Tony Blair has kept the door open to voting reform in Labour’s second term. He has resisted moves to ditch all mention of the referendum pledge from Labour’s manifesto and instead has reached a deal with the Lib Dems that embodies the wording agreed at the Exeter policy forum last July. Press briefings suggest that the manifesto will read: ‘The government has introduced major innovations in the electoral systems used in the UK – for the Scottish and European parliaments, and the Welsh and London assemblies. The Independent Commission on Voting Systems made proposals for electoral reform at Westminster. We will review the experience of the new systems for the House of Commons. A referendum remains the right way to agree any change for Westminster.’ Whilst this is a long way from the clear commitment to the referendum in the 1997 manifesto, the wording does offer reformers a way forward.
There are three reasons why it is really important that this agreement has been reached. First, the present first-past-the-post system is helping to erode public faith in politics. Second, dropping this pledge would have made Liberal Democrat voters less willing to vote tactically in the coming election – and Labour would inevitably lose seats. Third, the party’s fledgling policy forum process would have been undermined.
The first and most important of these reasons is public faith in politics. The current first-past-the-post voting system is no longer appropriate for the times in which we live. It is broken and needs fixing. The turnout at the last general election was 71.4 percent – the lowest since 1935. Recent polling shows that it is expected to fall further at the coming election, particularly in ‘safe’ Labour seats. People don’t see the point in voting when their vote has no effect – they know that most votes are either wasted in no-hope seats or piled on already huge majorities. In the marginals, where voting does make a difference, many people face the choice of either wasting their vote on a candidate who is never going to get elected or voting tactically for their ‘least worst’ preference.
In 1992, if just 1247 Conservative voters in the eleven most marginal seats had switched, the Tories would not have had a majority. That is just 0.003 per cent of the 33,614,000 who voted or roughly one out of every 300,000 voters. In 1997 it would have taken only 168,000 Labour voters in the 90 most marginal seats to switch their vote and Labour would have been deprived of an overall majority. That is just 0.5 percent of the 31,286,000 people who voted in 1997 or one in 200 voters.
So it’s no wonder that the parties focus their efforts on floating voters in the top 150 or so mainly Middle England marginals and it’s no wonder heartland voters feel ignored. This distorts the whole political agenda to policies that will play well with these relatively small numbers of voters. Politicians extol the virtues of free competition in all walks of life but seem reluctant to reform a system that currently protects them from electoral competition in the 500 or so safe seats where the result can be safely predicted before the election is held.
Our present Westminster voting system means that millions of voters are denied a representative from the party they support. For example, in 1997 the 130,000 Labour voters in Surrey gained no representation. In 1992 Labour polled more votes in the Home Counties (1.3 million) than in the whole of Scotland (1.1 million), yet Labour gained 49 seats in Scotland compared to only three in the Home Counties.
In recent months people in Britain watched in disbelief as the man that most people didn’t vote for became the President of the United States. Our system has delivered the same outcome here, notably in 1951 when the Conservatives brought an end to the famous 1945 Labour government despite getting fewer votes than Labour. In 1974, the reverse happened, bringing Harold Wilson back to power.
Supporters of the present system argue that it delivers ‘strong’ government and gives Labour its turn at the levers of power without the need for a coalition with the Liberal Democrats. Yet Britain’s public services and economic growth rates have compared badly over the post-war years with those achieved by coalition politics in Europe.
The Alternative Vote Plus system proposed by the Jenkins Commission is a long way from a ‘pure’ PR system. The brief given to the commission was to observe the requirement for broad proportionality, ensuring stable government, extending voter choice and retaining the constituency link. The Prime Minister warmly welcomed the publication of the commission’s report and went on to say: ‘The report makes a well argued and powerful case for the system it recommends. It is very much a modification of the existing British Westminster system, rather than any full blown PR system as practised in other countries.’
Under AV+, the majority of MPs (80 – 85 percent) would continue to be elected in single member constituencies, although people will be able to vote for candidates in order of preference. The remaining MPs will be elected from small ‘county’ regions on a proportional basis to ensure a more representative parliament.
The idea that it is desirable, or in the long run possible, to use the existing system to win power on a minority vote and then proceed to govern ‘strongly’ is completely at odds with the way in which the world is moving. Companies understand that governing by decree is not the way to motivate and involve employees in achieving world class competitiveness.
The Labour government itself has sought to establish endless partnerships, particularly in combating social exclusion. Networking and team work are rapidly replacing outdated ideas of hierarchy. If politicians and political parties try to continue with the adversarial and patronising culture of the nineteenth century, exemplified by our present voting system, then government and democracy will become weaker and less relevant to the lives of an increasingly demanding twenty-first century public.
Difficult as the transition to a more pluralist politics in Scotland and Wales has been, the first steps towards a more consensual politics have been taken. By changing our culture to adapt to devolution and pluralism, we can carry forward Labour’s programme of constitutional reform.
The second consideration is Labour’s self interest: it would have dropped the referendum pledge at its peril. The distortions of our system favoured Labour in 1997, but for most of the twentieth century the system largely favoured the Conservatives. Under first-past-the-post, the Tories could return to power with a minority vote and probably be more extreme than they were even under Thatcher. It is amazing how quickly the 179 Labour majority at the last election has lulled party activists into a false sense of security and how quickly the Tories’ eighteen years have become a hazy memory.
The size of Labour’s victory at the last election was inflated by tactical voting. In 1997, Labour only won 1 percent more share of the vote than John Major in 1992 and less actual votes, yet Tony Blair got a ‘landslide’ majority of 179 and Major won an inconclusive 21 seat majority. The Liberal Democrat vote actually fell by 1 percent in 1997, yet thanks to tactical voting they almost doubled their representation in parliament.
The reality is that the centre-left vote in Britain is divided and under the current winner takes all system it is just a matter of time before it reverts to form and returns the Tories to power with a minority vote. If Labour had ditched the voting referendum pledge this could have happened sooner than expected. A recent ICM poll for Make Votes Count showed that if such a clear promise were broken, a quarter of Liberal Democrat supporters would be less likely to vote tactically and 35 percent would be less inclined to trust Tony Blair again if he broke his word on this issue.
Finally, dropping the referendum pledge would have brought the ‘partnership into power’ policy process into disrepute. Electoral reform is a highly controversial issue within the Labour Party, with feelings running high. The agreement reached at the July 2000 meeting of the National Policy Forum in Exeter involved a real movement from both sides in order to find common ground.
The unions backing the first-past-the-post campaign accepted that there would be a referendum and held back from committing the party to the present system. Reformers in turn accepted that strong concerns had been expressed within the party about AV+ and that before any referendum could be held, the changes in Scotland and Wales would need time to bed down. This approach was endorsed by conference.
To have abandoned a pledge that is completely under the control of the government would have played badly, and been attributed to the Prime Minister’s inability to challenge the opponents of reform in the party. It would have caused dismay among reformers in the party who have been among the strongest in their support for a consensual policy making process in the party. Unlike the euro, voting reform is popular. Four people support change for every one that is opposed. It is not a top priority like health and education, but it is a key reform for developing a new politics of pluralism and co-operation. This, in turn, will lead to better government and a healthier democracy. Constitutional reform has been an integral part of the Labour Party’s modernisation process from Neil Kinnock’s Plant Commission, to John Smith’s ‘let the people decide’ promise and Tony Blair’s vision of a progressive century. It can still be one of the radical achievements of Labour’s second term.