Author Archives: Leo Watkins

The country is clearly experiencing a political crisis – the fact is so obvious as to barely need stating. MP expenses, a government with virtually no mandate, a sizeable chunk of the cabinet wholly unelected, including the ‘First Secretary’, Lord Mandelson: all this makes for a sizeable ‘democratic deficit’ – a term the Conservatives are ready and willing to apply to Brussels, but not so much to Westminster.

The Liberal Democrat policy position on constitutional reform is, uniformly, excellent and coherent – Single Transferable Vote, a cut in the number of MPs, a written constitution, committed localism, a great repeal of the many laws restricting civil liberties. I will go on to discuss how the coherence of those policies may be a problem for the party, but first I want to address a few presentational issues relating to electoral reform.

When the media talks about electoral reform, they invariably lead with remarks to demonstrate that they realise how boring the issue is – a kind of “don’t worry, like you ordinary folks, I find all this talk about the electoral system both deeply boring and utterly mystifying” (though probably using fewer words). Not only is this a counter-productive angle for the media to be taking on the issue – it confines discussion of it to self-appointed ‘policy wonks’ and academics – it’s one which is out of step with the British public, or at least could be made to be.

First off, I think there is an increasing interest in the issue – in a recent poll, 56% of respondents said they were in favour of Proportional Representation, for example. Even if you disagree, however, let’s be clear: I don’t find talk about electoral systems particularly interesting, but I am interested in the issue in so far as it is a pivotal one for deciding what kind of political system we have. I daresay written constitutions and bills of rights aren’t particularly glamorous things either, but somehow they become interesting because we identify them as pivotal to the political system.

Electoral reform has to become an issue that the public recognise as pivotal in our political system, because it absolutely is. The problem is, advocates of electoral reform have not been framing it in the right terms. In this regard, I think it would be useful to borrow some of the rhetoric used over MPs’ expenses. In that debacle, a constant refrain issued by members of the public and interviewers alike to still slightly shell-shocked MPs was “if I had done this at work, I’d have been fired”. After a while of hearing that, I realized that the way to characterize electoral reform is to talk of it as MPs’ terms of employment. That might be a more useful angle to take when presenting the urgency of this issue.

To take a step back for a minute and consider the wider political scene, I think the Lib Dems have to realise a number of things about this issue, as regards Gordon Brown’s mooting of Alternative Vote. Firstly, we are unlikely to see the electoral system change twice, unless the first change turns out to be a complete disaster and the second change is back to First Past the Post; or without a significant period of time elapsing in between.

Anyone who thinks Lib Dem support for AV might then lead to a situation where we’d be better placed to demand STV is therefore, in my view, mistaken. I don’t think that situation will ever arise.

Secondly, supporting AV means we are supporting a plurality (that is to say, non-proportional) system which can actually be more distorting than FPTP. In the left/right proportional/plurality continuum of voting systems, AV is to the right of FPTP, taking us further away, effectively, from the party’s stated goal of STV.

Thirdly, the argument that AV is only being brought in by this government for political reasons will be made by the Conservatives time and time again, and it would be both true and effective. The idea of defending Gordon Brown is not one that, I suspect, appeals to most Lib Dems. In fact, in the current political climate, I think it would be incredibly dangerous indeed to be seen to support any action this Labour government takes.

There are some issues on which the Liberal Democrats take a stance that I often feel is too purist. We insist on having things entirely our way, refuse entirely to compromise and, in doing so, marginalize ourselves from the political debate. Given that the electorate itself feels more marginalized than ever, I think this is an ideal issue for the Liberal Democrats to take a “plague on both your houses”, purist, anti-establishment stance.

We have to point out three things: first, Alternative Vote is a typical Gordon Brown fudge, designed to palm the British people off and avoid real change; secondly, the Conservative position of support for FPTP is no better, being driven entirely by cynical self-interest; thirdly, both parties are ultimately still talking about plurality voting systems, as opposed to actual proportional representation, however much they may want to kid you into thinking they’re debating PR.

The Liberal Democrats have a real chance to outflank both major parties here: call for what the Makes Votes Count campaign has been arguing for – letting a citizen’s jury decide what the best electoral system is, and then put that in a referendum, either at the next General Election or before.

We have to frame our argument as follows: we’ve seen what happens when MPs set their own pay and expenses; why should they be the ones who set their own terms of employment, too?