&greymullet;

Not Just War, Some Other Things Too

It’s My Party

Back in party conference season, when I first drafted this, I was once again painfully aware that I’m not welcome at any of them. Not because I’ve been protesting any conferences, but because, politically involved and opinionated as I am, I’m not actually a member of any political party.

Since an argument with a Green Party member at Guildford’s Ambient Picnic during my teenage years (I accused him, quite indignantly, of splitting the Lib Dem vote) I’ve been, more or less, helping out the Greens at every available opportunity (I lost the argument pretty spectacularly). I meant to sign up for membership so many times, but for one reason or another it never happened. Though there’re a fair few Greens among my friends, my more Liberal side waxes and wanes. I do still quite like the Greens, despite being a little bothered by certain policies (mostly silly things) and a certain niggling worry that they’re a little too statist for my liking. Thing is, I quite like the Lib Dems too, though their local election paperwork tends to be a mass of dodgy graphs and their actions regarding tuition fees have left something to be desired (to phrase that as the understatement of the year). And despite not getting a mention until the 237th word of this post, and their electoral pact with the original tuition-fee pledge breakers,¹ I’ve more than a soft spot for the Co-operative Party.

So to cut, at last, to the chase – these worries and confessions have all been by way of clearing the air before this momentous and ridiculous announcement:

I will be leaving my political allegiances for the next three years up to the fates to decide². The Co-operative Party, the Lib Dems, and the Greens will be going into my hat and will each receive, in turn, a year of my fortune and favour. I’ll not campaign for anyone else (when I sign an agreement, I stick to it). I’ll try my best to defend them in argument. I’ll even go to conference, where I can, and try to make the Greens a little more liberal, the Lib Dems a little more green, and try to get the Co-op Party to disaffiliate from their rose-bearing big sister.

God help me, especially if there’s an early dissolution.<sup>3


1</sup> The Labour Party manifesto for the 2001 general election said that the party “will not introduce top-up fees and has legislated against them.” Then, after winning a governing majority of their own (unlike the Lib Dems’ mere 16% of the government benches) they introduced £3000 top-up fees. And invaded Iraq, of course, but at least they hadn’t made a manifesto pledge not to do that.
² I reserve the right to back out on this, if I can come up with a really, really good reason.
³ File any early dissolution under “really, really good reason”.

On Alternative Voting, and the Alternative Vote

Lately, AV seems all too frequently to be contrasted with “pure PR” – Saturday’s Guardian being just one example of the trend. [1] This makes, at my count, two mistakes, the first of which is implying that the Lib Dems’ preferred method, STV, is completely/purely proportional.  Not only is this not the case, but critics of a completely proportional system (among whose number I most certainly stand) would consider this a grave slander on the good name of STV. When properly applied, there are implementations of STV that would produce, at a national level a broadly proportional share of seats in the Commons.  However, in as much as STV isn’t proportional it avoids the messiness of the arbitrary thresholds that are typically applied in the purest forms of PR (i.e. party list, be it open or closed) in order to exclude extremists (a good or a bad thing, depending on your viewpoint) and to prevent a proliferation of tiny parties (which could have some benefits, but I would consider mostly undesirable).  STV is, therefore, not pure PR, and is all the better for it.

The second mistake is in implying that AV is even remotely proportional.  While STV isn’t inherently proportional in all its forms (constituency size has an effect) if it were implemented with 5 or 6 member constituencies it is expected that, nationally, the result would be broadly proportional.  I see no way, other than coincidence, in which AV would produce a nationally proportional result.  AV is, practically speaking, STV with single-winner constituencies and, as stated above, the proportionality of STV is dependent on the number of winners per constituency.  With one 650 member constituency covering the whole nation STV would be equivalent to open party list PR, pretty purely proportional (but with none of the localism that is supposed make First Past the Post/AV/smaller constituency STV more accountable and representative).  At the other extreme, the AV/single-winner STV end of the spectrum, the results will likely be a little different to First Past the Post, but they won’t be remotely proportional at a national level.  So while Party List (or ‘pure’ PR), STV, and AV do sit on a spectrum, and the line between what can and can’t be called “PR” is a little blurred, Alternative Vote sits, most definitely, on the non-PR side of the line.  To claim that it’s a form of PR, impure or otherwise, vastly muddies the waters.

What AV most definitely is, though, is reform.  That said, I’m not one for reforming a system for its own sake; not only does reform have to offer an advantage over the old system, but that advantage has to be significant.  While these kind of constitutional reform issues should be done piecemeal, I do worry that too many tiny jumps just makes change a habit, a kind of continual fiddling with not enough debate and not enough good reasoning.  So on which side of this line should a change from FPTP to AV be placed?  Would a switch to AV give us a more representative democracy, or would it largely serve to maintain the status quo while giving the larger part of this government the excuse that “you’ve had your reform”? It would be an improvement over First Past the Post, certainly, and for any number of reasons, but confusing “reform” and “proportional representation” confuses a (positive) change with the necessary change.  If the AV referendum doesn’t pass, we’ll be told that “clearly people don’t want reform.” And if it does pass, a further shift to proportional representation will be a very long time coming.  This lumping together of the various flavours of electoral reform will be, I’m sure, a Government tactic in the months to come.  It’s sad, though, to see newspapers, and especially the Guardian (whose website has a wonderful description of the differences in electoral systems) unwittingly complicit in this deception.

Assuming, for a second, that it’s still desirable for the AV referendum to pass (and I think that it is, but will come to that shortly) there is a further problem with lumping together AV and the various forms of PR.  Confusing “electoral reform” in all its variety with the much narrower sub-group that can really be classed “proportional representation” not only weakens the important distinctions, and distinct arguments, for each flavour of voting system, it may weaken any chance of AV winning in a referendum over First Past the Post.  Upset as I am over this limited choice, I’m increasingly won over to the idea that, while the situation is not ideal, I’ve no choice but to vote in favour of AV.  As discussed above, a vote against AV could (and would) be seen, or spun, as a vote for First Past the Post.  And as unproportional (and distracting from the real issue of proportionality) as AV is, it’s not an entirely bad system.

Of the two arguments that I tend to hear in favour of AV, the most compelling is that this (or any) kind of preferential voting would mean something of a move away from negative campaigning. [2]  The Lib Dems, for example, would of course still need to persuade people that they were sufficiently different from Labour or the Conservatives to be worth voting for (an argument that, post-Coalition, it may be increasingly hard to make) but this would have to be phrased in a positive sense.  Here is how Party X offers something that Party Y doesn’t quite, or here is how Party X have a similar policy to Parties Y and Z but with important improvements.  There’d be a little less of the traditional campaign tactics e.g. “Labour Isn’t Working” and a little more “I agree with Nick.”

The other potential improvement is that all MPs would represent a majority in their constituency. [3]  No more would there be, in effect, “minority rule” in that area’s representation.  An important practical result of this would be to make the Tory policy of right-of-recall a potential reality.  I confess that I don’t entirely understand how (being opposed to AV) they would intend to implement such a policy in a First Past the Post system.  In a constituency where, as in York Central, the incumbent Member of Parliament only had 40% of the vote, surely they would face being recalled within days of their election?  While a petition would be required to initiate the recall, I have no doubt that in a Conservative constituency the Disgruntled Left would have no trouble collecting enough signatures, whatever the threshold, simply on the grounds that their MP is a Tory. The only obvious solution to my eyes would be a required supermajority in the recall election, which starts to look somewhat arbitrary, and I can’t imagine would fly over at Tory HQ. [4]  Preferential voting, such as AV, elects a candidate with majority support and, presumably, that support would continue at roughly the same level for at least some of the lifetime of the Parliament (barring wars and duck-ponds; either, in my eyes, perfectly legitimate cause for recall).

AV, then, is not perfect, but what voting system is?  It has to be remembered (and newspapers should be reminded) that it is not Proportional Representation.  Despite that failing it is an improvement in many ways and, to be horribly pragmatic, it’s probably the best we’re going to be offered. [5] Take Back Parliament will be supporting the AV vote in the upcoming referendum, as will York for Voting Reform.  And so will I. Probably.

[1] “For purists who dream of full proportional representation, AV is, as Clegg said during the election, “a miserable little compromise.” He admits AV falls well short of his goal of pure PR.”

[2] The other, somewhat contradictory argument by virtue of its negativity is, “It’ll keep the Tories out.”

[3] A positive in that a tyranny of the majority is, perhaps, marginally preferable to a tyranny of a minority.  The American fairvote.org http://www.fairvote.org/instant-runoff-voting point out that “majority rule and genuine voter choice are marks of a functioning democracy.”  I do take some issue with that, though, and am strongly of the opinion that democracy, in contrast to ochlocracy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ochlocracy, takes into account as wide a range of views as possible; preferably as close as possible to 100% rather than just settling for 50% +1.

[4] Though if the shift to a 55% Commons majority in order to dissolve Parliament is anything to go by, perhaps they’re not as afraid of arbitrary thresholds as I am.

[5] I do consider this a failing, lack of proportionality a failing, partly through some deep belief that populating the national legislature in proportion with how the nation votes is somehow more fair,  and partly through a desire to see a little less power in the hands of the Crown, and a little more in the hands of Parliament.  The current situation, with a strong Executive enforcing its will on the Commons via the Whips (and only really accountable to Parliament when the composition of that Parliament changes) is not remotely desirable to me, and not sufficiently pluralistic.

On Closed Doors

There’s been a lot of talk from politicians and others in the media about the injustice and undemocratic nature of negotiations on the future of the government taking place ‘behind closed doors’. I confess I’ve heard no such displeasure from anyone in person, though I have spent a significant part of my time since Thursday sitting in front of computers and televisions  (and working, of course).

This train of thought seems to imply that this situation is somehow in contrast to the usual arrangement.  An arrangement where negotiations don’t take place behind closed doors because there are no negotiations to make.  I fail to see,  however, how the current situation is any different to the setting of government policy within a party or,  if it is,  how these closed door decisions are somehow less democratic than those that take place within a party before or after a general election.  In this case, at least, the differing policies have some popular mandate, or lack thereof, behind them, and judgements can be made on their relative popularities as well as their practicality.

These inter-party negotiations, and the typical intra-party ones, though their broad structures may be thrashed out ‘behind closed doors’ are not somehow undemocratic; if they want to be acted on they will still have to be presented to Parliament, debated, amended, and voted on.  Unless, of course, there’s a strong majority and bills get pushed through with little or no debate.  But that’s just business as usual, there’s nothing new in that.