It is a weak point in the theory of representative government as now organized and administered, that a large portion of the voting people are permanently disenfranchised.
So said U.S. President James Garfield, back in 1881. At the time, he was talking about an American voting system that had only recently been opened up to African-Americans and was still denied to women. But if Garfield was alive today, he might well feel compelled to say the same thing about the effects of the first-past-the-post system on the majority of voters in the United Kingdom. In Part One of this in-depth look at electoral reform, I examined why Britain’s current system is so bad and also tackled some of the criticisms frequently directed at the main alternative: proportional representation. Now I want to take a close look at what kind of electoral reform the UK could have and in doing so answer the question: just how proportional do we want our representation, anyway?
(By the way, as I was was almost finished writing this Gordon Brown announced (admittedly not unsurprisingly) that he was planning a consultation on voting reform. Thus this post is transformed from a look at a complex, brain-achingly dense topic into a hot-off-the-press must-read. No, really!)
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3 comments | tags: electoral reform, UK Politics
Shortly after U.S. President Barack Obama was elected, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel gave the following advice: “Rule one: Never allow a crisis to go to waste. They are opportunities to do big things.” He was referring to the global economic meltdown, but he may as well have been talking about the current crisis in the UK surrounding MPs expenses. With Parliament in a state of disarray unseen since the time of Cromwell and the public demanding sweeping change, it looks like the door has finally been opened to the kind of major constitutional reforms that have been talked about for years but never acted on.
Chief among the major reforms now being seriously discussed by Parliament is electoral reform – specifically embracing a system of proportional representation. Ever since Labour swept into power twelve years ago, they’ve been promising to change the way we vote. However, these promises have never materialised; changing the electoral system is a lot less appealing when you’re sitting on a nice big Parliamentary majority. But now that everything’s on the table bar the kitchen sink, (which some MP has already claimed for, boom boom) it looks like the death knell might finally be sounding for our much maligned first-past-the-post system.
It isn’t surprising that Britain’s current system should be facing extinction, since first past the post is, in terms of representing the will of the votes, awful. It allows MPs and governments to be elected with minority support – support that is often no more than a third of votes cast. It leads to swathes of safe seats, where those who vote against their MP do so knowing their party has no chance of winning. In summary, it renders millions of voters powerless and allows the winning party to make a healthy, powerful parliamentary majority from a minority of votes. But is P.R. any better? And what kind of P.R should we have? The answers to these questions may determine Britain’s political landscape for decades to come…
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1 comment | tags: electoral reform, UK Politics
