Holocaust deniers and white supremacists are coming soon to a ballot box near you – if they’re not there already. But as the far right seeks to capitalise on gains across Europe, the left shouldn’t hide behind the skirts of an electoral system because we’re scared of the BNP. I understand why many people, both white and black, instinctively oppose proportional representation for ‘giving racists a platform’. Our current system, however, empowers the BNP by obsessing with middle England swing voters and disenfranchising the rest.
Mainstream parties embrace the agenda of the swing vote, while disadvantaged black and white communities become slowly more marginalised. An issue like social housing – perhaps the single greatest factor feeding race problems in Britain – slips down the agenda.
Safe seats are great for party politics, but terrible for democracy. There’s nothing worse than a safe seat to tempt politicians to ignore voters, and tempt extremists into the resulting vacuum. In areas like Dagenham or Stoke, white working-class voters feel that voting BNP is the only way to make politicians listen.
The Labour party’s anti-PR orthodoxy is starting to break up for various reasons, not least the prospect of crushing defeat. The diminishing group of committed Labour party activists on the doorstep are facing the public and facing the facts: our current system encourages a disconnect between people and politicians, and fuels ‘democracy rage’ – a feeling of powerlessness in the face of remote and unresponsive authority, which encourages people to move towards extremists.
Under first-past-the-post, whole swathes of the country have become ‘democracy deserts’, where the majority of votes don’t count. But even those who agree electoral reform is needed don’t agree how. The emerging consensus, though, is AV-plus, where the ‘plus’ creates ‘top ups’ for under-represented parties. It’s just possible for a party to win a seat with between 10-13% of the vote across a large area (bigger than a single parliamentary constituency). As the BNP’s two new MEPs have proved, they can do this when turnout falls, and disillusionment with mainstream parties soars.
But it’s the current first-past-the-post system that scares me most: there are already local wards such as Abbey Green in Stoke-on-Trent where the BNP have swept the board and now hold all the council seats despite nearly two-thirds of the electorate voting for other parties at consecutive elections. If first-past-the-post survives, the far right could take outright control of a local council against the wishes of the majority. Introducing a fairer voting system would prevent that happening nationally.
So it’s possible to minimise the prospects of the far right under PR. But the single most important lesson to take from the BNP’s recent success is that we can’t rely on an electoral system to transmit our values. If a substantial section of an electorate sympathise with the far right, no amount of electoral jiggery-pokery will disguise the view of the people. At the end of the day, progressives must win the argument. Whether we like it or not (and I hope we like it), that’s democracy.
And although electoral reform is not a panacea, changing the voting system offers an important opportunity to re-legitimise politics, connect mainstream parties with the electorate beyond middle England and make parliament more representative. Out of 646 MPs, there are only 13 black or Asian men, two black women and not a single Asian woman. If we really had ‘representative democracy’ there would be around 40 ethnic minority MPs – and about an extra 190 women MPs. With its ‘top-up’ system, AV-plus provides an opportunity to ensure that under-represented groups in parliament are more fairly represented.
The first practical step on the road to renewing our politics is a referendum on electoral reform on the date of the next general election. Instead of giving a platform to racists, let’s give a platform to democracy. It’s bad enough that the BNP lures votes from an apoplectic electorate; it would be unforgivable if the BNP trapped progressives in a first-past-the-post coffin.