Tuesday 4 August 2015

Reforming Britain’s archaic system of Governance

The Time is Now—Parties need to get together this Autumn and organise.

No Longer a Long-term project...
 
I have lived through a political era where the period up to 1979 was more or less dominated by two parties. In 1951 both the Labour and Conservative parties, on a turnout of 82.6%, received 48% of the popular vote and the Liberals 2.5%. The seats won were 295, 321 and 6 respectively.

There was not much change in 1964 when Harold Wilson became Prime Minister with both main parties, on a turnout of 77%, receiving around 44% of the vote each and the Liberals at 11%—resulting in 317, 304 and 9 seats respectively. Again when Ted Heath won, the figures were not much different on a turnout of 72%, leading to a seat distribution of 330, 288 and 6.

The first significant change came when the Labour party split and the ‘gang of four’ established the SDP. This gave a massive boost to three/four party politics and the Liberals became rejuvenated. Together, the Alliance parties on a turnout of 72% received 26% of the vote—only 1% less than Labour. Yet Labour had 148 MPs and the Alliance only 13. That was the first time disproportionality manifested itself in such a stark and undemocratic way.  Of course, this made the Tory position impregnable with 46% of the vote and 362 MPs.

Without going into further details, that general pattern remained until 1997 when the randomness of the voting system favoured Tony Blair, New Labour—43% of the vote and 418 seats set against 30.7% of the vote and 165 seats for the Tories. The Liberal Democrats continued to be hurt by the First Past the Post system as always since 1983. Again, avoiding detail, it was a pattern that repeated itself in succeeding elections—Labour benefiting and the Liberal Democrats considerably underrepresented.

One matter that does not get too much attention when discussing the undemocratic nature of our voting system is the low voter turnout. The randomness and disproportionality inherent in the system is one of the reasons why people just do not bother voting. In the 1950s, turnout was 80% plus, in the 1970s it was over 70%, but by 2001 turnout had dropped to less than 60%. However, turnout did improve slightly in the next two elections reaching 66% in 2015.

The 2015 result is more or less a reverse of what happened under Blair in 2005—the only difference being it was not the Tories but Labour that benefited from ‘the lottery’ that is our voting system. In 2005, Labour got a 66 seat majority after receiving 35% of the votes cast, but crucially winning 55% of the seats in the Commons. Similarly, at present, we have a Tory government claiming a ‘mandate to govern’ on 37% of the vote and again winning almost 50% of the seats. In both situations, in terms of the ‘people’s will’ only about 23% of all registered voters supported Blair or Cameron.

Another problem increasingly emerging is regional and/or national under-representation which is artificially dividing the UK. It exaggerates political divides and leaves millions of voters without proper representation. For instance, in 2005 the Tories received more votes than Labour in England but won 92 fewer seats. Then, in Scotland 2015, the SNP polled some 50% of the vote yet they secured 95% of the seats.

So what is clear:
·         Two-party politics has long been dead since 1983 and yet we continue to use an electoral system designed for a time when just two parties shared nearly all the votes.

·         We are well into the era of multi-party politics and around 8 million people in 2015 voted for smaller parties only to see their efforts result in 10 MPs. Peter Tatchell wrote a good piece on this in the Telegraph soon after the General Election—see weblink below.

·         Disproportionality is widening at an increasing and worrying rate.

·         The randomness of election results is becoming almost perverse—for example, compare 2005 and 2015.

·         Turnout is in decline—voter apathy is evident with a general view that ‘you are all the same’ and what is the point of voting in ‘our area as we know who will win’. Today’s electorate feels devalued.

·         The very concept of a ‘mandate to govern’ is increasingly being brought into disrepute, because the will of the majority is no longer clear or certain.   

For some twenty years now I have been commenting how in parts of Wales, with Labour, and the south of England, with the Tories, there is never much of a contest at election time—UK or local. Indeed it is rare for a parliamentary constituency to change political parties in some 400 seats covering over 26 million people—and we continue to call it a democracy!

In other words, all a ‘politico’ has to do is win the party nomination to be the candidate in a safe seat—and then there it is ‘a job for life’. Actually being elected the MP in those seats has little to do with the dynamic views of the electorate. Also, we have ended up with different systems of voting for various tiers of elections across the UK. There is no attempt at proportionality in Westminster and local elections—artificial majorities can lead to mini one-party states.

ERS Wales has argued:

STV can ensure that there is real electoral competition in all wards in Wales, and that there is an end to uncontested seats. In the 2012 council elections in Wales, 99 seats were uncontested and over 140,000 voters were denied a choice of who would represent them. Scotland used to have the same problem. However, since the introduction of STV in 2008 for Scottish local elections there have been no uncontested seats at all.

Four years ago a referendum on electoral reform was indeed held. In my judgement the timing was disastrous—voters were being asked to think about electoral reform in the middle of the most austere times in living memory for tens of millions of people. The outcome was disappointing. However, what was on offer was not STV and the campaign was ill-conceived. So there is little wonder only six million people (32%) voted to change the system. 13 million (68 %) voted to keep things as they are. To have received 32% in support is not only positive but heartening given the circumstances I have just described. It also augurs well for the immediate future and the task urgently facing us.

The recent ERS petition with some 500,000 signatories along with the public dissatisfaction existinggauging by the widespread reaction I receive through my social media activities as well as the efforts of groupings such as Democracy Now, Make Seats Match Votes, PR4Labour and other ‘anti-austerity’ partiesprove conclusively that ERS’s time has come. 

There is no time to waste. This autumn is key in terms of planning, making decisions and rolling out actions. Not only do we need to work towards a cross-party campaign and establish a broad based convention, ERS must be organised closer to the people by strengthening regional groupings, better integrating with groups of local constituencies.  In effect, ERS in certain respects should organise itself broadly as political parties do. 

Not only is the governance of the UK Union fragmented, so too are its electoral arrangements within the four nations—exaggerating national and regional divisions. The First Past the Post system continues to fail the British electorate, not only by failing to accurately reflect voters’ wishes but by creating divisions which do not really exist. The Union just about survived Scotland’s independence referendum, but increasingly the electoral system is splitting it...

Electoral Reform Society 2015—A voting system in crises