The Guardian
Away with these tribes:
Only a complete change in how we elect our leaders will put the
trust, and excitement, back into politics By Polly
Toynbee
August
1, 2003 Tomorrow marks the day. Labour will have been in power
longer than ever before, a remarkable achievement already discounted
and dismissed, but that makes it no less extraordinary. Does this
herald a social-democratic 21st century, a left-of-centre dominance
to equal the Conservative hegemony over the 20th century? That is
another question. Even if Labour wins the next election with ease,
this may only be a longer-than-usual freak interlude in the
country's conservative fate. As yet the government has not done many
vital things necessary to secure the future. At his final press
conference, Tony Blair said it was time to go on holiday and reflect
on the current political culture. (He did say the media should do
likewise, but the idea of the Mail's Paul Dacre contemplating any
such thing in his holiday shorts is beyond imagining.) It is public
trust, and the lack of it, that is on the government's mind. Once
lost, how is it regained? Mori is reassuring: people may despise and
mistrust all politicians, but for that very reason they do not vote
at elections on the honesty issue. They vote on "capable", "good in
a crisis" and "understanding the problems facing Britain". On these
Blair is home and dry, with his standing where Mrs Thatcher's was
two years ahead of her 1987 victory. So what's the problem? It is
more existential. Victory may be all but certain, but why is so
little love lost between Labour and the people? In this climate,
what hope for the social-democratic century? People will vote in
even fewer numbers next time, though most academic research suggests
voters will be back whenever there is a real cliff-hanger choice. So
is democracy to stay on hold until the Conservatives are next near
to power? Or should voters be given proper choices of a more
sophisticated kind now? A lot of hot air is being breathed about
"new localism" as the answer to a disengaged electorate. But the
idea that those who won't even vote in local elections will turn out
for incomprehensible ballots for foundation hospital boards,
choosing from lists of unknown names for obscure and powerless
functions, is political anorak wishful thinking. There is only one
high-voltage supercharge to democracy that would change the
jaundiced way voters rightly perceive their current minimal chance
of influencing how they are governed - and that is proportional
representation. Give people the right to define their votes more
precisely instead of voting for baggy coalitions fixed behind closed
doors. Let pro-European Tories have a voice alongside leftwing
Labour, hippy Greens and, yes, even fascists might get one
(unlikely) boot in the door. Under his palm tree, Tony Blair should
look back on his broken near-promise to Paddy Ashdown and consider
that trust is best engendered now by sharing and diffusing his own
absolute power. It would also secure the future for the nation's
natural centre-left majority. It was primarily his own party that
blocked PR, though it is the one sure way to deny a rightwing
Conservative ascendancy from seizing power again with minority
support. Only a Conservative party that moved considerably further
towards the centre than Thatcher or Major could ever hold the reins
under a PR system. A distinguished leftish Tory MP and former
minister told me he thought in 1997 that his party was finished
forever, never to regain power, because he assumed Labour would
bring in PR. But once he saw Tony Blair give in to the tribal and
frankly stupid opposition from his own ranks, he knew that the
Tories would live to rule another day. Under the first-past-the-post
system, the pendulum always does swing back. It is an iron law that
all governments eventually run out of steam, sooner or later. This
ex-minister's own career was over, and it would take time, but his
party had escaped the one hammer blow that would have forced it to
break up into its very different wings to form future coalitions
with other parties. So why did Labour MPs baulk when Blair at least
partly intended to bring it in? Ancient local rivalries with Lib
Dems made Labour MPs fail to grasp the historic opportunity. They
detest the way the Lib Dems fight on different policies depending on
who their opponents are, despising their "opportunism" and so on.
(Different pots and kettles here.) This is petty stuff. On key
policies - taxing the rich, opposing the war - most Labour
backbenchers, and ministers too, often lean with more sympathy
towards the Lib Dems in parliament than towards their own front
bench. Now is the time for Labour people who do support PR to push
forward and make the case in earnest. Some of the elephants lying
across the tracks in this project have departed the scene - several
first-past-the-post adamants such as John Edmonds have retired.
There are many signs that those who rejected it for bad old reasons
are thinking again and seeing the possibilities for a better
politics. PR would secure a centre to centre-left government as the
nation's natural majority and its rightful style of government:
Thatcher was always strongly opposed by a majority. Only Labour's
unfitness to govern during her years made a coalition of the left
impossible. How times have changed. There is now no more than tribal
tradition to separate Labour and Lib Dems. Coalitions under a new PR
system would add the missing spice of radicalism to future
governments. The problem now is that the very reason why Blair
himself cooled towards PR is the very reason why many in his party
might look on it with new favour. When it came to war in
Afghanistan, Blair thought he saw that weak coalition governments in
Europe were unfit to fight. But that need for a strong national
cross-party will before going to war might be exactly why Labour MPs
should now consider government by consensus a better option than by
prime ministerial diktat. Trust in existing institutions is lost in
this individualist and pluralist age, so traditional party loyalty
is fading. Choice between parties that represent something closer to
what each voter thinks is the only way to re-connect people to the
electoral process. "Strong government" has become mistrusted:
everyone knows its members are dragooned into obedience instead of
speaking their minds. Mori finds that these days, unlike 20 years
ago, voters trust MPs more if they speak their minds honestly than
admire them for silent party loyalty. Open coalitions, between those
with defined but different positions who come to policy compromises
in public, better suits a mistrustful populace unfooled by false
shows of unity. This exaggerated, cynical mistrust of politics is
mainly the fault of the press, Mori finds, although in polls people
deny the media's strong influence. Trusting a people grown so
impatient and unreasonably suspicious of all politicians may be
difficult. But in the end trusting voters to make fine-tuned
political choices, instead of offering them ready-made uneasy
coalitions, will engender more trust from them in a transparent
distribution of power. PR may be untidy, but it is grown-up politics
for a grown-up electorate. |