The Guardian
August 1,
2003
Summary:
An interesting and intelligent editorial in favor of full
representation (proportional representation) in Britain. The author argues that
retaining the plurality (first-past-the-post) system is the only
thing that will allow a minority-supported, majority-opposed
Conservative government to come to power in the
future.
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.
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