Tuesday 2 June 2009

Electoral Reform: What We Need, And What We Don't

Electoral reform should not mean voting for parties rather than people. It should not destroy direct local representation. It should not give power to anti-constitutional and anti-democratic forces. And it should not prevent necessary radical action on behalf of the poor or otherwise disadvantaged.

In the course of each Parliament, each party should submit to a binding ballot of the whole constituency electorate its shortlist of two for Prospective Parliamentary Candidate, and to a binding ballot of the whole national electorate its shortlist of two for Leader. It should also submit to such a national ballot the ten policies proposed by the most of its branches, with each voter entitled to vote for up to two, and with the top seven guaranteed inclusion in the subsequent General Election manifesto.

In multimember constituencies, we should continue to vote for one candidate by means of an X, with the requisite number declared elected at the end. We must not adopt the Single Transferable Vote. It is very likely to eliminate in early rounds candidates with high numbers of lower preferences, whom many voters had in fact wanted to elect in a multimember context.

MPs would be free to form caucuses. Any that comprised at least one sixth of the House would be entitled, if it so chose, to fill by election one sixth of the seats on each of the significantly more powerful Select Committees. One sixth of Select Committee Chairmanships, allocated by the whole House. One sixth of Ministerial positions generally, allocated by the Prime Minister. And one sixth of Cabinet positions specifically, also allocated by the Prime Minister.

None of the existing parties could survive electoral reform. The powers in the land would include an Old Labour Left party, an Old Liberal party (possibly the old Liberal Party), a High Tory party, an economically neoliberal and geopolitically neoconservative party, and an economically social democratic, morally and socially conservative party of British and Commonwealth patriots.

We also need a ballot line system, so that voters would be able to indicate that they were voting for a given candidate specifically as endorsed by a smaller party or other campaigning organisation. Those organisations might be trade unions, co-operatives, peace and disarmament movements, civil liberties groups, or environmental campaigns. Or they might be fighting for Crown and Commonwealth, for national sovereignty, for the countryside, for traditional family life, for the Armed Forces, or against expensive and socially disruptive wars with no British strategic interest at stake. Among numerous other possibilities.

The number of votes by ballot line would be recorded and published separately. If a candidate owed either success or failure to a particular campaigning organisation, whether national or local, then he would know it. And so would everyone else.

And we need to require all political funding to be by resolution of membership organisations, with MPs’ staff appointed from lists maintained by those organisations in return for payment of at least half of those staff’s salaries. This would require MPs to have links to wider civil society. Trade unions, co-operatives, agriculture, manufacturing, small business, and organisations campaigning for conservative causes. Again, among numerous other possibilities.

We needed all these reforms before the MPs’ expenses scandal broke. Both primaries and a more proportional electoral system are absolutely vital. But neither is in itself a remedy against corruption. They have both primaries and corruption in America. There have both PR and corruption on the Continent. They have both primaries and PR in Italy. The expenses scandal will blow over eventually. But when it does, the real reasons why we needed these reforms will still obtain.

2 comments:

  1. Lanchester Bleau3 June 2009 at 11:00

    David Lindsay - the man who wants to bring the French third and fourth republics to these shores!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I can't see how anything in this post resembles either of them. But they were certainly preferable to the arrangements before, between and after them.

    ReplyDelete