Proportional Representation: Why Has It Taken So Long To Even Get This Close?

I was interested to hear on the news as part of the pre-election campaign that the government is now scheduling a vote on whether the UK moves to a referendum on introducing proportional representation for elections to the Westminster parliament.  These days, which parliament you are referring to is an important distinction because, despite the UK's apparent adherence to the first-past-the-post electoral system, in fact now for a number of elections in the UK, proportional representation is already in use. 

There is proportional representation for all elections to the European Parliament from UK consituencies, for the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly since their creation in 1998, for the Northern Ireland Assembly since 2003 and in Scottish local elections since 2007.  So the concern that the British public would find it difficult to understand proportional representation seem to be disproved.  I know it does not apply to England where 83% of the UK population live, except for European elections which have a poor turnout, but anyone who has been a student and this is now more than 40% of 18-year olds will have the chance to engage with proportional representation in student union elections too.

Of course, when New Labour was uncertain of winning a clear majority in 1997 it laid out a series of constitutional reforms to attract what was seen as centre ground middle class people, especially those who back the Liberal Democrats in local or national elections.  This ground is very muddied now with the Liberal Democrats having seemingly been to the left of Labour in the early 2000s and now to their right, leaving a void on the left (and too much on the right with the UKIP and BNP attracting extremists).  Of course, given that Labour had been out of office for 18 years mainly in opposition to a government that had one a minority of the actual total votes, you could understand why they were sympathetic to an electoral system which more truly reflected their level of suppport and would have prevented what was termed the 'elected dictatorship' of the Thatcher years.  Naturally smaller parties, notably the Liberal Democrats and their predecessors, have always been supportive of proportional representation.  As I observed back in March 2008: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2008/03/what-if-proportional-representation.html  if the UK had had proportional representation it would have been a three-party state for much of the 20th century.

When Tony Blair's New Labour won the largest majority seen in the 20th century in British elections, the need to woo Liberal Democrat MPs into working with Labour disappeared immediately.  Not only the 'big tent' approach which had even envisaged Liberal Democrats in the Cabinet went instantly, a lot of the Liberal Democrat attracting ideas went too.  In the almost 13 years since Labour came to power we have seen minimal reform of the House of Lords, and as the MPs' expenses scandals showed, parliament as a whole has been neglected in terms of reform.  We are no nearer to an elected upper house than we were back in 1997 and in fact faith in the parliamentary system has been damaged.  Of course, the large majority's Labour won and the lack of need to actually address the parliamentary system suited Blair's personal, presidential, arrogant style of rule.  The extent of this was revealed to us further today in Clare Short's testament to the Chilcot Inquiry.  Behind the facade of chummy government, in fact the Cabinet system was as suppressed under Blair's smiling approach as it had been under Thatcher's scowling one; both were smug and unapologetic over the lack of democracy, accountability and discussion at the core of government as well as in each branch.

So, in 2010, Gordon Brown finds himself in a position which resembles in part the one Tony Blair was in back in 1997.  He is concerned that there will be a hung parliament and he is stacking up the policies that will woo the Liberal Democrat MPs if they are willing to fall for the trick again.  He is also building up a policy which may prevent Labour being out of office for the next one to two decades.  This is a real danger as it is estimated that the Conservatives' plans for redrawing of constituencies would make it far harder.  As Scotland and Wales places where Labour has always been strong, go more their own way, this may mean them losing any chance of a majority in England, and certainly for now, thus in the UK.  Of course, it is too late.  It was a mistake to wait 13 years to move towards proportional representation.  It would have been better in, say, 2000 once the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly were up and running and people could see proportional representation working and could talk to British people who were not confused by it.  The Conservatives have never had an interest in proportional representation.  Unsurprising given that they were in power for a majority of the time in the 20th century.  Keeping the first-past-the-post system will also slow the haemorraging of Conservative supporters or potential Conservative supporters among the formerly politically inactive towards UKIP and the BNP, which after the European elections seems a reality with all the violence and harship even small gains by these parties bring in their wake.

The UK has been prevaricating over proportional representation for over ninety years now and it is time to move towards it.  Yes, it will mean extreme parties appearing in parliament, but it will also mean that sectional interests get a look in, drawing more people to democracy.  I can see the benefits of Green Party, a grey party, an Islamic party, a Socialist party let alone regional interest parties, having representation at Westminster.  Of course, the right wing is in fact already better equipped, with UKIP and the BNP able to get representation quickly as well as probably people like the Countryside Alliance.  Having such parties will mean that the existing parties will be compelled to shake off their complacency and be compelled to argue their case much more vigorously.  Blair could never have coped with a parliament chosen by proportional representation, he believed he was always right and had no need to explain himself.  In a parliament where more sections of society is represented and new groups can rise up if people are dissatisfied, politicians have to work harder.  In such a context we more likely would have been spared a fudged decision to invade Iraq and had had a strict policing of MPs' expenses.

Contrary to the assumptions by some last year that Cameron would simply walk into being prime minister, I have always thought that the battle would be tougher.  I think Labour and even Brown can offer good solutions for the UK and I am sure a less divided society than the one Cameron would foster.  It is a pity that proportional representation has been wheeled out once again in these circumstances rather than put into place properly mid-way through Labour's 13 years in office, or even earlier.  Democracy in the UK is weak.  It is archaic, too much (notably the House of Lords and the royal prerogative) is in fact undemocratic and it is too easily manipulated when the electorate is disinterested and elections are sewn up between two parties.  Too little attention is being paid in the run-up to the election to policies that will promote true democracy in the UK.  Instead the focus is purely on how hard we are going to beaten in cut-backs.  If you come face-to-face with a candidate surprise them and ask them what steps they are going to take to make the UK a real democracy for the first time.

What is the Problem with an Elected House of Lords?

Back in 1997 before the Labour Party was elected to power for the first time in the UK in 18 years there was much in their policy documents about their policies for constitutional reform. For a country that has had some form of democracy for a quite a long time, though only universal suffrage since 1948, the UK actually is not a very democratic country. Putting aside the fact that so much policy is made by the ultra-rich in UK society, in fact even at a base level it does not really count as a democracy. Like so many other countries in the World we have a bicameral system of parliament but the upper house, the House of Lords, is totally unelected and is made up of people, predominantly men, who have inherited their position in parliament, alongside 24 bishops from the Church of England, no other church, and then people who have been appointed for life by some politician in the past few decades. You could argue that this all frees them from political influence and that their age means that they can bring experience to the job, but the key problem for me, and for the Labour Party of 1997 is that they are all unelected.

Eleven years on, nothing has changed. There were attempts to reduce the number of inherited peers (as the lords and ladies are termed generically) or reduce their voting rights, but even that has not really come about. In 1999 the number of hereditary peers was reduced from 700 to 92, which is an improvement, but the house is still full of appointed rather than elected people. As you probably know, it is suspected that Labour, for some reason will lose the 2009/10 election, primarily because with the departure of Tony Blair they have stopped pandering to the ultra-rich as much as they used to, and money and influence turned all the media against the Brown government, even though their rivals, the Conservatives, lack any policies and seem content to simply have power handed to them. We actually might be moving into an era of policy-free politics. However much I loath Margaret Thatcher and how she totally wrecked the UK (to give her the state funeral she is now requesting would be a travesty) no-one could say she lack policies. So, in this environment, the slowly grinding steps to try to reform the House of Lords are now facing opposition from within Labour itself, because they think it may upset the electorate even further. Given that most Labour MPs think they will lose anyway, why are they bothered? I can tell you why, it is because the House of Lords is the most exclusive club in the World and even the majority of Socialists of the past were happy to become lords or ladies. Partly, I imagine, because it meant they could keep sticking their noses into politics for the rest of their lives. Full credit to Tony Benn for giving up the peerage he inherited in the mid-1960s and refusing one in his own right, though he is the one man I think this country still needs in parliament.

What angers me most is the feeble excuses which are being put forward to delay reform of the House of Lords and they show a stunningly patronising attitude to our friends and allies not only in the EU but also North America. The team supposedly leading the reform headed by Jack Straw and Lady Corston, argue reform now would be 'a knee-jerk reaction', how slow are your responses if it takes 11 years to react? In fact it is more than that as Labour was thinking along these lines back as early as 1994 and even before that. I met in the 1990s who had researched Labour's attempts in the 1970s to reform the House of Lords, so 30 years is a very slow 'jerk'. The really feeble response is that there might be split legitimacy in parliament if there was an elected upper house. I could understand this fear if nowhere else in the World had a bicameral system with both houses elected, but since Japan abolished its House of Peers at the end of the Second World War, not democratic country has an unelected second house. The Americans have had one now for over 200 years. In neighbouring countries notably France, Belgium, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, have elected upper houses. The Norway, Sweden, Finland, Portugal, Luxembourg, Greece, all the Balkan states except Bosnia, Hungary, Slovakia, Ukraine have unicameral systems, so are entirely elected. Of course we could go unicameral, but if we insist on bicameral there are scores of successful examples across Europe and the English-speaking world: Canada, South Africa, India, Australia, only New Zealand is unicameral.

Straw whines that if proportional representation was used for the upper house then members there could claim greater legitimacy to hold their seat than many of those in the lower house, the House of Commons. Well, whose fault is that? Labour was very eager to have proportional representation when it was losing during the 1980s and 1990s and then when they came to power they forgot all about it. If they had introduced it when they said, we would not now be in that situation. The other issue is that there are loads of models of an elected upper house. The nearest, i.e. the Republic of Ireland, the only state to share a land border with the UK, has an indirectly elected upper house, Seanad Éireann is chosen by electoral colleges. The trouble is a lack of imagination on the part of the reformers. The UK could move first to an indirect model before a directly elected model, if they wanted, but even those charged with looking at reform seem stunningly ignorant of the different models available. I suppose it is the typical British thing, that as the 'mother of democracy' we have nothing to learn from ignorant foreigners who have instability leading to dictatorship. Of course this neglects how for over 60 years so many European models have worked well in securing political stability in times of upheaval. The British feel they must find a uniquely British model and given how many varieties are already in existence this leaves little to choose from. Straw's whining is pathetic. They should ask him to pay back any salary he has received from doing this work as clearly he has done less research than you and I can achieve through a Google search or a visit to Wikipedia.

The other problem is that many upper houses are based on a territorial pattern, examples include the states of the USA represented in the Senate and Germany with the Bundesrat. Belgium, Canada, India, Russia, Switzerland are other examples. Of course this would seem a good way forward now that Scotland, Wales and to some extent Northern Ireland are gaining more autonomy. However, again, despite their promises in 1997, regional assemblies for England where 83% of the UK population live, have been stillborn. Partly this is because regional identity is weak and in some areas it is on historic lines, in others on modern things like unitary authorities and these all come in different shapes and sizes. However, the other issue is that the British public do not like 'government' and feel they have no ability to shape it so they simply resist it as an extra level of bureaucracy. Thus, the parallel policy of having large geographical areas from which English senators could be elected itself has failed. A lot of this stems from the fact that so many British people are ignorant of their political system, they love historic models and would probably prefer simply the Queen in power advised by her housecarls, they have felt powerless for so many decades now too and so when reform comes about there is no engagement. Consequently the UK will struggle on with its truncated democracy, which clearly favours, rather than challenges, those who have power. Our upper house will remain an exclusive club rather than a strong tool of democracy.

Is this a model of democracy?

Talking with some young Americans at the time of the war with Iraq I put forward the following suggestion for the political system that might be introduced to the country after Saddam Hussain was deposed and asked whether they thought it was a good model. This was my suggestion:

The head of state should also be head of the most established sect of religion in the country, but one which most people do not actually subscribe to. The head of state should be from a foreign family and be unelected, holding their position for as long as they live with the position passing to their children on their death. All laws would be enacted in the name of this head of state and people would swear loyalty to them.

Half of the parliament would be unelected too. It would be made up of mainly elderly people who either are given their posts by political leaders or simply inherit them from their parents with often the same family having held a position in parliament for centuries. There is no obligation for them to attend parliament but they get paid a small fee if they bother to turn up. Twenty-four members of this part of parliament are rotating batch of religious leaders but all of them are from the same sect as the head of state.

The rest of parliament would be elected, however on a system that means if a candidate gets one more vote than his opponent s/he wins and almost 50% of the votes cast in a constituency are effectively 'wasted'. Different parties effectively have to get a different number of votes to win a member of parliament, so a centre party winning 18% of the votes gets 7% of the seats and another party winning 41% of the votes gets 62% of the seats in parliament. There are no left-wing, extreme right-wing or ecological parties in the parliament. Though ethnic minorities make up 8% of a country's population they have only 2% of the representatives in parliament. Women make up more than half the population and more than half the working population of the country but only 20% of representatives are female. More votes are needed to get a representative in from the South of the country than from the North. About 50% of the eligible population vote in national elections; 25-30% in local elections.

Legislation in the parliament can be extended in scope or duration by the use of the 'prerogative' of the unelected head of state, wielded by the head of government. It is often 'guillotined' to rush it through without debate. The head of government only appears before the parliament for 15 minutes once per week and parliament is closed for large portions of the year. Much legislation comes from a supra-national regional body, located outside the country, especially covering things like food and work issues.

Anyway, it is not much of a trick because people soon work out that it is the UK government system I am talking about. We have the Queen as the head of state and she is also head of the Church of England. The House of Lords is entirely unelected, still, after 10 years of reform being promised and it contains bishops. The electoral system does lead to huge distortions and it is a waste of effort for small parties to even bother trying to get in. Even the Liberal Democrats who in one form or another have been around for two centuries have found it difficult to get a credible number of members of parliament. Ethnic minorities and women are seriously under-represented in parliament. The Blair government has made more use of the royal prerogative and guillotining than any of its predecessors to get legislation, these days often poorly drafted, through, despite having huge majorities in parliament.