What should we make of the resignation of Italian prime minister Romano Prodi, following his coalition’s defeat in a vote of confidence in the upper house of parliament, the Senate? British commentators might reassure themselves ‘but that was Italy’, assuming that anything as colourful as punches flying around the woolsack couldn’t happen here. Not in the Lords’ present moribund condition, perhaps, but could it in future?
Italian journalists, by the way, haven’t written up yesterday’s events as if it were yet another humdrum day in the dysfunctional life of their nation’s politics. They sense something ‘un-Italian’ about it all, one paper describing it as like a scene from The Sopranos.
And the events in the Senate had an aura of over-the-top, couldn’t-happen-in-real life TV drama: the smallest governing party which resigned from the coalition because its leader was implicated in a corruption case (he, by the way, was Justice Minister) and which therefore caused the confidence vote, split with one of its three senators trying to vote to save the centre-left government, until he got roughed up by his party colleagues. He was stretchered out of the hall.
The question for Italy is now: is their country ungovernable?
Prodi says it is ungovernable, under the present electoral system. He – with the equivalent of the CBI and, seemingly, the President on his side – argues that reform needs to precede any move to go to the polls. The issue is not so much the electoral laws Berlusconi rushed through in his last gasp as PM, which bolstered whoever won the election by giving them extra seats in the Lower House, but a deeper problem. It’s the ‘perfect bicameralism’ of the constitution which has caused the most recent crises. Twice Prodi has had to fight a confidence vote, twice he’s won in the Lower House, twice he’s lost in the Senate.
The question for us is: how can we make our parliamentary system something close to a representative democracy and avoid the imperfections of perfect bicameralism? We would like to see an elected Upper House, on STV. We should surely want to give it teeth, rather than keeping it as the neutered beast it is now. We would want to avoid the provision for life senators that occurs in Italy – though that provision gave the Prime Minister a glimmer of hope that he could remain and stability be achieved.
But would we enjoy the consequences? Will we end up throwing punches or popping corks?
* David Rundle is Liberal Democrat deputy leader of Oxford City Council, and blogs at de moribus liberalibus.
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5 Comments
The problem with electing the Lords by STV would be that this would give it greater legitimacy than the Commons, which, if one wants to have a bicameral legislature, is not a good idea. But it is essential to have a second chamber which has sufficient power to act as a brake upon the possible excesses of future governments. My suggestion, which covers both the balance of legitimacy problem and the necessity for membership of the second chamber to be democratic, would be to have a majority of members elected by STV and the rest to be selected by a special National Lottery draw. Before you dismiss this idea as ridiculous think about it for a few moments: it would provide a group of people whose political views reflected those of the country – people who, by having entered the lottery had shown that they had some interest in politics and pubic service (no one in the second chamber would be a ‘Lord’ any more); they would serve for, say, ten years only so they would not be looking over their shoulders all the time to curry favour with the electorate, and could get a pension at the end of it to compensate for the career break; and it would mean that there was a traditional British compromise with regard to the balance of legitimacy between the two chambers. Of course it would mean that a few nutters and useless prats would end up in the second chamber – but even the House of Commons has its share of those!
The problem with a lottery is that we run the risk of losing. Statistically, there will be times when the number of prats and nutters is high enough to cause a disturbance, especially if you go for a PR second chamber.
One can imagine a 49-51 situation where the faction with 49 lucks out and gets more supporters from the lottery. Isn’t that basically just as random as the current system, with the lottery replacing the key marginals?
The balance of legitimacy problem is unlikely to be resolved by any conception of democracy that is based purely and simply on methods of voting.
As we have repeatedly seen, representation that fails to reflect both the structure and composition of society is only storing up conflict for the future – so merely imposing any new and different electoral qualification will fail to address the true issues of relating to each other all the different forms of constituency that exist in the country.
2. One would have to look at the likely results of an STV election, make a decision about the optimum number of members of a second chamber, and then come to a conclusion about the proportion of members to be selected by lottery. I would think that probably around 25% would be about right. Of those, very few statistically would be disruptive (A.S. Neill believed that a community could sustain about one person in 22 who did not subscribe to the community’s norms).
As ever, it helps not to ge too hung up about Italy. I’m not an “it couldn’t happen here” type, but Italy (along with Israel) always pops up in the “perils of PR” debate and I’m afraid people tend to ignore the specific local factors.
Italian politics is fractured six ways from Sunday both geographically (people are practically still voting based on the pre-unification city-states) and left-to-right. Neither characteristic is one that can be seen in Britain.
The “perfect bicameralism” seems to be the heart of the problem – and one we would never dream of repeating here. The Lords (and whatever comes after them) have a specific, if not yet written, mandate no advise and amend but not to legislate. The two houses’ powers should by qualititively different even if they are theoretically equal. Assuming that any Lib-Dem-led settlement would also include a written constitution and a fully-reformed Commons, this would seem workable.
On the subject of composition, I always seem to make myself unpopular by stating that my objection to including life-peers or appointees has never been on principle but because of the sheer opacity and openness to abuse in the system. The Senate (and I have no issue with still letting them take a title on election or wear ermine if someone decides it’s good for the telly) needs to be democratic and accountable – and elections are an obvious way towards this – but it also has a job to do, and reflecting the public mood is only part of it. A hereditary politician, is indeed, as absurd as a hereditary mathematician, but I wouldn’t want mathematical truths to be decided by the person with the best PR and whitest teeth either. An elected mathematician is no safeguard either.
There should still be room in our upper house for those whose expertise is in their chosen field and not in getting themselves elected. Of course the Lords/Senate cannot be immune or set apart from public opinion – and I would want to ensure that even appointees were subject to public recall and scrutiny – but they have a job to do and as Liberals AS WELL as Democrats, we need to ask what is the best way of ensuring proper oversight, scrutiny and expert input into laws passed.
A Proportional Lower House is undeniably a good thing and a massive improvement on the current system but will innevitably lead to more laws being amended, diluted and compromised upon to secure a majority. In this scenario it is MORE not less essential that the reviewing chamber contain people from outside party politics to ensure the resulting laws actually do the things they have to be able to do.