Following their formation as the ‘Labour Representation Committee’ in 1900, the policy of the Labour Party (the name they adopted in 1906) regarding electoral reform was an obvious one. Primarily, they were interested in extending the franchise to their main group of supporters, the working class, who in the large part were excluded from the electoral process.
Alongside this however came a demand for electoral reform – an end to the ‘unfair’ First-Past-The Post and the introduction of a form of Proportional Representation which would create a better correlation between votes and seats.
Perhaps not surprisingly, Labour abandoned this policy once they started winning elections. After replacing the Liberals as the main ‘progressive’ party in British politics, they became firm supporters of the status quo.
The Liberal party’s policy followed the opposite pattern. In 1906 – having gained a massive Commons majority thanks in part to First-Past-The-Post which overrepresented their support – they were firm supporters of the existing system, one which they had helped create. Once reduced to the ‘third-wheel’ of British political debate, they switched to firm supporters of electoral reform, a stance they have continued to hold right up to the present day.
Certainly, there is a contentious debate regarding the issue. Its critics argue First-Past-The-Post is grossly unfair, failing to give the largest party a democratic mandate to govern, creating an undue focus on marginal seats and producing the problem of ‘wasted votes’; while discriminating against small parties and narrowing the political debate, excluding many, and causing low turnout.
In its defence, it is argued that it provides strong government, is simple and transparent, creates a close link between an MP and their constituency, and keeps out extreme parties.
Regardless of the terms of the debate however, it is clear that political parties’ stances on the issue is not affected by what they believe to be ‘right’, but by self-interest. This makes it unlikely that the system would ever be changed from the inside, and raises the question of whether, if the Liberal Democrats were at some point in the future to reverse the switch which took place in the early twentieth century and usurp Labour as a the main party on the left, their commitment to electoral reform would remain.
If the current system saw them elected to government (unlikely in the short term, but certainly not an impossibility if Labour were to self-destruct after defeat at the next election) would they prove as fickle as the rest of them?
I believe they would. Electoral reform is a means to an end. A noble, justified ‘end’ certainly, and one which certainly justifies the ‘means’, but nevertheless an ‘end’ which, in itself, does not include electoral reform.
* Robert Smith is a Liberal Democrat Voice reader, living in West Yorkshire; however, he is not a party member “nor necessarily a supporter per se“.
Editor’s note: ‘The Independent View’ is our slot for non-Lib Dems to write an article for Lib Dem Voice which we believe will – subject to our editorial discretion – be of interest to our readers.
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23 Comments
I disagree, for a couple of reasons.
First, the evidence we have is that PR wouldn’t be great for the Lib Dems right now. The party underperforms in European elections and has hardly shone in London mayoral, Scottish parliamentary and Welsh assembly contests.
Second, many of us are fans of PR, not because we think it’ll propel our party to power but because of the power the *right* system can give to the people.
A good PR system like STV gives people far more power to kick out politicians they don’t like than either FPTP or the dreadful Euro list system. It gives voters the power to favour one Labour candidate over another, for example, or to vote in MPs from different parties in one constituency.
I’m not saying that every Lib Dem would still want PR if the party usurped one of the others, but many of us would, and for good reason.
I agree with the article.
We (the SLP) don’t have a commitment to electoral reform, partly because our membership probably wouldn’t have any of it! They quite like the FPTP system, and it’s one that every party needs to work with instead of complaining.
Having said that, there are so many different PR systems I’ve seen, I can’t really make my own mind up!
I wonder what party the author is in though. If he’s a liberal but not a LibDem, I’d encourage him to check out the SLP.
Who the *uck are the SLP….
So not a single Millian Liberal in the entire party then? Why do you call yourselves Liberal if you reject the founder of modern liberal thought?
/repeat griping at the splitters.
Robert:
Um, factually inaccurate. The biggest change to the electoral system in the 20th Century was the 1948 Representation of the People Act, which abolished the traditional multi-member Borough constituencies and split the entire country up into single-member seats, which helped entrench LAbour/2-party dominance.
Sure, they abandoned a policy of progressive reform, but instead reformed things into a system that strongly benefitted them. Before then, the electoral mechanics, especially in towns like Huddersfield, between the Conservatives, National Liberals, Liberals and Labour candidates make for interesting analysis.
In which case I strongly invite him to Liberal Drinks West Yorkshire, in the Old Ship Inn, Brighouse this Thursday coming, specifically open to non-members and likely to involve much imbibing of decent Yorkshire beer.
http://www.flocktogether.org.uk/event/5154
Could the SLP be Scargill’s rump?
Despite my general cynicism, I don’t agree that the party would abandon our commitment to PR. It’s incredibly ingrained in the culture of the party. The current membership (and admittedly becoming the sole governing party would probably go hand in hand with a big expansion in membership) would never let us drop it.
(I disagree with Costigan Quist that those elections are useful comparators though as none of them is an STV election.)
haha – I didn’t say all of us! Just I suspect many wouldn’t either like it or like to have an emphasis on it as part of the party’s platform.
The SLP is here: http://www.VoteLiberalist.org
No Felix, it’s a socially and economically liberal party.
Agree with Mat. Mill wrote the first book on adopting the Single Transferable Vote system in his 1861 book Considerations on Representative Government. Despite their achievements in office, the two Liberal governments of the last century did not put principles over expedience, both with PR and with Ireland. I am convinced that we as a party will not let this happen again.
Am going to eat a bit of humble pie and correct myself a bit.
I should have said “they like the FPTP system over some of the PR proposals”.
As you know, there are loads of methods of doing PR.
As I recall, there are also some hybrids that seem to get the best of both, minimising the wasted vote but maintaining a decent constituency link.
(Could someone please link me to that one, I’m having trouble finding it again)
Sounds like you’re talking about STV, Anton – feel free to ask next time we chat!
Anton, the Lib Dems argue for STV for the same reason the Electoral Reform Society does—it’s “the British system”, it has a good tradition of working here, strengthens the constituency link and isn’t purely proportional.
Labour seem to favour AMS, I can tolerate that but think it puts too much power into party machines and marginalises Independents.
List PR is a worse system for Parliamentary elections (IMO) than FPTP. Most anti-reform types only ever trot out objections based on list PR. These objections are spurious, only an idiot would propose list PR for Westminster, and I utterly oppose it.
If you want a decent constituency link… well, some FPTP MPs don’t have an office or hold surgeries in their constituencies. The link itself has nothing to do with the electoral system but the quality of MP elected.
I’m a member of the Lib Dem AO DAGGER so I have to now suggest that STV in multi-member constituencies would be teh rox at solving this =)
Robert Smith has put his finger on one of the great hypocrisies of the debate, which is that Liberal Democrats criticize Labour and Conservative supporters of first past the post for naked self-interest, while themselves supporting proportional systems out of exactly the same motives.
MatGB is ahistorical; there were only a tiny number of double-member seats after 1918, and in ending them in 1947-8 the Labour Government was simply completing a job started decades before. This move did nothing in itself to encourage the two-party system.
For me the key point is this: no-one ever seems to argue the central principle. Why should a party be entitled the same proportion of seats as it gets votes?
Also, the idea that we’ll drop policies like this and tuition fees as soon as we get into power is patently ridiculous – look at our record in Scotland, where STV was adopted for local elections.
I agree that the self-interest defence is a powerful one and that winning a percentage across the nation is not a good way to divide up seats because we do not live in one single constituency. Surely the basic tenet of our democracy should be that voters should choose who represents them in a given constituency? That does not always happen and it is a disgrace to politics that a plurality sometimes bears no relation to the will of the electorate.
I looked at the numbers some time ago and we would actually lose at least 3 of our currently held seats under the STV system.
David Boothroyd: Why? Seriously?
Um.. because it’s pretty much self-evidently the democratic way to do things. Or at least, it’s obviously more democratic than the current system, whereby a minority (perhaps the biggest minority, but a minority nonetheless) get almost complete control for their representatives in parliament.
“For me the key point is this: no-one ever seems to argue the central principle. Why should a party be entitled the same proportion of seats as it gets votes?”
Simple.
Because to argue otherwise would be to say that some votes are worth more than others. And by definition, some people (those casting the more valuable votes) are worth more than others.
That is a fundamentally illiberal position to take.
I also don’t like partisan self-interest arguments as I don’t think that is in the public interest.
My support for electoral reform is probably the biggest reason I’m with the LibDems, but we seem to only be entering round 3 of the debate. So let’s move it along a bit, eh?
Every system of election has it’s strengths and weaknesses, so really we need to find a way of sensibly combining and balancing them all to maximise the benefits while eliminating the problems of systemic bias.
On this I think it should be possible to have different voting systems for different parliamentary houses.
Councils, assemblies, HoL and HoC are all constituted differently, so it seems natural that they should have different systems of election.
Which horse runs better over each course is something others are probably better placed to judge, so I’ll stop there.
However, I will say that electoral reform must go hand in hand with constitutional reform otherwise any democratic gains will be offset by compensatory changes within the structure of government and the public will have lost a major opportunity to improve our politics.
Single policies of reform are not enough – we need to show we have a well-rounded and more coherent programme of reform.
Now that would certainly make us stand out from the crowd!
Robert,
Basically you’re saying that all politicians end up putting self-interest first and principles second.
Your cynicism seems generally pretty well justified by recent events, but I would just ask you one question: Do you think that the easy way to personal political fame and fortune is to join the Lib Dems?
I would suggest that if by and large, shallow, self-interested careerists who wants an easy ride into power are likely to have joined the Tories or Labour. If instead someone chooses the rocky road of joining the Liberal Democrats, they probably do so because they think principles matter.
It follows that Lib Dems should be a little bit less likely than most to betray their principles.
I disagree with the suggestion that democracy is merely a means to an end – it is also an end in itself.
The Liberal Democrats has consistantly recruited people who overwhelmingly believe in proportional representation and there is simply no way the party will change it’s mind simply because of an election from which it benefits from FPTP.
David
That’s not my understanding, although I may, again, have missed something, there were a fair number of larger towns with multi-member seats.
True, and not saying otherwise, but I’m being no more ahistorical than an assertion that Labour stuck with the status-quo when in power, they changed the system and abolished the two STV seats.
Palpably false—a number of seats had electoral alliances, the National Liberals mostly ran one candidate in two member seats, as did Tories and Liberals in some, knowing that their voters would support others. That the National Liberals always took the Tory whip encouraged Tory voters, etc. But the National Liberal party didn’t formally wind itself up and merge into the Conservatives until, what, 1960ish?
Single member simple majority elections encourage two-party districts. One of the basic rules of psephology.
It shouldn’t. I couldn’t care less about the proportion of votes cast nationally compared to seats received per party, I care little for parties overall.
I care that Parliament is fundamentally unrepresentative, and is dominated by white middle class men in suits, to the detriment of women, ehtnic minorities, alternative interst groups, etc.
If the House of Commons is to be the debating chamber of the nation, then it should be broadly representative of the nation. Multi-member constituencies encourage diverse candidate slates, single member constituencies encourage candidates that “look like politicians”.
Massive amounts of research on this, most of it ignored by people who should be paying attention to it.
I’m sure you’re aware that STV in itself isn’t a proportional system, although it tends, broadly, to be more proportional. It’s better because it encourages diversity, strengthens constituency links and ensures more people are actually represented.
Plus you can vote out a useless MP while still supporting that party overall, which is essential.
The partisan arguments for “fairness” are never going to get many votes or win any arguments. Thus they’re pointless, life isn’t fair.
I want the House of Commons to represent me and the country I live in. Currently, it doesn’t, and that’s why I’ve long favoured reform, and more recently joined the only party that’s got a chance of actually getting that reform in.
First Past the Post suits the Labour and Conservative Parties as their supporters are able to vote by simply putting an X on the ballot paper.