Tories want democracy....ish

The Tories are now up in arms about the threat of another unelected prime minister if and when Gordon Brown resigns and the Lib Dems decide to go for the rainbow alliance option.

It is so refreshing to have the Tories banging on about democracy is it not? Considering their staunch support for those less than democratic organs of the British state, the Monarchy and the House of Lords. Also their total resistance to allowing the British people a referendum (can’t get more democratic than that can you?) on proper PR. Any future leader of the Labour party will have been elected in the same way that John Major was when he became Tory PM in 1990. They were bounced into offering a referendum on the alternative vote and I have just seen George Osborne saying “let the people decide” on the news. Fair enough considering their new desire for all things democratic, so why not include STV as well and let the people decide?

The Alternative Vote, which uses the same constituency boundaries and voters, would elect one person to represent them in parliament, just as we do now. However, rather than marking an 'X' against their preferred candidate, each voter would rank their candidates in an order of preference, putting '1' next to their favourite, a '2' by their second choice and so on. If a candidate received a majority of first place votes, he or she would be elected just as under the present system. However if no single candidate got more than 50% of the vote, the second choices for the candidate at the bottom would be redistributed. The process would be repeated until one candidate got an absolute majority. The Alternative Vote is not actually a proportional system, but a majoritarian system as there is only one member for one seat and in addition votes not cast for the winner are still wasted.

They don’t really want any change to the system of First Past the Post which sees a tiny minority of marginal constituencies determine the complexion of the government while the vast majority never change hands. This means that the majority of MPs (currently Tory ones in England) never actually have to face a proper democratic election. In reality they have jobs for life. This means that a vote for anyone other than the sitting MP in these constituencies is totally wasted.

Is that democratic?

The same, of course, holds true for Labour MPs in Scotland, where the vast majority of seats never change hands. So we have the weird situation where the Labour MPs in England are keen on PR while those in Scotland are not. Not a cynical ploy to continue the lazy practice of not really having to fight an election is it?

A resignation: but not as we know it!

At last Gordon Brown has said he is stepping down as Labour Party leader. He said he wanted his successor to be in place by the time of the party's conference in September. Mr Brown announced his intention to quit in a statement in Downing St in which he also said his party was to start formal talks with the Lib Dems.


Why don’t you just go now? It’s far too late to inject any dignity into you premiership. It has been a disaster from the very beginning and now that it is almost over we get this last cynical gamble on keeping the Labour party in some sort of power. Whatever happened to the national interest that everyone was on about. Is that what this is? Or is it rather an attempt to stymie the Lib Dems efforts to cobble together a coalition with the Tories?

Gordon revealed that Nick Clegg has asked for formal talks with the Labour Party. So do we assume that the talks with the Tories are not going as well as we are being led to expect? I don’t exactly see why it is taking so long. Nick ought to insist on at least a referendum on PR or no deal, what is the point of talking about everything else first if that is going to be a stumbling block. Mr Cameron is slavering to get the keys to Number 10 so I would say PR or no deal. Let Cameron go form a minority government without Lib Dem support see how far that will get him.

The Clarion Call for First Past the Post

The Tories are campaigning for “choice” and “change” while Labour claim to want a “future fair for all” and yet both cling to a voting system that restricts choice to a minimum and entrenches unfairness, reported Richard Moore in the Independent on Sunday.

Mr Moore goes on to explain that in 1928 women got the vote at the same age as men and we had to all intents and purposes universal suffrage. Since then there have been 20 General Elections. In three of these: May 1929, October 1951 and February 1974 the party with the second largest number of votes got more seats than the party with the largest number of votes. In three others: February 1950, October 1964 and October 1974 the parliamentary majority of the winner was in single figures. In 1931 there was a National Government led by Ramsay MacDonald, who until two months earlier had been Labour PM, but with the Tories and Liberals had now formed a coalition despite the fact that Stanley Baldwin’s Tories had won an outright majority of seats in the election. So in a third of these 20 elections the first past the post system had not produced a decisive majority for a single party or the strong government which are claimed to be its chief merits. 2010 looks likely to add to that tally.

So what exactly are the chief merits of strong government? A large majority encourages arrogance and complacency. As is evidenced by the Labour landslide in 1997. The last time that PR was on the cards as even Tony Blair had not the confidence before the election to predict a landslide. And who could blame him after the “oh yea” moment from Neil Kinnock in 1993. To that end it was seriously mooted that Paddy Ashdown would have a seat in Cabinet and that PR would be a real option. That was all quickly ditched when the landslide materialised and the Tories were wiped out. This election hubris is quickly spent in the first or second term of a powerful government when a large part of its reform agenda is actually complete.

Then one or more of three things happen: the swollen ranks of government supporters realise how many of them will lose their jobs/seats on quite a small loss of votes and so the agenda switches to holding on to power rather than governing. The government flails around to extend in any way possible its reform agenda usually with disastrous results; the poll tax and railway privatisation spring to mind. And worst of all it begins to run out of talent and searches around for what it can get: I think people will agree that Harriet Harman, Lord Mandelson and Alistair Campbell come into this category among others. All this is made so much worse by an incompetent or ineffective opposition, Labour from 1979-1994 and the Tories from 1997-2010.

In the end panic prevails as we see in the hectic disorganisation of the current Labour Party a trend that I well remember from the mid 90’s infecting John Major's Tories just as much.

So there you are the clarion call for first past the post? Does it work? I don’t think so.