Bringing It Together: Why All This Matters

The New Reform Package - TOC

1. Is There No Alternative?
2. A Swift Kick in the Ballots
3. Does Size Matter?
4. Bringing It Together: Why All This Matters

The last three posts have all been about plans for electoral reform: voting systems, Constitutional processes, electoral boundaries. To many, it's dry stuff. It's dull, it's pointless. It's a distraction from the real issues.

I disagree.

Because these things are the foundations of politics, and if you get these details wrong, you get the structures wrong, and if you get the structures wrong, you get the policies wrong.

When I argued my case for independence, I argued that while where we are governed shouldn't be the be-all-and-end-all of politics, it has a direct impact on how we are governed. Think of all the policy areas where Scotland has gone a different way since devolution, or the areas where there would be a differnece if Holyrood had more or ll possible powers. While the many new public spending commitments might now be under threat, try telling a student who no longer has to pay tuition fees, or an OAP receiving free personal care, or the fishing fleet exasperated at the UK Government performance in the last set of CFP negotiations, or the families of troops in Iraq or Afghanistan, that the constitution is irrelevant. It isn't: the present constitutional state that has contributed to the position they are in. Where things are done affects what things are done.

The same is true of the voting system. had PR been in place, the final outcome of, well, pretty much every Parliamentary election would have been different: there would have been fewer - if any majorities in the Commons and that would have had a profound effect on the Governments formed and what they could have done. Blair at the head of a Labour-LibDem Coalition would be remembered differently to the one in our history books. Imagine a Tory-led Government in the 1980s with the worst excesses of Thatcherism curbed, or perhaps a 1980s run by a Coalition of Labour and the Alliance. Even the end of this inconclusive election would have been different: a mathematically viable Labour-LibDem Coalition would have been possible, and the LibDems would have had greater bargaining power with more seats. Even if the votes cast were the same - which we know wouldn't be the case as voting behaviour would be altered: no need for tactical voting, more and more viable options to choose from - Parliament would be different, so the Government would be different, so Government policy would be different and that would affect everyone.

And even with FPTP, the boundaries matter. We know this as we know that Labour notional majority, based on the 2005 result applied to the new boundaries, was smaller than their actual majority on based the constituencies in place. nd we see it at Holyrood: the proposed boundary changes, if applied in 2007, would have cost the SNP one seat and Labour two, with the LibDems gaining one and the Tories two. Now with the outcome so finely balanced, that would have changed the direction of the Parliament, particularly in 2009, when the Budget that was rejected on the Presiding Officer's casting vote would have been passed by a majority of two votes, so the Scottish Government's spending priorities would have been different and that would again have affected all sorts of policy.

And that's what I'm trying to say: the Constitution, the voting system, the boundaries, they all affect who represents and governs us, so all affect what our Government does. And that affects nearly all of us.

This wonkery, this geekery, this process story that only excites the political village? It's at the heart of everything. It all matters.

Does Size Matter?

The New Reform Package - TOC

1. Is There No Alternative?
2. A Swift Kick in the Ballots
3. Does Size Matter?
4. Bringing It Together: Why All This Matters

What do the Tories get in exchange for electoral reform? They get a smaller Parliament, with the Commons reduced to around 600 from 650 (yet it's funny: they object to the SNP's proposal to reduce the number of MP's by 59!), a new boundary review with the focus on near-total electoral parity at the expense of everything else, and, in effect, a 'rolling review' with boundaries constantly subject to change and with less time to reflect on proceedings.

Now the size issue is one thing, and given that Germany, for example, has a larger population but a smaller Bundestag (and seeing as they use AMS, that means constituencies more than twice the size of those in the UK, and the Germans don't seem to mind), while the US House of Representatives is about two-thirds the size of the Commons but the US has a population about five times the size of the UK, one could argue that this isn't the worst idea in the world.

But the boundaries?

The Tories complain that the current boundaries see smaller-than-average electorates (coupled with smaller-than-average turnouts) in Labour seats than in Tory ones, and want to see total parity. But if you want to see where that gets you, look at the initial proposals for the Scottish Parliament: Clydebank being tied with Renfrewshire springs to mind as a particularly crazy proposal from that draft, but also spare a thought for the Lanark, Shotts & Whitburn constituency which never made it off the drawing board. Had it done so, its hapless MSP would have had to deal with three different local Councils, and the initial plans for the regions saw the drive for equality drop Dumbarton in with the Highlands and see the other Dunbartonshire constituencies lumped in 'East Central Scotland'. That's where the obsession with equality gets you.

And the Tories have already accepted that it can only go so far: Orkney & Shetland and Na h-Eileanan an Iar will be protected (yet the Isle of Wight, will be carved up only to see one part of it lumped in with the mainland - that MP's going to have a hard time for sure) and there are plans for there to be a maximum land area restricting the size of Highland constituencies, with a knock on effect that seats in urban Scotland will have to be even larger.

So already, the idea that size isn't the only thing that matters has crept in, but still the Tories persist.

And the new approach to reviews is equally dotty: effectively the boundaries would be in a state of semi-permanent flux. Now I agree that the current system isn't ideal: the boundaries that only just came in this year for Westminster are based on electorate figures from 2002 if I recall correctly, so by the time they're out of use they'll be based on population patterns that are older than some of the people on the electoral roll.

But at least there's a chance that a community will have a fighting chance of knowing who their MPs is: it allows Parliamentarians, candidates and their parties to develop lasting local links and given the nature of the system, that's surely a good thing, and it can't be achieved if the boundaries are subject to constant change.

And by streamlining the review, you enhance the possibility that seats like North Renfrewshire & Clydebank, or Lanark, Shotts & Whitburn do get off the drawing board: combinations and divisions that no one except Boundary Commissioners would ever think viable would become the norm. Again, one MP represents an entire community, so it really does help if they're representing an actual community.

Maybe things do need to be changed, but in this case, it's the wrong change to make.

Is There No Alternative?

The New Reform Package - TOC

1. Is There No Alternative?
2. A Swift Kick in the Ballots
3. Does Size Matter?
4. Bringing It Together: Why All This Matters

It was, of course, only a matter of time before I took a look at the Coalition Government's package of reforms for elections to the House of Commons, and weighed in. And I'll be honest: of course I'm not happy with the Alternative Vote system. I would have preferred the Single Transferable Vote to strike that balance between the voter having a wide choice of candidates and representatives, and the ability to create a Parliament that actually reflects to a far greater degree the balance of opinion in the UK.

Indeed, I was amused to note that Tom Harris was once again pooh-poohing STV by working out that as a Glasgow MP, if Glasgow were one big seven-member STV constituency, he'd only need 37,501 votes on a 70% turnout to be elected. The irony here is that he himself was elected to Westminster with 20,736 votes on a turnout of just under 62%. Had he received the same vote share on a 70% turnout, he'd have got around 23,525 votes and some of those would have been surplus to his needs to get back in. So rather than being a way of losers sneaking in to Parliament, STV would in Tom Harris's case at least, require him as the candidate to work harder over a larger area to secure votes. That's a good thing.

Nevertheless, I choose to be fair to Tom Harris while at the same time hold my nose and support AV as a step in the right direction. Why? Well, if we must stick with a system where each voter and each constituency has only one MP who is the sole voice for the entire seat, then it's right that MPs should, at the very least, command the support of more than half of the people who expressed an opinion at the ballot box. Tom Harris does meet that standard, but in Scotland, he's very much in the minority: out of 59 MPs, 37 owe their position not to their popularity - more people voted against them than for them - but to the fact that support for opposition candidates broke down in such a manner that they got in by default.

They complain that PR lets losers in? First Past the Post is doing it right now. 37 MPs out of 59 could not command the support of half of those who cast a valid vote, and so were rejected by voters, but got in because no one had a majority and the split in opposition votes allowed them to come through the middle. Moreover, in one case, Argyll & Bute, Alan Reid got in despite being voted against by more than two to one - the more than twice as many people voted for someone other than Reid as voted for him - but because of the system, Reid was indeed first past the post, and was elected. This isn't meant as a personal go at Alan Reid, but this system cannot be right: it must be changed, and while Alternative Vote doesn't address full concerns about proportionality, it does at least guarantee that MPs will go to Westminster with some level of support from a majority of those who expressed their view.

That, at least, is progress.