Simon Jenkins is a clever man; he has edited The Times, something I will never have the opportunity to do. His cogent analysis of the latter Blair years, and of the incursions into Iraq and Afghanistan, shows he is not without some great insight and influence.
But even the wise can let their hearts rule their heads and when they do the results can sometimes be nasty. Amid all the current talk among the intelligentsia about democratic renewal there has been much pontificating about a new politics. Not much about elections, though.
Mr Jenkins jumped in this week with a full-blooded assault on proportional representation systems. They put too much power in the hands of the party machine, he claimed. They decide who the candidates are, and in the case of multi-member constituencies put barriers between the voter and his representative that single-member ones don’t.
Best, he says, to incorporate parts of the American system with our own. He advocates primaries for candidates which would allow voters a say in who actually stands for election. And retaining a first-past-the-post voting system maintains a direct link between the politician and man on the street.
He then concludes by saying the countries that have a PR system are fed up with them because they produce endless coalitions but not strong government, thereby depriving the electorate of a mandate by putting policy into the hands of the men in smoke-filled rooms.
To be honest, I could find a Standard Grade Modern Studies student to come up with a better analysis of the voting systems than this.
Proportional representation is not all bad. Let’s start with the selection of candidates. It is no more or less democratic than the ways that are used to select them at present. The parties still decide who we will be allowed to vote for. In many cases it’s the bigwigs who do the picking, not even the grassroots. So how is that more democratic than a closed list. Under STV parties could even choose their candidates as they do now.
And what about the method of voting ? If we stick to STV there is one huge advantage; you can vote for the people you want and vote AGAINST the ones you don’t. You get two votes. By ranking candidates in order you can help someone get elected AND help stop someone else getting into a position of power you don’t think should be there.
It is, as the title suggests, proportional. So, roughly speaking, the number of votes each party gets is reflected in the number of elected representatives it gets. How is that anti-democratic ? Is it any less democratic than allowing a party absolute control of a legislature when fewer than 50% of the electorate has voted for it ? Mr Jenkins is silent.
And as for the relationship between individual electors and politicians being lessened in a multi-member constituency, well, apparently it, “denies the MP as sole embodiment of a territorial group of voters.” Eh ?
If I am a Labour voter in a first-past-the-post system and have a Conservative MP I would much rather he was not my embodiment, thank you very much. If we had STV in a multi-member constituency there is more of a chance of me voting Labour and getting a Labour representative. Tories could vote Tory and get one of their own, and so on.
Rather having just one MP we could have many. With four or six MP’s in one constituency we could still choose to see one of them as “our” MP, most likely the one whose party we voted for, although we could just as easily choose them on the basis of where he was from, or whether we liked him as a person. But we could also decide to have many MP’s, and if we had a problem or an issue we required representation on we could select the one we thought had the most expertise in that area. We could even switch between some, or all of them, using our many elected representatives as we saw fit. Empowerment or Hobson’s Choice, and this is supposed to be anti-democratic ?
As for a lack of strong government, do you mean elected dictatorship, Mr Jenkins ? Because that’s what Britain gets just now. At least in Scotland, where we have some proportionality, and no overall control, voters of a number of parties get to see some of their policies implemented as a result of what you call “a continuous minority grip on power.” Are governments less effective because they are more consensual and inclusive ?
I rather think Mr Jenkins must have been struggling for an idea with a deadline approaching when he came up with this. The worry is the number of people who seem to agree with him.
But even the wise can let their hearts rule their heads and when they do the results can sometimes be nasty. Amid all the current talk among the intelligentsia about democratic renewal there has been much pontificating about a new politics. Not much about elections, though.
Mr Jenkins jumped in this week with a full-blooded assault on proportional representation systems. They put too much power in the hands of the party machine, he claimed. They decide who the candidates are, and in the case of multi-member constituencies put barriers between the voter and his representative that single-member ones don’t.
Best, he says, to incorporate parts of the American system with our own. He advocates primaries for candidates which would allow voters a say in who actually stands for election. And retaining a first-past-the-post voting system maintains a direct link between the politician and man on the street.
He then concludes by saying the countries that have a PR system are fed up with them because they produce endless coalitions but not strong government, thereby depriving the electorate of a mandate by putting policy into the hands of the men in smoke-filled rooms.
To be honest, I could find a Standard Grade Modern Studies student to come up with a better analysis of the voting systems than this.
Proportional representation is not all bad. Let’s start with the selection of candidates. It is no more or less democratic than the ways that are used to select them at present. The parties still decide who we will be allowed to vote for. In many cases it’s the bigwigs who do the picking, not even the grassroots. So how is that more democratic than a closed list. Under STV parties could even choose their candidates as they do now.
And what about the method of voting ? If we stick to STV there is one huge advantage; you can vote for the people you want and vote AGAINST the ones you don’t. You get two votes. By ranking candidates in order you can help someone get elected AND help stop someone else getting into a position of power you don’t think should be there.
It is, as the title suggests, proportional. So, roughly speaking, the number of votes each party gets is reflected in the number of elected representatives it gets. How is that anti-democratic ? Is it any less democratic than allowing a party absolute control of a legislature when fewer than 50% of the electorate has voted for it ? Mr Jenkins is silent.
And as for the relationship between individual electors and politicians being lessened in a multi-member constituency, well, apparently it, “denies the MP as sole embodiment of a territorial group of voters.” Eh ?
If I am a Labour voter in a first-past-the-post system and have a Conservative MP I would much rather he was not my embodiment, thank you very much. If we had STV in a multi-member constituency there is more of a chance of me voting Labour and getting a Labour representative. Tories could vote Tory and get one of their own, and so on.
Rather having just one MP we could have many. With four or six MP’s in one constituency we could still choose to see one of them as “our” MP, most likely the one whose party we voted for, although we could just as easily choose them on the basis of where he was from, or whether we liked him as a person. But we could also decide to have many MP’s, and if we had a problem or an issue we required representation on we could select the one we thought had the most expertise in that area. We could even switch between some, or all of them, using our many elected representatives as we saw fit. Empowerment or Hobson’s Choice, and this is supposed to be anti-democratic ?
As for a lack of strong government, do you mean elected dictatorship, Mr Jenkins ? Because that’s what Britain gets just now. At least in Scotland, where we have some proportionality, and no overall control, voters of a number of parties get to see some of their policies implemented as a result of what you call “a continuous minority grip on power.” Are governments less effective because they are more consensual and inclusive ?
I rather think Mr Jenkins must have been struggling for an idea with a deadline approaching when he came up with this. The worry is the number of people who seem to agree with him.
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