Remember, we had a referendum on replacing our current system with the Alternative Vote (AV) system back in 2011, a system favoured by the LDems and forced on us as a term of the Con-LDem Coalition of 2010. It was roundly rejected by the voters. After weeks of campaigning costing taxpayers milions of pounds, on a very poor and disinterested turn-out of only 42%, NO won by 67.9% to YES's 32.1%. Interestingly, the 13,013,123 votes cast for NO would coincidentally be more than enough to win a UK General Election. Of the 440 Local Authority areas in UK at that time, all bar 10 voted NO. The ten that voted voted YES were Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh Central and Glasgow Kelvin, with the remaining six being in London (Hackney, Haringey, Islington, Lambeth, Southwark & Camden), - which shows the hostility toward changing our current system and suggests that support for PR is mainly a metropolitan liberal elite affair with them showing their arrogance in trying to force something on people that they clearly do not want.
Now me personally, I am a big fan of FPTP mainly for the following reasons:-
- FPTP invariably produces a clear winner and a strong government holding a majority of seats in Commons and thus able to persue it's aims and ambitions without having to water them down or abandon them entirely in order to assuage a coalition partner (as happened in 2010).
- PR would produce never ending and highly unstable alliances in which very little of any party's election manifesto or idealogy would be present as it would have been traded-off during cross-party talks in order to gain a working majority. Italy for example has had 66 governments - virtually all coalition, some only lasting a matter of days, since 1945 compared to our 21, only one of which was a coalition (Tory-LDem of 2010) and a further two were minority governments supported by a 'confidence & supply' arrangemet (Lib-Lab pact of 1977 and the DUP-Tory pact of 2017).
- I believe it is vital that we retain a direct link between the people and Parliament, via a constituency and a named directly elected representative (the MP). PR removes that and you no longer have a representative and the people in Parliament merely become party delegates whose sole loyalty is to their party not their constituents (because they don't have any). Elected politicians must remain the choice of, identifiable to and answerable to the people that put them there, on as local a level as possible. We are their masters - not they ours.
- It is simple. As simple as it can get. It requires one voter, to mark one piece of paper, with one 'X'. And that's it. Job done.
Politics is not popular in the UK and politicians are largely regarded as 'necessary vermin' and little better than snake oil salesmen. The public do not trust politicians and really really do not like careerist politicians especially - and PR only creates careerist politicians who are never ever directly answerable to the voter. Research has shown time and time again that most voters have no interest in politics at all, vote purely out of a sense of duty and with 2019 being the exception, only pay attention to 2 or 3 things that are directly affecting them at that moment in time (usually centred on part of the 'Holy Trinity' of 'schoolbooks, beds in hospitals and peace in our bloody time') and regard once every five years as just about bearable. 'Brenda From Bristol' is the norm. Any system that makes for situations where governments would be more likely to fall more frequently would be unacceptable in their eyes as would any system that 'breeds' careerists.. They want it over and done with as quickly as possible and binned for 5 years thank you very much. It probably explains why turn-outs for the three devolved administrations - who all use various methods of PR remember, are never ever as high as they are for a good old simple Westminster General Election that requires minimum effort on a voters part.
REFORM THE HOUSE OF LORDS INSTEAD
I do however, believe conventional PR should be used to replace Lords as our Second Chamber - the House of Lords replaced with a House of Deputies if you will. PR in the UK at this level however, would only work properly if it was heavily regionalised otherwise the SNP, Plaid and the Northern Irish parties would quite rightly feel heavily discriminated against as would their relevant Home Nation's voters. Devolution that we have already brought into being needs to be respected.
The first ‘cut’ therefore should be an allocation of 650 seats (or however many it is decided to be in size) to England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, based on the number of Commons seats uisng the new 2019 Parliamentary Constituencies within . Then the seats within each Home Nation's share allocated on how each party did in that specific Home Nation. There would be no need to hold a separate vote or election, nor even have a separate ballot paper (as they do in Wales) - it could be done at the standard General Election using the weight of votes cast at that time. To prevent cross-benchers etc, once the House is sitting, the seat once allocated belongs to the party and should a Deputy be suspended, die, renounce the whip or whatever then the 'owning' party merely replaces them. For example, seats won by the Brexit Party (BXP) would now automatically be held by the Reform Party (Rfm), as that is what BXP 'morphed' into. Should by some chance a party cease to exist in entirety without a clear 'heir or successor' then those seats get suspended for the remainder of that Parliament.
As an example, 650 seats, based on the 2019 constituencies equates to:-
England: 533 seats
Scotland: 59 seats
Wales: 40 seats
NI: 18 seats
And party-wise using 2% as a cut off and when rounding and always doing it in favour of the underdog, (which is generous as in similar models 5% is the norm) would have produced within each Home Nation - with England being calculated by regions:
SNP 27
Con 15
Lab 11
LDem 6
WALES (40 seats)
Lab 16
Con 14
Plaid 4
LDem 4
BXP (Rfm) 2
DUP 6
SF 5
AP 3
SDLP 2
UUP 2
ENGLAND (533 seats)
Con 255
Lab 186
LDem 66
Green 18
BXP (Rfm) 8
By sub-dividing England into it’s 9 regions ( LDN, SW, SE, WM, EM, EA, NW, YH, NE) and seats allocated to parties by percentages cast within those regions it encourages regional minority party representation (such as the Cornish nationalists, English Democrats and the Yorkshire Party for example) as I believe a PR-based Second Chamber should be as politically and regionally diverse as possible.
As I said, Commons should remain Constituency-based as now and remain FPTP. It should also remain the 'senior' and primary of the two Houses.
FURTHER POTENTIAL REFORMS
As an aside and as further reform:-
- I would make the Salisbury Convention applicable to all Bills as they transit both Houses, not just Bills concerning promises in an election manifesto. This will stop the ridiculous and childish 'ping-ponging' that goes on now, and speed the Parliamentary law-making process up.
- I would change the way we vote, making General Elections a weekend affair, with the polls opening at 1800 on a Friday night and remaining open until 0600 on a Monday in order to make it more accesible to shift workers, lone parents etc.
- Restrict postal voting to the registered disabled, pensioners, long term hospital in-patients, people on chemo-therapy, people terminally ill, people in care homes, people overseas such as Embassy Staff, Government workers and HM Forces etc. Everyone else is fit enough and able enough to toddle down to a polling booth and slap an 'X' on a bit of paper. If they can't be bothered then they have voluntarily opted-out of the process.
- See if it were technically possible for people to vote via cash point machines, enabling voters to vote anywhere in the UK but the vote assigned to the Constituency in which they are registered (computers, robotics and artificial intelligence are supposed to work for us and make things easier for us after all).
- Bring in compulsory biometric ID cards containing people's DNA details, full palm prints and retina scan and make production of an ID card mandatory to vote in person. This is the 21st Century. You cannot register at a Doctors, claim benefits, claim your state pension at commencement, register for higher education, get a bank account, get a job, get a mortgage or take out a tenancy - either social housing or private tenancy, without verifiable ID. So I fail to see what the problem with a single, all encompassing recognised ID card is.
- Restrict MPs from being able to hold a seat for more than three consecutive General Elections in order to deliberately prevent 'careerists'. After three consecutive elections, they must miss the next one.
- And the biggie and most contentious of all. Make it 'compulsory to attend' (less those with postal status obviously). You will turn up in person and collect your ballot or face a nominal fine (say £10). You won't have to cast it - you are free to rip it up and throw it in the bin if you wish. You will not be required to actually vote, but you will attend. (The only exemptions being those granted the right to a postal vote under the terms I highlighted above).
And finally, I leave you with the thoughts of a giant of a man in UK political history - Winston Spencer Churchill:-
No comments:
Post a Comment