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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » It’s time for the Tories to embrace PR
It is unusual for governments to schedule and highlight their splits in advance. However, three years ago, the Coalition launched into a bout of premeditated infighting from which it has never really recovered. It was entirely unnecessary on any number of levels. The event was of course the AV referendum.
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Make no mistake there are a few tories who would countenance independence if they thought that the loss of scottish labour MPs would help them long term in rUK. I would however be surprised if that wasn't still a very minority view among tory MPs, but you just never know.
Still, coalitions ain't all that either.
Also, AV was defeated by a thumping majority of 2:1. It was genuinely unpopular and was looked upon as a stitch-up by the political classes, now even less popular than they were then.
But David Cameron has shown himself to be completely unprincipled, so he'll probably do it.
Long-winded regurgitated hypothesis because there is nought to talk about? Maybe the Russkies will invade China (or-some-such) on-the-morrow....
:dull:
Those headlines keep getting better and better... #IndyRef #currencygate pic.twitter.com/BsktGdxjLZ
'Independent Scotland 'may keep pound' to ensure stability
A currency union will eventually be agreed between an independent Scotland and the remainder of the UK to ensure fiscal and economic stability on both sides of the border, according to a government minister at the heart of the pro-union campaign.
The private admission comes amid increasing jitters at Westminster, after opinion polls showed an increase in support for independence despite the Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrats all arguing that Scotland could not keep the pound after a yes vote.
"Of course there would be a currency union," the minister told the Guardian in remarks that will serve as a major boost to the Scottish first minister, Alex Salmond, who accused the UK's three main political parties of "bluff, bluster and bullying" after they all rejected a currency union.'
http://tinyurl.com/oqcbrdb
euan mccolm @euanmccolm 1h
hear the guardian source who breached the government line on no currency union is uncomfortably senior tory. #indyref
The UK wants to keep Trident nuclear weapons at Faslane and the Scottish government wants a currency union – you can see the outlines of a deal."
Since "no currency union" didn't shift the polls, do you think "keeping nukes" will?
Chortle......
eastertoss[sp?] asked the immortal 'Kate Bush (Bromley)' question. I think I have found the answer....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8R-M4Ov8M3E
What a shame. All that shrieking for nothing.
*chortle* indeed.
However I can't see it; I don't think they'd get it past the Tories, the public rejected a change to voting arrangements in the previous parliament and I'm not sure it'll even be in the Lib Dem manifesto. I think it'll need to happen at local level first - get it working for councils and it'll seem a far less big jump for Westminster.
But the strategic thinking in the article is sound - assuming that there is no prospect of 2 party dominance again, PR makes a lot of sense for the Tories if they can wean themselves off FPTP.
The No camp are blaming crisis on Darling & hinting at new strategy - who do you think will be #Darlingsreplacement #indyref
Derek Paterson ?@delpaterson 51m
"Darling may take the hit for this. Not for the leak, but for the utter failure of this political strategy." #indyref http://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2014/03/28/money-trouble/ …
ammacj ?@ammacj 2h
Yes Scotland ?@YesScotland
Mr Darling was among MPs to back George Osborne’s benefits bill cap yesterday http://ow.ly/v39nm #indyref
@BBCJamesCook the problem now for Carmichael, Darling and others is that even fewer people will now believe what they say... #indyref
Ferrets in a sack. Careful, or they might give each other TB.
''Independent Scotland 'may keep pound' to ensure stability'
Good luck trying to get that past the UK electorate let alone Parliament.
Of course the minister is just being honest.
I have been saying for a while that BT's scare stories are transparent.
This just confirms it. Better Together is a bloody awful campaign. It deserves to lose. I desperately hope it doesn't.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/md-politics/maryland-delegates-threaten-to-seize-house-of-cards-property-if-filming-leaves-the-state/2014/03/27/0715a0ca-b605-11e3-8cb6-284052554d74_story.html
Titter....
1923, 1924, 1929. (1918 if you count the two coalition parties separately), Feb 74, October 74.
So 5 possibly 6. Or about a 5th of General Elections.
And then more recently in 05, and 10.
The Lib Dems's commitment to PR doesn't lie solely in a desire for fair representation. For as long as the UK remained a two and a half party country, PR promised to deliver the Lib Dems an almost permanent balance of power, with kingmaker powers and a perpetual government role in coalition. This was the realpolitik.
Given today's polling it would not be unreasonable to expect 2015 to deliver vote shares, assuming a SIndy No, as follows:
34% Conservatives
34% Labour
10% Lib Dem
10% UKIP
12% Others
Not only would the Lib Dems lose their expected balance of power in a fully proportionate election, but the voting system would also undermine the party's electoral strategy of concentrating on 70 target constituencies with the aim of protecting their incumbent MPs and building future pockets of strength.
Now I realise that 2015 will be FPTP but would a leader of the Lib Dems want to take the risk that 2020 will return to a two and a half party fight rather than a two big plus two medium contest?
I agree with tpfkar downthread that, for the above reasons, the Lib Dems won't even offer PR for HoC elections in their 2015 manifesto. In a contest between principles and seats, seats will always win.
It would be much better for the Lib Dems to sit out 2015 & 2020 under FPTP to see whether the 2017 EU IN/OUT referendum result kills off the UKIP threat. After all the most likely outcome of the 2015 GE is a continuation of the current coalition (even if not predicted on current polling).
Cameron too would not want to commit to PR before knowing the outcome of his 2017 EU referendum and its impact on UKIP.
I detect between the lines of your argument the tactical need for Cameron to tie in the support of the Lib Dems for a continued Coalition before the election in order to hedge against Labour gaining most seats and Clegg having a real choice of coalition partner.
Maybe the answer to this would be to set up a Royal Commission on Parliamentary Reform during this term with a specific remit to consider the preferred options of both ("all") parties. This would advance the debate and preparations for change without any need to commit to a pre-election position.
Given the current electoral dilemma, It would also be sellable by Cameron and Clegg to each of their parties. This in turn would increase trust between the two parties and promote if not guarantee a preference and justification for continued coalition..
Finally it could also address the long term strategic issue of securing viable governments with declining shares for the major parties, or at least be sold as such to the media and public.
I predict even Pork would be gullible enough to buy it.
Furthermore, only one of those five elections produced a working majority. By contrast, it's entirely realistic to see parties winning outright now on less than 35% and certainly less than 40% given the size of the support for the parties beyond Labour and the Conservatives.
Thanks. If Cameron were brave enough to support PR in the Tory manifesto - and flag it up in advance - I don't think the Lib Dems could credibly execute a U-turn and oppose it, even were it not their preferred method (and strictly speaking, STV isn't PR anyway): their members and activists, who are important in determining policy, would surely baulk at dropping such a traditional policy just at a time when it became possible. Many of them will be members of Unlock Democracy and previously Charter 88 and would jump at the chance of winning such a long-term goal, even at the cost of another Con-LD coalition.
As for the conflict between seats and principles, I think the bigger problem would be on the Tories' side, where there are plenty of areas of dominance and where five MPs might be scrabbling for three realistic places. Under local open lists, the Lib Dems on current polling should take about 60-70 MPs: more than now and almost certainly more than 2015. Although larger constituencies would pose a problem of diluted locally cultivated support, that only goes so far. Many Lib Dem MPs are known beyond just their constituency as they're the only one in their district. That should provide a good platform of name-recognition and support in the larger constituencies.
The Liberals had several opportunities to back PR in the 1920s (not uncoincidentally, when support was last so diffuse); they failed to act, sometimes out of misguided strategic judgement, sometimes because they couldn't agree on details. Were they to do it again now, the public might be forgiven for not understanding why.
The AV decision could be written off as (1) the rejection of a bastard compromise system that no-one really wanted, (2) a demonstration of the distinct lack of public enthusiasm for the subject and therefore of the validity of no second referendum, and (3) a tactical necessity resulting from conflicting opinion within the government rather than a constitutional precedent.
Believe me, there is only one winner under FPTP and it is not the Tories ! This is regardless of constituency boundaries. Boundaries can only correct constituency sizes. It cannot correct distribution of votes.
Of course, Labour will also suffer slightly higher "wasted votes" as many left of centre Liberals come back home. In the past, in seats which Labour could not win, it suited Labour if there supporters voted Lib Dem. For example, in Surbiton.
There is another angle for the Lib Dems to think about. What is the real Liberal vote in this country ? It is not 24% - not even 16%. It is less than 10%.
Because in the past many Labour supporters and some Tory supporters voted Lib Dem to keep the other side out. I believe about 10% out of 24% of Lib Dem were actually Labour supporters. Possibly 4% Tory supporters.
For example, what is the true Labour support in Richmond upon Thames ? I can tell you it is not 6%. More like 20-25%. But Labour voters over the years have learnt to vote Lib Dem to keep the Tories out !
PR flushes out the real votes. No need for tactical stuff. I can reckon the Labour vote will be around the 40-42% mark in a PR election. Tories similar.
Equally, there's probably a largish group of liberal dems that are mostly voting labour in two way marginals to keep the tories out. I'd imagine the who thing would even out or close to it.
I think that neither main party would exist in the a proper PR scenario, like German MMP. The tories in particular would split in two, between a harder anti EU movement and a more centrist rump.
The electoral system isn't there because of the parties, the parties are there because of the electoral system.
- The campaign against independence has been so relentlessly negative it risks depriving the UK of a moral mandate http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/28/scottish-independence
On the other hand, Germany provides a very good example of PR not necessarily leading to a fragmentation of the party structure. The electoral system and a country's party structure are linked but loosely and each applies pressure on the other.
Not that it really matters. A truer party structure (i.e. one that better translated opinions into votes in Westminster) would be beneficial either way.
But the cynic in me says that we might get a vote for or against PR, but we won't get to vote for the voting system - that will be a stitch up by politicians, they will probably offer us a closed list or nothing.
I also think we need a thoroughgoing constitutional settlement - assuming a SIndy no, a confederal arrangement for the UK, elected upper house etc - rather than the piecemeal tinkering that has been going on for years. That won't happen either.
Fair enough. Fairly unremarkable. But look closer. Look at the list of organisations providing speakers:
- Business for Scotland
- Liberal Democrat Voters for Independence
- Scottish Green Party
- Women for Independence
- Labour for Independence
This campaign is getting more interesting by the day.
I think it's more likely that the Lords will get PR. It's just too ingrained in the Tory psyche to resist constitutional change, but the Lords has already been meddled with and is a sideshow. PR for the Commons is too much of a leap.
a) Dave Cameron is about to get thumped at the ballot boxes
b) Bookies are philanthropists
I know which answer is the more likely to be true.
Lab 1/3 (Ladbrokes)
Con 7/2 (Paddy Power)
The last time the Tories were returned to power with an overall majority was in 1979. That is 35 years ago. At the rate they are going, with the right-wing vote splitting, it is hard to see the Tories ever being returned to power with an overall majority again. They could not even defeat the hopeless Gordon Brown.
Their coversion to PR cannot therefore be far away.
It's one thing voting for a system that might result in you losing your seat; it's another to do that *and* to then be completely dependent on your party's patronage, either at central level or at some not-very-well-attended joint selection meeting - wherever the rankings are decided.
It would be far easier to sell the change if the public has the option to choose individual candidates, whether that be STV, open lists or AMS (yes, AMS can work with closed lists but (1) it doesn't have to and (2) even if it does, people can still pick a local MP).
Which begs the question: who could this "uncomfortably senior tory" be?
Sad though it is to say for those of us on the right, there has been a seismic shift in political attitudes in Britain since the Major years, to no small extent occasioned by two decades of high levels of benefit dependent immigrantion, resulting in the Conservatives no longer being what the late Bob McKenzie used to refer to as "the natural party of government".
The last time the Conservatives were returned with an overall majority was 1992 and before that 1987 and before that 1983.
Instead of giving up, the party got on with it. The result, a landslide.
A bit of blaming others crept back in around the Brown years. But that has largely gone again under Milliband.
The Tories really need to stop being so wet and just get on with it.
That means opposing major and/or unnecessary change but supporting it incrementally when it is needed. An electoral system is simply a method, it's not a principle. The principle that derives from that mission statement (to use management-speak) is that parliament needs to both represent the public and be seen to represent it. The risk of revolutionary change is increased when the political class becomes too distant from the public at large as it's seen not only as unrepresentative but incapable of being so. The electoral system should act as a pressure valve but FPTP is doing that only imperfectly when all three parties draw their leadership and a large part of the parliamentary party from such a narrow political elite and when other parties have great difficulty in challenging that.
It's also why the Tories back free markets, because they're more likely to provide people with what they want, and when they have what they want, they're less likely to demand change.
It's why the Tories are instinctively small-state because again, people ordering their own lives are likely to do it better than when ordered by some central diktat.
But it's also why neither of the above is a fetish: markets and small states have their limit because regulation and protection are necessary safety nets. Indeed, it's why Tories are sceptical of ideology in general.
It's why the Conservatives are keen on the idea of the UK as a nation: it's a binding factor and a country which has a shared sense of self is less likely to do anything stupid to itself.
And so on and so on.
There is no existential crisis. I am perfectly clear about what the Conservative Party is for. The question is how best to achieve it.
A system under full AV - single transferrable vote with multi member constituencies - fixes these democratic gaps and let's people vote for who they want. And retains the constituency link. And enables smaller parties to emerge to represent peoples actual interests rather than what the 3 big parties bought by the elite say their interests are.
And whilst we are changing the constitution let's fix the west lothian question. A federal UK with national parliaments for each constituent country plus a smaller Westminster. A democratic revolution that truly puts power in the hands of the people. It'll never happen. They can't allow that....
Is this why there is no apathy, discontent or distrust of the political process anywhere except here?
Two thoughts:-
Generally, it's hard to know whether the referendum rejected AV or PR more generally. (It's also hard to know why Clegg accepted it, but I notice that no one here seems to know what goes on inside his head...) I agree with John Lilburne: we need a more general constitutional settlement.
To pick a nit with DH [7.31]: that's a pretty fair description, not of Conservatism, but of Butskellism. I doubt Maggie Herself would have recognised it, and there are a number of Conservative ministers - notably Chris Grayling - who would scorn it. to say nothing of the increasing libertarian element within the Party (self-employed techies under 40, I suspect).
Are the tories a right-wing reformist party, a genuinely conservative party or a turn-the-clock-back nostalgia party like UKIP?
They are not the same thing. One pulls forward, one back, the other tries to hold the centre.
There is however a fundamental question of what the parties are for. Large parts of both major parties wouldn't agree with David that the objective is to prevent radical change. Among the Tories, the section that would like dramatic changes to the welfare state, replacement of the NH by an insurance model and so on is large, and younger Tories don't often seem to me motivated by a wish to keep things broadly as they are. On the left, lots of people want to see Britain turn its back on the default free market model. Neither group would have any chance of success under PR. PR favours gradual, cautious change. Is that what today's Tory MPs would vote for if push came to shove?
I also think the decline of the big parties is about to go into reverse. UKIP and the LibDems will get maybe 10% each, but 75% will be mopped up by the big two as the election narrows down to an "us or them" choice.
The Thatcher era was exceptional in some ways but I'd argue that the reduction in the size of the state (privatisations with mass sales to the public, sale of council houses, reduction of income tax etc.) was very much core-Tory, as was a confidence in Britain as a concept and as a country. Certainly, the economic policies were divisive and caused serious unrest initially but could still be justified in terms of minimising the risk of revolution given that the alternative was being bound to a status quo that had utterly failed. The trade union reform and the economic policy (and the two went hand-in-hand), were the lesser of two evils.
Where I'd agree that Thatcher departed from true Conservatism was in her third term, with a more stridently ideological platform. But then that led to her ejection as leader so it wasn't so much that the party departed from the philosophy as the leader did, and paid the price.
Of course the Sindy referendum gets super interesting as soon as we get VI crossover in a Westminster poll. If Salmond can present the result of a "no" vote as being 5 more years of tory rule then he'll win.
Start of Malaysian GP qualifying delayed by a little rain.
Wimps. ;-)
As a LibDem supporter, I am generally in favor of PR, but would not support any system that relied on party lists. We have enough SPADs in power already.
The answer to the Tories Kipper problem is not to throw out the baby with the bathwater, it is to deal with the fractures in the country that make a unified party impossible. The Tories need to recapture some common ground between the turnip Taliban, the socially liberal city slickers and the petit bourgousie.
After all, post PR they would have to form a coalition of these, why not do it first?
I would be astonished if this is not the debris from the Malaysian flight. Having done two big trips to these southern oceans, one thing you notice is the almost total absence of man-made items floating. You can go days without seeing even a plastic bottle.
Normal Scottish people will be happy with that and will have got the deal we deserve after funding London for 40 years. Toom Tabard's like you will be disappointed as it is not bad for Scotland and your pathetic gloating has been shown up as just petty hatred.
Re your other point, it depends on circumstances.
When I was a Labour activist (a very long time ago) I often found myself describing the Party not as it was, but as I wished it was. I suspect this malady is fairly widespread in all Parties...
Personally I think the answer is for the Tory party to break into separate national parties with the Scottish and Welsh Tories being in coalition with the English Tories at Westminster (similar to the CDU/CSU German model) and add to that the DUP/UUP from NI. They should face down UKIP not pander to it.
Heaven forbid if we opt for the LibDem STV nightmare - where we find out the MP's for a constituency the size of Africa sometime next year !!
Feels quite dismissive of a group that have been a crucial part of every Conservative majority govt since the war (if not before).
If you leave that centre 20% (more like 30%) to other parties, you are not going to govern alone.
2. Because it allows each 'wing' to demonstrate public support, rather than having to fight for it in all sorts of internal proxy battles.
It's a reasonable hypothesis - at the moment, which is all you can plan for - that a centre right party gets 35% and a centre left party gets 35%. The result is that an unprincipled party on 16% that is willing to get into bed with either one of them has disproportionate power.
If that central party were to only get 16% of their manifesto implemented then that would be fine, but the nature of auctions is that they will get increasingly more power despite having less than half the support of the major two parties*
A better reform would be to split the executive out of the legislature. The Commons should be about holding the executive to account. The fact that the payroll vote is well over 100 now, and the importance of the whips, means that it is ineffective at this job.
* It's quite possible that the large parties will fragment, but that isn't an improvement .
1979 Margaret Thatcher won an overall majority when she replaced a minority Labour government
1997 Tony Blair won an overall majority when he replaced a minority Tory government
2010 David Cameron fell 18 seats short of an overall majority when he replaced a Gordon Brown government defending a majority of 48. Had Brown also been leading a minority government, Cameron would almost certainly have won an overall majority. To win a net 97 seats was a remarkable achievement.
Secondly: I'd say it's hard to know whether the referendum rejected AV, general PR, the stupid arguments made by both sides in general, or Clegg.
It's perhaps not coincidental that you, NickP and Jonathan are of the thoughtful left-of-centre. Certainly, there are some - me amongst them - who would advocate significant change to the benefits systems, to the NHS and elsewhere but as a Conservative, that'd be entirely justified when the alternative is preserving a status quo that runs contrary to the core purpose i.e. change is not only justified but necessary if sticking to the status quo increases the risk of revolutionary change down the line.
So, for example, if the benefits system is both costly and ineffective, producing perverse outcomes, it's absolutely necessary to change it, even if some will lose out by doing so (as is inevitable). Not doing so not only results in higher taxes but a breakdown in the general support for the principle of benefits in the first place, setting one part of society unnecessarily against another.
Of the various PR schemes, I also agree with Easterross that the Scottish system is preferrable, even though it produces the bluff and bluster of Salmond.
BONG BONG BONG BONG BONG BONG BONG BONG BONG
That of course reducing to 350 and 225 (or thereabouts) on independence if voted for.
You might have Cameroons, Cornerstoners, Libertarians, Hayekians, One-Nation Disraeli-ites under the Tory banner, with Campaign Groupers, full-on socialists, soggy social democrats, Blairite free-marketers, trades unionists under the Labour banner, and Beveridge-group social liberals, Orange Bookers, traditional liberals under the Lib Dem banner, and Eurosceptics, libertarians and nostalgics under the UKIP banner.
The larger you are, the more corpuscles you have, the harder it is to have a very clear ideological bent for any party.
Any reason or just a hunch?
Even that may be too parochial: Clinton's globalisation spelt the end of social democracy European-style, since there is little or no production which cannot in time remove to wherever labour is cheapest (which will always be a dictatorship of some sort). The only question was how long it would take before anyone noticed. Well, they noticed about 4/5 years ago. Brown was just unlucky.
The truth is that both the Conservatives and Labour are loose coalitions. They are sustained only by the need to win power under FPTP and a mutual dislike of the other. The leaders are motivated primarily by a nihilistic desire to become PM. They have difficulty navigating the economic, social, political and cultural landscape - both historical and present - so can't clearly think for themselves, and articulate what they believe and stand for, because they do not know. So they become petty and partisan. And they are not respected.
Even without PR, there are big problems with the parties. Modern media pressures and social attitudes on gaffes/splits and soundbites encourage both of them to impose a rigid 'party line' on their candidates, which further increases public cynicism, but also fuels a minority of backbenchers to rebel against the leadership. Meanwhile membership falls of both - they are not respected, and do not respect their members - and are finding it increasingly hard to fund themselves. This is a continuing trend and is unsustainable.
Under PR both parties would fragment (although not disappear) and decide what they are for. However, I suspect we won't get that for a quite a time yet. As has already been pointed out, the route to PR for the Commons is through 'baby steps' on PR for local elections and/or the Lords first. However, although I recognise the present system for the Commons is unsustainable, I'm still not fully convinced of the merits of changing either of those.
Brown was also the author of his own misfortune, so not just unlucky. Something about fixing the roof when the sun was shining. He was happy enough to take the credit for the boom (in both senses).
What happened in Scotland during the minority SNP administration was the Greens and the Tories were able to get certain things done by a supply and confidence action which overlapped with, or were not too far off what the SNP was happy with - energy policies, polis on the beat etc. [Edit:] Also Labour, LDs and the Tories got together to bring in the Edinburgh Trams - no doubt to their satisfaction at the time.
[Edit: in other words, it wasn't because they were worried about the 1707 union. But now I suspect many folk read a new meaning into the name.]
What has happened since 1992 is a variety of social changes and political factors that have ripped apart the party coalitions, from both inside and out: a prolonged Tory civil war, fragmentation of the UK, the rise of the spin-culture, 24-hour media and the internet, the end of the cold war, demands for consumer choice, decline of deference etc.
However, if I were to postulate a thesis on the biggest one, it is this: a cultural attitude shift towards political participation. Almost all over 65s I know always vote, see it as their duty to vote and have clear values. They are aware of their democratic responsibilities, support broad political ideologies and take nothing for granted. Plenty also join/donate/campaign support for parties. In 1992, the over 65s would have been born in 1927 (or earlier) and come of age during, or before, WWII. They knew the importance of democracy and ideology. Over 65s in 2015 will have come of age in the late 1960s, or earlier. It won't be long until even this key voting demographic has forgotten the experiences of regular single-party government, and the battles earlier generations fought.
By contrast, the under 40s tend to have strong passions about single issues that distinguish themselves as individuals. Be it.. Scottish Independence, Gay Marriage, Privacy, Climate Change, Aid Relief, Wars etc. They feel no pressure to support ideologies that align themselves to parties, as those battles are now ancient history. They pick and choose their politics and drop in/out to suit them.
I am far from convinced that this is A Good Thing. But I can't see how the trends will be reversed. In fact, one of the only things probably flattering it is the fact young people don't vote, and older people do. So FPTP is looking increasingly "unfit for purpose".
Some change is inevitable.
Really proud that the UK took the lead in getting the UNHRC resolution passed against Sri Lanka paving the way for the independent international enquiry into the war crimes committed by both sides in the later stages of the civil war. David Cameron has stood by his word in "shining a light" into the situation in Sri Lanka - he was right going to CHOGM meeting in Colombo even though many including me thought it would be a propaganda coup for the vile SL Government. In fact, he played a blinder in Colombo turning the tables on the alleged war criminal Mahinda Rajapaksa.
I know that this UN process may take many years to deliver the justice that would ensure a true reconciliation but at least we have taken the first step - this country has played a pivotal role with many MPs of all hues keeping the pressure up. Thank you....
1979 Conservative vote +8.1% - Thatcher 'seals the deal'
1997 Labour vote +8.8% - Blair 'seals the deal'
2010 Conservative vote +3.7% - Cameron fails to 'seal the deal'
Until Conservative cheerleaders stop their cheerleading and look at the facts they wont win elections.