats and the Tories just 220. That is an unfair lead of 18% of all the seats in the House of Commons. For the Conservatives to win outright with a majority of two, with 324 seats, they would need a national lead of 11.7%. This is a larger margin than they had as the governing party in 1979 and 1987, and all for a majority of two.
Explaining this discrepancy—this blatant bias in British politics—is at once fiendishly complex and infuriatingly simple. The simple answer is that the bias is the consequence of the First-Past-the-Post voting system used to elect MPs, a system the Conservatives couldn't support more vehemently.
The complexities are dealt with in the Electoral Reform Society's new briefing, 'The Conservatives and the electoral system'. It's a must (if perhaps slightly painful) read for any Conservative, supporter or MP, and one which I intend to share over the course of this week, broken down into smaller, more manageable chunks, like something off late-night BBC exam-time television. (Impatient souls can download the full PDF now.)
However, in the hip and exciting world of the Interweb, fewer and fewer people have time to read such things, even in bitesize form, especially if they believe they're going to spend a long time reading something they'd rather not hear. So, in the name of accessibility and altruism, I've prepared a shorter, snappier, version, concentrating on the key points and swerving some of the psephology. Continue reading, or remain unenlightened.
That politics is about power is about as simple and axiomatic a statement as you'll ever come across. It is, however, a little too simple. Power, you see, is no good on its own; in the dirty world of politics it either comes at the expense of somebody else or it's nothing. It's the same, largely pointless, keeping-up-with-the-Joneses nonsense based on people's daft pre-occupation with what strangers think of them used to cripple human progress and sell Volvos. Anyone who says otherwise is either a child or a fool and should be ignored or slapped until they see sense or the inside of a padded cell.
Similarly, anyone who can justify the following stat in the name of anything resembling common sense or common decency should be awarded the Nobel Price for Rhetoric.
In 1992 the Conservatives under John Major outpolled Labour by 7.6 percentage points but got an overall majority of only 21. [In 2001], by contrast, although Tony Blair did only a little better than John Major, leading the Conservatives by 9.3 points, he won a majority of 167. —The Economist, April 8th 2005
This also means that it takes about twice as many votes to elect a Conservative MP as it does to elect a Labour MP. If I was a Tory voter, I think I'd be mildly aggrieved that I was deemed only half as worthy of my place in the democratic system as a random Labour counterpart.
Yet despite this, the Conservatives, for reasons born out of either blind optimism or wilful ignorance refuse to even think about what could be done to even things up. Were it simply a refusal to change anything, one could perhaps understand it, but failure to even consider possible solutions smacks of stubborn stupidity.
Under such circumstances, one is usually best advised to let the ignorant rot, "never smarten up a chump", as W.C. Fields would say. But that seems a little too cruel, and I never take advice from men named after a toilet. And besides, we've seen the trouble a majority government without effective opposition can wreak in too many foul and inhumane ways recently to sit by and do nothing.
So here we go… This isn't intended to be a typical 'FPTP is rubbish, STV would be much better' exposition—we have plenty of them already, and the Tories have ignored every single one. The purpose of this piece is to awaken the Conservatives to issues they've up until now simply pretended didn't exist, but which they would be well-advised to engage with. And if at the end they still choose to champion FPTP, that's okay, but at least they'd be doing it from an informed, rather than a party-political, basis.
The ERS report is split into five main sections: the 2005 election, the boundary review, how boundaries can bias the system against the Conservatives (but how they really aren't that important), the real reasons for bias, and what can be done about it. For ease of reference, I'll follow pretty much the same course here.
The 2005 Election
Overall bias
A common argument used to defend FPTP from a Conservative point of view is that it may be biased in favour of Labour now, but one day the pendulum will swing and it will be the Tories that are able to repress free speech and execute Brazilians or whatever else they feel like doing in the name of justice, combating terrorism or placating Rupert Murdoch.
This misapprehends the history of electoral bias and vastly underestimates the current state of play.
The principal means of measuring electoral bias is to consider how the two main parties would fare against each other if there were a uniform swing from the party that won the popular vote to the runner-up, such that they drew level on votes. To see how electoral bias has operated since the end of Second World War, see this chart. (*=estimate of result using new boundaries that came into force in 1974, 1983 and 1997 respectively)
The system hasn't worked in the Tories' favour since the 50s. Throughout the 60s and 70s, Labour experienced a small bias, a lead of about 20 seats on level votes, but nothing particularly impressive. However, since 1992, things have gone a bit crazy. In 1992, the bias was 38 seats in Labour's favour. In 1997 this had increased to 79. By 2001, following a 1.8% swing to the Conservatives that saw almost no seats change hands, the level votes scenario had Labour ahead by 140 seats. This monstrous figure was tamed slightly in 2005, to 116 seats, still wildly out of line with historical figures. Tony Blair may have been the fertiliser that caused the bias to grow so fast so quickly, but that is no reason to think he'll take it with him when he leaves. It is more likely, given the Prime Minister's declining popularity, that his departure could increase the bias further.
Bias in England
Surprisingly little was made of the fact that the Conservatives polled 65,704 more votes than Labour in England, yet ended up with 92 fewer seats. Whether this was because they realised bemoaning this statistic would mean people like us would badger them some more about electoral reform, or whether it was because they lacked the balls to campaign wholeheartedly for an English parliament is hard to say. Either way, it's an important issue.
The reason for the Tories getting battered seat-wise in England, despite having more votes than Labour lies in the metropolitan areas. Outside of London, the Conservatives won just five out of 124 urban seats. That's five MPs for 1.1 million votes, votes that under a more proportional system would have returned 30 MPs. This is a larger problem than just fewer metropolitan members in the Commons. As the report states: "FPTP has not only weakened the voice of the Conservatives in the big cities, it has also weakened the voice of the big cities within the Conservative party… the perception that a minority party does not matter in the area is self-reinforcing." Talented Tories, if they wish to rise up the ranks, are forced to abandon their local area in order to have their say, thus further lessening the chances of the Tories winning seats in the cities.
But enough of England; things only start to get really amusing across the borders.
Bias in Scotland and Wales
There were 59 seats up for grabs in Scotland in the 2005 general election. Labour got 40 of them (67.8%) on just under 39% of the vote, at a cost of 22,681 votes per MP. The Conservatives only managed to elect one MP, at a slighter grander cost of 369,388 votes.
In 1997 and 2001, the quarter of a million Conservatives in Wales failed to elect a single MP. 2005 was therefore, a time for much celebration, as they scooped three seats (albeit two by wafer-thin majorities of 133 and 607) at just under 100,000 votes per seat. Labour polled almost exactly twice as many votes as the Conservatives in Wales, and were rewarded with almost ten times as many seats (29) at just 20,511 votes each.
It's not all bad news, however. When Scotland and Wales were devolved, and the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly were created, it was thought that allocating seats in such a ridiculous manner would be a bit stupid and would not lead to either public support or effective governance. With this in mind, they opted to hold the devolved elections under fairer systems, thus saving the Conservative Party from Celtic oblivion.
The boundary question, or why Oliver Heald is a bit of an idiot
Would the Hon. Gentleman accept that the bias in the system at present is mostly accounted for by variations in size between constituencies throughout the United Kingdom? If we had an equal electoral quota that was properly implemented throughout the country so that constituencies were the same size we would have a much more proportional system and one that did not have the bias within it? —Oliver Heald, speaking in the Commons, June 22 2005
Talking about the 'unfair' state of constituency boundaries is the Conservative Party's way of dealing with the electoral bias in Britain. In Conservative World, it is easy to see that the average Conservative seat contains more electors than the average Labour seat, and thus easy to see where the problem lies. Take Heald's quote above, Boris on Question Time, or Peter Oborne in the Spectator. They should, I suppose, all be commended on spotting that something is wrong, but their pronouncements as to why things are wrong are equally erroneous.
The net effect of the new boundary changes, (based on data from February 2000 and not likely to be used for Westminster elections until at least 2009) if used in 2005 would have been to increase the number of Conservative MPs by around seven, reduce Labour MPs by six and increase Lib Dem MPs by three, thus reducing Labour's majority from 66 to 50. Nothing special, in other words, and nowhere near explaining the bias highlighted earlier. The only thing it will do is make it harder for Labour to have a majority despite a Conservative lead in votes; it will make little difference to Conservative chances of establishing a majority of their own.
There is a more subtle, and arguably more important, aspect to the redrawing of boundaries than the mere creation and elimination of certain seats. For example, making certain Labour-held marginals more or less difficult for the Conservatives to gain on a given national swing. Due to knock-on effects and the fact that some people's voting behaviour will change when they are put in a new constituency, the more subtle outcomes of boundary changes are generally very hard to account for, however clever a party's lawyers may be.
Take Northamptonshire as an example. Northamptonshire is due another seat, an increase from six to seven, due to population growth in the mainly Conservative areas in the south west of the county. The Conservatives thus now have an extra safe seat (South Northamptonshire). However, South Northamptonshire robs surrounding marginals of key Conservative voters, enough to wipe out their thin majorities in Northampton South and Kettering and almost in Wellingborough too, meaning a net loss of one seat for the Tories.
Overall, therefore, fiddling with the boundaries is all a lot of posturing with very little purpose. To make this abundantly clear, one needs only look at how the difference in constituency size has changed, or rather not changed, over the years. As this chart (*='notional' figure if the boundaries introduced in 1997 had been used in 1992) shows better than any amount of words and numbers could, size really doesn't matter; anyone who spots a correlation between this chart and the earlier one showing overall bias might want to book an appointment with their local optician. Perhaps Mr Heald would like to print them out and stick them on his wall.
For a full explanation of how the boundary commission works, including the specific changes to constituency boundaries, see the full report.
The real reasons for bias
Bias summarised
With boundaries being consistently tilted in Labour's favour since the advent of rock and roll, and overall bias only really taking off along with grunge in the early nineties, there must be some other, significantly more important, factors to explain why the system hates the Tories. And there are, namely, differential turnout and inefficient vote distribution, including political and electoral strategy and tactical voting.
Differential turnout
Turnout in 2001 fainted like that time Margaret Thatcher fell face first from the podium during a conference speech. And like the Iron Lady, it hasn't recovered.
The unprecedented fall in votes was concentrated in the most working-class safe labour constituencies. In 2001, turnout in Labour seats was only 58.0%, as opposed to 65.3% in Conservative seats. Combined with a 9.1% difference in electorate size, the actual gap in terms of voters was 22.9%—47,618 people voted in the average Conservative seat and only 38,739 in the average Labour seat—a gap ten times larger than the equivalent figure in 1959.
Blame Blair, or blame the general shift in British political attitudes, but don't blame the boundaries.
There's not a lot that can be done about this; compulsory voting would eliminate the difference, but it's very unlikely to help the Conservatives—Labour would gain in the vote, but seats would probably remain unchanged.
For a more detailed explanation, involving a lovely little example, check the full report.
Inefficient vote distribution
One of the more successful items of nineties ephemera were 'No Fear' branded T-shirts. They're still going, but you don't see nearly as many of them these days. They became popular through whacking competitive and rebellious slogans on cheap pieces of material, such that the wearer might be deemed a cross between James Bond and Evel Knievel. One such slogan was 'second place is the first loser.' It was (not) known in the trade as the 'First-Past-the-Post' slogan.
Coming second under FPTP is pointless, vote for a second place candidate and you might as well have voted for the Monster Raving Loony. No one cares about you. This is why a move that would encourage a few hundred extra people to vote Labour in a tight marginal, but alienate a few thousand up in Liverpool is worth doing, politically speaking.
This is how FPTP distorts the political process—it encourages negative campaigning, as there is no need to be any good if you can make your opponent appear worse; it alienates millions of people as their votes don't make a bit of difference to how the country is run, all because of where they live and it reduces policy-making to short-termist tat specifically engineered to bribe the special voters into placing their cross in the correct box. Defenders of FPTP defend this as the best means of running an effective, democratic country.
There is no way to fix inefficient vote distribution through redrawing boundaries. As the full report states:
While there are substantial numbers of Conservative supporters in South Yorkshire, for instance, there is simply no way of corralling enough of them into a single-member constituency to give them a chance of winning a seat, however much one bends the boundaries. The Labour vote being 'lumpier' (more efficiently distributed), it does tend to be able to achieve representation where it is locally in a minority, although there are cases such as Surrey where it is too thinly and evenly spread.
It continues:
Avon provides an insight into how the system can work against a party with evenly spread support. In 2005 the Conservatives were very narrowly the most popular party in the county, with 31.9% support to 31.8% for Labour and 30.9% for the Lib Dems. Yet they won only 2 seats, compared to 3 for the Lib Dems and 5 for Labour.
It should also be noted that in Avon the average Conservative seat is slightly smaller than the average Labour and Lib Dem seats.
Part of the reason for the Conservatives' relatively inefficient vote distribution is tactical voting, which has become increasingly clever since 1992, with voters in 2005 able to consult a number of websites to find out how best to vote against the Tories, including 'swapping' their vote with someone in another constituency.
Post-1992 bias summarised
The change in the vote share of the three main parties since 1992 is as follows:
Conservatives - 9.8%
Labour + 1.5%
Lib Dem + 3.7%
Allowing for boundary changes, and assuming these changes took place uniformly, the outcome of the 2005 election would have been very different. In short, the Conservatives would have been 48 seats better off, taking 30 from Labour, 16 from the Lib Dems and two from the others.
Labour's success in manipulating the voting system is "the stuff of politics rather than boundary distribution or electoral mechanics". FPTP puts such a premium on swing voters in marginal seats that whoever works them the most effectively runs off with all the prizes. The Conservatives might think, therefore, that all they need to do is ape Blair, and win these voters back. They might want to think again.
"There is no reason not to expect a substantial pro-Labour bias in terms of translating national share of the vote into seats."
Despite 'tactical unwind', and the culling of some superfluous Scottish seats, the bias in 2005 was still monumental. The problems of differential turnout and inefficient vote distribution are not going anywhere fast, and whoever emerges from the current interminable leadership contest is going to have to either work with them or realise that to eliminate them he must eliminate FPTP.
The Conservatives and electoral reform
FPTP is an obstacle to the Conservatives in the essential business of politics, namely regaining power. If the Conservatives are happy existing with a bit under a third of the vote, a comfortable lock on representing some of the more attractive places in England, and very little chance of power, they should stick with FPTP. If the Conservatives have more ambitious aims, they need to look further.
Over the last thirteen years, the power of the Conservative party in relation to Labour has atrophied to a startling degree. They spectacularly failed to respond to the shifting structure of British party politics and the desires of the nation as a whole. A series of nondescript leaders have been as useless at combating Tony Blair as they have been at combating their own alopecia. There is no reason to suggest this malaise is about to disappear.
Complaining about the boundaries is a pointless distraction from the real problems. Playing with boundaries will not, indeed cannot, solve the Conservatives' problems.
The electoral system bias means the Conservatives can't 'do a Labour' and win back power on 35% of the vote. Outside of some form of deluded dreamland, there is no way to reverse this situation; these problems are very real and will continue to plague the Tories for the foreseeable future.
There is, however, a way to even it up. Under any voting system, the Conservatives need to propel themselves into the 40% level of support to gain back governmental power. Under a reformed system, unlike under FPTP, Labour would need to do this too.
Winning back enough voters to push support over the 40% mark has proved to be very difficult for the Tories, largely because New Labour have commandeered so much of their traditional ground. Simply offering a change of management, especially given the large level of post-Black-Wednesday ill feeling associated with the Conservatives' ability to run the country competently isn't all that appealing. This situation isn't helped by a voting system that encourages negativity at the expense of real policy debate and demands that you focus your policies to the same few hundred thousand key voters, thus limiting scope for offering a real alternative.
The Conservatives are by no means compelled to embrace a change; new systems could well bring about new problems. But that doesn't mean that any new problems are in any way as bad or intractable as the ones they face under FPTP, and to dismiss the entire debate when it could result in both a better future for the Tories and a better future for the country as a whole is bordering on retarded.
Peter Oborne - ideas as unkempt as his hair?
Posted by pauldavies on August 30, 2005 | Comments (0)
Below is something ERS psephologist and all-round election guru, Lewis Baston, wrote in response to Peter Oborne's article in the Spectator back at the start of this month. It would've gone up sooner, but we were kind of hoping to turn it into a proper piece for the magazine. Boris, showing an alarming downturn in his otherwise obvious wisdom, appears not to have bitten. Nevermind. An enlarged version of what follows will be available as a proper ERS briefing on the Conservatives shortly. In the meantime, more Conservative chat can be found here, here, here and here. And in the ERS final general election report. (PDF)
Re: Stolen Tory Votes (Peter Oborne, Spectator 6 August 2005).
There are a number of errors in Oborne’s article about the Parliamentary Boundary Commission. For a start, population and census data are not (unlike in the US) the basis for constituencies – the basis is registered electorate, which is different. Population would include people not on the electoral register for reason of foreign citizenship, age or under-registration (a serious problem particularly in the large cities, that was aggravated by the poll tax when the current boundaries were drawn up).
Neither is the requirement for the boundary commission to use out of date figures as big an issue as Oborne claims. If the boundary commission were to use the latest available figures, rather than the 2000 electoral register, three more counties would gain seats and three more would lose seats – not dramatic stuff, and worth only 6 to Labour’s majority rather than up to 20 as Oborne suggests.
The examples quoted by Oborne and most other critics of the boundary system – the small electorate in the Western Isles and the large electorate in the Isle of Wight – are not a consequence of the slow pace of the review. They are rare, long standing anomalies permitted by the ability of the boundary commission to take ‘special geographical circumstances’ into account. A few islands having rather too few or too many electors is not a threat to democracy. There is something to be said for making constituencies more rigorously equal-sized than they are at the moment, but advocates of this course have to accept that it would undermine one of those pillars of first-past-the-post (FPTP), namely that strong and stable link between MP and constituency. Frequent boundary changes would destabilise the link, as would the fact that many constituencies would cease to bear any relation to natural communities. Would people really prefer a seat such as ‘Southampton Central and Cowes’ to an oversized constituency covering the whole Isle of Wight?
Oborne says that ‘it would be an easy enough matter to change the basis of calculation to reflect votes cast rather than population.’ This, to put it bluntly, is bonkers. The number of votes cast in a constituency, and its relationship to the turnout in other constituencies, is not fixed. It will vary with each election and instantly throw the calculations out each time. If this bizarre suggestion were to be enacted would give rise to anomalies even greater than those under the current system. It is also dubious in principle, as it implicitly regards the non-voter as undeserving of representation. It amounts to a collective punishment of electors for low turnout (often the fault of the political system rather than the electors). It is an example, like the creation of constituencies that are not communities, of a suggestion made for the convenience of one group of politicians at the expense of what voters want from their local representatives.
There is no way of ensuring that FPTP produces equal treatment between two major parties. There are all sorts of reasons, including political geography, tactical voting (very important in the contrast between 1992 and 1997), the parties’ strategies, differential turnout, the distribution of each party’s vote, and – in a small way – boundary determination, which can affect the way FPTP works. Many of these factors work unpredictably. The only way of ensuring that there is a proportional relationship between votes and seats is to introduce a system of proportional representation – it really is that simple. Ferdinand Mount, and Keith Best of Conservative Action for Electoral Reform (CAER) are quite right to see PR, rather than tinkering with boundaries, as the solution.
Another authoritative word on the boundary issue
Posted by pauldavies on June 16, 2005 | Comments (0)
Constituency boundaries
From Professor R. J. Johnston, FBA
Sir, The seats that Labour won in the recent general election on average had fewer electors than those won by the Tories not because the Boundary Commission defines smaller seats in urban areas (report, June 13) but because of the long delays between redistributions.
The constituencies this year were defined using 1991 data, since when city seats have tended to lose population, thus helping Labour. More frequent and quicker redistributions could significantly reduce that (but Parliament has resisted that in the past). The constituencies now being defined in England use electoral data from 2000: when first used they will probably be nine years old, and they are likely to last until at least 2016.
Although this “creeping malapportionment” benefits Labour and was one of the reasons why its 3 percentage points lead in the votes translated into a 25-point lead over the Conservatives in seats, it was not the main reason. Differences in turnout were more important. Labour tends to win in seats with lower turnouts than those won by the Tories and the Boundary Commissions cannot be blamed for that.
RON JOHNSTON
(Co-author, The Boundary Commissions, Manchester University Press, 1979)
Boundaries and bias (again)
Posted by lewisbaston on May 18, 2005 | Comments (1)
Some more entrants to the 'nonsense about boundaries' file from the Sunday Telegraph , Scotland on Sunday and their columnist Gerald Warner (who should probably lie down in a darkened room until the feelings go away).
I'll leave the Scotland question for a later entry, but consider this fact. In 2005 the average English Conservative seat had 73,221 electors and the average English Labour seat had 67,671 electors. Shocking, says the chorus... but hang on. In 1979 the average English Conservative seat had 69,923 electors - and the average English Labour seat had 61,150. The boundaries were therefore much more biased in 1979 than 2005 (a difference of 14.3% rather than 8.2%). But the system as a whole operated much more fairly between the main parties in 1979 than it did in 2005.
To paraphrase that famous sign from the Little Rock campaign war room in 1992: It's Not the Boundaries, Stupid.
If you want a system that rewards parties systematically in relation to the votes they obtain, you cannot guarantee this outcome under FPTP whatever the boundaries. You need a proportional system. It's that simple.
Lines of least resistance
Posted by lewisbaston on May 17, 2005 | Comments (3)
Everyone should be aware by now of how ridiculously unfair the election result proved to be.
However, there is a worrying tendency for some people, particularly on the Conservative side, to imagine that all that needs to be done is to jiggle around with the constituency boundaries a bit and that would produce a fair relationship between seats and votes between the big parties at least.
This, I'm afraid, is nonsense.
The reasons why it is nonsense are a bit complicated to go through in detail on a blog post, but an analysis piece should appear soon on the Electoral Reform Society website.
In brief, the reasons that the system is biased in Labour's favour are not much to do with boundaries, more to do with intrinsic defects in the First Past the Post electoral system. FPTP rewards parties whose support is 'lumpy' - moderately high in some areas, low in others, as Labour's has been in recent elections. It brutally punishes parties with a middling vote spread evenly across the country, the prime example of this being the Alliance vote of 25.4% in 1983 which netted only 23 seats. Anti-Tory tactical voting has distorted the electoral system against the Conservatives at every election since 1992.
Labour also benefit from 'differential turnout' - that turnout in safe Labour seats is low. If there had been full turnout, and the party shares of the vote in each constituency had been exactly the same as in the real 2005 election, the Labour lead would have been 2 points greater. The system 'thought' Labour led by 5 points, not 3. There's nothing that changing the boundaries can do about this.
The forthcoming boundary review will do a bit towards improving the fairness of the electoral system, but not much - it will abolish a few seats in depopulated urban areas and create a few new rural and suburban seats. But on my estimates this would only reduce the Labour majority to 52, and still leave the Conservatives needing a lead as large as they achieved in 1987 to get a bare overall majority of 2. The Times suggests as much today.
Complaining about boundaries is the classic line of least resistance from those who have realised that there is something very wrong with the way our electoral system works, but who are not willing to grapple with what needs to be done.
