It’s a very good idea. But it requires that MPs grant us this referendum. It’s not obvious to me that they would do so, given that all MPs were elected under the present system.

There does seem to be a consensus that the people want change, and that now is a golden opportunity to change the system for the better. The main problem with the system, in my opinion, is that politicians are our masters when they should be our servants. So we need to take power away fromn the politicians and give it to the people.

One way this could be achieved would be to gain a consensus over what reforms are desirable (these might include PR (either STV or AV+), recall elections, binding referenda at any level of government if enough people demand it, etc). Some possible reforms are presented here and here.

Then we invite people to sign a pledge saying at the next general election they will only vote for a candidate who agrees to these reforms. If enough people sign, the major candidates and parties will be forced to agree to the reforms.

The public are angry about expenses but I haven’t noticed any demands for PR outside of the left-wing blogosphere and the Guardian.

#2 Richard.
But that’s because the establishment don’t want any PR. Note the opposition ro electoral changed as clearly spelled out by the Telegraph yesterday. note how the Independent’s campaign was silenced post-2005 elections.

Most people are not aware of alternatives to First Past the Post, but if you ask them if the system is fair as it is, they would answer that it’s not. A debate needs to be had and a referendum.

Here the situation is blatantly clear. In 12 to 15 years, we’ll be sitting here talking about the death of Cameronism, commenting on articles about how fed up and hungry for change the British people are.

Thanks to FPTP, Britain has eerily entered a pattern. Landslide victory producing a one-party feud held by Party A for 12-18 years. Entrenched power brings sleaze and alienation which result in Landlisde victory for Party B. Another 12-18 years of total domination. Which brings sleaze and dissatisfaction. Hence Landslide victory for Party A again, and so on. Absolutely stupid situation.

Is it envisaged that political parties will have to rebrand themselves to adapt to the new electoral gestalt?

Personally, I don’t think NEW-new Labour really works.

Richard, I suppose you probably regard Alan Johnson and James Purnell as being “the left” but most wouldn’t, and yet they’re reportedly calling for electoral reform:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/may/24/mps-expenses-commons-reform

Yes, this article is from The Guardian but it’s news reporting so it must be in other sources as well. Get your facts right before you sneer.

Ryyan, well said.
The Times as well today are giving relevance to the subject of electoral reform.

Most Guardian readers probably went to Uni (or may still be there) and belong(ed) to groups in which sitting around in a circle was a guarantee that all decisions would automatically be democratic. It’s not the electoral system that is wrong it is the spirit with which people participate in the system. Take two countries with very similar electoral systems – Germany and Italy. Notice any difference? Whatever you do, tinkering with the electoral system might seem more fair or democratic but at the end of the day people get the government they deserve.

#3

We’ve had one 18-year government followed by one 12-year (and counting) government. Before that governments changed at a much faster rate. 2 instances of something happening isn’t sufficient to identify a pattern.

Rayyan is right at #5. Supporting proportional representation doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with being left-wing. Alan Johnson appears to support it; I don’t. He’s not suddenly more left-wing than me.

“2 instances of something happening isn’t sufficient to identify a pattern”.

Well. Count again. It’s 3 instances. The next elections too are going to be a total wipeout. And though you can never be sure, the next opposition (Labour) will be in tatters for god knows how many years, torn by internal struggles and widespread distrust.
Literally, a repeat of 1997 but with the Tories and Labour swapping roles.
So that’s 3 instances. And 30+ years.

If that’s good for democracy then I may be missing something here.

To be honest, my blood goes cold at the thought of what “a large jury of randomly selected citizens” will come up with.

#9

It looks as if you just used as evidence something that hasn’t happened yet. Do I really need to point out why this is silly?

Nino @ 7

If I remember correctly, Germany’s PR system has a 5% threshhold, which cuts down on an endless proliferation of splinter parties (that’s not an endorsement, btw).

The Observer published my letter too.

But i was the only one who signed mine.

[8] Indeed. And who is to say that, after 10 or 15 years’ of Cameron plus one (Johnson? Dorries? Hannan?) there will be a “centre left” Party ready, able and willing to win an election?

It is at least arguable that the electorate has been moving steadily to the right since the 1970s. In the upcoming Euros it is quite likely that parties to the right of the Tories will obtain 15%+ of the vote, and that parties of the left and centre will do well to top 40%. I expect this rightward move to continue during the Tories’ term of office for three reasons

- the increasing salience of race as a source of political cleavage. Remember that the left has no narrative to address this issue. We know that there is no intellectual or moral justification for immigration control, yet it is a political necessity. We are outmanouevred on this issue every time. The same is true for language: there is no intellectual or moral justification for granting “indigenous” languages official status in particular parts of these islands, yet denying it to tongues spoken by significant numbers of non-white Brits. Indeed, “race equality” demands that we do give these languages official status – yet I doubt even one in a hundred of whites who vote left in the upcoming Euro-elections would support, let alone campaign for this – not even the ultra-left groupuscules do so.

- the next ten years will be ones of economic collapse. The structural basis of such prosperity as we enjoyed between our exit from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992 and the banking collapse of 2007/8 – financial services and a house price bubble – is gone for good. The measures that the Tories will have to take, including sacking 10-20% of public sector workers – even Labour propose to sack 10% so we can be sure the Tories will sack more – and cuts of similar size in public sector pensions, together with further benefit reductions in the face of unemployment levels stubbornly above five million – to say nothing of asset sales to moderate tax rises, including a substantial part of the Council housing stock and the personal information held on the State’s databases – these measures may rekindle the flame of left-wing politics, but they are just as likely to nurture the far right. In any case they will lead to outbreaks of public disorder which will justify further repressive legislation and police tactics.

- the likelihood of major disruption caused by climate change. If the floods of 2007 had risen but a few inches further, it would have been necessary to evacuate the whole of Gloucestershire. Apart from the disruption inherent in such an event (with the necessity of imposing martial law, which inevitably means shooting innocent people out of hand) it is far from clear that the weakened economy could cope with such a blow.

For these reasons I think that, while the Tories may be replaced by a government more to our liking in 2020/25, it is just as likely that the BNP will be the official opposition by then – our FPTP system can do strange things – and the Army will have become sufficiently alarmed to at least stay in barracks while a coup d’état is mounted by sections of the Establishment in conjunction with the Police.

If I may take this part of a quote:

“what voting system and other changes would make Parliament more accountable to citizens”?

There is the issue where successive governments have held the view that convicted prisoners by their crimes warranting imprisonment have lost the moral authority to the vote.

However, moral authority has never been a qualification for the franchise in this country.

On the other hand, critics of the expenses scandal have expressed the view that Parliament has lost the moral authority.

Any reform of the system must include full universal suffrage, which means that all convicted prisoners get the vote before the next General Election. As some have pointed out, there are many in prison for doing less than what some MPs have done.

Prisoners are the most vulnerable group in society. They must have the vote to get their voices heard in Parliament. This abuse has gone on for a lot longer than the recent exposure of abuse of the expenses system.

This issue needs pushing up the political agenda.

I’m not sure how serious that comment was. But I can respect and disagree with an argument that PR is better than FPTP because it’s “fairer” in some way. We shouldn’t change a voting system because there’s a chance that something undesirable might happen in 20 years time.

Your comment sounds too much like the 1980s creeping fascism narrative.

A few comments regardless:

“It is at least arguable that the electorate has been moving steadily to the right since the 1970s.”

On some issues, perhaps. The right’s perspective on how trade unions acted in the 1970s and what freedoms TUs should have has become widely accepted. On the other hand, most people accept that the Tories starved public services of cash through the 80s and early 90s, and were very happy for Labour to dramatically increase public spending on education and on the NHS. Similarly on many equalities issues, most notably issues around homosexuality, the electorate has moved to the left.

“Remember that the left has no narrative to address this issue. [race]”

I disagree. The left needs to have the self-confidence not to be scared off by allegations of “political correctness” and to call out racism where it exists. We need to confront racism head-on. The failure of all main political parties to do this has allowed the BNP (aided by the Tories in the early 2000s) to drag the agenda on race rightwards.

“the next ten years will be ones of economic collapse”

This paragraph is too hypothetical for me to comment on. The events you describe could happen, just as lots of different things could happen. The response and organisation of ordinary people will determine a lot.

Then you get on to shooting people, the BNP being the official opposition and an armed coup-d’etat. Anything is possible, I suppose, but to say that these events are “just as likely” as a democratic shift to another government is surely an exaggeration. There was widespread public disorder under the Thatcher government. But people kept voting for the Tories, and then they voted for Labour.

previous comment aimed at MK, sorry

Goodness, MK, time to move to Switzerland I think.

Can anyone explain to me how PR can be prevented from giving party managers even more power, ie over the party lists?

Cjcjc, most PR systems do not give the power to party officials. The closed list regional PR system, like the one we use for the Euros, does. But open list regional PR systems, and the STV, which is favoured by the Electoral Reform Society, allow voters to choose between candidates on a party’s list, rather than just between parties, therefore invalidating the need for a party to rank its candidates – that’s the voters’ job.

Read up more on the various systems here:

http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/article.php?id=5

Alan Johnson is proposing Alternative Vote Plus, which is a mixture of the Alternative Vote and the Top-Up system, the latter of which is used in Welsh and Scottish regional assembly elections. AV+ was first invented and recommended by the Jenkins Commission, yonks ago. It’s far from proportional but it’s a definite step up from FPTP. However, if there’s going to be a referendum on it, and the huge effort that would be required to change things if it passes, I’d much rather there was a more radical option on the table. Maybe this is something the Lib Dems can push for.

Thanks for that link.

#11 tim f
“It looks as if you just used as evidence something that hasn’t happened yet. Do I really need to point out why this is silly?”

But I’m sure you’ve been reading the papers and, Gordon Brown and his few friends aside, all opinion polls suggest the Tories are going to mop the floor with Labour at the elections and that it may take at least a generation for Labour to recover.

You may not call it empirical evidence, but to ignore this is to live in lala land.

#7 Nino
Germany and Italy do NOT have the same electoral system. At all.

[16] Yes, Tim, on the question of gay rights the battle – outside of a few churches – appears to have been won: even the BNP don’t want to re-criminalise it. In fact, although their approach to matters concerning sexual behaviour and the place of the family in the scheme of things horrifies Conspirators like Laurie, it is probably more liberal than that of the Labour Party sixty years ago. The subject-matter of politics changes over time, after all.

On the question of race, I’m afraid you just make my point for me. What is your definition of “racism”, Tim? I have at least made a start on one – and I assume from your reply that you haven’t the slightest intention of “calling out” the kind of structural racism which I have identified.

As to the likelihood of my doomsday scenario, of course people will differ. Although I suspect those charged with emergency planning are a good deal leass sanguine than Tim appears to be, after what so very nearly happened to Gloucestershire.

Let me approach it from another angle. What do we think the polls might be (absent the creation of a new Party) after a year or so of Cameron? I suggest they’ll show roughly 40:20:20:20 where the Tories hold on to the 40%, Labour and the Liberal Democrats have 20% each and “others” – roughly half on the left, being SNP, Plaid and the Green Party and half on the right (UKIP/BNP) – also have 20%. Those of course are British figures – in England the right will have 55-60% of the vote. And of course Cameron is going to get rid of 60-70 seats from the HoC – common sense suggests that the bulk of the cull will be in Scotland and Wales.

This produces two problems. First, that the left has to get 50% of the vote in England – I should no doubt do some research to find out how often and under what circumstances it has managed this in living memory. Not very often, I guess.

And the second problem is that there will be no single Party able to say “vote for us to get the Tories out” other than on a local basis. When people are asked to vote tactically, there is bound to be a considerable leakage – because not all “left” voters have keeping the Tories out as their first priority.

I do not expect the various components of the “left” to have solved these conundrums by 2020 – not least because there is no common intellectual basis for them to do so. And I doubt that, in his heart of hearts, even Iain Dale expects the Tories’ third term to be incorrupt, let alone effective.

A coup isn’t the only alternative of course, and in my haste this morning I left out what may be a lieklier one – a celebrity and a media mogul corralling the various populist forces to present a list for 2024 which will appeal to those disgruntled with organised (what we think of as “proper”) politics whatever its political colour.

Last para, fourth word should be “likelier”. Sorry.

#21

The polls are suggesting Labour will suffer defeat at the next election, although I maintain a lot could happen between now and then.

The polls are NOT suggesting that Labour will be out of power for “at least a generation”. That is purely paper talk. Polls have no capacity to make a prediction like that. We simply can’t predict now how people will react to a Tory government making swingeing cuts, some of which some voters will imagine Labour would have to have made, but others which will be to key Labour projects which Labour will be able to say we would never have cut.

Mike – I didn’t make your point for you. What I was saying is that mainstream political parties on the left have made no serious attempt to challenge the right’s discourse on race, not that it’s impossible. Worse, they’ve believed they can make the issue go away by conceding ground to the right, instead of challenging it.

Not sure where you’ve got the idea I think calling out structural racism is a bad idea from.

IF the Tories win the next general election (and yes, the polls suggest they will but we’re still a year away), I would be gobsmacked if your 40-20-20 prediction was to come to pass a year into Tory rule, and the rest of your comment is also a hypothetical I find unlikely.

If Cameron really does get rid of 60-70 seats it will cause a massive outcry, and it will happen at some cost to himself and his party.

there is awindow of opportunity opening before us but its a small window & we could easily slam it shut fighting over what shape it should be. we have a coalition building round a program of democratic reform including the idea of a referendum on the principle of fair votes. only this tired, divided government can actually implement such a vote & thats why we should get behind Alan Johnsons proposal, its our best chance to ” blast open british politics”.
lets not get bogged down arguing over which reforms should have priority, we should grab as much change as we can get; while the opportunity lasts.

Mike Killingworth @ 14:

-…the increasing salience of race as a source of political cleavage. Remember that the left has no narrative to address this issue. We know that there is no intellectual or moral justification for immigration control, yet it is a political necessity.

You might be conflating ‘race’ (where the left does have some kind of ‘narrative’ re. anti-racism) and immigration. On the latter, there can be a ‘pragmatic’ position (i.e. there has to be some kind of control). For all its faults, an approach that ‘regulates’ who comes in and what qualifications/skills they have (as in the points system) is different from the race to the bottom by others who compete to limit the total numbers that enter the country – a ‘debate’ that always tends towards a grand total of ‘zero’ as each right-wing group competes to see who can come up with the ‘toughest’ policy. In addition, the right is split between those who object to all foreigners and those who just object to the ones with brown skins, so they are spoilt for choice this June between UKIP and the BNP respectively. Unfortunately, New Labour’s increasing flirtation with nativism (thanks for nothing, Phil Woolas) isn’t helping any.

Plumbus: the referendum should be held on the principle first, otherwise the voters will end up being asked to vote on a bunch of wonkish proposals re. which voting system to have.

[25] Well, we’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we? I base my view on (i) the inability of the Lib Dems to poll over 20% for any length of time (ii) the near-certainty that prominent Labour figures will still be doing a ferrets-in-the-sack impersonation 12 months after their calamitous defeat. Nor should we forget that there will be a massive and unremitting media onslaught on all kinds of public services (except the Armed Forces and the Police) but particularly health and education.

[27] I am not conflating – the question of immigration is central to the issue of anti-racism. You may not want to discuss whether the proportion of people in this country who are white is too high, too low or about right but many non-white people most certainly do. There is such a thing as safety in numbers, after all! What they see is white liberals accepting that the proportion of non-whites will increase due to differential birth-rates (because of course feminism comes before anti-racism, and none of us dare suggest that white women ought to give birth more – oh no, that’s nobody’s business but their own) but when there is any suggestion that this process might be accelerated by opening our borders to people from Africa, the Sub-Continent and the Carribbean; oh no, shock horror – and suddenly it’s people like RedPesto who are doing the conflating, conflating their own imaginary “anti-racism” with the Hard Right’s mendacous claim that the country is full.

(26)

there is awindow of opportunity opening before us but its a small window & we could easily slam it shut fighting over what shape it should be. we have a coalition building round a program of democratic reform including the idea of a referendum on the principle of fair votes

I don’t think I could agree more – electoral reform is needed, regardless of what many say the FPTP system is corrupt in that it does not allow for the election of a government that represents the majority.

Percentage New Lab 43.2% Cons 30.7% Lib Dems 16.8%

That was the % result in ’97 – New Lab didn’t get the magical 51% so were, in effect, a minority government.

The UK needs, desperately, a form of ballot that give a government for the majority.

New Lab might actually benefit from some sort of PR – it would give the Tories less seats then they would under FPTP in the inevitable Tory victory. As much as I would like electoral reform to be adopted for the right reasons (i.e. so voters stop feeling like their votes don’t count), if it is adopted out of political pragmatism then I don’t mind too much – I just feel, seeing as we’re going to overhaul the system, that we might as well go quite far in doing so rather than just introducing AV+ or AMS, both of which are not that much better than FPTP.

STV FTW!

Cameron should be bolder still. We need less politicians and the House of Commons could be cut to 400 or so. It is far too large. The constituencies need to be redrawn, quite radically in many places. And we need to address seriously, for a change, the ‘West Lothian question’. That means an English Parliament.

You a Tory, by any chance, Andy?

Mike Kiloingworth @

I am not conflating – the question of immigration is central to the issue of anti-racism. You may not want to discuss whether the proportion of people in this country who are white is too high, too low or about right but many non-white people most certainly do. There is such a thing as safety in numbers, after all! What they see is white liberals accepting that the proportion of non-whites will increase due to differential birth-rates (because of course feminism comes before anti-racism, and none of us dare suggest that white women ought to give birth more – oh no, that’s nobody’s business but their own) but when there is any suggestion that this process might be accelerated by opening our borders to people from Africa, the Sub-Continent and the Carribbean; oh no, shock horror – and suddenly it’s people like RedPesto who are doing the conflating, conflating their own imaginary “anti-racism” with the Hard Right’s mendacous claim that the country is full.

I’m sorry, Mike – did I run over your cat or something? The state cannot determine how many kids anyone can have, and the idea that ‘They’ will out-breed ‘Us’ is highly unlikely given the size of the white population in Britain. (You could just as easily pick on white Catholic families that don’t practice birth control.) Second, my post did not advocate open borders – my point was that, even if a fair system of immigration was devised, and everyone accepted it (or in a more pessimistic scenario, all migration was blocked), the debate about race would still continue in relation to those migrants who had already arrived, settled, and had children who were British by virtue of being born/raised/naturalised here.

[34] I have to go out shortly, will reply this evening.

Well the West Lothian question does have to be dealt with sometime, won’t it tim f?

(I mean doesn’t it…)

I’ve never met a voter who’s raised it on the doorstep yet. The only people who ever raise it are Tory members, fringe right-wing parties and self-obsessed media types on Daily Politics-type programmes.

The “cut down on numbers of MPs” thing also tends to be raised by Tories because they don’t realise how much casework the average Labour constituency generates. I don’t believe it’d be possible to cut down to that kind of number without reducing severely the quality of service that most MPs provide. Having more constituents also means an MP is able to maintain less regular personal contact with their constituents. If we were going to change the size of constituencies, I’d say democracy would be better served by having more MPs rather than less. (Not sure how you would fit them in the House of Commons, though!)

And of course it suits you to have those Scottish Labour MPs around doesn’t it!

It suits me to have Labour MPs around full stop, whether in Scotland, England or Wales. It suits David Cameron to have less of them. I wasn’t addressing the issue of representation in Scotland and Wales, I was addressing Andy’s idea that there should be around 400 MPs in total.

It’s fewer, not less, btw!

I think where MPs are concerned, ‘less’ is an acceptable term.

Technically “fewer” is grammatically correct, however I’m waging a one-man campaign against the pedantic correction of “less” to “fewer” on the basis that the word “fewer” offers nothing to the English language, since it always signifies something that is already obvious from the context. It is therefore entirely superfluous.