Caroline Lucas’ narrow victory over Labour in Brighton Pavilion will no doubt be lauded by the BBC far beyond it’s significance. With a majority of 1252 (2.4%) on an 8.4% swing from Labour this is fragile enough, but having sat up watching results come in last night, the impression that I got is that elsewhere their candidates rarely if ever managed to save their deposits (see comment #1 below). According to various reports, the Brighton result owes much to the Greens putting the same amount of effort into taking this single seat as might have gone into a national campaign. With 200 activists phoning possible supporters as many as three times yesterday to offer them a lift to their polling station – by rickshaw or on someones back presumably – they certainly weren’t taking any chances.
It will be interesting to see how the Greens’ share of the popular vote stacks up against the BNP and UKIP when these figures are available. Caroline Lucas is a very experienced and competent politician who had the good sense to fight her campaign on local issues rather than traditional green ones. Perhaps the best analogy to draw is with George Galloway’s far left Respect Party’s successes in Bethnal Green and Bow in recent elections, although at the time of writing it seems likely that they will now lose this seat.
I watched BBC coverage of the election until after five o’clock this morning, without much relish, then took a glass of whiskey outside to look at the dawn, listen to the birds, and enjoy the heavy scent of bluebells wafting from the wood. I enjoy election nights. Usually there is real life drama and you can feel the political pulse or the nation beating in a way that is impossible at any other time. Some candidates are jubilant and clamouring to get at the future, while others know that, for them, it is all over, and try to smile through their tears. It is about the only time that politicians seem human.
But last night, for hour after hour there seemed to be only confusion and disappointment wherever one looked. Not one party was prepared to show any sign of real jubilation, right down to Plaid Cymru, who were ‘disappointed’, and Alex Salmon of the SNP saying, with a broad grin, that they had done very well really, except that they hadn’t got anywhere near their target number of seats. But Alex is like that.
How can you have an election where everyone is a loser? Well the analysts will probably be explaining that for months to come.
All this was played out against a background of occasional references to a dramatic escalation in the sovereign debt crisis on world financial markets, which I have not been able to catch up with yet. Surely this is no time for there to be doubt about who is running Britain.
Supposing that, over the next few days, the Conservatives manage to form a government, it is worth looking at what they have to say about Climate Change and Energy on their website. Even a cursory glance at this reveals that compliance with the requirements of EU carbon reduction policy is the main driving force. There are several things that this brings to mind.
Firstly, the Conservatives are divided on Europe. Secondly, even David Shukman was prepared to admit in a BBC report the other evening that a lot of conservative MPs are sceptical about climate change. Thirdly, any incoming government that is doing the job properly will have to take a very careful, cool and objective look at energy policy, because at the moment we don’t really have one that is credible. Bits of paper bearing fantasy figures for the contribution that immensely expensive wind power can make to keeping the lights on until 2020 just will no longer do at a time when the economy is in ruins and the coffers are empty. Lastly, if David Cameron manages to form a government, its hold on power is likely to be very tenuous indeed until there is another election.
Welcome to the brave new post-Blair’n’Brown world!
Alex, #21:
I suppose that the supporters of electoral reform that you list do realise that any PR system that would give the Green Party a seat in the HoC would do the same for the BNP and UKIP who rated twice and three times the share of the popular vote respectively as the Greens.
Peter G, #23
I noticed that too and perhaps it signals a very real change form the way that politics has been conduced over the last 13 years. Have some of our leaders at least realised that leaks, spin and off the record briefings are not the best way to run a country? It would be wonderful to think that the age of the masters of the dark arts, Mendelson and Campbell, is drawing to a close.
Peter M, #34
There seems little doubt that most of us poor benighted Brits will come to know a great deal more about the multiple flavours of PR over the next few weeks. In the meantime, an interesting conjecture reported by the Sunday Times from two researchers called Rallings and Thrasher. Had Labour achieved 36% of the popular vote in the election that would have given them a majority of 64. The Lib Dems are not the only people with a reason to beef about the current electoral system.
Max, #25
Your points are, of course quite legitimate, but let’s try and keep this thread away from general considerations of the AGW debate. Any thoughts about electoral reform from the very different perspective of a mountainside in Switzerland?
TonyN,
You say that “any PR system that would give the Green Party a seat in the HoC would do the same for the BNP and UKIP”
Well not any system. I’ve just looked up the results for the Green win in Brighton which, neglecting the most minor candidates , was:
Green 31.3%, Labour 28.9%, Conservative 23.7%
Liberal Democrat 13.8%, UKIP 1.8%
Under the AV system, the same as we have in Australia, UKIP votes would be reallocated to their second preferences. These would nearly all go to the Conservatives. Next, the Liberal vote would be re-allocated and I would guess that they would nearly all go to the Greens. This would put them on about 45%. Next the Conservative vote would be reallocated and the Greens would only need 5% to cross the 50% line. I’m guessing that at least this number of Conservatives would rather vote for anyone other than Labour!
So I would say that the Greens would still win. I doubt if the BNP or UKIP would pick up any seats under this system – I don’t think they came that close anywhere, did they?
Two points about PR which I never see made:
1) By changing the very vocabulary of politics (e.g. by making terms such as “my MP” and “my constituency” meaningless) PR distances politics from the average elector just a little bit more (if that’s possible).
2) Voting for a slate of candidates means inevitably voting for a list drawn up by the party, of whom the top x% are almost certain to be elected, and the rest are ballast. In France, the head of the list is usually a media star who may not even take up his seat; the electable top x percent are the party chiefs, and the tail end of the list is made up of people who look good on the election poster; peasants, members of ethnic minorities, the handicapped, women – people like that.
I favour our system of government by 650 representatives of relatively coherent geographical entities. It is ironic that the Lib Dems, defenders of grass-roots politics, should also be the biggest promoters of PR, which puts power into the hands of the party machine.
TonyN, your point about the current system being advantageous to Labour has an amusing explanation. Forty years ago, the Conservatives were favoured by a system under which the Labour-voting working class piled up massive majorities uselessly in urban constituencies. But increasing wealth has seen them move out to the suburbs, while Conservatives have retreated to the green and pleasant shires, where they now pile up equally useless majorities. It’s social mobility wot does it.
TonyN
Each democratic nation with a representative government has a somewhat different electoral system (as well as differences in the distribution of power and tax revenues between local and central government). These are largely the result of each nation’s different history. Size and demographics obviously also play a role.
Over the centuries, Switzerland has gradually moved from a very loose confederation of almost autonomous cantons (that sometimes warred against each other) to a federal republic (since the new federal constitution, patterned after that of the USA, became law in 1848). The balance of power still lies to a great extent with the cantons and communities (the split in direct tax revenues mirrors this), but the federal government is becoming stronger. As a part of this redistribution of power, we now pay a 7.6% federal VAT, which was approved by national referendum after being proposed by the federal government to help fund increased federal expenditures.
The federal constitution sets specific limits on the powers and duties of the federal government; all others matters are decided by the sovereign cantons (or at community level). According to the constitution, the Swiss people (i.e. all men and women over 18 years of age who carry Swiss citizenship) constitute the highest political body.
The voters in the cantons elect by majority vote the representatives of the two houses of parliament (200-member “Nationalrat” – based on population and 46-member “Ständerat” – 2 members per canton). This body constitutes the legislative branch, representing the cantons and districts, which elected them. There is no minimum required percentage for a political party to be represented in the parliament (as I believe there is in Germany), so there are several representatives from “splitter” parties in addition to those from the main 5 parties. The Swiss parliament is (by British definition) always a “hung parliament”, as there is never one single majority party. There are also no “coalitions” necessary (such as in Germany) to create an artificial “majority group”.
The parliament elects the executive branch of government, a seven-member “Bundesrat”, which changes leadership (“Bundespräsident”) annually. These are representatives of the largest parties, and there is an unwritten “rule” that a certain number of French, German or Italian speakers should be represented. Each Bundesrat acts as head of a department (defense, finance, state, etc.). A Bundesrat remains in office until he/she resigns, or (in rare cases) is elected out of office by the parliament.
The parliament also elects and appoints the 30-member federal court, whose job it is to carry out the provisions of the constitution (rather than to challenge and change these, as is the case in Germany).
Swiss voters have greater direct voice in government than the voters in most representative republics. A direct federal referendum, for example to overturn a decision by the parliament, can be initiated with 50,000 signatures. If this involves a change in the constitution, 100,000 signatures are required.
Each canton has its own legislature (usually also two houses). Local or cantonal referendums can be initiated with a smaller number of signatures.
“Electoral reform” is often a name given to attempts to “level the playing field” (or, put another way, to give or remove an advantage to or from one political group or party from or to others). I am too far removed from the scene to be able to judge whether or not this is what Nick Clegg has in mind or not. It appears to me that his party’s push for “Proportional Representation” does have exactly this sort of thing in mind, by changing the way votes are counted to benefit the smaller parties. It also appears to me that this removes the voting power away from the local districts and communities to a sort of national average, so that the parliamentary representation reflects the national percentages of the vote. Is this “more democratic” or simply “less decentralized”?
The Australian approach as PeterM has described it, with reallocation of votes to “second preferences” is even further removed from a decentralized democratic system.
Neither system would work for Switzerland, with its strong tradition of decentralized democratic control.
Max
PR difficult? Would let the BNP in? Depends on the system of PR you’re using.
In Germany, where I live, you get 2 votes – 1 for your local candidate (just like the UK), and 1 for a party. Thus half the MPs are elected directly – exactly as in the UK – and the other half by PR, with the proviso a party has to get above 5% nationally to be involved in the PR shareout.
So if you lived in Brighton you could have given your first, direct vote to Caroline Lucas of the Greens, as well as giving your second, party vote to the BNP, for example. Well, you could have done if you were decidedly weird, that is …
Anyway, applying German PR rules to the UK election, the Greens would have got just 1 seat – the seat they actually won. Neither UKIP nor the BNP would have got any seats at all, as neither party reached the 5% limit nationally, and none of their candidates got elected “first-past-the-post”.
(I say “you” get 2 votes in Germany. Well, you do if “you” are a German National, but if “you” happen to be a British National for example, living in Germany for goodness knows how many years, “you” will get precisely no votes at all.
Strangely, even though you haven’t got the vote because you’re not a German National, that doesn’t mean you don’t have to pay German Taxes. Oh no – you still have to pay their taxes. That’s only fair, innit?).
Paul Boyce
“End taxation without representation!” was sort of a battle cry of the US Revolution.
Since the US federal income tax was ratified by constitutional amendment in 1913, it has grown exponentially.
Unlike most other countries, the USA taxes its (legal) inhabitants regardless of citizenship and its citizens regardless of residency on total world-wide income. US citizens living abroad and paying local taxes can deduct these from their US tax liability (with a complicated formula for determining the allowable tax credit). However, they are required to pay US income tax for those days spent working in the USA (even if residing abroad and paying local taxes for these days), i.e. they are taxed twice for these days. Some states have state income taxes (usually much lower than the federal tax) and most communities collect property taxes. There are also state and local sales taxes in many locations.
Switzerland (like most countries) taxes Swiss residents only (regardless of nationality or citizenship) on total world-wide income (plus there is a smaller “wealth tax” on total assets). Unlike most countries the bulk of the Swiss income tax is paid to the local community, a slightly lower percentage goes to the canton and the smallest chunk goes to federal taxes. There is a complicated “tax equalization” system whereby richer cantons and communities pay a small amount of their tax income to poorer cantons and communities. There is also a federal VAT.
In neither Switzerland nor USA can non-citizens vote in general elections. Proposals have been made (but rejected) to allow non-Swiss to participate in purely local elections, and I thought that similar proposals had also been made for Germany, but don’t know if any of these passed.
So both USA and Switzerland (and it appears from what you say, Germany) practice “taxation without representation” today.
Max
As of 6.00pm everything has changed. Such is politics.
TonyN: “As of 6.00pm everything has changed. Such is politics.”
Wow, it has certainly been a confusing, to-and-fro sort of day here. However, I’ve learned more about PR in the last few hours than I have during the rest of my life so far!
One thing seems likely to me – if UK politics continues to become ever more chaotic and unpredictable in the weeks and months ahead, saving the world from climate change will dwindle ever further in the public’s priorities. “Business as usual” will begin to have a rather wistful, nostalgic ring to it.
I foresee a lot of squabbling. There may be a short period of relative calm, but the effort of being nice to each other will be too much to bear before long, and we’ll have to have another election, IMO. It will be interesting to see the effect of any voting reforms introduced in the meantime – I too have learned more here about PR than I ever expected to! Who would have thought that a fair voting system could be so difficult to arrange?
WRT the Greens winning Brighton Pavilion, my favourite overheard comment was, “what was second prize?”
PeterM, #27:
You are talking abut AV and I was talking about PR, which I believe to be rather different; more like the system used in EU elections. Few electors seem to understand how this works, which may be why turnout in these elections is very, very low. As I am sure you know, Caroline Lucas is already an MEP.
But I am certainly not claiming to have any in-depth knowledge of alternative voting systems, yet.
TonyN,
From what I have read the term PR does seem to be used rather loosely in the UK and interchangeably with AV. Isn’t AV what the Labour Party are proposing?
AV is a big improvement on FPTP. It is less disproportionate but not really full PR. On the other hand, it does maintain the link between MPs and their constituencies which is generally considered desirable. In Australia the deficiency is corrected by an allocation of seats in the Senate to minor parties who don’t have any representation in the lower house. It works well and has all party support.
Max,#29,
Thanks for that. I can see how such a system would evolve in a loose confederation of isolated communities, but isn’t there some kind of movement in Switzerland to sweep it all away and have something far simpler? Or could it be that this thoroughly anachronistic voting system suits you in the same way that our rather old-fashioned system suits us? Electoral reform may be the flavour of the month the moment here, but in fact this is the first electoral snafu there has been for over thirty years. I doubt if there are many countries that use PR that can say that.
Would one of you guys summarize the election results for the stupid American? (Preferably Robin or TonyN).
What the hell happened?
I can’t make heads or tails of the mess…………
Peter M:
You say:
Twenty-four hours ago I would have thought the same, but not any more.
Suddenly this evening everyone on the news feeds is making a very clear distinction between AV and PR. The Labour Party did indeed make faint noises about AV in their manifesto, presumably with an eye to a future alliance, but now they seem, and I say seem because no one appears to know what the hell is going on, to be offering PR without a referendum to the Lib Dems if they would like to cosy up for a coalition. And it appears to be PR that the Lib Dems really want, with AV as second best if there is nothing better on offer. That isn’t playing too well, even with Labour’s own foot soldiers, many of whom have apparently got the strange idea that suddenly announcing that you will change the voting system radically without consulting the electorate might be risky. Particularly when you have just lost an election.
Brute:
If Robin doesn’t turn up soon I’ll try. At the moment the situation is changing so rapidly there would be little point, but one might say this:
The election produced one winner, with 306 seats in a 650-seat legislature, and 36% of the total votes cast nationwide (Conservative). It also produced two losers, one with 29% of the vote and 258 seats (Labour), and the other with 57 seats and 23% of the vote (Liberal Democrat). For an absolute majority in the House of Commons you therefore need 326 seats, and no single party has that, quite. It is possible, constitutionally, for the winner to form a minority government and hope for the best, but only after the incumbent prime minister has shown that he cannot continue by forming a government with an absolute majority in coalition with another party.
So at the moment the folk who won the most votes and the most seats (Conservative) are biting their fingernails while the folk who won the least votes and the least seats (Lib Dem) decide whether they will back the winner, or the other loser (Labour) which has just suffered the second worst electoral defeat in its history.
Just to add to the fun, miraculously there is something that all three parties agree about: the UK economy is in meltdown and needs fixing very quickly if things are not going to get very much worse very soon. So instead of a coalition being formed on the basis of agreement about how to tackle the economic crisis, which rather rules out the party that just lost the election as it happened on their watch, the main condition that the losers with the least votes are making for their support is electoral reform, which has absolutely nothing to do with the economic problems at all.
That is a very simplified version of the mess. If it doesn’t make much sense to you, don’t feel bad about it: you’ve got lots of company. The detailed version would take pages and probably be out of date before I got halfway through, always assuming that I know what is going on, and most of our ace political correspondents were admitting this evening that they don’t have a clue, but it’s really, really weird. I agree with that assessment.
Brute,
Well it not that hard. If you’re smart enough to understand enough climate science to know it’s all wrong, then the arithmetic of the UK’s election is all a “piece of piss” As they say over there!
From the numbers, there are three possible stable governments.
1) A Lib-Dem / Tory coalition.
2) What is starting to
be referred to a “progressive alliance”. Basically it means Labour + Lib Dems + Green + Welsh and Scottish Nationalists , + the Northern Irish SDLP and Alliance Parties.
3) No one is talking about it yet, and maybe they never will!, but you could of course have a Labour/ Conservative Coalition.
We’ll all have to see just who gets into bed with who.
Brute and TonyN
I am not a political animal-despite what Peter might believe about the motives of sceptics- and I don’t have an inbuilt visceral hatred of other parties.
It has become apparent that at a time of great need for political stability due to our precarious financial situation, that both the Lib Dems and Labour are guilty of nakedly pursuing their own narrow political interests, which I find utterly reprehensible.
Nick Clegg has shown himself to be cyncial and shallow-he was described by a former Labour cabinet minister today as one of the greatest Harlots in history. Labour has shown a willingness to cling on to power at any price, despite an election defeat of historic proportions, in a scenario that Robert Mugabe would be familiar with.
As a result of all this I think the intended ‘coalition of losers’ have poisoned their own well.
David Cameron has been very reluctant to promise a referendum on PR, preferring to rely on a Parliamentary vote first to see if one should be forthcoming. Strategically, I think he is quite safe to now offer this as a lure to the Lib Dems, in the safe knowledge that people like me-who had been perfectly willing to listen to the merits of such a system- will in no way now countenance such a proposal. This is due to the duplicity of its chief promoters -the Lib dems- and knowledge of the chaos that such a system would cause due to our political make up.
Secondly, the demands for largesse exhibited by the smaller nationalist parties can only fuel the deep unease felt that- as by far the largest partner in the UK- England is the only one not to have a say in our own affairs. This will be expressed as a demand for an English Parliament so Scottish Nationalists can not vote in our affairs, as they can at the moment. (The English can not vote in theirs).
This would be tied in with a redrawing of English boundary seats so each constituency is of equal size-current boundaries mean Tories need to poll around 5% more than Labour to gain the same number of seats. This would deliver a permanent Tory majority in England and allow the Scots to do what they want.
From a personal point of view I believe the country needs a Conservative/Lib Dem coalition as that commands a comfortable majority and it can deal with the problems this country faces.
If I were more partisan, a liberal/labour pact would be preferable, as it would last only a short period before it collapsed, and then the voters will severely punish those two parties for the disgraceful opportunism they have shown, which would be some sort of natural justice.
By the way, to my disappointment, Caroline Lucas has behaved very badly in all this with weasel words about a ‘progressive majority’ and has displayed the extreme left wing roots of her party.
Tonyb
Interestingly (or depressingly depending on your pov) the contracts for CCHQ staff have been renewed for 5 months, so it would appear at least the Tories think we may well have another election in the Autumn
Peter
There will never be a Lab\Tories coalition, more likely to form a Tory minority government. Equally the “progressive alliance” idea won’t happen due to numbers (the DUP at least would align themselves with the Tories).
Things are now slightly up in the air atm wrt any coalition between con/lib due to the slightly (and most likely deliberately) destabilising timing of Browns resignation, as he was the main stumbling block to any lib/lab coalition.
Maybe they could draw straws………
From what I understand, the UK economy is in the same dire straits as the Greek economy (with the United States not far behind) due to its Socialist entitlement programs………(the government’s mouth was writing checks it’s ass couldn’t cash).
While these three are dithering over who’s the prettiest, the people and businesses are drowning in debt………arguing over who gets into the insufficient amount of lifeboats………the trouble is, all the lifeboats are leaky.
God Save the Queen………
barelysane,
I think that the Germans have managed to put aside their differences and have a SDP/CDP coalition for the sake of national stability. It seems a bit sad that you guys are so entrenched in class warfare that no-one in the UK, on either side, dare even suggest that a similar solution may be the best way forward for the next couple of years.
BTW The New Statesman is reporting that the “progressive alliance” do have the numbers. They reckon a majority of 15. Have they got that wrong?
Peter
Germany is not the UK. Your class warfare argument may have been correct 20 yrs ago but UK politics have moved on since then. Unfortunately these days the various parties can no longer considered to have an real base support as such and certainly not divided along class lines. It’s now more slightly different ideologies that tend to change with whatever direction media/ public opinion is blowing.
Hadn’t seen that article, yes they do have the numbers broadly right, though they miss out a couple of parties in their calculations.
Though i still think that an alliance of that many parties is extremely unlikely and would detonate into a media circus, i’m thinking “alliance of losers”, do you think a government formed by those who did not get the majority vote is a good thing?
Incidently the New Statesman is on a serious downhill slide on readership, there’s reasons for that. If you want to get a reasonable idea on the state of UK politics i’d read much wider than this (your class war comment is a bit of a giveaway)
TonyN
Thanks for comment #37. Yes, the Swiss system of voting (and government) is anachronistic, and yes, there are always moves to “simplify” both (usually means giving more funding and power to the federal government at the expense of the cantons and communities). These proposals usually come from the “left” (who feel they would benefit from them) and are opposed by the ”center” and the “right” (who feel they would be disadvantaged by them). This aspect, itself, appears to be not much different from the UK situation, although the two systems are quite different.
The biggest difference is that a “majority government” in parliament is not required (or even desired) in Switzerland. The 5 major parties join with one another on votes on individual issues or initiatives, with the minority parties joining one or the other side.
Makes “swift and significant change” almost impossible, but that is apparently the way that a majority of the Swiss voters want it. And they always have the option to overrule parliament with a referendum vote (requiring only 50,000 signatures to initiate).
Your (post 1066) system grew out of a centralized royal control, with periods of murder, execution, civil war and anarchy, with the barons gaining a bit of power sharing with the Magna Carta, wars and finally unity with Scotland and Wales, rise of the Empire, etc., but very little “grass roots” democracy until modern times.
Switzerland grew out of an initial peasants’ revolt against feudal rule (about the time your ancestors were quibbling about the Magna Carta). There is an inherent suspicion of “central rule” here (why did the Swiss refuse to join the EU and only finally agree to join the UN in 2002?), which does not exist in the UK.
Another difference: Switzerland is small and does not see itself as very important or influential on the world stage (except as a neutral arbitrator), whereas the UK has been a very powerful and influential international player since the days of the empire.
But each nation (hopefully) has the system that works best for its citizens. Otherwise (in a democratic society) they can change it.
One person’s ideas on how PR would have influenced the most recent election results are here:
http://www.dangarland.co.uk/?p=256
It shows that the Liberal Democrats would have been the big winners, with both Labor and the Conservatives the big losers. The Greens would not have gained much, according to this analysis, but both the BNP and the UKIP would have had significant gains.
But the author raises the key question:
One question: As I understand it, the UK could conceivably decide to enact a PR reform to its system of counting votes by a simple majority vote of parliament. Is this correct?
In Switzerland, this would require a constitutional change and (most likely) a general referendum by the Swiss voters.
Max
Brute,
One of the good things about the net is that it’s possible to check claims about the UK economy being a basket case. According to no less an authority than the CIA, the situation in the UK is quite a bit better than France, Germany, Japan, Singapore, Belgium….
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_public_debt
Incidentally I was my total debt was only 70% of my annual income!
You might look at Zimbabwe at the top of the list and equate debt with poverty. However you’d also look at the bottom of the list and have to think think that Equatorial Guinea had the world’s healthiest economy!
For everyone who has a debt, someone else has a credit. Start asking which countries have a big surplus. I thought China did, but even they are in debt according to this list. You guys are the supposed to be the sceptics. Start being sceptical!
PeterM
The CDU/SPD coalition is an invention neither side prefers, but with the Germanic fixation on needing a “majority government” it has become a undesirable necessity, not so much for “national stability” (as you put it) but for ensuring the power of the big parties, despite the fact that the voters have not given them this mandate.
German history shows that the periods governed by a “big coalition” have not been more harmonious (or productive) than those governed by a single majority party.
A multi-party parliament with no clear single majority party is another approach that works in other countries (including Switzerland).
Could this be the way that the UK is heading?
Probably not, in view of its history.
Max
Barelysane,
Thank you for pointing out that “Germany wasn’t the UK”! I do know that the is quite a large stretch of water called the North Sea in-between the two countries.
I was looking for a slightly deeper analysis of the problem and whya similar solution is considered to be impossible in the UK.
I’m not necessarily blaming only you right wing types. I’m sure that there would be an equal and opposite revulsion to the idea in Labor’s ranks too.