Neil Harding on Elections
Harding, a long time supporter of Proportional Representation, reports that Labour have finally reneged completely on their ‘97 manifesto commitment to hold a general referendum on election reform, calling it “the last nail in British democracy”. Frankly, this strikes me as a confirmation of the obvious: in reality, they reneged long ago, making it one of the first nails that Labour have driven, wilfully, blindly and without remorse, into the coffin of British democracy.
In any event, this is an unsurprising development. Harding has claimed that PR would lock out Tory MPs forever, giving Labour more control, and that it is therefore in their own interest. It seems to me that the best way for Labour to stay in power is to clean up its act: stop bashing civil liberties, stop treating “database” and “solution” as synonyms, stop stripping professionals of their discretion, stop nanny statism: essentially, stop being authoritarian control freaks. It is these things that erode their majority, and adopting PR will not stop the rot. They need to change their ways, and as Barak Obama said recently, and rousingly, change happens from the bottom up: not the top down. That is a lesson that Westminster would do well to learn.
For the record, I’m not sure what I think of PR. I’m quite certain that FPTP is terrible, but what to replace it with is a difficult question.
Bookmark this post: 
February 16th, 2008 at 22:56
Harry, essentially you are right - Labour reneged on its promise of a referendum in its first term, but this recent review was the final nail in the coffin because the government came out and clearly said that ‘FPTP is working fine’ which it quite clearly isn’t when 35% of the vote gets you 55% of the seats and the ‘winning’ party could have actually come third in terms of votes in 2005 and still got the most seats.
I am not sure exactly why you are unsure of PR but if it is because of what you perceive as an erosion of the mythic ‘constituency link’ or a fear of ‘weak’ coalition government then you might want to read my letter to Michael Wills Minister Of State. You might also like this totally proportional system that keeps the same voting method and ‘constituency link’ idea as ours and is as simple to count.
Finally for the record, I don’t think that PR will ‘lock out Tory MPs forever’. It will however, stop another Tory government ever being elected on a minority of the vote and riding roughshod over the majority’s wishes like Thatcher’s did.
February 17th, 2008 at 12:38
Ok — I guess I misunderstood. I was sure that I read a post of yours long ago saying introducing PR would be the best thing Labour could do to stay in power, or words to that effect, but a brief search has not turned it up.
Also, I must point out: as you say, this Labour government have been elected on a minority and are riding roughshod over the majority’s wishes, exactly like Thatcher did. She just had different policies!
I’m unsure about PR because I haven’t read much about electoral systems and I don’t know what else is out there. The Landtag one looks interesting, though!