There was a question for short debate in the Lords last night on electoral systems, especially the party list system. I missed it because I was taking part in a debate hosted by Policy Exchange – on electoral systems. Home Secretary Alan Johnson and Professor Vernon Bogdanor argued the case for introducing a system of proportional representation and London Mayor Boris Johnson and I argued the case for the existing first-past-the post system.
The Mayor was on fine form. It was a good debate and I am pleased to report that our side carried the day: in a vote at the end we won by a narrow margin. This was a welcome surprise. The audience – journalists, think tank people, politicians and political anoraks – was something of a self-selecting audience that one would expect to favour electoral reform. I was gratified when someone saw me after the debate to say that he had been a firm supporter of PR when he arrived but, having listened to me, he was now opposed to it. Comments like that make it all worthwhile.
I may do a post on the arguments I advanced, but it may not be a short post. As I pointed out last night, when I was an undegraduate I was a member of the University debating society and the report of one debate said: ‘Philip Norton said there were many ways of looking at this issue – and he then proceeded to prove it’.
Fine work ! although it may have been in vain, as it looks like the Government have given up on the idea in any case…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/michaelcrick/2010/01/alternative_vote_referendum_sc.html
Perhaps they learned of your debate and decided to throw the towel in before they got beaten..
Bedd Gelert: Indeed. In any event, the Government was only considering the Alternative Vote (AV), which is a different electoral system to First-Past-the-Post (FPTP) but is not a system of proportional representation. Under AV, the disparity between votes and seats can be greater than under FPTP, as it is estimated would have been the case in 1997 had the election been held using AV.
I must admit to being perpetually puzzled about the sound and fury generated by PR yet how little discussion goes into small but significant technical changes to the present system that would have quite a proportional effect. I’m thinking of broadly equalising the constituency populations (removing the insanity of Na h-Eileanan an Iar 22k voters/ Isle of Wight 110k), boundaries being drawn on predictive size at the next election not on the population at a date anything up to 10 years ago. This largely removes the problem of urban constituencies losing population to suburban areas leaving urban seats smaller than suburban ones on ‘real’ population.
Did you lead or follow Boris? I know which I think would be preferable!
A similar line is taken HERE.
I would like to see the figures that lead to the author’s assumption that those who are moving from inner cities to the leafy suburbs are mainly Conservative voters. Given that roughly 90% of the poulation are urban-dwellers I would had assumed that most of the urban seats are more likely to expand and thus create extra seats in favour of the Labour party. hence, why Mr Cameron wants to get rid of 100 seats, presumably from urban areas.
Just me thinking aloud, no more than that.
…and Boris’ speech is <a href="http://conservativehome.blogs.com/thetorydiary/2010/01/boirs-puts-the-case-against-proportional-representation.html" HERE.
Darn, I mean HERE
I hadn’t read the link but it says much the same.
The claimed 90% figure – it includes both the inner city and the leafy suburb. The party lines are crudely between those areas. For whatever reason the population is moving from the former to the latter. Whether Tories are more likely to move out, financially better able to move out or there is something in the water in the leafy areas that creates Tories I offer not view. Assume, for the purposes of argument, that those moving out exactly match the party balance nationally and take 7 urban/7 suburban contiguous seats. If each urban seat loses ~10k over and each S-U gains the same – then on redrawn boundaries we might expect 1 less urban and 1 more suburban seat. Ceteris paribus we would see a +2 change in the balance between the parties. Repeat this across the many seats where this problem occurs and it adds up to a non negligible change in seats.
I’m by no means clear exactly what the Tory proposal is – setting a fixed size of constituency (+/- 1-2%) would hit some of Labour’s urban seats and some of the Celtic fringe seats. Reducing the number of MPs is quite separate from this proposal and could be achieved separate from or additional to this.
Truly, I wasn’t implying that your original comment was a mish-mash of the article. The problem with innovative thought has lined the pockets of lawyers for quite some time! Indeed, Finkelstein’s article on Who Will Rid Me of This Turbulent Bloke? (see Bedd’s O/T below) had been debated and wrapped up at Tiz Towers just three days ago. It’s a bit annoying that we can’t get royalties, isn’t it?
Anyway, back to your reply. You are right to divide urban areas into inner-city and the burbs. Approx. 29% of the population live in rural areas, themselves divided into ‘accessible rural areas’ and ‘remote rural areas’: only the latter make up some 11% of the population. That’s that cleared up – possibly.
(have to go – back later)
Croft: I agree, though more attention is now being given to addressing the disparity in constituency populations. In the debate, Alan Johnson proposed the motion calling for a new electoral system and Boris Johnson spoke against; Vernon Bogdanor then spoke in support of the motion and I spoke against it. I was quite happy with the order of speaking: it meant that I could pick up on the points that had been made.
Isn`t what is being suggested here…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8451096.stm
a form of PR to be foisted upon us ?
” Obligatory quotas for the number of women put forward for selection as a parliamentary candidate by each political party have been proposed.”
“Its members also call for lists featuring only black and ethnic minority candidates, though they acknowledged such a move might undermine the principle that an MP represents the constituency regardless of background or politics.”
Apparently we don`t have to earn the positions anymore just be the right creed or sex. Britain is still the land where one can be promoted beyond your abilities.
Afternoon and happy new year Phillip. Although I believe in some form of proportional system I for one would be interested in reading your points. After all only a fool has a closed mind 🙂
Afternoon Carl and happy new year. I’m very pleased to see that you are one of our (regular?) readers. I shall be happy to persuade you of the merits of the existing system!
I’m sorry that the debate wasn’t recorded! Would have been well worth a watch.
While I am a supporter of FPTP, as with all things I strongly believe in I can at least forgive people who disagree (and who are therefore wrong)… provided their motives are genuine.
I’m afraid most of this new talk of AV is shamelessly for political advantage. These cabinet members coming out of the woodwork all of a sudden saying they support AV/PR are fooling no-one. The Labour Party quietly dropped their support of PR in 1997 (I wonder why!) and only now are they mentioning it again.
My support of FPTP is because I support the constituent-MP link. If someone’s rubbish then I want the chance to kick them out. Whereas if they are on a party list then that choice no longer belongs to me.
While the Australian voting system (with preferences) still does does FPTP’s work (sort of), I’m not convinced that it’s “fair” that someone with 10% of 1st preference votes could, in theory, beat someone with 49.9% of 1st preference votes. How is that an improvement on our current system? It’s not. It’ll put people off voting, and the Lib Dems won’t support it because they still won’t be able to punch above their weight.
My dislike of AV cannot match my hatred of these mixed FPTP/PR systems used in Wales and Scotland. How on earth can we have a situation where someone accountable, who actually represents a constituency, sits in Parliament on equal terms with someone off a party list? And who decided the arbitrary proportion of FPTP and PR seats available? Ridiculous.
At least the matter of electoral systems for Wales and Scotland still rests with our supposedly sovereign Parliament. The same cannot be said of our electoral system for European “elections”, for which the EU has banned us from reverting back to FPTP.
Chris K: Thanks for the comments. You make some very valuable points. I made some not dissimilar points in the context of Wales, which presently has a coaltion government for which not one elector cast a vote in the 2007 elections.
I think that there are better methods than either FPTP or PR.
I like the way that FPTP gives the ruling party alot of power, I believe that a government can only function if it has a firm foundation.
However, its does seem that this power comes from a loss of, well, representation.
How do you give people they’re say, without swamping Parliament with trivialities?
Troika21: I would not accept that FPTP results in a loss of representation relative to PR. If you don’t have FPTP or a system of PR (PR isn’t a specific system), then you have, presumably, AV – or do you have something else in mind?
I used to be a supporter of PR but, listening to the arguments over recent months, I’ve come to the conclusion that a Single Transferable Vote system would work best as it both allows representation to be closer that of the real support of a party but gives the winning party a majority.
Francisco: The Single Transferable Vote (STV) is a PR system, but it is a system that has a range of problems. It is not as proportional as some other PR systems – it can produce parties gaining a majority of seats on a minority of the votes. It can be manipulated through the choice of how many members are allocated in a multi-member seat and in the Republic of Ireland it encourages excessive localism, to the detriment of the Dail as a legislature. It is also a little used system: only 0.1 per cent of voters around the globe vote using STV.
Lord Norton,
It’s a great pleasure to read a post from you on electoral reform. I still recall clearly going through each type of voting system in the first year of my Politics A-Level (and yes, we did use your excellent Politics UK textbook!)
At the age of 16 I remember being quite keen on AV+, the system devised by the Jenkins Commission. But eight years on I am keener to stick to FPTP as the least-worst system. I would be very grateful if you would mention AV+ in your future post – I await it eagerly.
Andrew: Many thanks for your comments. It is always good to hear from someone who is so obviously well read. I regard AV+ as a very poor system (or rather proposed system, since no one uses it), with no real merit to it. It was constructed in order to meet criteria that were not compatible with one another. It is not surprising that the Government decided not to proceed with its 1997 manifesto proposal to hold a referendum on an alternative system, given that this was the alternative proposed by the Jenkins Commission.
Teaching young people to debate would be a better way of spending money than giving them laptops and a broadband connection at home. Discuss.
What !! And have young people ACTUALLY thinking instead of copying and pasting ? What are you thinking ?
My 8 year old daughter just last night had homework of finding 6 facts about Australia, so off she duly goes to the internet.What she came up with wasn`t what I expected nor do I think it`ll be what her teacher specifically wanted. Do you know the median age of a female getting married in Oz ? She does. Do you know the percentage of women and men who won`t get married ? She does.
Are they facts about Australia ? Well more like stastitics but none the less facts I suppose and relating to Australia specifically. I was thinking more along the lines of it`s venoumous creatures or it`s geography…Ahhh well that`s the net for you. The handwriting was good and grammar correct at least I didn`t have to print it out as I do for my 15 year old taking GCSE`s.
I do wonder if I ask her in a month if she`ll remember that 32% of Australian men won`t marry ?
I guess being clever equates to not having to sit doing something boring like homework for hours. Genius kids we have nowadays, at least I think so but hold up let me google that to ensure the facts………
The problem with calculators was that we didn`t have to do mathematics anymore, the problem with the internet is we don`t have to do anything but type. Anyone remember that song ” In the Year 2525″ ?
Bedd Gelert and Carl H: As you will know from some of my earlier posts, I very much support citizenship education in schools. That should encompass learning how to discuss issues as well as studying the nature and process of the political system. Using the Internet should facilitate or complement such activity and not be a substitute for it.
Off-topic post [for a change..] and from last year..
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/daniel_finkelstein/article6930463.ece
Da Fink covers a constitutional crisis, and it is rather interesting. What would you do in Her Majesty’s shoes, so to speak ?
Call Lord Norton for advice on the best way forward, call Baroness Deech for the legitimacy of it and then bugger off to the Bahamas to get out of the snow.
Or…Look up the answer on the internet :-p
Call Lady Murphy for an emergency delivery of olives – as it going to require a lot of strong drinks to make the decision
😀
http://conservativehome.blogs.com/thetorydiary/2010/01/boirs-puts-the-case-against-proportional-representation.html
But one wonders what will happen in Wales if they vote for further devolution ?? I think there is a small risk in ignoring national feeling on things like the language, but as BoJo eloquently points out, with PR one gets to see the BNP invited to Buckingham Palace.
Whilst welcoming any debate on electoral reform, I find it disappointing that the only alternative to FPTP is so frequently presented as PR.
PR has so many downsides. For me, perhaps the predominant one is the centralisation of selection in each party into the form of the poor sod who has to compile the party list – a poisoned chalice if ever there was one!
This would render the local Conservative Associations, Labour CLPs and other small parties’ equivalents truly powerless. It would, of course, remove the concept of the constituency altogether, finally seal the London bubble, and leave us with no constituency MPs to take especial responsibilities for us.
Why does London continue to debate these two inferior systems of election, when far superior systems exist, such as the Alternative Vote Plus? This maintains constituencies, produces a far more representative Parliament, and ensures that the vast majority of the people are represented by the party of their choice at either constituency or county level.
stephenpaterson: PR is a generic term for a great many electoral systems (indeed, the number runs into three figures). AV+ is supposed to be one of them (or at least a quasi-proportional system) but it is a fairly dreadful system (or proposed system, since no one uses it). The way it was constructed by the Jenkins Commission meant that it was not strictly proportional. So for most electoral reformers, it doesn’t go far enough. For those who see the merits of the existing FPTP system, it goes too far. First, it implements a system (AV) that has the potential to be far more disproportional than the existing system and then, essentially to correct for that, it introduces a (limited) number of top-up members, who will then be in a position to conflict with those elected at the constituency level.
For me, at least, the issue of PR is a red herring, as is the issue of electing the “best” candidate (i.e. party). “Best” is a concept that’s very difficult to address, as any child who’s played “Rock Paper Scissors” can tell you. Voting certainly doesn’t fit into a utilitarian view of the world, where one variable is a sufficient measure; yet we seek an electoral system that attempts just that.
I support AV (plain) as the system that gives us the “Least Worst” candidate in an election.
Lord Norton does valuable work in campaigning for a different electoral system, which may only become reality if the Lib dems have apart in Govt, which would come about with a Tory co-alition, not labour, I should say.
My own prefered system is STV but it was tried in Afghanistan and they had 234 candidates which made the arithmetic quite complex!
STV gives points in descending order, and is used by the coop group to great effect.
Gar Hywel: I’m not campaigning for a different electoral system. I’m campaigning to keep the present one! STV, for the reasons I shall develop in due course, has plenty of defects.
Mathematically it does have defects.
The Afghan govt (to which I am giving reading thought, at the moment)took up the transferable vote system of some sort. There were then vast numbers of candidates and I believe only about ten votes per elector, ie 10,9,8,7 etc beside the candidate name in order of preference.
They stuck with the system in 2009, and it took a couple of months to sort all the arithemtic out, but it did give huge opportunity for argument about the integrity of the election, if you recall!
In a country with apparently so many tribes and clans, it might turn out rather well in the long run!
It is possible that a coalition govt would allow us to shelve the idea of PR … for the time being.
I am surprised that a politics prof is NOT interested in PR…. to get his teeth in to!
Is it 14 different PR systems in use in the EU at this very time?
The problem is comming up with a system that destroys the idea of bribery or whipping MPs. The problem is how to control MPs and what they do and don’t do.
The Lords have failed in this. Completely. They aren’t value for money either.
ie. First past the post works, so long as the electorate has the final say on any act. First past the post or even STV with a constituency, it doesn’t matter how you get a rep elected.
What really matters is how you control them once elected.
I’ve posted this here, so as to be ‘on-topic’, but it could just as easily have gone in under ‘Crass Electioneering’..
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/michaelcrick/2010/01/av_extra_government_whips_orga.html
Good to see that conference speeches and manifesto promises are regarded in such high esteem…
Ed Balls would surely like to see the Commons work much the same as School sports under New Labour.
365 MPs in total, divide the total by 52 and each section would get to Govern for a week. Each MP taking a day to be Prime Minister, everybody gets a fair chance and it takes away the horrible idea of competition which of course the chubby one eyed guy would never win because he never gets picked for the team.
There would be no winners, so no peers. Everyone would be equal and have equal chance to be number 1. No one will worry if you`re not very good and cheer you nonethe less.
If you would like to see this system please place your name on the relevant list eg., female, black and Asian or sorry we don`t care if you`re qualified you`ve the wrong skin colour and genitalia.
Lord Norton, could you post a link of your speech? I cannot find it…
Adrian Kidney: There isn’t a text of my speech. I only had a few notes. The only text will be the comments I post on this blog. So, an exclusive for the blog…
The European system that we use in these islands certainly gets people elected who are prepared to work at how the particular electoral system works.
Whether that makes somebody a suitable debater legislator, or leader of men, is another matter.
It might just make them good salesmen of A level politics Text books!!!(only teasing)
One wonders if the ‘Lords of the Blog’ will be hired as consultants to help design the future version of this game ‘Lord/Lady for a Week’ ?
http://www.parliament.uk/education/online-resources/games/mp-for-a-week.htm
Wiki has a good series called ‘Politics’. Terms like ‘universal suffrage’ are important to democracy whilst ‘voter turnout’ has an important association with electoral methods.
Ref: Subseries; Election; Elections; Terminology, Suffrage
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics
Further reading, Voter Turnout – Election Guide
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout
Electoral Methods; Single Winner; Multiple-Winner
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_representation
Lord Norton
I am a student of West-European Studies from Prague. I must say I was delighted to read about your victory against Mr Johnson and Mr Bogdanor in the great debate. I consider you one of the greatest protectors of the common sense not only in the field of constitutional matters. I wonder whether there is a longer record of your encounters with Vernon Bogdanor? I understood your and his views on a number of issues differ radically – did I get it right?