Referendum on PR at the General Election

[Mike777]

"Seize this moment to make real constitutional change, bring in proportional representation for the Commons, a fully elected Lords and clean party funding. It's too late now for a fag-end government to command the power to do it. Now it would smack of last-gasp gerrymandering to save parliament's sorry necks. But a formidable array of reformers is gathering to demand a referendum on the principle of PR to be added to the ballot paper at the next election. Let the people decide if they want to blow fresh air into parliament.

Make Votes Count, the Electoral Reform Society, Compass, Unlock Democracy and an array of reformers of many kinds are now determined to add a referendum to the next election.

From Make My Vote Count http://www.makemyvotecount.org.uk/news.html

[Strategist]

For this demand - which obviously I support - to get any kind of traction, we need to see a complete haemorrhaging of support from the mainstream parties on 4 June.  We need to see Lab+Con getting <50%, and the LibDems into fourth or fifth place behind the Greens and UKIP in England, with Plaid and SNP in first place in Scotland and Wales.

The mad thing is that, after all these years of fruitless waiting, with eg the Great British electorate taking Iraq etc in their stride as no biggie from their perspective, suddenly, unexpectedly an earthquake is occurring and all is possible.

There is no better time for activists to take to the streets and get leafletting etc for the left platform of their choice, I personally would advocate the Greens, others of a more traditional disposition may prefer No2EU... the point is that there has probably been no better time in years to make an effort to do some traditional electioneering work.  One poll estimates that as many as one in three voters are thinking about the Greens, and if they receive this leaflet:

http://public.easterngreenparty.fastmail.fm/Accountability  ,they may well act on it.

[Free Radical]

Strategist

While I know that your reasons for advocating these tactics are entirely honourable, and you have given your own recommendations on how to vote, your posting could imply that votes for UKIP might in some way be a good thing. I regard votes for UKIP, which seems to be a nasty rightwing nationalist organisation, as undesirable in every respect, no matter what other consequence they have. You could after all apply the same logic to votes for the BNP.

Personally, as I have said previously, I do not in any case regard PR as a panacea for our ills, and the countries that do operate a PR system seem to fare little better in their politics.

[Strategist]

Happy to correct any impression that I am hoping people will vote for UKIP.  However, I am resigned to the fact that they are going to get a very large vote indeed, so we might as well make the best of it.  People are itching to cast a protest vote, and any non big 3 party that can get its leaflets through doors is going to hoover them up.  I expect UKIP to hoover up more than the BNP actually, although both are going to do well. 

My main point is that there hasn't been a better time in ages for any left-of-New Labour activist to get out and deliver some leaflets, preferably the Greens and on that, I hope you might be persuaded (even if you're an actual Labour Party member!) 

On PR, Mike777 posted this not me, but I strongly disagree that it doesn't lead to better politics and a better democracy.  The Swedes, Dutch or the Germans would think you insane if you told them they'd be better off with FPTP.  I wouldn't offer it up as a panacea for all ills, but I actually think it would address a surprising many.  People closer to it than me might wish to comment on the revival of local government politics in Scotland since STV. 

The Guardian's lead story today is about Mike's posting ie the attempt to use the expenses crisis to get one last burst of constitutional reform out of Brown before Labour are sent to the wilderness.  http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/may/20/gordon-brown-parliament-constitutional-reform The article is pretty garbled lobby correspondent shite (like, is Mandelson for it or not, it appears to self-contradict), but it shows something is afoot.  I'm not hopeful, Brown should have gone for reform when he first came in, but honest supporters of reform just have to do what they can, and this Make Votes Count initiative should be supported. 

[Free Radical]

Strategist

There is a glimmer of hope that out of the abyss into which parliamentary democracy appears to have descended, that something good may come out of it in terms of constitutional reform.

As these questions are raised of course there will be a battle to mould them to fit particular interests - particular class interests if you like.

Coming back to the approaching elections - on the face of it the intervention of media types like Esther Rantzen (like Martin Bell before her) appears superficially attractive compared with the hold of the two parties, but the other thing it opens up is the ability of a different kind of elite to run the country - a kind of celebrity class of people with ties to the fourth estate - Berlusconi style, as I have already mentioned elsewhere. The advantage of the more traditional parties (including newer parties like the Greens) is that they are at least rooted in society - they have a base - rather than being a top-down media driven imposition. They also tend to reflect what I see as underlying class forces which media celebrities don't (or rather they do and that is almost entirely middle and upper class - but the class agenda is well hidden if there is one).

Nevertheless independents might have more scope - the Wyre Forest MP was pretty good I thought.

On PR - I'm not wholly against it - the right kind of system based on single transferable vote in my view, might improve things. But against Germany, Denmark and Sweden there are pleny of contrary examples... Italy, Israel, where politics is a nightmare of corruption and horse trading. And of course, at the back of my mind, it is hard to get rid of the example of Weimar Germany...

[Jon Teunon]

FR

PR isn't a panacea for all our demoratic deficits but some fversion of it is an essential first step. There is no one seriously proposing changing their electoral system to FPTP anywhere in the world, and like a lot of our 'institutions' are only here because they happened to evolve from our Anglo-Saxon past. No one starting a new nation would choose a constititional monarch, FPFP, House of Lords etc etc.

But as I keep repeating in 2005 Blair was elected with just about %22 of the eligible electorate. That is an apalling state of affairs.

That is more pertinent to this debate than your carefully selected examples. I don't think that 1920/30s Germany is very relevant. Italy is actually releatively stable democracy (inspite of the influence of the Catholic Church and Mafia). They've had numerous 'governments' but these can't be compared with the traumatic changes in administrations we witness in the UK. They're mostly changes in alliances - with a junior member of a coalition joining or leaving, they're not having elections anymore than we have. (As an aside perhaps that should be a crticism of rep. democracy - perhaps having electiions more often would be a way of controlling our M.P.s Levellers wanted annual elections).

And this is Malcolm Clark from Make Your Votes Count has to say about Israe's most recent electionl:

'There are ever-increasing calls from within Israel and amongst the Israeli political establishment to reform their electoral system and do away with some of the problems that arise from having such an extreme / pure form of proportional representation. There are fair criticisms to be made of Israel's system. And it is for Israelis to decide how they elect their representatives and are governed. However, Israeli elections often have the side-effect of people in Britain talking negatively about proportional representation and using the Israeli example as a way of attacking the electoral reform campaign in the UK. Thus it is worth having a few facts and points to hand to rebut any myths and ill-informed comment that you come across. Here are a few to start you off: 1. The election was very close between the two leading parties. When elections are close, the result takes a while regardless of system - the US Presidential election of 2000 took over a month (and was terminated by a dubious Supreme Court decision), and the 2008 Minnesota Senate election is still undecided! See our pamphlet 'Close Elections Globally' for more examples. http://www.makemyvotecount.org.uk/opus25808/Close_Elections_Globally_pamphlet.pdf 2. Israel is a very divided society (religious, ethnic, attitude to peace) and there is a need for even small minorities to get representation. It has an extreme form of PR for this reason. Nobody would suggest having a single national constituency and a very low threshold for election in Britain. You're not comparing like with like if you compare Israeli PR to elections in Britain. 3. First-past-the-Post wouldn't exactly be the answer in Israel! You would have a government with low levels of public support, low legitimacy, and low ability to deliver any agreements it enters into. 4. The formation and success of new parties (e.g Kadima and Yisrael Beitenu) in recent years has drained support from Likud and Labour and makes the process of forming a coalition and maintaining a stable government more challenging.'

[Brigg57]

There may be PR – one undemocratic system of government may replace another, but it will be the result of small groups of people using their skills to make changes which are NOT on any popular agenda.
JonT, Strategist,
I think we need to avoid a mechanical approach which foresees stages. It's like the old socialist idea that first we nationalise the utilities, then we nationalise connected industries, then we..leading to a fully socialist economy. The old CPGB used to have a stages analysis of how class alliances could be built gradually into a popular Front which would win electoral power and then...Stages always lead to political fantasy. There's many a slip twixt cup and lip.

PR in itself is not democratic. Unless there can be a more democratic government, then PR will ensure democratic changes to the composition of parliament but will also ensure that government remains undemocratic. If the many vociferous academics and small groups of political activists can link their campaign for PR into a major change in which executive power operates in this country, there will be a cosmetic change only - albeit a change which will make all the slide-rule maniacs much more happy.

Germany is likely to be the model for democratic government than any other as long as we have a stable party system, which is not guaranteed (it combines PR with local representation too). There governments rarely change at elections – it’s the minority party, usually the right-liberal FDP (and with the collapse of the left taking place there at the moment the FDP looks set to be king-maker again), which dictates the government in backroom negotiations often set before elections. A highly unstable party system would lead to highly unstable politics, which can set the political scenario-people working out their games, but which may lead to some very unpalatable consequences.

Too much bandying the term democracy about, anyway. We live in a particular type of democracy, with very fragile rights whose main strength lies in custom. I feel that a lot of energy could be misdirected here on the basis of tactical activism which will make no fundamental change to power in our society.

[Mike777]

PR is not enough in itself, but would any other system than FPTP lead to maybe 150, 000 voters in marginal constituencies deciding the outcome? And the parties chase these often fickle voters with their policies. The fabled middle England, should not have more power than the rest of us at the ballot box, and any system that removes that influence is to be welcomed.

It would also to some extent stop the main parties from using the negative line about voting for them to keep the other lot out and probably would increase the shamefully low turn outs at British General Elections, where people in safe seats feel their is no point in voting.

I always prefered FPTP when we had a genuine choice between a party representing the workers and one the bosses, but sadly those days are gone. The other thing that changed my mind was Margaret Thatcher. Even with those landslide election victories, she only got at best 44% of the vote, so 56% were against her, and look what damage she did.

[willp]

Yes, I think the deckchairs should be on the port side, near the stern  - that way they are much further from the iceberg.

[Jon Teunon]

Brigg

For once I largely disagree with your last post!

I have my doubts about a purist representative democracy in general as you know - so implying that I have an overstated faith in PR is way off target.

But the present system is atrophying politically as well as economically. (And I believe future historians will trace the beginnings of this to way before New Labour and the present debacle. Frankly I think that centrist politicians have found themselves more and more trapped by both the circumstances they face and the strategies they've responded with).

You don't have to be a Marxist to see the many contradictions that you have so well sketched out on these threads in the way our society and economy is structured. But this is because so much unfinished business has always been left – and consistently since the Restoration in1660. And constitutional and electoral reforms are both needed to make up for so many centuries of standing still.

But you don't seem to give much importance to the simple reality that both the UK and the US have systems that ultimately have stultified because they realistically only allow two choices at the ballot box. Any new Party that emerges almost always have some of their best ideas co-opted - at least superficially - only to wither away...

Yes of course the whole of society needs more democracy – in fact it needs to be drenched in it. But as you know we are so far from that. On the radio today someone just said that less than %1 of the population is a member of a political party. That is a shockingly low figure for a country that once had mass political movements.

Pr would give a chance of parties being formed that many more people would consider as a serious alternative. Too many intelligent people are just opting out and/or switching off politically. Why join a political party when you can attain more influence in the corporate world? Corporatism is a very real threat…

[Brigg57]

Jon, I'm glad you disagree, and that you avoid the flatulence of some who disagree.

I am not wedded to the existing political system of voting, though it provides effective government, and election results usually reflect with an approximate accuracy what people want to do. It's undoubted that PR is a more accurate reflection in parliament of voter feeling. We may get it. After all, we have PR in the Euro elections, and for some mayoral races. This hasn't resulted in a major shake-up from what I see - the Euro elections have become a sounding board for people to yelp with pain or disgust or, as now, with both, but with usually low turnouts. By-elections under FPTP have served for quite a while in also expressing such protests - Glasgow NE promises to be interesting later this year, but Orpington in 1962 was one of several by elections which put the liberals on the map, only to take them off again when a government had to be chosen.

I don't actually care if PR is brought in or not, because I don't see any difference. What I do see is that changes in political culture are reflected in elections - under FPTP this was seen in the replacement of the Liberal by Labour in the 20s, with the interesting result that the Libs suddenly became as interested in PR as Labour became suddenly uninterested. A disillusionment with old political parties which results in a major shake-up will affect either PR or FTFP - in Italy, the PR system resulted in political paralysis because of the strength of the Communist party, and when that party collapsed, govts started to become more stable - Berlusconi is more popular than ever in Italy, despite court rulings that he's a crook; with popular backing, he had a law passed which said so what you can't charge me.

My point is that without a change in executive power to make government itself more subject to popular control, then PR provides a happy hunting ground for the decreasing number of Politics academics and take up the energies of some political activists. You’ll get more parliaments which are a fairer expression of the electorate at a snap-shot of time, and you’ll get government which are chosen in a very undemocratic way.

A Presidential system would be no different. The US has a very effective one which reflects the balance between the national government and the states – when George Wallace nearly upset the apple cart in 1968, they tried to change the system but that change failed in the US Senate precisely because it would involve a change in the distribution of electoral power between the national and the states. See Gordon Wood’s seminal The Creation of the American republic for the manner in which the political system emerged – it’s a federal system in every sense of the word, and in itself truly admirable. There is a definite role for third parties to make a big effect when needs – look at the Populists, the Socialists and Ross Perot which all had a big impact on the way the party system operated – the two parties are major coalitions and adapt when challenged to incorporate the challenger. It’s the political culture rather than the electoral system which is the problem – not black power of woman power but green power (the greenback, not the Green party).
The mayoral elections run under PR also show an inbuilt tendency for two-party systems, but under unsettled political conditions, challengers to that system can do well – see Esther Rantzen, or the UKIP, or Ray Mallon the ‘robocop’ mayor of Middlesbrough. It’s the political culture which produces these people, and they emerge whichever electoral system we have.
The feudal system has changed, and while some feudal forms remain 9the electoral system originated in feudal times) they have adapted and changed. We want to make sure we’re not shadow-boxing and trying to carry through a revolution which isn’t really that much of a revolution.

Connect PR to a change in government, and you may find me more interested.

[Strategist]

Brigg said:

Connect PR to a change in government, and you may find me more interested.

and

a change in executive power to make government itself more subject to popular control

Intriguing, but what precisely are you proposing?

By the way, you are very wrong on this:

[FPTP] provides effective government, and election results usually reflect with an approximate accuracy what people want to do

You have missed Mike's point about the 18 Tory years, with 44% support at its maximum. 

[Brigg57]

Strategist,
I'm proposing that any campaign for electoral reform be more than a campaign for electoral reform. A parliament which reflects striving for power within the parties by knaves who manage to smell like roses is not democratic if government remains untouched. fantasies that this is all going to be democratic are just fantasies - we know how parties operate, and decisions are taken behind closed doors which are then communicated to party door-knockers and activists, an oligarchy whose rule is frequently interrupted by pesky uprisings  by activists which have to be handled until they die down - 'give the buggers a meeting if they're giving you any trouble" as the old Labour and trade union leader Jimmy Thomas put it.

That's why I'm more interested than protective rights than in giving these people any more excuses. I want rights to make sure they don't aim their guns at me as they struggle for their petty power. I’m not keen on democracy, and I think it’s only when you haven’t got any that you start thinking that maybe it’s the best of a lot of awful alternatives; when you have a measure of it (and we have a measure, no more) then you can see it in some of its full horror..

Cynical? Well - put it down to age, experience, reading.

You'll have to give me time to develop the argument that FPTP is more or less an expression of what people want. I started developing it on another post, but it died from lack of interest. I felt the Labour govt gave people what they wanted in 19445 even though they had over 50% of the population against them. I feel new labour gave people what they wanted after 1997 until at least the Iraq war although over 50% of the people were against them. I would say the same about Thatcher, though it was a deeply divisive govt which was rightly hated by the Left. But I have a meal to prepare for me family, me tired after a sleepless night, me full of self-pity and whining and everything contemptible. Will post again on this if required. Take care now.

[Mike777]

From The Daily (Maybe) http://jimjay.blogspot.com////////

Libertas candidate stands down for Greens

Ben Tallis, who is also the UK Policy director for Libertas, has decided to stand down for two very good reasons.

As a committed anti-racist he's decided that the battle to keep Nick Griffin out of the European Parliament has to take precedence over other concerns. That means backing the Greens.

Secondly, he'd become disturbed by some of the candidates in the Eastern European nations for the Libertas slate. Tallis has criticisms of the Lisbon treaty and EU structures, as do I, but is also a committed European and by no means sees himself as a Europhobe. However, he fears that some elements in Eastern Europe are distinctly dodgy, particularly about Jews and he felt, understandably, he could no longer lead the North West list for the organisation that makes great play of its pan-European nature.

Whilst Libertas are unlikely to make political waves here in the UK, especially now, they are a significant force in some parts of Europe - Ireland particularly - so it does matter what their politics are. Whilst there are some positive aspects to their platform (the criticism of Europe's institutions without feeling the need to blame the EU for everything, UKIP style) it is a deeply contradictory organisation.

[Brigg57]

Isn't the founder of Libertas some eccentric millionaire who claimed Daniel Cohn-Bendit was a pedophile during a tv debate. Cohn-bendit apparently laughed him off the set and the credibility of Libertas suffered.

Or is this some ill-remembered snippet of news form about a week or two back?

[Strategist]

I'm proposing that any campaign for electoral reform be more than a campaign for electoral reform.

Fair enough, Brigg.  Your views on the Guardian's "A New Politics" campaign would be interesting.  For me it feels like exactly the right prescription exactly 12 wasted years too late - but I'm not as leftwing as you.  It is fascinating to wonder if Brown feels tempted to go out on a massive big bang of constitutional reform than crawl out to be a crap unremembered sub-Callaghan loser of a PM. 

You'll have to give me time to develop the argument that FPTP is more or less an expression of what people want.

No worries.  If there's one thing you get on the Red Pepper forum, that's time.  Take your time.  In fact, I insist, have a good bank holiday, enjoy the forecast weather and pick this up next week.  (NB I doubt I will ever agree with you on this, unless you can really answer the question that, if FPTP is such a good idea, how come no other countries with a multi-party system decide to choose it?)

[rob9443]

Brown and Labours only hope is to go big bang on constitutional reform in their last year. Otherwise there is no purpose delaying the election except to give Cameron an even bigger majority. People like Hain support AV, which while not proportional would be a huge improvement on FPTP since voters would be free to vote for what they actually want rather than the supposed lesser evil. It would break the two main parties' lock on power.

According to the Guardian AV might lead to a hung parliament with the malignant Cameron just short of a majority in which case you might end up with a coalition. Anything that increases the chances of Vince Cable being Chancellor rather than Osborne is surely worth considering?

Of course electoral reform should have happened twelve years ago but in normal times the party in power wants to keep the status quo. That's why I'd far rather the election was delayed and Labour used its remaining time constructively. Chances are that only this parliament is hurt enough to deliver and if Cameron PM the sense of urgency will very soon dissolve.  The Tories are no more likely to devliver than New Labour once they've got their noses into Doning Street

[Brigg57]

Strategist,
I'll give you my answer soon - but I don't get the Guardian. It was the start of 1974 that I decided I was being misinformed by that paper.
So - what is the New Politics? I've never heard of it.

[CharlieMcMenamin]

Rob,
I'm beginning to increasingly doubt that Brown et all have a last year. I think the swell of public disgust could well force them into an autumn election.

I'm all for a modernised capitalist state, so I support electoral reform and most of the rest of the suggestions made in the Guardian. But a bit of me thinks they may be wildly, madly out of kilter with the public mood. There is a public revulsion at the conduct of parliament, and at what a de-politicised electorate consider to be 'politics' in general, not any great settled political will to an alternative way of doing things. A call for the 'smack of firm (but fair) government' or a supposedly apolitical 'clean hands' candidate - one somewhat more convincing than Esther Rantzen - seems more likely to draw a positive response than the Guardian's proffered alternative.

[Free Radical]

Charlie

I think this is absolutely right. And it's dangerous.