The dynamics of political power
This is why everyone needs electoral reform.
It’s because rules don’t define the powers a politician has, they simply define the hurdles a politician has to overcome before they can grab more power. In politics you get all the power you can take and hold.
An example of this would be Ken Livingstone who, as Mayor of London, managed to build the power of that office by daring the government and others to try to stop him. Those who had some power to do so usually chose not to confront him and so set a precedent for the extent of the London Mayor’s reach, a precedent still enjoyed by the present incumbent Boris Johnson.
Conversely, the monarchy has let its power atrophy and the royal prerogative is now mostly exercised by the Prime Minister.
This point is important; power is a zero sum game. In percentage terms, in order to empower someone who has little or none, then you have to take that power from someone who has some.
Power and mandate go hand in hand. A dictator might wield a large percentage of the available power, yet without a mandate, will find it very hard to retain that power in the modern world. Robert Mugabe used periodic and increasingly rigged elections to top up a mandate that was mostly won on the strength of his anti-imperialist activities in his earlier life. Dictator or not, he took steps to nurture just enough mandate to ensure that he remains President of Zimbabwe to this day.
Mandate is crucially important in a democracy and can define where the power lies as much as the rules laid down in statute. The passporting of chunks of the royal prerogative from the monarch to the Prime Minister happened in parallel with the increasing popular mandate of parliament. And this is not even restricted to the monarch. The Lords as decreased in power with the rise of the Commons and its increasing democratic legitimacy; and despite there being no rule to prevent it, the Lords has failed to provide a Prime Minister in a long time. Universal suffrage has given the Commons a mandate so weighty that it is now unthinkable that a party would choose a leader, or a monarch would choose a Prime Minister, from the upper house.
It was the largest direct mandate a politician has ever enjoyed that enabled Ken Livingstone to overreach is legislated powers.
A mandate in the Commons does not, however, mean that the commons is powerful. The British constitution has been described as an elected dictatorship and there is truth in that. The Prime Minister, beneficiary of the overwhelming mandate of the Commons, exercises the Royal prerogative almost without qualification. It would be more accurate to describe our Prime Minister as an elected monarch than an elected dictator.
And like any classical monarch, the PM’s most powerful tool is patronage; governing and managing the Commons through fear and favour. This is the system our democracy has bequeathed to us through a balance of rule, precedent and mandate. It’s hard to see how power in this country could be divided any other way given the circumstances.
At this point you have to make a decision. You have to choose whether you like the way power in this country is divided up or whether you want it to be more fairly arranged. I have my own view that not only should it be more fair, but that the unfairness of the system is self perpetuating and exacerbated over time. People are so far from their government now that for many, there is little point in voting. There is little faith in existing parties but no opportunity for new parties to emerge.
My prediction is that as the political class gets more arrogant in its power, the public mandate will correspondingly decrease as people will in greater numbers refuse to vote for mainstream parties. The expenses scandal is an example of the extraordinary extent to which politicians have lost touch with their voters. Not only are they affronted to have been found out, many of them are blaming their dishonesty on penury and demanding a pay rise before they will respect their voters. As a body they should be humbled. They should spend five years in sackcloth before they earn back the respect of the public and start asking for a pay rise.
In response to this scandal, parliament will start to clean up its act, and shortly there will be a general election where a lot of the bad eggs will find themselves either beaten or “retired”. The next parliament may look cleaner than the current one and have a greater mandate and power for that reason. However, the underlying issues will not have been addressed and over time, the problem will get worse again.
Let me ask you this question. If your MP isn’t mindful of you when claiming their expenses, why do you think he or she is mindful of you when they are legislating? What additional force for accountability is at play when they are performing the latter task that is absent when performing the former? There is no additional force. The Commons’ corruption in expenses has been illuminated and is being addressed. But the corruption of power still remains hidden and still they refuse to address it.
It comes down to accountability. A parliamentary candidate is never more responsive to their local members than during the selection process. If elected, reselection is overwhelmingly considered a formality. Deselection of a serving MP in any of the mainstream parties is an extreme rarity and even in these times, no MP has yet been deselected by their members over the expenses scandal. Under pressure from above, a number of MPs have decided to “retire” at the next election instead. The accountability in this case has been to a party leader, not to members.
That might be well if an MP derived their accountability from the public. But here we have the problem of safe seats. Whatever the benefits that are attributed to the “first past the post” system of election, it has resulted in about 400 safe seats in a parliament of 646 MPs. Even on current polling with the Conservatives enjoying a 17 point lead, about 400 seats are unlikely to change hands from one party to another.
Therefore the ease of reselection means that the voters have very little input at all into who is their legislator. Overwhelmingly the accountability comes from above. Your party leader can promote you or can, as in the case of Howard Flight in 2005, ban you from standing from parliament. But in 400 seats, someone who is quiet, mediocre and who doesn’t break any major laws can expect to have a long career in politics, never once bothered by the emergence of a competitor.
This simply isn’t healthy. The British establishment may not be crass or brutal like those who govern Zimbabwe or Afghanistan, but our elections are equally rigged. They may not be rigged in favour of a particular political party, but they are rigged to keep the top-down power dynamics intact, which suits both Labour and the Conservatives.
Nearly every reform proposed by MPs in response to the expenses scandal has been of no consequence to the culture of unaccountability that pervades the Commons. There are three insipid exceptions. The Prime Minister has offered a referendum on the “alternative vote” method of election to the Commons should Labour form the next Government. Furthermore, he will seek a mandate at the election to create an elected House of Lords. Finally, he will offer a means of recall, whereby voters can force an MP out of office.
Taken together, that sounds like a radical set of reforms, but light inspection shows precisely how weak these promises are. Firstly, the AV method of election is a means by which you ensure every MP has the support of at least half of their constituents. In any result where no candidate has 50% of first preferences, second preferences of those not in contention are reallocated until one candidate has 50% support. Anyone who has more than about 47% support in the first round (in many cases much lower) is guaranteed to win and so is no more accountable to their voters than they were under FPTP.
In total, it is calculated that the current number of safe seats, in the region of about 400, would be reduced to about 320 safe seats. This is not a radical enough reform to stimulate a change of culture in Parliament if half the seats are as safe as they ever were.
Secondly, the institution of a recall system demands an election system where MPs have 50%+ support on election or else they would effectively have failed a recall ballot the day they were elected. The recall proposal itself is extremely wet. The Prime Minister accompanied the announcement with the words, “where there is proven financial corruption by an MP and in cases where wrong-doing has been demonstrated but Parliament fails to act we will give constituents the right to recall their Member of Parliament”. I have rarely seen quite so many caveats in a single sentence.
1. Where there is proven financial corruption
2. Where wrong-doing has been demonstrated
3. Where parliament has failed to act
That’s three tests that have to be passed before voters even get to vote on whether to eject an MP. If an MP has been caught in demonstrated wrong-doing and is guilty of financial corruption, why on earth should it take an expensive balloting process for an MP to be removed? Not to forget, there would be a subsequent by-election soon after so you would be forcing people to the polls twice. And why should an MP’s threat of recall be limited to financial corruption? What about other forms of corruption, doing favours for friends or for a promotion for example?
Governor Gray Davis of California was not recalled because of corruption. He lost his job because of public dissatisfaction with a state budget crisis. He lost his job because Californians decided he wasn’t very good at it. The Prime Minister is not offering people the opportunity to remove an MP on the grounds of competence as suffered by Governor Davis. Given the demonstrated inability of political parties to take competence into account when reselecting their MPs, there is no force for competence in the power dynamic of the House of Commons and no plan to institute one.
The offer of Lords reform was similarly weak when clarified by the Secretary of State responsible. Jack Straw’s vision is that only 80% of the Lords will be elected and even that will take 12-15 years to implement.
The most depressing element of these commitments is that they are contingent on Labour winning the General Election at a time when Labour’s chances are not at their best. In the pantheon of worthwhile promises, these rank lower than Camelot’s insistence that “it could be me” winning the lottery on Saturday.
The fact is that MPs will clean up their act on expenses, and they’ll probably get their pay rise too. And then there will be a general election and a new set of MPs will insist the whole affair was nothing to do with them and that it all happened in the bad old days.
The financial corruption might be cured for as long as three parliaments but the legislative corruption will continue. In fact it will accelerate. With a House of Commons wearing its financial probity ostentatiously on its sleeve, it will feel far more legitimate than its corrupt predecessor.
The public is rightly angry about the financial fiddles. But they ought to be angry about the culture of unaccountability of which the financial scandal was merely a visible example; an unaccountability that MPs have no stomach to reform.
Because MPs know the dynamics of power better than the public. They know that their power depends on the patronage of their leaders and that their leaders’ power of patronage depends on their party’s numbers elected to the Commons.
Both Labour and Tory leaders know that neither of them can pass a law that radically reduces the number of safe seats because 400 MPs, an overwhelming majority, are in safe seats, and they rather like them. Yet how does the public accept this? MPs’ have proven their inability to make decisions where their own self interest is at stake. MPs are deemed the body to make this decision, yet they are the least qualified body to do so. They can’t be trusted.
The position on Lords reform is a similar example. In 2007, when the government was seeking Commons support for a 60% elected Lords, it was rejected by MPs. Surprisingly, on a free vote, MPs backed only the 80% and 100% elected options.
But somehow, legislation was not forthcoming. As described, the Labour position is only for an 80% elected House some time in the next 15 years and the Conservative position is that while they support Lords reform, it’s not a priority.
In this case, the party leaders understand the power dynamics better than their MPs. They are desperate not to give the upper house a mandate because that would necessarily reduce the amount of power held elsewhere. Because power is a zero sum game. In this case, the power would be drawn from the Commons and possibly from the PM. Where a PM could command a majority in both houses, it would increase the PM’s power. But normally (under PR) the PM would have to negotiate to get legislation passed and it would reduce the PM’s power. At the moment, the Lords is weak because of its democratic illegitimacy. Elected it would have a mandate and provide a real check and balance for the executive.
And so in 2009 we have had rubbed in our faces that the Commons is corrupt and that they are not willing to do anything to increase their public accountability. With a Constitution Bill on the table in parliament now and cross party support for 100% elected Lords already demonstrated in the Commons, why can’t we have a proper check and balance? Why do we have to wait 12-15 years when we need some accountability right now?
If the Upper House had a mandate, if it carried legitimacy, then it would have power, and in the zero sum game of power, those in Downing Street and those who aspire to be there will oppose that sharing of power.
There is a simple solution to this problem, which would at a stroke remove nearly all safe seats. Ending FPTP and replacing it with the Single Transferrable Vote (STV) would immediately make every seat in the country competitive. If you set it up in 3-member seats, the parties would be obliged to promote 3 candidates, the 3 winners chosen by the public’s preferences votes. It’s a proportional system so there are very few seats in the country where one party might win all three seats. Therefore, even if it were guaranteed that one party would win 2 of three seats, the party itself wouldn’t get to choose which two of its three candidates were returned to office.
This system would provide a competitor from the same party and the public would ultimately get to choose their MPs rather than the parties. It is the equivalent of rolling in a party primary with polling day itself (and at a significantly lesser expense). Suddenly there would be a force for competence in British democracy and a counterbalance to the overwhelming “top-down” nature of political accountability today.
I can illustrate this. When an MP threatens to vote against their party whip, the lecture they often receive is, “who do you think you are? How many of your voters even know who you are? You’re here because you had the word [insert party name here] after you name you arrogant prick, now get in there and vote”. This is true; I have witnessed it myself. And so if you have STV, an MP can say, yes I’m here because I’m Labour [for example] but I’m also here because my voters thought I was better than two other Labour candidates, so I really do represent my voters, not just my party. Is it any wonder that the Leaders of the main parties oppose any electoral system that weakens the power of the whips?
This accountability vacuum is the number one problem in Britain today. After running the country moderately well for over a decade, the Labour Party has now taken leadership in averting a global depression. Yet we are still experiencing the lowest poll rating since I was a child. And despite this, David Cameron’s Conservatives are failing to attract conversely high levels of support, consistently hitting a ceiling on their popularity.
A lack of faith in the mainstream parties is the reason why the number of protest votes is increasing and why turnouts are decreasing. This is the mathematics that allowed two BNP MEPs to be elected this spring and why the BBC had to consider inviting BNP leader Nick Griffin to take part in Question Time.
The lack of public accountability not only entrenches the power of the political elite but it hampers the elite from delivering effectively for the people. As successive governments insist on choosing which sliver of swing voters they will serve, they do so at the expense of all the others. If 646 MPs had to fight every election to be re-elected, if every vote counted, then we would have governments who work in the interests of all the people.
The power dynamics you set up in your system define where the power will flow to.
So where do you want the power to flow to? Design your system accordingly.
I’ll give you an illustration. If the Lords were directly elected, there’s no legal barrier preventing a Peer being appointed Prime Minister, as long as they could command a majority in the Commons. This, MPs would rail against, without really knowing why.
But let’s just say for the sake of argument that the people wanted a principle chamber and a secondary, revising chamber – yet wanted democratic accountability in both houses. Qualifying a mandate is a simple thing to do and it relates to the accountability issue.
1. If a constituency is bigger (in size), a politician is less accessible to his or her constituents, so they could be said to have a lesser mandate.
2. If a constituency contains more people, each constituent person “owns” a smaller proportion of their elected politician and it is less realistic for their politician to be responsive. This is as true for casework as it is for policy lobbying.
3. If the electorate is a secondary body rather than the public in general, for example, if only elected Councillors could vote, or if members of the upper house were “delegated” from local authorities, then they would be deemed to have a lesser, secondary mandate.
4. “Freshness” of the mandate is a factor. Whichever politician is more recently elected can claim to have passed a more relevant electoral test.
So if you want an Upper House to have a lesser mandate than the Commons, it would seem logical to only ever elect it on the day of a General Election so that its mandate is never more fresh than that of the Commons. You could even elect half the Lords at each general election, giving each Peer a two-parliament term.
Secondly, you could apply larger constituencies. A regional or sub-regional PR would work, though my preference for an open list over a party list is unshakeable. With an open list, the voters indicate their order of preference. With a party list, the party itself chooses the order so it becomes almost a party appointment (again a safe seat) for those at the top of the lists.
It’s not overly cynical of me to distrust political parties. In the context of a system where all power flows from above, then political parties necessarily move to serve their leaders, or some other powerful faction with pretensions to leadership. In the Labour Party, the only party of which I have any experience, it is normal practice for internal elections to be interfered with by party staff and not uncommon for parliamentary selections to be fiddled for “favoured” candidates. Party staff wear their ability to pervert internal elections like a medal and gloat and joke about it. In 2000/2001, when I worked for the party, this was an eye-opener for me and I have heard similar stories from people in other parties.
There will always be a force driving towards the internal corruption of party democracy while democracy in the country is tailored to empower those who are already powerful.
This is the upsetting point for me. If the Labour party is not the party seeking to empower the people, then who hell else is left to do it? We broke the ruling class and replaced it with the political class. Just as exclusive. Just as inaccessible to the general public. Just as unresponsive.
The political class would have us believe that by 1928 we had created a democratic nirvana in the UK; that we were beyond any meaningful improvement in our democracy. My proposals so far in this paper – STV for the primary chamber and an elected revising chamber – they’re not revolutionary proposals, they are already working well in other parts of the world.
But I can take this further. I do believe that elites cannot help but perpetuate themselves and that it is the first task of every democratic society to explore how it can be more democratic. Because democracy isn’t a state of being, it’s a dynamic of power. Whatever form of democracy you have will result in some people having some power and it is in their interest to reinforce that power. So any society committed to democratic ideals must be ever searching for improvements to its democracy.
The alternative is the path down which we are watching out own country travel. This is a path where mainstream political parties are so out of touch, so unaccountable, yet so immovable from power, that protest votes and low turnouts are leading to the election of a fascist party, the BNP, to the London Assembly, the European Parliament, and to numerous local authorities. This is a party that will end democracy as we know it if they get the chance; that is the sworn enemy of the BBC whose own sense of independence led them to give air time to the BNP leader; a party with a hatred for free speech.
This is where we are sleepwalking. We are seeing now what the BNP is achieving with only 6% support in a national election. What will they be able to do if they start getting ten or fifteen percent support? And this is what will happen unless we give CPR to our feeble democracy.
I was a child 30 years ago and I remember learning about the danger to the environment of human profligacy. If it could be taught to a child then, how is it that it has taken 30 years to get the Copenhagen summit organised where we might have a chance to do something about it? This is because a failed democracy works for those already in power, not for those who may never have access to power.
The Labour movement was born over a hundred years ago to tackle poverty and exploitation. Yet after 12 straight years in power, why have we not revolutionised the life chances of every child? Because a failed democracy is accountable only to those who already wield power, not to those who may never wield it.
Reform of our democracy is not a philosophical game or a marginal pursuit. It is at the heart of what it means to be Labour. It’s at the heart of social justice. It’s at the heart of environmentalism and social mobility.
My parents are Labour, they had many council and parliamentary candidacies between them. My grandfather was the organiser for a Labour candidate who took on Winston Churchill, and my great grandfather was at the GC meeting that Clement Attlee first attended. This party is in my bones. And yet I despair that we have become so uninspiring, that our politicians are protecting their own power rather than sharing it. And I despair even further that despite how flawed we have become, our democracy is so flaccid that Labour is still the best party available.
Of course I want us to win elections, but I want us to win because we have had to fight to be the best against an opposition also driving to achieve for the nation. All we are now is the least bad option.
And we will only achieve our potential; to end poverty; to secure the sustainability of our planet; if we become better than we are.
And we will only be better if we inject life into our democracy, if we abolish safe seats and make each of our representative compete properly to hold office.
If competition’s good for the Royal Mail, why can’t it be good for government?
Alex Hilton
Labour candidate for Chelsea & Fulham
alexhilton@gmail.com
07794 771 113
It’s because rules don’t define the powers a politician has, they simply define the hurdles a politician has to overcome before they can grab more power. In politics you get all the power you can take and hold.
An example of this would be Ken Livingstone who, as Mayor of London, managed to build the power of that office by daring the government and others to try to stop him. Those who had some power to do so usually chose not to confront him and so set a precedent for the extent of the London Mayor’s reach, a precedent still enjoyed by the present incumbent Boris Johnson.
Conversely, the monarchy has let its power atrophy and the royal prerogative is now mostly exercised by the Prime Minister.
This point is important; power is a zero sum game. In percentage terms, in order to empower someone who has little or none, then you have to take that power from someone who has some.
Power and mandate go hand in hand. A dictator might wield a large percentage of the available power, yet without a mandate, will find it very hard to retain that power in the modern world. Robert Mugabe used periodic and increasingly rigged elections to top up a mandate that was mostly won on the strength of his anti-imperialist activities in his earlier life. Dictator or not, he took steps to nurture just enough mandate to ensure that he remains President of Zimbabwe to this day.
Mandate is crucially important in a democracy and can define where the power lies as much as the rules laid down in statute. The passporting of chunks of the royal prerogative from the monarch to the Prime Minister happened in parallel with the increasing popular mandate of parliament. And this is not even restricted to the monarch. The Lords as decreased in power with the rise of the Commons and its increasing democratic legitimacy; and despite there being no rule to prevent it, the Lords has failed to provide a Prime Minister in a long time. Universal suffrage has given the Commons a mandate so weighty that it is now unthinkable that a party would choose a leader, or a monarch would choose a Prime Minister, from the upper house.
It was the largest direct mandate a politician has ever enjoyed that enabled Ken Livingstone to overreach is legislated powers.
A mandate in the Commons does not, however, mean that the commons is powerful. The British constitution has been described as an elected dictatorship and there is truth in that. The Prime Minister, beneficiary of the overwhelming mandate of the Commons, exercises the Royal prerogative almost without qualification. It would be more accurate to describe our Prime Minister as an elected monarch than an elected dictator.
And like any classical monarch, the PM’s most powerful tool is patronage; governing and managing the Commons through fear and favour. This is the system our democracy has bequeathed to us through a balance of rule, precedent and mandate. It’s hard to see how power in this country could be divided any other way given the circumstances.
At this point you have to make a decision. You have to choose whether you like the way power in this country is divided up or whether you want it to be more fairly arranged. I have my own view that not only should it be more fair, but that the unfairness of the system is self perpetuating and exacerbated over time. People are so far from their government now that for many, there is little point in voting. There is little faith in existing parties but no opportunity for new parties to emerge.
My prediction is that as the political class gets more arrogant in its power, the public mandate will correspondingly decrease as people will in greater numbers refuse to vote for mainstream parties. The expenses scandal is an example of the extraordinary extent to which politicians have lost touch with their voters. Not only are they affronted to have been found out, many of them are blaming their dishonesty on penury and demanding a pay rise before they will respect their voters. As a body they should be humbled. They should spend five years in sackcloth before they earn back the respect of the public and start asking for a pay rise.
In response to this scandal, parliament will start to clean up its act, and shortly there will be a general election where a lot of the bad eggs will find themselves either beaten or “retired”. The next parliament may look cleaner than the current one and have a greater mandate and power for that reason. However, the underlying issues will not have been addressed and over time, the problem will get worse again.
Let me ask you this question. If your MP isn’t mindful of you when claiming their expenses, why do you think he or she is mindful of you when they are legislating? What additional force for accountability is at play when they are performing the latter task that is absent when performing the former? There is no additional force. The Commons’ corruption in expenses has been illuminated and is being addressed. But the corruption of power still remains hidden and still they refuse to address it.
It comes down to accountability. A parliamentary candidate is never more responsive to their local members than during the selection process. If elected, reselection is overwhelmingly considered a formality. Deselection of a serving MP in any of the mainstream parties is an extreme rarity and even in these times, no MP has yet been deselected by their members over the expenses scandal. Under pressure from above, a number of MPs have decided to “retire” at the next election instead. The accountability in this case has been to a party leader, not to members.
That might be well if an MP derived their accountability from the public. But here we have the problem of safe seats. Whatever the benefits that are attributed to the “first past the post” system of election, it has resulted in about 400 safe seats in a parliament of 646 MPs. Even on current polling with the Conservatives enjoying a 17 point lead, about 400 seats are unlikely to change hands from one party to another.
Therefore the ease of reselection means that the voters have very little input at all into who is their legislator. Overwhelmingly the accountability comes from above. Your party leader can promote you or can, as in the case of Howard Flight in 2005, ban you from standing from parliament. But in 400 seats, someone who is quiet, mediocre and who doesn’t break any major laws can expect to have a long career in politics, never once bothered by the emergence of a competitor.
This simply isn’t healthy. The British establishment may not be crass or brutal like those who govern Zimbabwe or Afghanistan, but our elections are equally rigged. They may not be rigged in favour of a particular political party, but they are rigged to keep the top-down power dynamics intact, which suits both Labour and the Conservatives.
Nearly every reform proposed by MPs in response to the expenses scandal has been of no consequence to the culture of unaccountability that pervades the Commons. There are three insipid exceptions. The Prime Minister has offered a referendum on the “alternative vote” method of election to the Commons should Labour form the next Government. Furthermore, he will seek a mandate at the election to create an elected House of Lords. Finally, he will offer a means of recall, whereby voters can force an MP out of office.
Taken together, that sounds like a radical set of reforms, but light inspection shows precisely how weak these promises are. Firstly, the AV method of election is a means by which you ensure every MP has the support of at least half of their constituents. In any result where no candidate has 50% of first preferences, second preferences of those not in contention are reallocated until one candidate has 50% support. Anyone who has more than about 47% support in the first round (in many cases much lower) is guaranteed to win and so is no more accountable to their voters than they were under FPTP.
In total, it is calculated that the current number of safe seats, in the region of about 400, would be reduced to about 320 safe seats. This is not a radical enough reform to stimulate a change of culture in Parliament if half the seats are as safe as they ever were.
Secondly, the institution of a recall system demands an election system where MPs have 50%+ support on election or else they would effectively have failed a recall ballot the day they were elected. The recall proposal itself is extremely wet. The Prime Minister accompanied the announcement with the words, “where there is proven financial corruption by an MP and in cases where wrong-doing has been demonstrated but Parliament fails to act we will give constituents the right to recall their Member of Parliament”. I have rarely seen quite so many caveats in a single sentence.
1. Where there is proven financial corruption
2. Where wrong-doing has been demonstrated
3. Where parliament has failed to act
That’s three tests that have to be passed before voters even get to vote on whether to eject an MP. If an MP has been caught in demonstrated wrong-doing and is guilty of financial corruption, why on earth should it take an expensive balloting process for an MP to be removed? Not to forget, there would be a subsequent by-election soon after so you would be forcing people to the polls twice. And why should an MP’s threat of recall be limited to financial corruption? What about other forms of corruption, doing favours for friends or for a promotion for example?
Governor Gray Davis of California was not recalled because of corruption. He lost his job because of public dissatisfaction with a state budget crisis. He lost his job because Californians decided he wasn’t very good at it. The Prime Minister is not offering people the opportunity to remove an MP on the grounds of competence as suffered by Governor Davis. Given the demonstrated inability of political parties to take competence into account when reselecting their MPs, there is no force for competence in the power dynamic of the House of Commons and no plan to institute one.
The offer of Lords reform was similarly weak when clarified by the Secretary of State responsible. Jack Straw’s vision is that only 80% of the Lords will be elected and even that will take 12-15 years to implement.
The most depressing element of these commitments is that they are contingent on Labour winning the General Election at a time when Labour’s chances are not at their best. In the pantheon of worthwhile promises, these rank lower than Camelot’s insistence that “it could be me” winning the lottery on Saturday.
The fact is that MPs will clean up their act on expenses, and they’ll probably get their pay rise too. And then there will be a general election and a new set of MPs will insist the whole affair was nothing to do with them and that it all happened in the bad old days.
The financial corruption might be cured for as long as three parliaments but the legislative corruption will continue. In fact it will accelerate. With a House of Commons wearing its financial probity ostentatiously on its sleeve, it will feel far more legitimate than its corrupt predecessor.
The public is rightly angry about the financial fiddles. But they ought to be angry about the culture of unaccountability of which the financial scandal was merely a visible example; an unaccountability that MPs have no stomach to reform.
Because MPs know the dynamics of power better than the public. They know that their power depends on the patronage of their leaders and that their leaders’ power of patronage depends on their party’s numbers elected to the Commons.
Both Labour and Tory leaders know that neither of them can pass a law that radically reduces the number of safe seats because 400 MPs, an overwhelming majority, are in safe seats, and they rather like them. Yet how does the public accept this? MPs’ have proven their inability to make decisions where their own self interest is at stake. MPs are deemed the body to make this decision, yet they are the least qualified body to do so. They can’t be trusted.
The position on Lords reform is a similar example. In 2007, when the government was seeking Commons support for a 60% elected Lords, it was rejected by MPs. Surprisingly, on a free vote, MPs backed only the 80% and 100% elected options.
But somehow, legislation was not forthcoming. As described, the Labour position is only for an 80% elected House some time in the next 15 years and the Conservative position is that while they support Lords reform, it’s not a priority.
In this case, the party leaders understand the power dynamics better than their MPs. They are desperate not to give the upper house a mandate because that would necessarily reduce the amount of power held elsewhere. Because power is a zero sum game. In this case, the power would be drawn from the Commons and possibly from the PM. Where a PM could command a majority in both houses, it would increase the PM’s power. But normally (under PR) the PM would have to negotiate to get legislation passed and it would reduce the PM’s power. At the moment, the Lords is weak because of its democratic illegitimacy. Elected it would have a mandate and provide a real check and balance for the executive.
And so in 2009 we have had rubbed in our faces that the Commons is corrupt and that they are not willing to do anything to increase their public accountability. With a Constitution Bill on the table in parliament now and cross party support for 100% elected Lords already demonstrated in the Commons, why can’t we have a proper check and balance? Why do we have to wait 12-15 years when we need some accountability right now?
If the Upper House had a mandate, if it carried legitimacy, then it would have power, and in the zero sum game of power, those in Downing Street and those who aspire to be there will oppose that sharing of power.
There is a simple solution to this problem, which would at a stroke remove nearly all safe seats. Ending FPTP and replacing it with the Single Transferrable Vote (STV) would immediately make every seat in the country competitive. If you set it up in 3-member seats, the parties would be obliged to promote 3 candidates, the 3 winners chosen by the public’s preferences votes. It’s a proportional system so there are very few seats in the country where one party might win all three seats. Therefore, even if it were guaranteed that one party would win 2 of three seats, the party itself wouldn’t get to choose which two of its three candidates were returned to office.
This system would provide a competitor from the same party and the public would ultimately get to choose their MPs rather than the parties. It is the equivalent of rolling in a party primary with polling day itself (and at a significantly lesser expense). Suddenly there would be a force for competence in British democracy and a counterbalance to the overwhelming “top-down” nature of political accountability today.
I can illustrate this. When an MP threatens to vote against their party whip, the lecture they often receive is, “who do you think you are? How many of your voters even know who you are? You’re here because you had the word [insert party name here] after you name you arrogant prick, now get in there and vote”. This is true; I have witnessed it myself. And so if you have STV, an MP can say, yes I’m here because I’m Labour [for example] but I’m also here because my voters thought I was better than two other Labour candidates, so I really do represent my voters, not just my party. Is it any wonder that the Leaders of the main parties oppose any electoral system that weakens the power of the whips?
This accountability vacuum is the number one problem in Britain today. After running the country moderately well for over a decade, the Labour Party has now taken leadership in averting a global depression. Yet we are still experiencing the lowest poll rating since I was a child. And despite this, David Cameron’s Conservatives are failing to attract conversely high levels of support, consistently hitting a ceiling on their popularity.
A lack of faith in the mainstream parties is the reason why the number of protest votes is increasing and why turnouts are decreasing. This is the mathematics that allowed two BNP MEPs to be elected this spring and why the BBC had to consider inviting BNP leader Nick Griffin to take part in Question Time.
The lack of public accountability not only entrenches the power of the political elite but it hampers the elite from delivering effectively for the people. As successive governments insist on choosing which sliver of swing voters they will serve, they do so at the expense of all the others. If 646 MPs had to fight every election to be re-elected, if every vote counted, then we would have governments who work in the interests of all the people.
The power dynamics you set up in your system define where the power will flow to.
So where do you want the power to flow to? Design your system accordingly.
I’ll give you an illustration. If the Lords were directly elected, there’s no legal barrier preventing a Peer being appointed Prime Minister, as long as they could command a majority in the Commons. This, MPs would rail against, without really knowing why.
But let’s just say for the sake of argument that the people wanted a principle chamber and a secondary, revising chamber – yet wanted democratic accountability in both houses. Qualifying a mandate is a simple thing to do and it relates to the accountability issue.
1. If a constituency is bigger (in size), a politician is less accessible to his or her constituents, so they could be said to have a lesser mandate.
2. If a constituency contains more people, each constituent person “owns” a smaller proportion of their elected politician and it is less realistic for their politician to be responsive. This is as true for casework as it is for policy lobbying.
3. If the electorate is a secondary body rather than the public in general, for example, if only elected Councillors could vote, or if members of the upper house were “delegated” from local authorities, then they would be deemed to have a lesser, secondary mandate.
4. “Freshness” of the mandate is a factor. Whichever politician is more recently elected can claim to have passed a more relevant electoral test.
So if you want an Upper House to have a lesser mandate than the Commons, it would seem logical to only ever elect it on the day of a General Election so that its mandate is never more fresh than that of the Commons. You could even elect half the Lords at each general election, giving each Peer a two-parliament term.
Secondly, you could apply larger constituencies. A regional or sub-regional PR would work, though my preference for an open list over a party list is unshakeable. With an open list, the voters indicate their order of preference. With a party list, the party itself chooses the order so it becomes almost a party appointment (again a safe seat) for those at the top of the lists.
It’s not overly cynical of me to distrust political parties. In the context of a system where all power flows from above, then political parties necessarily move to serve their leaders, or some other powerful faction with pretensions to leadership. In the Labour Party, the only party of which I have any experience, it is normal practice for internal elections to be interfered with by party staff and not uncommon for parliamentary selections to be fiddled for “favoured” candidates. Party staff wear their ability to pervert internal elections like a medal and gloat and joke about it. In 2000/2001, when I worked for the party, this was an eye-opener for me and I have heard similar stories from people in other parties.
There will always be a force driving towards the internal corruption of party democracy while democracy in the country is tailored to empower those who are already powerful.
This is the upsetting point for me. If the Labour party is not the party seeking to empower the people, then who hell else is left to do it? We broke the ruling class and replaced it with the political class. Just as exclusive. Just as inaccessible to the general public. Just as unresponsive.
The political class would have us believe that by 1928 we had created a democratic nirvana in the UK; that we were beyond any meaningful improvement in our democracy. My proposals so far in this paper – STV for the primary chamber and an elected revising chamber – they’re not revolutionary proposals, they are already working well in other parts of the world.
But I can take this further. I do believe that elites cannot help but perpetuate themselves and that it is the first task of every democratic society to explore how it can be more democratic. Because democracy isn’t a state of being, it’s a dynamic of power. Whatever form of democracy you have will result in some people having some power and it is in their interest to reinforce that power. So any society committed to democratic ideals must be ever searching for improvements to its democracy.
The alternative is the path down which we are watching out own country travel. This is a path where mainstream political parties are so out of touch, so unaccountable, yet so immovable from power, that protest votes and low turnouts are leading to the election of a fascist party, the BNP, to the London Assembly, the European Parliament, and to numerous local authorities. This is a party that will end democracy as we know it if they get the chance; that is the sworn enemy of the BBC whose own sense of independence led them to give air time to the BNP leader; a party with a hatred for free speech.
This is where we are sleepwalking. We are seeing now what the BNP is achieving with only 6% support in a national election. What will they be able to do if they start getting ten or fifteen percent support? And this is what will happen unless we give CPR to our feeble democracy.
I was a child 30 years ago and I remember learning about the danger to the environment of human profligacy. If it could be taught to a child then, how is it that it has taken 30 years to get the Copenhagen summit organised where we might have a chance to do something about it? This is because a failed democracy works for those already in power, not for those who may never have access to power.
The Labour movement was born over a hundred years ago to tackle poverty and exploitation. Yet after 12 straight years in power, why have we not revolutionised the life chances of every child? Because a failed democracy is accountable only to those who already wield power, not to those who may never wield it.
Reform of our democracy is not a philosophical game or a marginal pursuit. It is at the heart of what it means to be Labour. It’s at the heart of social justice. It’s at the heart of environmentalism and social mobility.
My parents are Labour, they had many council and parliamentary candidacies between them. My grandfather was the organiser for a Labour candidate who took on Winston Churchill, and my great grandfather was at the GC meeting that Clement Attlee first attended. This party is in my bones. And yet I despair that we have become so uninspiring, that our politicians are protecting their own power rather than sharing it. And I despair even further that despite how flawed we have become, our democracy is so flaccid that Labour is still the best party available.
Of course I want us to win elections, but I want us to win because we have had to fight to be the best against an opposition also driving to achieve for the nation. All we are now is the least bad option.
And we will only achieve our potential; to end poverty; to secure the sustainability of our planet; if we become better than we are.
And we will only be better if we inject life into our democracy, if we abolish safe seats and make each of our representative compete properly to hold office.
If competition’s good for the Royal Mail, why can’t it be good for government?
Alex Hilton
Labour candidate for Chelsea & Fulham
alexhilton@gmail.com
07794 771 113
