Gibraltar has its Barbary apes, and the Tower of London its ravens. For Labour, we always had Tom Watson’s opposition to electoral reform. The globe needs its fixed points, otherwise we’d all get confused and fall off.
But this week, the tectonic plates clashed. Tom Watson, the man behind the AEEU’s ‘No Way Woy’ campaign which sought to undermine the masterly Jenkins Report with reference to the author’s speech impediment, has come out for the alternative vote. AV falls short of Roy’s recommendation (‘Woy’s Wecommendation’ as the AEEU would have put it) which as everyone knows was for ‘AV-plus’. But it’s a start.
Tom’s Damascene conversion is a sign of Labour’s fundamental reappraisal of constitutional reform. It was easy for Cameron to dismiss Gordon Brown’s statement this week on constitutional reform as a knee-jerk reaction to the expenses scandal. It has certainly been a field-day for all those slightly cranky constitutional reformers who are burrowed in every GC and party branch. Everyone with a pet policy is pushing it forward as the answer to MPs on the fiddle. Expenses abuse? What you need is STV, or an elected House of Lords, or an enhanced select committee system. (What you actually need is an expenses system which requires receipts for valid out-of-pocket expenditure, clear boundaries on what you can claim, a rule that you can’t profit from expenses, and people running the system who have an accountancy qualification between them. It’s not that hard.)
If this is to be a genuine moment of reform (as I believe Brown wants it to be), and we are to prove Cameron’s jibes wrong, then we must channel the anger and disgust of the people into a popular reform programme. When we devolved to Wales and Scotland a decade ago, it was after lively national debates, people’s conventions, and referenda. Serious constitutional reform has to be in response to popular demand. The reform of the rotten boroughs didn’t come about because of a committee of ministers, but because of political activists petitioning in the town squares and on the village greens. Votes for women came about because of protestors smashing windows and chaining themselves to railings, not because of a government press release.
This is the real test for Labour. Can we turn anger into activism, disgust into democracy? The only way to do that is for power to be devolved from politicians to the people, not merely redistributed between politicians, and that means a healthy dose of direct democracy. Labour has always been strangely wedded to representative democracy. Radicals from Benn to Bevan have viewed parliament as the primary tool for social progress. Indeed, 30 years ago the Labour candidate for the Bermondsey by-election got into trouble with the leadership for daring to advocate ‘extra-parliamentary’ activity. I don’t think Peter Tatchell meant guillotines on College Green; he meant campaigning of the kind pursued by Make Poverty History, which today’s Labour ministers fall over themselves to praise.
Americans don’t have the same hang-ups. They fused Jeffersonian and Madisonian concepts of democracy into a constitution which allows citizens to be both represented by others and also have a direct say. But in Britain, we bought into Burke, put Tom Paine on the boat, and have ever since been democratically poorer for it. But direct democracy is the best way to improve representative democracy, especially when, as now, it feels so very misrepresentative.
Now is the time for Labour to make up with Tom Paine. There’s a simple way to do it, and that is to introduce a system of recall for MPs. There’s been a debate in government circles for many months about recall, but the PM’s statement brought it front and centre. Unlike the difference between AV and AV-plus (I could explain, but don’t have the space), recall is simple. It means a system whereby if enough citizens in a constituency sign a petition, it triggers a by-election. The amount of names required would be set high, so it wouldn’t simply mean everyone who voted Labour or Liberal ganging up on the local Tory MP. It would only be allowed in rare cases of a major breakdown in trust between an MP and their electors, not because you don’t like their policy on Europe. It could only be tried once in a parliament, to avoid vexatious misuse. It would have to succeed or fail within a tight timetable, to avoid lengthy attempts to destabilise MPs. And if triggered, the incumbent could choose to stand in the by-election to explain themselves.
But crucially, people would feel they had some real power over their MPs in between general elections, and as a result I bet you far fewer MPs would be getting their moats spruced up or buying plasma TVs.
If Bro. Watson can be recruited to the cause of electoral reform, perhaps we can even get Labour MPs to put some power in the hands of their constituents. We won’t know unless we try.
Paul Richards is Progess’ newest weekly columnist