Friday 29 January 2016

David Owen puts the case for a Progressive Alliance and a cross-party Constitutional Convention

Guest post by Lord David Owen 
www.lorddavidowen.co.uk 

‘Can the parties build enough trust to bind themselves in before the election to work together after the election’?

‘Another progressive alliance building block must be establishing a cross party Constitutional Convention with the aim of bringing forward draft legislation for a federal structure for the UK’.

There are other ways of introducing democratic reform than rolling out referenda after referenda. The present Conservative government have made it clear that there will be no all-party Constitutional Convention before the 2020 election (1).

A cross party Constitutional Convention crucially depends on the Labour Party working with the SNP to ensure it has the widest possible support, authority and participation.

A first order question for such a cross party Constitutional Convention is can they and should they break the assumption hitherto that it will be followed by a referendum? A demonstration of both the unpredictability and the capacity for the manipulation of a referendum is the national Alternative Vote referendum conceded by the Conservative Party in the negotiations with the Liberal Democrats as the price for a coalition government in May 2010.


Every poll in the second half of that year showed AV being won in a referendum. By February 2011 Ipsos/MORI had "Yes" on 49% and AV looked certain to be endorsed  ten weeks later.
Cameron was forced to focus on the issue by Osborne who is reported to have said,

 "we have to win this .... thing; who cares what Clegg thinks?" (2)

Cameron true to his reactive "Flashman" character moved fast. Money was found to overpower the "Yes" to Fairer Votes campaign. More people became aware that AV was neither truly proportional nor fair 16 and can have bizarre results. Some saw it as another manipulation agreed post-election inside the coalition by Conservatives with no electoral mandate.

The "No" campaign spent the last few weeks exposing the three 'Cs': cost, complexity and Clegg, who was lampooned. Cameron now talked of AV being "bad for democracy".
On 5 May the referendum resulted in the "No" campaign achieving 67.9% support with 30.1% voting "Yes" to AV. The turnout was a miserable 42.2%. It is hard to see referendums after this AV debate as the only respectable, let alone only legitimate, way for a democracy to change the constitution and/or voting system.

Certainly the manifesto mandate route will and should be tried at some point in the future on voting reform, deliberately excluding referenda. House of Lords reform is also, after even modest reforms, is being sabotaged and the place even more dominated by patronage, a subject better dealt with through a manifesto mandate and stem from a Convention based on a federal UK.

This raises the question of the design of a people-led broad-based Constitutional Convention that should be established by opposition parties in 2016. It needs extensive public consultation and academic input but it will fail in Parliament unless there is cross-party involvement from people close to the party leaders that can help ensure its recommendations are carried through into party manifestoes by the 2020 General Election. This was what happened over the creation of the Scottish Assembly and the practical steps on devolved government where Donald Dewar played such an important role.

What the coalition government of 2010-15 demonstrated is that the post-election horse trading to form a coalition government, with no prior manifesto authority, is not a sufficient let alone a satisfactory basis for ensuring legislation. Yet the introduction of Fixed Term parliaments having survived one General Election has demonstrated some staying power for a post-election "fix". If it survives post 2020 it may become permanent.in which case it is likely to be a key precondition in place for proportional representation, itself the glue for a Constitutional Convention.
 
The ‘West Lothian question’ will need to be addressed but that will never have a simple answer. The McKay Commission chaired by the Clerk to the House of Commons from 1998 until 2002 (3) made a good start with the delicacy of watchmakers, and crafted with the skill of seasoned and acute observers of Parliament. Sadly the House of Commons has not been able to reach agreement.

The other important aspect to the Scottish referendum has been how it has inspired a sensible concept if not schemes in England to devolve more decisions to the bigger cities: London, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool and Newcastle, to Cornwall and elsewhere. In part this follows the success story of the gradual introduction of powerful elected mayors.

The time has surely now come for a small elected four-national second chamber, revising laws across the UK. If some appointed members were to be retained they could vote on non-legislative matters, while speaking on any subject, but only elected members would vote on the floor of the chamber. This proposition was a compromise discussed in 1911, the last time the Lords was seriously reformed. The present Lords is exploding under the load of its own contradictions. Broad reform across the UK through a Convention offers a path to enlightened federalism.

I will highlight only one possible model for a second chamber and that is the US Senate where the elected Senators are a reflection but not an exact copy of the population of the USA. Every State with its own legislature sends two Senators to Washington irrespective of the size of its population. What if the House of Commons continued to follow the UK population like the House of Representatives but the reformed second chamber of the UK followed more closely US Senate representation.

Such a second chamber even though elected would have mainly the existing powers of delaying as well as revising legislation, but in addition it could be empowered to block and to instigate constitutional change in the UK.  Its membership, by not exactly following the populations of England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, could more easily establish, as in the US Senate, a significant vote percentage where representatives in such a UK federal chamber could have a legitimate blocking vote on constitutional matters that could not be overridden by English votes within the second chamber.

This is a delicate mechanism to devise but if the right balance is achieved it could be a powerful unifier for the UK and seen as such by fair-minded people.

It is an important sign that Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the UK Labour Party, elected by close to 60% of paid-up members without counting supporter votes, aims to give priority to a constitutional convention. The Labour Party historian, Greg Rosen, interestingly uses the term 'progressive alliance ' in relation to the breakthrough period in the party's history 1901-1906 under Keir Hardie.

Hardie was always an uncertain supporter of 'a progressive alliance' but he went along with MacDonald's covert negotiations on a secret electoral pact with Liberal Chief Whip Herbert Gladstone in 1903. As a result Labour secured a clear run from the Liberals in 30 seats at the forthcoming election (4).

Here there is a choice. Can the parties build enough trust to bind themselves in before the election to work together after the election?

The first issue that looks as if it might face any progressive alliance, in terms of today’s parliamentary timetable, and could perhaps be the first building block of any progressive alliance for the next election, would be the NHS Bill (5) designed here in Queen Mary’s by Allyson Pollock’s team.

This is UK-wide in its significance but focused on England and will challenge the slogan English votes for English legislation. The Bill is before the House of Commons in the name of the Green Party MP, Caroline Lucas. Before the General Election as well as after the Election its cross party sponsors were Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell and all SNP MPs, including their present health spokesperson in the Commons. That Bill (6) is due for its Second Reading on 11 March 2016. Whether it progresses could be the litmus test as to whether a progressive alliance is possible.

The Liberal Democrats face an early choice of whether, under their new leader, Tim Farron, they are ready to divorce themselves from their earlier support for the Health and Social Care Act 2012. No 'progressive alliance' worth the name will survive with one party keeping the option open on doing a deal with the Conservatives again in 2020 and supporting the marketization of the NHS.

Another progressive alliance building block must be establishing a cross party Constitutional Convention with the aim of bringing forward draft legislation for a federal structure for the UK. That could be accompanied by a commitment to legislate any agreed recommendation early after a successful General Election and as they would be entitled to do to act without a referendum.

Any Convention seriously addressing the UK which has to include individuals close to the separatist SNP would be making a massive mistake to exclude Sinn Fein which has cooperated with power sharing. It would have Liberal Democrats but would not have the Conservative Party and sadly possibly not the DUP. But by choosing people as individuals it can be easier to forge a consensus in the UK as a whole.

Nicola Sturgeon said in 2012 that Scotland had to focus on – and here I quote - “the most effective political and economic unit to achieve the economic growth and the social justice that the Scottish people want. It is, in many ways, our version of the same question being asked across all mature western democracies: how to build a thriving but sustainable economy that benefits the many, not the few. The Westminster system of government has had its chance – and failed. Today, independence is the pragmatic way forward."

On this basis she can, I imagine, conceive at least of a progressive alliance, a Convention establishing a better pragmatic way forward than Scottish separation from the UK. Already many of the gas and oil revenue assumptions on which the SNP campaigned in 2014 have been shown to be invalid. There are many critical constitutional questions and techniques for cooperation to study and fulfil. To start to establish a Convention infrastructure, appoint research workers, and agree on an independent Chair of the proceedings might be possible early in 2016 but start after the May elections.

Then its recommendations could be submitted before the end of 2018 or 20 early in 2019 allowing the political parties, who would be well represented in all its decision making, to have time to absorb it decisions at their conferences and agree recommendations well before the General Election. This would give time for party politicians to compete for votes while at the same time presenting themselves as ready to fight for constitutional change as a cross-party manifesto commitment not subject to a referendum.

Sometimes people talk of constitutional reform as an academic subject something to be done only by all party reform. That is rubbish and we should remember, for instance, how, on the 24 July 1911 during the Parliament Bill, the Conservatives howled down Asquith as Prime Minister for 30 minutes in partisan rage while he remained on his feet unable to speak until Foreign Secretary Grey intervened (7).

My great grandfather, Alderman William Llewellyn, Liberal leader of Glamorgan County Council was also Chairman of his Liberal and Labour Association. They made 'seat deals' for the 1906 Liberal victory and I have no hesitation in saying that Labour will have to become more open-minded on individual seat deals with any parties who wish within a truly progressive alliance if they are to stand a chance of becoming the government in 2020.

Pacts or deals do not involve merging of parties or the loss of their identity, but they can be the means to legislate for a constitutional accord. Such an accord might be one where the parties that want to separate agree to stay in the UK, to participate in a federal union and have proportional representation across the UK. To help achieve all that it is surely worth persuading some constituencies to stand down, particularly where two seats are contiguous and they can have a better chance of victory in the other.

This is radical politics such as we have not seen for many years, but it is cross party, not one party; inclusive, not exclusive. This is not hard left, nor Trotskyist but socially responsible and capable of uniting the UK.


1. House of Lords Hansard, 2 July 2015. Column 2167 (Lord Dunlop)
2. Anthony Seldon & Peter Snowden, Cameron at 10. The Inside Story 2010-2015 (William Collins, 2015), p. 118.
3.  Report of the Commission on the Consequences of Devolution for the House of Commons, March 2013.
4.  Greg Rosen, Old Labour to New Labour (Politico's, 2005) p. 32.
5.  David Owen, The Health of the Nation. NHS in Peril (Methuen, 2014).

 7. David Owen, The Hidden Perspective. The Military Conversations 1906-1914 (Haus, 2014) p. 131.