I have read a great deal of liberal-left angst about the AV referendum in the last few days.
Everyone concludes that the Yes campaign was poorly led. Beyond that you pays your money and you takes your pick as to what the key factor was in the massive defeat. You might share the view that insider networks undermined the campaign (although to me this mainly seems to be about saying the wrong sort of insider networks were in control, an argument that factions on the left have relied upon since Trotsky). You might even indulge the conspiracy fantasists and believe the establishment plotted together to preserve the status quo. Personally, I am coming increasingly to the conclusion that the electorate was just too smart to buy a bad product.
Where next, though, for constitutional reform?
House of Lords reform might just make it through and it will be to the eternal shame of the Labour Party if a Conservative led government delivers where New Labour failed.
But electoral reform is dead. We should get over that and move on.
And, in any case, it is not clear to me how electoral reform was supposed to deliver the kind of New Left nirvana that some of our friends were aiming for. PR tends to produce coalitions – deals done between the very politicians the radical activists are looking to dethrone. Coalitions tend to govern by compromise. The direction of compromise is inevitably towards the centre and the status quo. If you want a political revolution then surely an elective dictatorship would be more likely to deliver?
Or maybe it is time for radicals to look at the issue from the other end of the telescope. If they want to alter the relationship between politicians and the citizenry, maybe they should support a programme that aims to shift that balance by reducing the role of the state. Or one that promotes civic activism. Or one that increases direct accountability for key services. That surely would be a programme to alarm conservatives and challenge the vested interests of all political parties?
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41 Comments
You’re not part of a Conservative insider network are you?
I deny that Liberal Democrats need to choose between electoral reform and other ways to “alter the relationship between politicians and the citizenry”, as you put it. We can support both.
“Electoral reform is dead”
Centuries of tradition ended by one cack handed referendum? You’re mad.
“Electoral reform = Coalitions = Compromise = Status Quo”
So presumably you think the most radical way to change our political system would be to leave it completely untouched?
Your article is well written, I just find my own logical flow runs entirely differently to yours.
Critical change would be a lot easier if it wasn’t the case that we endlessly cycled between two parties in government, this parliament may be an exception but on the whole ideas that are not supported by Labour or the Tories don’t get a hearing. Coalitions allow ideas from outside the two largest parties to have a shot at actually becoming policy so I certainly don’t think it would necessarily reduce radical policy.
I truly don’t see how any of the Tory policies you link to are at all radical. Free schools in their original Swedish incarnation were radical but the UK version is very watered down. Hardly radical. Also, data from Sweden suggests that they only performed well in the short term and failed to produce any longer term improvement in achievement. Which begs the point, why bother?
The Big Society is not radical, as this kind of set-up was quite common in the 19th century in some aspects of life (albeit different ones to those proposed now). It’s not to say that it’s inherently a bad idea but it is not radical and worse still it is putting the cart before the horse. The services run by citizens and the third sector have to be encouraged to grow before you can remove the state provision, you need to make sure there is something there to take the place of these roles of the state rather than just saying that you’d like citizens to do it and leaving it at that.
I am of the view that a job like a police commissioner should be gained by merit, not by politics. They are civil servants, not politicians. This is all my own personal opinion but this kind of position doesn’t seem appropriate for elections any more than directly electing the head of a primary care trust would be. You’re free to disagree of course!
Also, I disagree that electoral reform is dead. AV for the Commons is dead, the battle is lost, the war may not be. A lot of young people in particular voted no or did not vote because the alternative to FPTP was too similar and they didn’t see the point.
Overall, I disagree with your article but it was well written, even though I found little common ground. The radical ideas you mention seem either copying and butchering ideas from elsewhere in the world or, in the case of the big society, an idea where there is not adequate groundwork laid out for there to not be a medium-term decrease in quality of public services. Some ideas that many Tories like, such as open primaries*, are genuinely radical (even if they are not new ideas), but we are not helping them enact that kind of policy, sadly.
*I’m fairly agnostic on open primaries, I see positives and negatives in them. Still, a radical idea in my view.
“Personally, I am coming increasingly to the conclusion that the electorate was just too smart to buy a bad product.”
As I’ve said before you just cannot polish a turd ! AV was not wanted even by most of those trying to convince people it was a good idea. However, I disagree that electoral reform is dead.
Increased localism and reducing the role of the state (where appropriate) should always be goals. But reform of the political system needs to be simple and make sense to voters if it is to be achieved. Preferential voting does not seem to resonate with people, I think looking at the simplest method to achieve true proportionality would be the place to start. If that means party lists then so be it. It may also mean more rather than fewer MP’s, or larger more unwieldy constituencies.
It would be easier to sell, the message would be simple. Your vote will always count. Something AV never had a chance of offering.
I think there’s a very good chance that House of Lords reform will make it through the Commons.
Some Tory backbenchers will make a lot of noise about it and try to block it, but the pattern of Tory backbench rebellions has been that when it comes to the division 90% or more of the Tory MPs will vote as instructed by the whips, and even if the official Labour line was to vote against the reform proposal there could be enough Labour rebels to more or less cancel out the Tory rebels.
Getting it through the Lords could be a lot harder, and then it would depend on Cameron’s willingness to use the Parliament Acts.
However while I’d be moderately content to see Clegg’s proposals enacted I don’t think they’re the best availiable option, which would be to simply replace the present Lords with all the parliamentary candidates who came second in their constituency elections.
On a provisional count there were 239 constituencies where the LibDem candidate came second in the May 2010 general election, which would have given the LibDems 239 seats in the Second Chamber, 37% of the total of 650.
Adding these 239 LibDem Second Members of Parliament, SMPs, to the 57 LibDem MPs, would have given the LibDems a total of 296 elected representatives in Parliament, 23% of the total of 1300, which as it happens it the same as the overall share of votes received by LibDem candidates.
Denis, do you never tire of flogging this dead horse?
Have to say that’s a pretty appalling idea Denis – how on earth can you get rid of them, if by electing them out of “office” you remain stuck with them in the other place?
AV might have been doomed from the start. I can say confidently though, as a activist within the campaign, the only reason we got such a crushing rejection is due to the failure of the people running the campaign. Andy May’s assessment is probably the most detailed and most accurate.
“And, in any case, it is not clear to me how electoral reform was supposed to deliver the kind of New Left nirvana that some of our friends were aiming for. PR tends to produce coalitions – deals done between the very politicians the radical activists are looking to dethrone. Coalitions tend to govern by compromise. The direction of compromise is inevitably towards the centre and the status quo. If you want a political revolution then surely an elective dictatorship would be more likely to deliver?”
The answer of course is that our aim is to build a fair, free and open society and then <b?safeguard it. As a party we believe in plural politics and that no one party has a monopoly on the right ideas for this country. That’s why we want PR as it gives people accurate representation in parliament.
You’re also making the mistake of assuming that PR always leads to coaliton government. It doesn’t. As we just saw in Scotland, when people genuinely want one party to have a majority then they will get it under PR. As a Lib Dem, that’s exactly the kind of thing that I would want to work towards under PR.
The ideological right are always long on talk of radicalism and short on delivering it.
Their supposed bonfire of public sector vanities duals all too often puts services in the hands of private companies unaccountable to external scrutiny.
Their supposed economies are all too often delivered by cutting provisions and cutting the wages, terms and conditions of already low paid staff.
Their supposed empowerment of the individual and support for civic activism is all too often code for sponsoring the well educated, motivated middle classes in getting an even greater share of resources.
Hitching the Lib Dems even more firmly to that wagon is unlikely to revive fortunes, especially as Labour is also (sadly) moving in this direction.
I’ll attempt to answer the more sensible objection from Robson.
Under FPTP-SPTP, the general rule is that a party can either have the MP for a constituency or it can have the SMP for a constituency, but not both.
Only in very rare cases would a party have such overwhelming support in a constituency that it would dare take the risk of attempting to capture both seats.
Of the two, by far the greatest prize is of course the seat in the dominant Commons, whose members provide the majority to keep the government in office, with the prospect of ministerial posts for the majority party MPs, and which controls the purse strings and can use the Parliament Acts to over-rule the Second Chamber
Therefore when somebody who was the MP before the last election is demoted to being the SMP, over the following years it will be down to his party to decide whether he has a good prospect of recapturing the seat in the Commons on its behalf at the next election, or he should be de-selected and replaced with a new candidate who would have a better chance of doing that.
Bear in mind that not all MPs who lose their seats at a general election suffer that fate through their lack of personal merit; in many cases they’re simply swept out with the general tide of public opinion despite their good personal performance as legislators and/or ministers.
Now contrast that with the present system for filling up the House of Lords with ex-MPs who can never be removed until they’re carried out feet first, and with the proposed system whereby most or all of the members of the Second Chamber would be elected by STV on large multi-member constituencies, or even worse by a party list system, with terms of 15 terms.
Neither the present system nor the proposed system imposes a significant penalty on a party if its leaders decide to keep some favoured but basically useless person in the Second Chamber, because doing so wouldn’t impact on its chances of getting an MP elected; under FPTP-SPTP the two are connected, and sticking with the useless SMP for a constituency becomes the direct alternative to possibly getting an MP for that constituency at the next election.
George, I agree with both of your comments. I am certainly not opposed to PR, I am just a bit puzzled why those who have hitched their waggon to the ‘anti-politics’ train favour it.
I am basically suggesting people consider that the Lib Dems have invested too much in changing the process rather than looking at the outcome they want to achieve. If the aim is to enable people to take and use power then there are other ways to do than than changing the institutional furniture.
The people who support a smaller state, free schools and academies, and elected police commissioners are Tories. These are the very same people who favour elected dictatorship because they do not believe that under a fair voting system the majority of people would vote in favour of it.
There are some on the left of the Labour party who also support elected dictatorship because they support the 1983 Labour party manifesto which advocated nationalising the top twenty capitalist manopolies, and again they do not believe the majority of people will vote for that either.
The rest of us are pluralists who believe strongly that democracy should deliver what people vote for.
Is that hard to understand?
I was searching for a way to point out the absurdity of advocating a volte-face from fair votes to elective dictatorship. I was searching for a way to point out that if we really need to turn to something else in order to get over the disappointment of the AV referendum, then turning to strong drink, or to mindless violence towards feline pets, would be much more appropriate than turning towards a ragbag of far-right policies.
Then I found that the previous poster had trumped anything I could possibly offer. The article had actually provoked Geoffrey Payne to write a piece which, alongside Geoffrey’s normal superbly courteous, rational and principled argument, included something suspiciously like a real flash of anger.
Next up Mr Maxfield, see if you can make a statue cry…..
I agree that people need to start looking at the issue from the other end of the telecope because too many are happily stolling into bad choices where the consequences haven’t been thought through properly.
But I disagree that compromises ‘inevitably’ lead to the centre because there are such things as good compromises and bad compromises.
AV was a miserable compromise and was rejected for this reason (that the main advocates were obviously less than convinced meant the leadership was muddled, the campaign was divided and the messages were unclear), these HoL reforms contain several depressing compromises and will hit stumbling blocks as a result (especially with crossbenchers – a public which has become cynical of partisanship when faced with greater partisanship becomes disengaged, deferential and more likely to support the right-wing establishment as the left-wing opposition splinters) and neither alone would ever prevent compensatory measures from allowing ingrained interests to reassert their stranglehold on power.
So if you want to alter the relationship between politicians and the citizenry then you first need to redefine the role of the state in a modern context – determine where it should go, not how it should get there.
And if you want reforms to the House of Lords to be successful then you must design the composition of the chamber around the role you want it to perform – determine what it should do, not how it should do it.
It is maddening that we are told electoral reality dictates the negative set of choices we’re given and so many people swallow this with a shrug and a whimper – unless we know that, how and why particular reforms are going to produce better results then any support will remain half-hearted and hollow.
Good reforms must be the correct thing to do, they aren’t just done for the sake of it.
@Denis
You make a basic assumption that the Commons has precedence by right, which seems to lead you into making a ‘logical’ choice for a technical argument in your preferred composition for the Lords.
But Commons precedence derives from the greater legitimacy gained from the direct connection to the people it represents, as constructed through the electoral process.
So, providing an electoral basis for Lords membership would create a legitimacy by which the Lords may be able to challenge the order of precedence (especially re the Parliament Act), but by subordinating the Lords to the Commons in the system of election you suggest you’d actually delegitimise it and may as well abolish it from the start.
If you want an unicameral system, that’s fine, but it does tend to go against plural politics and the trend for greater devolution and autonomy of powers.
Mr Allen I have great respect for Geoff and the passion with which he holds his views and I know that he and I have different views on the role of the state.
I would hope that a majority liberal government would seek to empower people against bureaucracy by increasing direct elections, allowing parents greater choice in the education of their children and encouraging citizens to be actively involved in their communities so I dont dismiss the reforms.
Maybe its because I have a more optimistic view of human nature which is also why my real next ambition is to encourage you to get a life instead of wasting so much of it posting on here.
I had to blink when I read this article. I thought have I been too long away from the pulse of the Lib Dems to think this is current Lib Dem thinking and then I thought perhaps i have been. Could I ask if this is the thinking of the people who subscribe to the The Orange Book school of thinking. What appears to be a “party within a party” irrespective of the seniority of the people who subscribe to its thinking. My understanding is the writings of the The Orange Book are not currently Lib Dem Policy as endorsed by the sovereign body of the Lib Dems The Federal Party Conference.
So is Ed Maxfield’s writing an inadvertent attempt to move the Lib Dems still further onto the Libertarian agenda occupied by the Tories which has not truck with Electoral Reform. I hope not because as as a “true” Liberal who is “salmon pink” in colour I do truly believe that it is the fundamental right as an individual to be free of the stricitures of dogmatic political systems whether they be Socialist or the Free market because as a Liberal you have the potential to be enslaved by both.
Consequently I feel “so passionately” that Ed Maxfield is FUNDAMENTALLY WRONG in his belief. Changing the Electoral System should be the life blood of being a Liberal. From everything our fundamental Human Rights stem from.because it puts the power of deciding who should govern us in the hands of individuals. If the LIb Dems were seriously to contemplate Ed Maxfield’s idea there must be serious questions as to whether the Lib Dems truly carry the baton for the majority of Liberal Thinkers. I am sorry Ed but your comments are that serious.
I would urge people who share my viewpoint to once again get involved with the Take Back Parliament Campaign which has been undertaking this exact Blue Sky thinking exercise about where we should go next. In terms of radical thinking I have already accepted that if the case for PR is going to advance then it will not be able to advance through the Lib Dem Party for the duration of the time it is in the Coalition but the case will need to advance with other political parties, and possibly in spite of current political party loyalties so that it is not taken out of the shop window of the electorate. Perhaps Purple People Candidates in By Elections?
“But electoral reform is dead. We should get over that and move on.” People said that to John Stuart Mill when he lost a move to give women the vote by about 300 votes to 50. They told him to give up, they told campaigners they’d never win. It is a weak point to make – but the best comment above is the second one: ‘We can support both’.
Furthermore, the risk of going down your outcomes rather than process look is that we fail to realise they are both intimately linked. An outcomes only approach, without considering the journey in reaching that point is what developed into Blair’s New Labour…
(cf Ronald Dworkin (Sovereign Virtue) for a hugely flawed understanding of democracy, and cf Mill and Lovell for a more competent grasp of why people want democracy, and why liberty demands PR.)
“Personally, I am coming increasingly to the conclusion that the electorate was just too smart to buy a bad product.”
That’s got to be one of the funniest comments I’ve read of recent – I think NOT!
Had you been active on the ground (which obviously you weren’t) then the reasons why the NO vote predominated would have been very clear. Ignorance at best combined with dissatisfaction of the Liberal party (due to association with cuts) and Nick Clegg in particular. Unfortunately many associated AV directly with Nick Clegg (certain dailies made that fact clear) and that was all they needed to know to make their mind up.
The YES campaign itself was incompetent and this was made increasing clear to me by the number of those “open to discussion” who views could be changed to YES right outside the polling station. Some had not received any YES campaign material at all (but plenty from the NO camp).
TBH, I was impressed by the size of the YES count as at least this vote represented views of some intellect. which is a lot more then can be said for the bulk of the NO vote.
However erudite the previous postings are, have we not missed the point somewhere here?
The voters have voted – we lost.
It is now time to put AV and Constitutional Reform to the BOTTOM of our “to do” list – we have far more important priorities.
Any change in the voting system and/or Constitutional Reform is going to cost money, which we do not have.
Let us please re-prioritise our Party aims whilst in the term of this coalition government. In my book we need to be tackling poverty, poor schools, an ailing NHS Service and Social Care system, bankers bonuses, MPs fiddled expenses and offshore banking & Tax evasion – these are the things which voters see as priorities, not the big boys’ games!
Whilst we are at it – stop what has already been started in the proliferation of our Trident and nuclear missile systems – we don’t have the money for this – spend it on the REAL priorities!
“Electoral reform = Coalitions = Compromise = Status Quo”
“Personally, I am coming increasingly to the conclusion that the electorate was just too smart to buy a bad product.”
The electorate said no, by a very wide margin and you don’t understand the reason or are unwilling to understand, it is quite simple really… and if we had a vote on PR I believe it would also be a no vote for the very same reasons.
Just over twelve months ago I posted on LDV on the chance Liberal Democrats had on showing the electorate how and why coalitions could work; the result has been spectacular to say the least.
The next few years will, I think, see a more narrowing of the Liberal Democrats POV, it has already started, as more people fail to support and the core membership tightens the view will narrow more and more, but that is not really my point.
In twelve months Liberal Democrats have given the electorate the clear example of coalitions at work, and the electorate have rejected that option, in fact that is why I think PR would be a no vote on the same sort of scale as AV, AV would of made coalitions more likely, PR would almost guarantee coalitions, I don’t think the majority want that at all.
It is not that you did not make your case for AV, good or bad. It was the example of coalition government that I think made the vote against AV, and would do so against PR in the foreseeable future, the real truth is, you scared the crap out of the electorate and that fear is not going to go away anytime soon…
Electoral reform’s not dead, it’s merely sleeping….
But what the referendum does is effectively kill the question for 10 years or so. So it can still – and should – remain a key Lib Dem policy, but acknowledging that it’s not top of the list for most people should at least allow us to develop more policies to replace it.
“Coalitions tend to govern by compromise. The direction of compromise is inevitably towards the centre and the status quo.”
The heart of my objection to PR, and electoral reform that might lead to PR.#
Good article.
Oranjepan –
“And if you want reforms to the House of Lords to be successful then you must design the composition of the chamber around the role you want it to perform.”
Exactly, and that’s just what I’ve done.
Starting from the assumption that the Commons will continue to be elected by FPTP for the foreseeable future, and that experience has shown that whichever single party achieves a Commons majority by FPTP there will always be too little effective opposition in that chamber – after an election landslide, very little indeed – and that therefore the Second Chamber should be designed to compensate for that inherent defect in the Commons.
If the Commons were elected by PR then there would be a stronger case for moving to a unicameral system, and in fact there is some discussion in the Irish Republic about abolishing the Senead:
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/james-downey-seanad-is-out-of-date-and-out-of-time-lets-scrap-it-2660136.html
Clearly a chamber comprising the candidates who came second in constituency elections would have a significant degree of democratic legitimacy, unlike the present Lords, but less than a chamber comprising the candidates who came first, and therefore a Second Chamber reformed on that basis could not challenge the primacy of the Commons even though the members of both had gained their seats through a process of direct popular election.
“TBH, I was impressed by the size of the YES count as at least this vote represented views of some intellect. which is a lot more then can be said for the bulk of the NO vote.”
Having lost the argument, and lost the vote (by a mile), I suppose it must be tempting to blame the stupidity of the electorate.
In fact, I think the electorate was quite shrewd enough to see through the pretexts that were being advanced by the “Yes” campaign in favour of a system that few people really believed in, and on that basis it was entirely rational to reject AV.
If the referendum had been about proportional representation, and proper arguments had been advanced in favour of it, perhaps the outcome might have been different. We’ll never know, because there obviously isn’t going to be another referendum on any kind of electoral reform in the foreseeable future.
“TBH, I was impressed by the size of the YES count as at least this vote represented views of some intellect. which is a lot more then can be said for the bulk of the NO vote.”
That really doesn’t fly on any level.
For every tribal no-vote i guarantee there was an angry teen rebelling against the injustice of the ‘system’ with a messianic belief in change-for-the-sake-of-change.
And, in any case, it is not clear to me how electoral reform was supposed to deliver the kind of New Left nirvana that some of our friends were aiming for.
Sorry, just WHO was saying that? I’m not aware of anyone who was saying that, it certainly has never been the principal argument for electoral reform. For socialists democracy is something that happens inside The Party, so they have this attitude to constitutional matters that the only thing that is important is how much power it gives to them, but liberals do not think that way. For me as a liberal, the argument for electoral reform has always been that it gives a chamber which is properly representative of the people, and not what that chamber might do once elected.
On the usual tiresome lines in your last paragraph, yawn, you sound like a 1980s Trotskyite endlessly repeating the same old mantras and utterly lacking the critical ability to be able to see why those ideas didn’t work as claimed when tried or how in practice they get manipulated by the powerful to result in the reverse of what the idealists intended. Your politics may be different, your tired old sloganising and one-track mind is very much the same. The answer the Trotskyists always had as to why socialism hadn’t worked was that we just needed it in an even more extreme form. To me they were like architects proposing a design for a building where every building built to that design had fallen down but who could not say why. The reality, Ed Maxfield, is that we have had 30 years of this sort of Thatcherite politics, and it HASN’T WORKED. People do not feel more free than they did in the 1970s, they do not feel more in control of their lives, if anything the concentration of power and control over our lives that has gone int faceless big business has achieved the reverse of what the idealists say this sort of thing should do.
On electoral reform, as I have pointed out here, repeatedly to the more obdurate, there was a massively paradoxical aspect of the AV referendum, in that there was a big block of voters – most of those who voted “No” from the left – who complained about the unrepresentative and extreme nature of the current government, and yet saw that as a reason to endorse the electoral system that led to it rather than to vote to change it. I’m sorry to go on and on about it, but I still find it very weird, and I have not yet got a straight answer from any of the people I have been arguing with here on these issues, as to how they can explain their contradictory lines.
The opponents of AV argued that the current electoral system is good because it tends to lead to one-party government, and that is good because it is more “decisive”. That’s all very good, but if that’s the position you hold, then surely you should be very happy about the current government because it is, indeed, very decisive. Surely if your position is that it’s better to have single party government because that’s more decisive, then your position ought to be that the more the current government acts like a purely Conservative Party one, the more it ploughs ahead with its extreme policies, the better, because that’s the “decisive” sort of government you want, rather than one which is timid because it is having to find wider agreement before going ahead. Many of those who voted “No” to AV said they did so to punish the Liberal Democrats. But punish them for what? For not doing enough to stop Conservative Party policy? That does fit in logically with the “No to AV” line that single party government is better, if that is your line then you should want to punish the Liberal Democrats for not giving in more to the Conservative Party and so allowing your ideal of a very decisive government doing what it wants without having to consult with minorities. If the Liberal Democrats had been destroyed, and it seems many of those who voted “No” to AV wanted that to happen, then we would have had a purely Conservative government anyway. Yet there were these hordes of people wanting to vote “No” saying that was because the Liberal Democrats had allowed what they saw as a more or less purely Conservative government.
I have argued and argued with these people to try and see if I could get some sense from them that would explain their paradoxical attitude, but I have got none. Unless I get some, I will remain of the opinion that what went wrong with the referendum was the appallingly bad nature of the “Yes” campaign – so appallingly bad at explaining its case that it managed to get people to vote in favour of the very thing they said they were against – unrepresentative government. For this reason, Ed Maxfield’s line that “the electorate was just too smart to buy a bad product” is ridiculous. If they really were “smart” they would see that the logical consequence of their support for “No” ought to be support for the principle that the Liberal Democrats just let Cameron and his Conservatives do what they want because that is “decisive” and that is in line that it is better to distort representation in order to give all power to one party than to have a balance closer to the vote which means there has to be a government which involved multi-party compromise.
@Denis Cooper
No disrespect intended, but please let me beg to differ with you.
You have not set out your envisioned purpose for a second chamber and you have not used this as a starting point to design a method of composition for it. Rather the contrary.
Additionally you have not grasped the crux of the argument that legitimacy is not a plaything to be used for political purposes, and you seem happy to advocate a reforms to a second chamber which would see it unable to hold the Commons to account effectively.
If you support elections as a decision-making process then it is impossible to avoid the concept that they provide the mandate for leadership, so suggesting second-placed candidates could ever have sufficient legitimacy to potentially override those who defeated them is a fundamentally flawed thesis (just add up the numbers of votes).
And fixing a relatively higher standard of legitimacy for the body favoured with precedence is a perverse way of restricting overall legitimacy and undermining the basis of a functioning political system.
How long would it be before a third-placed candidate says that there should be a chamber for them where they can override the second-placed candidates? Or a fourth, or an eleventh-placed candidate? I’m pretty sure there are some way-out fringe groups who’d relish the opportunity!
If a slide into divisive extremism isn’t what you advocate then you may want to consider your reasoning again.
I certainly don’t favour any reforms to create or maintain an artificial balance – even where they may smile favour on my preferred outcome – and it causes concern when this is suggested. The shining example of the flaws can best be seen in the Spanish election system before Primo de Rivera, and just look where that went.
Liberalism is advocacy for justice and equality, not favoritism: support for more proportional representation is good because it advances justice and equality, not because LibDems may get more seats even if that is the result (which it may not be).
Oranjepan –
“You have not set out your envisioned purpose for a second chamber and you have not used this as a starting point to design a method of composition for it.”
On the contrary, I’ve been setting out that purpose on and off for more than a decade, and most recently on this site a week ago here:
“The central problem with our Parliament is the inherent “winner takes all” nature of the FPTP system used to elect the members of the first and dominant chamber, which often leads to a lack of effective opposition in that chamber and allows a single party government to behave as an “elected dictatorship”.
The blindingly obvious solution is to carry on having elections based on the (planned) 600 parliamentary constituencies, but supplement FPTP for members of the first chamber with SPTP for members of a second chamber with the same powers as the present Lords, taking the edge off the “winner takes all” nature of FPTP and ensuring that a single party government will never be able to command a majority in both chambers.”
Etc.
“suggesting second-placed candidates could ever have sufficient legitimacy to potentially override those who defeated them is a fundamentally flawed thesis (just add up the numbers of votes).”
Precisely, that is why a Second Chamber constituted as I suggest would have the power to delay a Bill, the same power as the unelected Lords now enjoy, but the Commons would always be able to have the last say by invoking the Parliament Acts.
I should have put in the link:
https://www.libdemvoice.org/dpmqs-groundhog-limbo-dancing-24249.html
@ Matthew Huntbach… I’ve tried to explain before and failed. I am, however, a stubborn man so I’ll try again.
In an eloquent post on another thread you made the point that in times of economic hardship the more academic concerns of small l liberalism come a poor second to economic concerns in the minds of the voters.
In the past many left minded voters have been happy to believe Lib Dem policy on the economy is broadly centre left. Looking at the coalition, however, they see Lib Dems and Tories agreeing not only on emergency deficit cuts but on a broader philosophical case for cutting the public sector. In particular they see the coalition advocating a greatly enhanced role for the private sector in the NHS (ok that’s been backtracked on but it was proposed to begin with!) and being generally biased against public provision of services.
The left minded voter might conclude both are parties of the economic right. He might prefer Lib Dems over Tories on other issues but on the key issue of the economy he could conclude there was no difference.
Having stopped trusting the Lib Dems to be a party of the economic left why would such a voter support an electoral system that would improve their chances of getting more MP’s?
That may seem irrational to you but I believe that analysis accounted for a good number of left minded “no” votes.
Kevin Colwill
The left minded voter might conclude both are parties of the economic right. He might prefer Lib Dems over Tories on other issues but on the key issue of the economy he could conclude there was no difference.
The left minded voter having swallowed propaganda from the Labour Party (which has a vested interest in destroying the Liberal Democrats), the Conservative Party (which has a vested interest in destroying the Liberal Democrats), the right-wing of the Liberal Democrats (which, …, well sometimes it acts as if it does), and the liberal press (which, well it doesn’t, but it is stuck in the Westminster bubble so it finds it hard not to see things in that way, also it is dominated by arts graduates who can be a bit thick at times), and … . Well, ok, but I have tried very hard to persuade you that not all Liberal Democrats are “Orange Book” types despite the various outlets giving that image.
Having stopped trusting the Lib Dems to be a party of the economic left why would such a voter support an electoral system that would improve their chances of getting more MP’s?
So the voter instead supports an electoral system which gives more Tory MPs, a system whose main argument was that it distorts the vote in favour of the biggest party (i.e. the Tories) because it’s better to have an unrepresentative but “decisive” one party government than one which is more fairly representative of the way people vote? Does that make sense? No, to me it doesn’t.
That may seem irrational to you but I believe that analysis accounted for a good number of left minded “no” votes.
Sorry, but I repeat, it is irrational. The AV system is not perfect, it is a miserable little compromise, a minor variation on what we have now, but it was all that was on offer in the referendum apart from what we have now. By ending the “Must vote for X to avoid splitting the vote and letting Y win” fear, AV would have started the process by which politics could have changed, for example by allowing left-minded voters people to show what they think of the Blairite Labour Party by voting for Greens and alternative left candidates, and use their second preferences to make sure doing that didn’t hand the seat to the Tories.
@ Matthew Huntbach…I did say the analysis might seem irrational to you!
As a final shot I can only go all abstract and say there are three parties A, B, C. You support some of the philosophies and policies of A some of B but you pretty much loathe C.
There is what you perceive to be a re-alignment, B become friendlier to C- maybe shares core values on an area of policy you feel particularly passionate about. You no longer feel the old affection for B.
A change in voting is proposed. It will harm C, might help A but definitely help B. Therefore, under the new system the combined forces of B and C will be stronger than now.
If you saw B and C as pretty much the same on the policy area that matters most to you (and you feared marginalising you choice…party A) wouldn’t you feel disinclined to support the change in voting system?
Right, I’ve tried telling my personal narrative, I’ve tried being rational, I’ve tried being abstract. That me out of ideas!! lol
@Denis Cooper
I’ve read through your comments several times and it really seems you’re calling for the second chamber to act in opposition to the first.
Well, that’s simply bananas. Wherever this has happened historically it has been the cause of civil wars – it would initiate a constitutional crisis where none existed since institutions of state cannot be set directly at odds with it’s government and survive. Opposition may not be the constitutional purpose of a legitimate second chamber, or if it is we may as well abolish it before it causes large amounts of blood are spilt.
Yes, you’ve repeated that you wish to get away from an electoral system which is ‘winner takes all’ (which the current one isn’t btw), but that gives no clear indication of the exact role you wish the second chamber to complete, and therefore you’ve not answered the question properly.
Do you wish for the Lords to initiate legislation, do you wish for it to be a reforming chamber with obligations to approve new laws, an advisory chamber, a pre-legislative consulting chamber, or what? What is a second chamber for?
You followed this up by stating there should be no question of precedence (ie a second house should have limits on legislative power), and you’ve supported this with your odd suggestion to fill it with electoral losers (ie people who’ve shown they don’t command public confidence) – but if the public didn’t listen to them then, why should the government of the day listen to them later?
How does that make either chamber more legitimate or more relevant? It certainly makes both effective opposition and effective leadership less likely, not more likely – in most normal cases your system would diminish the use of executive powers to non-existant thereby rendering the main house impotent, while in the extreme case giving an unpopular minority government an unbreakable double-lock on parliament and removing any basis for coalitions or compromise.
Deadlock or dictatorship, not democratic decision-making, and not an enviable choice.
So your suggestion is utterly perverse – it would achieve the opposite of that which you say you hope.
Why not just randomly pick MPs and Lords by lottery – you know how popular jury duty is – then you can abolish those distrusted elections altogether?
Of course it wouldn’t lead to constitutional crisis, let alone civil war, because the powers of the Lords are already limited by law, the Parliament Acts, and there would be no particular reason why that law should be changed.
So like the present Lords the new Second Chamber would not be permitted to delay a Money Bill by more than about a month, and any other Bill by more than about 13 months, except for a Bill to prolong the life of Parliament beyond five years when it would retain an absolute veto.
It’s already the case that no single party has an overall majority in the Lords – changed from the bad old days when a Tory government could always rely on a compliant majority in the Lords – and if a reformed Second Chamber was elected by some conventional PR system then it would usually be the case that no single party would have an overall majority.
What my proposed much simpler method does is to guarantee that a single party with a Commons majority won’t also have a majority in the Second Chamber, and moreover that the larger its majority in the Commons the fewer members it will have in the Second Chamber.
You seem to forget that in theory it’s recognised as important that there should be effective opposition to the government, which is why in the Commons there is a Leader of the Opposition who is paid extra salary and the opposition parties are provided with Short money to assist them with their work.
Unfortunately with the governing party using its whipped majority to sweep aside objections and, importantly, to control the timetable, the opposition in the Commons is usually too weak, and especially so when the government has a large majority, which is a major reason why we have the chronic problem of too many poor laws being passed.
Obviously FPTP is “winner takes all”, as the election results in just one candidate taking the seat in Parliament.
I wish the reformed Second Chamber to do pretty much what the present Lords do, but better and with greater authority and greater willingness to stand its ground when it believes the government has got it wrong.
I would remind you that the difference between an electoral “winner” and an electoral “loser” can be as little a single vote in many thousands, and point out that a candidate who you might ridicule as being a “loser” on the basis of one election may be the “winner” at the next election, for no reason other than a general swing in support towards his party, and that a candidate who got 15,000 votes but nonetheless lost the election would still have won the support of 15,000 more electors than any member of the present House of Lords.
Kevin Colwill
As a final shot I can only go all abstract and say there are three parties A, B, C. You support some of the philosophies and policies of A some of B but you pretty much loathe C.
There is what you perceive to be a re-alignment, B become friendlier to C- maybe shares core values on an area of policy you feel particularly passionate about. You no longer feel the old affection for B.
But this is not abstract. Instead of viewing the voting system in terms of its intrinsic qualities, you are viewing it in terms of what you perceive to be the party balances at present. To me that is wrong. Arguments for an electoral system should apply whatever the balance of the parties, it is undemocratic to say that whether an electoral system is good or bad depends on what the current position of the parties. To me your argument falls down completely if you are saying AV would be fine if B were close to A but not fine if B were close to C.
A change in voting is proposed. It will harm C, might help A but definitely help B. Therefore, under the new system the combined forces of B and C will be stronger than now.
The opponents of electoral reform use this as their main argument: “It is better for a government to be all of one party, so we reject attempts to share out representation more evenly and instead support the idea that representation should be distorted in favour of the largest party”. In agreeing to this, you are saying that it is right for the representation of C, if it is the largest party, to be twisted upwards so that it can form a government on its own and do what iot klikes even if it has well under half the votes. Why? You say you loathe C so where is the logic in supporting a system which gives C absolute power when it has only minority support?
Even if you are disappointed because you feel B has moved closer to C, isn’t it still better to have a system where C is less likely to gain complete control due to more presence of B?
But what is completely ridiculous in your argument is that the REASON that B seemed to become closer to C in your eyes was that the electoral system that YOU support forced it that way by weakening B’s representation and strengthening Cs and leaving a situation where despite A and B together having a majority of votes, A and B together did not have a majority of seats, so and A and B coalition was impossible. That is, what you wanted – B working with A rather than C – was ruled out and made impossible by the electoral system you supported.
So what you are doing is complaining about the behaviour of B while supporting the electoral system which left B with little alternative. This is ridiculous, it is illogical, it is supporting the very thing you say you are against, it makes no sense, it is like saying you are disgusted by racism and then voting BNP as some sort of protest about it.
If you saw B and C as pretty much the same on the policy area that matters most to you (and you feared marginalising you choice…party A) wouldn’t you feel disinclined to support the change in voting system
However, I repeat, I would not think that way. To me whether electoral system X is better than Y should be an absolute, not something that depends on the current position of the current parties.
@Denis Cooper
“What my proposed much simpler method does is to guarantee that a single party with a Commons majority won’t also have a majority in the Second Chamber, and moreover that the larger its majority in the Commons the fewer members it will have in the Second Chamber. ”
Is that a good thing?
What about candidates who came third (or fourth, fifth…eleventh etc) – are you also suggesting a third (or fourth, fifth…eleventh etc) chamber for them? and if not, what is your basis for making an exception from your rationale?
As far as I can see you’re playing favorites, which is excellent if you’re being favoured, but not so much if you’re not – I prefer fairness.
Oranjepan
Yes, it is a good thing, because:
1. It means that the governing party can’t dictate the timetable in the Second Chamber, push through programme motions to curtail debate, decide on the chairmanship and composition of committees etc, and
2. The weaker the opposition is in the Commons, the stronger it will be in the Second Chamber.
“What about candidates who came third (or fourth, fifth…eleventh etc) – are you also suggesting a third (or fourth, fifth…eleventh etc) chamber for them?”
No, because:
1. As a practical solution having one other chamber designed to oppose the Commons majority is good enough and there would be little or nothing to be gained by creating another at additional cost, and
2. On average the leading candidate and the runner-up would between them account for something like three quarters of the votes cast, and candidates lower down the order would each have gained less and diminishing support.
Even with conventional PR systems there is always an effective threshold below which a party does not achieve any representation.