Analysis of Changes in United Kingdom

To: CVD Core List
Rob Richie, executive director
6/6/99

Here's a new analysis by Thomas Lundberg, a doctoral student in political science at the University of Notre Dame. Tom has been following electoral reform in the United Kingdom closely. Because of its relevance to reform efforts in the United States, I thought you would want to see the piece in full. Note the summary charts at the end that reveal such fun statistics as the fact that the Conservative Party (of John Major and Margaret Thatcher) would have won a grand total of one seat in the elections in Scotland and Wales without PR.

Later this week I will plan to send information about the PR elections in South Africa (generally heralded as quite successful in the nation's transtion to being a full-fledged democracy) and Indonesia.

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PR Elections in Scotland and Wales and their Implications

By Thomas Lundberg, June 4 1999

On 6 May 1999 Britain's devolution of power from Westminster to Scotland and Wales reached a new level with the election of the Scottish Parliament and the National Assembly of Wales. Aside from the unprecedented decentralization of power that will accompany this event, the elections are also significant due to the use of proportional representation (PR). To some extent, these events represent a move away from the Westminster model of democracy. However, this change will be difficult to accept for the Labour party, the architect of this and other constitutional changes. Labour failed to win a majority of seats in either Scotland or Wales, causing the party leadership to question the wisdom of their choice of PR, despite the fact that the party will govern in both places. The success, or failure, of the newly devolved assemblies will not only affect the devolution project itself, but will also have profound consequences for the fate of electoral reform for the House of Commons at Westminster, as well as the way the majoritarian "Westminster model" of democracy is viewed by politicians and citizens.

The new governments in Scotland and Wales will assume the powers currently held by their respective Secretaries of State. "Devolved" areas of responsibility for the new assemblies include agriculture, the arts and culture, economic development, education, the environment, food standards, health, housing, local government and planning, social work, sport and leisure, internal transport, and tourism. However, only the Scottish Parliament will have primary legislative authority over these areas; the Welsh National Assembly will "implement" laws made at Westminster that affect the areas listed, as well as decide how to spend the block grant allocated to the principality by the central government. In another departure, only the Scottish Parliament will be able to vary the income tax rate (by up to three per cent). Parliament at Westminster will retain control of "reserved" areas, including the constitution, foreign affairs, defence, financial and economic matters, social security, and energy resources (including oil and gas reserves). In the event of a conflict over jurisdiction, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council will decide the outcome.

At present, there is little interest in England in devolved assemblies for English regions, although Greater London will get its own assembly (and mayor) next May. The resulting asymmetry of representation in the Union has some English members of parliament asking questions about why Scottish and Welsh MPs at Westminster should be able to vote on matters affecting only England, when the same matters for Scotland and Wales will now be dealt with by their own assemblies. This so-called "West Lothian question" has not yet been answered by the government, but it appears inevitable that the current over-representation of Scotland and Wales in Parliament (both places have more MPs per capita than England) will end after the next general election.

The Scottish Parliament is composed of 129 members, while the National Assembly of Wales has 60. Both are elected for fixed terms of four years. The Additional Member System (AMS) of proportional representation is used. Modeled on the electoral systems used in Germany, New Zealand, and Venezuela, AMS gives the voter two ballots. One is cast for a candidate in a single-member constituency, with the candidate receiving the most votes (a plurality) winning the seat. This is the "first past the post" system used for elections to the Westminster Parliament. Because there is often a major difference between the percentage of seats won by a party's candidates and the actual popular vote received by them, many critics in Britain have long campaigned for an electoral system which would reward parties with a share of parliamentary seats reflecting their actual electoral support.

In the case of Scotland and Wales, the reformist argument has particular strength due to the presence of nationalist parties. Because the vote is split between four major parties (Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat, and nationalists), election results would be highly disproportional without some kind of correction. This is where proportional representation (PR) comes in. On the second ballot, voters choose a party, and this choice is decisive for the subsequent allocation of parliamentary seats on a partisan basis. Before coming to power after the general election of 1997, Labour agreed to the AMS form of PR when it participated in the Scottish Constitutional Convention with the Liberal Democrats and the Scottish National Party. Without PR, the Scottish and Welsh assemblies would be overwhelmingly Labour dominated, and would therefore not have the kind of popular legitimacy the government hopes to attract for them.

In Scotland, the 129 seats for the Scottish Parliament come from 73 single-member constituencies (identical to existing Westminster constituencies, with the exception of the Shetland and Orkney Islands, which were split into two constituencies) and eight electoral regions. Within each electoral region are an average of nine single-member constituencies (each electing one candidate). In addition, seven more candidates for the parliament are elected from party lists submitted by participating parties. After results are obtained from the first past the post races, the "additional members" for each region are elected so that each party's total number of elected candidates is approximately equal to its share of the party (second ballot) vote. Voters may not choose among the list candidates, however, as this is a "closed list" system. The AMS model used here is also compensatory, not parallel (as in Japan or Russia), because the electoral system takes into account the partisanship of constituency candidates already elected when allocating party list candidates. The goal is overall proportionality within electoral regions, insofar as this can be achieved given the ratio of constituency to list seats.

In Wales there are 40 single-member constituencies, identical to those used for Westminster elections. These are grouped into five electoral regions, each containing eight single-member constituencies, with four additional list candidates to be elected on the same basis as in Scotland. Because the total number of candidates to be elected from a Welsh region is 12, a party must win over eight per cent of the party (second) vote in order to take one of the list seats. In Scotland, the average number of candidates to be elected from each electoral region is 16, meaning that a party must win over six per cent of the party vote to obtain one list seat.

The new electoral system raised fears that it would be too complicated for voters to understand, although anecdotal evidence reported in the media revealed that this was not the case. The government was criticized before the elections, nevertheless, for not mounting enough of an education campaign to inform voters, although the major parties were quick to point out in their own campaign literature that the second vote was not a "second choice," and that voters should give their chosen parties both votes. Furthermore, voters may split their vote, in the sense that they need not vote for the same party on both ballots. In Scotland, about a third of the voters did just this, and 11 per cent used their second ballots to vote for "minor" parties (other than the four major ones).

Indeed, the strongest party in both Scotland and Wales, Labour, failed to achieve its goal of a minority government in Scotland and a majority government in Wales. Winning less than 40 per cent of the vote in both places, Labour had to accept going into coalition with the Liberal Democrats in Scotland, as well as minority government status in Wales (full results follow at the end of this article). In Scotland, voters elected Britain's first Green to take office above the local level (the Scottish Green Party's leader, Robin Harper, won 6.9 per cent of the vote in his electoral region of Lothian), as well as electing the leader of the Scottish Socialist Party, Tommy Sheridan, whose 7.3 per cent of the vote in the Glasgow electoral region gave him a seat. Labour rebel Dennis Canavan, who left the party because "new" Labour failed to select him as a candidate, ran as an independent in his Falkirk West constituency and won his constituency with a 42 per cent swing against Labour. In Wales, this kind of electoral diversity was absent, however, with only the four major parties gaining any seats. Yet in both places, female candidates did very well; 37 per cent of the members of the Scottish Parliament are women, as are 40 per cent of the members of the Welsh National Assembly.

Both Scotland and Wales also saw a strong performance of the nationalist parties. The Scottish National Party (SNP) won over 27 per cent of the party vote and almost 29 per cent of the constituency vote to take 35 of the 129 seats, but this was below the party's expectations, thanks to a poor campaign (in which its leader criticized NATO's bombing of Serbia as an "unpardonable folly" and promised to use the parliament's tax- varying power to raise income tax by one per cent). The SNP was also on the defensive regarding its commitment to holding a referendum on independence for Scotland. The party's Welsh counterpart, Plaid Cymru (The Party of Wales), fared better, taking over 28 per cent of the constituency vote and almost 31 per cent of the party vote. This performance, far better than at the 1997 general election when it won about 10 per cent of the vote, deprived Labour of its expected majority, Plaid Cymru's campaign downplayed its support for an independent Wales (it spoke of "self government" within a united Europe and denied separatism) and seemed to benefit from the feeling that Labour had micromanaged the Welsh campaign from London. After the resignation of the Secretary of State for Wales Ron Davies, Prime Minister Tony Blair's replacement, Alun Michael, won the leadership of the Welsh Labour Party on the basis of the union block vote, despite the fact that the majority of party members voted for challenger Rhodri Morgan. It is possible that the poor performance of Labour is due in part to the party's supporters staying home on polling day--voter turnout in Wales was a disappointing 46 per cent, compared to 59 per cent in Scotland.

The Welsh government will be a Labour minority one, thanks to its election gain of 28 of the 60 assembly seats, led by Alun Michael as First Minister. He has stated he plans to govern by consensus, consulting with the other three parties in order to gain as much support as possible on an issue by issue basis. This approach has been welcomed by Plaid Cymru. In Scotland, however, Labour's ability to win only 58 of the 129 parliamentary seats has forced Donald Dewar, Scottish Labour leader, to invite the Liberal Democrats, who won 17 seats, into a coalition government. On 14 May the two parties announced their "Partnership for Scotland" coalition agreement, in which education is the top priority. On this issue, there was some disagreement, as the Liberal Democrats (along with all other Scottish parties, including the Conservatives) had called for abolition of university tuition fees. Here the two parties have agreed to the establishment of an Independent Commission of Inquiry into the issue which will report its findings to the Scottish Parliament at a later date.

The agreement also gives the Liberal Democrats a promise that recommendations on local government reform arising from the McIntosh Commission will be followed by an "immediate programme of change, including progress on electoral reform." This is taken by most observers to mean that Labour has accepted PR for local government elections in Scotland using the preferential Single Transferable Vote (STV) system in multimember wards, a system which would bring an end to the Labour-dominated "one party states" in Scotland's Central Belt, where Labour dominance is blamed for corruption and sleaze. [Editor's note: It also is possible that the McIntosh Commission instead will recommend some version of an AMS system.] Indeed, it is probably in Labour's best interests to implement STV, as the party is likely to retain a strong presence (if not overall control) on most councils, but the new electoral system would give some balance by ensuring effective opposition where none currently exists. If successful, it is possible that STV may be used for local councils elsewhere in Britain as the government at Westminster makes sweeping reforms of local government, including the introduction of directly-elected mayors in those cities that want them. Chief among them is London, whose voters will elect a mayor in May 2000 using the "supplementary vote" system (allowing a second preference, which will be counted if no candidate wins a majority of first preference votes) and an assembly using the AMS system.

All British voters will be able to vote in the first UK-wide PR election on 10 June, when Britain elects its delegation to the European Parliament (EP). While the three Northern Ireland seats in the EP have always been elected by STV, the remaining 84 UK seats were previously elected using the first past the post system, despite the fact that the European Union had called for member states to use a common voting system, and forms of PR have always been used by all other EU members. The UK Labour government, after a long battle with the House of Lords (the unelected upper house of Parliament), implemented a "closed list" PR system which breaks the mainland UK up into electoral regions, each electing between four and 11 members to the EP. Parties will submit lists of candidates for these regions, but voters will only be able to choose a party, and will not be able to re-order the party lists. Labour is expected to lose almost half of the 62 seats it gained in the 1994 EP election, while the Conservatives, who opposed the use of PR, will benefit from the new electoral system by gaining several seats if the party's support in May's local elections holds up. The big winners will be the Liberal Democrats, who may increase their present seat total of two to 15, as well as the Greens, who may gain one or two seats thanks to the use of PR.

The use of various forms of PR, plus the supplementary vote for London mayor, and the current first past the post systems for Parliament (in single-member constituencies) and local councils (in multimember wards, where the system is called "block vote"), means that by this time next year the UK will be using six different electoral systems. While there is much unease among the Labour party leadership about the impact the new electoral systems will have on the party's fortunes, some in the party support the extension of PR to Westminster elections, and hope that successful government in Scotland and Wales will reduce the apprehension among their colleagues towards the proposal by the Jenkins Commission for "Alternative Vote Plus," the semi-proportional electoral system being considered as the alternative to first past the post to be offered to British voters in a referendum at an unspecified future date. With AV+, Lord Jenkins hoped to create an electoral system which would offer Labour a way to have its desired single-party government while reducing the landslides and increasing representation for those voters living in regions dominated by one of the two main parties.

However, despite Jenkins's best efforts, the two main obstacles PR presents to the British political culture, coalition or minority government, and multimember constituencies, remain. AV+ was designed to give the one party winning about 45 per cent of the vote a majority of seats, although this outcome is not certain, as the system has never been used anywhere in the world (Australia uses __undiluted__ AV for its lower house of parliament). Many in the Labour party are worried about the potential for losing comfortable majorities under AV+, especially now that the Conservatives are in disarray, and the attitude of the Liberal Democrats towards Lib-Lab cooperation in the wake of leader Paddy Ashdown's resignation is uncertain.

Furthermore, while between 80 and 85 per cent of Westminster MPs would be elected from single-member constituencies under AV+, there would still be list MPs elected from electoral regions encompassing four to nine single-member constituencies. UK politicians view the relationship between constituents and their __one__ MP as something close to sacred, and the thought of sharing a constituency with list MPs is very disturbing. Already the Labour government in Scotland is trying to undermine its opposition by threatening to cut expense allowances for list members of the Scottish Parliament. Most Labour and Liberal Democrat MSPs were elected from constituencies, while most SNP and all Conservative MSPs were elected from regional lists. Labour's attempt at creating two classes of MSP arises out of the fear that its own MSPs will face competition for constituency service from other parties' MSPs setting up shop locally, making the re-election of Labour candidates less certain.

The Labour party's ambivalent attitude towards PR does not bode well for the future of AMS in Scotland and Wales, let alone for AV+ at Westminster. By deliberately creating so few list MPs in his plan, Jenkins not only has caved in to the British cultural bias against list MPs, he helps perpetuate it. The anti-PR sentiment within Labour has strengthened since the party's "unsatisfactory" results in Scotland and Wales, and media reports of Tony Blair's concerns about the German and Italian governments' difficulty in formulating a policy towards Kosovo only reinforced his wariness of coalitions. Whether British voters are ever given an opportunity to have their say on an alternative to first past the post voting for Westminster will have much to do with the ruling party's satisfaction with the electoral revolution already in progress. * * *

Election Results: Scottish Parliament

Constituency Party List Total

Additional Member System (compensatory "Mixed Member Proportional" with the d'Hondt formula): Eight electoral regions containing an average of nine constituency seats with seven "top-up" party list seats.

* Voter turnout = 59%

* Women elected = 48 (37%)

* Effective number of parliamentary parties = 3.35

* Deviation from proportionality (Michael Gallagher's Least Squares) = 7.51%

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Election Results: National Assembly of Wales Constituency Party List Total

Additional Member System (compensatory "Mixed Member Proportional" using the d'Hondt formula): Five electoral regions containing an average of eight constituency seats with four "top-up" party list seats.

* Voter turnout = 46.0%

* Women elected = 24 (40.0%)

* Effective number of parliamentary parties = 3.03

* Deviation from proportionality (Michael Gallagher's Least Squares) = 8.58%

Compiled by Thomas Lundberg from election results on BBC, Financial Times, and The Economist websites, plus information from the UK Electoral Reform Society.