The left of centre think-tank Compass has noted:
The Labour party is not just facing electoral annihilation in only eight months time; the people the party seeks to defend don’t just face years of bleak Tory government: the very prospect of re-election, ever, now stands in jeopardy. This is not just because of the scale of the likely defeat and its nature. Much more worryingly three unprecedented factors could come into play if the Tories win:
- First, an incoming Conservative government has pledged to cut the number of parliamentary seats by 10%. This will hit Labour hard because the biggest reduction will be in Labour strongholds such as Wales and industrial and urban areas which have seen population flight. One electoral expert has predicted that of the 65 seats that will go, a conservative assessment would be that 45 of them are Labour.
- Second, the likelihood of the SNP winning a vote on Scottish independence increases considerably with the election of the Tories in Westminster. New polling conducted for Compass shows that 34% of the Scottish electorate ill be more likely to vote for the SNP promise of an independence referendum by the end of 2010. This could be enough to see a Yes vote go through. There are currently 59 Westminster seats in Scotland and 41 of them are Labour. They would all be lost.
- Finally, an incoming Tory government is very likely to introduce new party funding rules, which will break the link between Labour and the unions and further destabilise a party heavily in debt and its declining membership base.
These three factors could then combine to ensure that an already intellectually and organisationally weak party fails ever to recover.
The answer — to save democracy from the ever encroaching threat of a very pernicious form of Tory takeover? PR. Labour has to do it. A majority have to have their say. We might never have that chance again.
I am reminded of a comment Alvin Rabushka, creator of flat taxes made to me:
The only thing that really matters in your country is those 5% of the people who create the jobs that the other 95% do. The truth of the matter is a poor person never gave anyone a job, and a poor person never created a company and a poor person never built a business and an ordinary working class guy never drove economic growth and expansion and it’s the top 5% to 10% who generate the growth for the other 90% who pay the taxes to support the 40% in government. So if you don’t feed them [i.e. the 5%] and nurture them and care for them at the end of the day over the long run you’ve got all these other people who have no aspiration for anything more than, you know, having a house and a car and going to the pub. It seems to me that’s not the way you want to run a country in the long run so I think that if the price is some readjustment and maybe some people in the middle in the short run pay a little more those people are going to find their children and their grandchildren will be much better off in the long run. The distributional issue is the one everyone worries about but I think it becomes the tail that wags the whole tax reform and economic dog. If all you’re going to do is worry about overnight winners and losers in a static view of life you’re going to consign yourself to a slow stagnation.
This seems to me to be what the Tories believe — and they want to claim the right to govern for that group alone.
PR stops that.
That’s why we need it. Now.
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“Save democracy”, Mr Murphy? The truth is that even under a “democratic” system weighted heavily in their favour, Labour cannot hold on to power, so now they’re considering thwarting the electorate’s desire to eject them from office by introducing a system more to their advantage. Even this may not save them, as the Liberal Democrats – traditionally opportunists willing to make a Faustian bargain with anyone in their thirst for power – now sense the opportunity to replace Labour as the principal party of the centre-left, and are actually opposed to a referendum on PR at the time of the next election.
More specifically, to take Compass’s three points in order:
1 Labour seats will be lost more than Tory seats for the simple reason that they mainly hold seats with smaller electorates. This is wholly unfair, giving them a substantial advantage that needs to be eradicated.
2 Why should Scotland be over-represented at Westminster when it has its own semi-autonomous parliament? Come to that, why should Scottish MPs be allowed to vote on purely English matters when English MPs cannot do the reverse?
3 Why not? Labour has for years been trying to change party funding rules in ways that would disadvantage the Tories.
Ultimately, Michael Ashcroft has nothing to do with it. Labour will lose the next election because the people want them out.
I fear that Brown is so unpopular that the referendum would be lost, and the Tories and their millionaire media barons would squeal that Labour was trying to gerrymander the electoral system in order to cling on to power and prevent the public throwing out a failed government. My guess is that the chance for PR will not come again until Labour has lost again.
The tragedy is that New Labour could have won a PR referendum in the late Nineties when Blair appeared to walk on water. With his huge FPTP majority Blair could have said PR wasn’t in the self interest of the government at all but was about democracy and modernising Britain.
But dinosaurs such as Prescott and Jack Straw said no. Robin Cook did his best but he was isolated. Now it is too late.
Compass fears that Scottish independence could leave the Tories in power in England for good. I think that without Scotland Labour would be hard pressed to win power on its own ever again but that this is no bad thing – they would be forced to do an electoral pact with the Liberals and agree to PR.
In the short run the loss of Scotland would be a disaster for the English left but in the long run it might force us to clean up our act. Tribalist loyalty to the Labour party by people like Prescott and Jack Straw’s implacable hostility to PR are what made Blue Labour possible.
Just as the bishops war in Scotland triggered the English Civil War, Scottish independence could be the catalyst for the English constitutional revolution.
Whatever your views or inclination politically, I think it’s pretty clear that Labour are heading for a very big defeat next year. I seriously doubt there is much they can do about it now.
That argument for flat taxes is a tautology. It does not explain why some people are poor and stay poor.
As for PR, Labour had its chance to introduce it in 1997 but chose not to. That was part of its innate corruption. If it is wiped out, good riddance, it is time that socialism of that kind was consigned to the dustbin of history.
Britain is in for 2 or 3 terms of Conservative government. It will be grim. The Brits will have deserved it. Scotland will probably go its own way.
Think of it as a just punishment for their refusal to think beyond the usual left/right stereotypes, a symptom of the mental laziness that characterises the English in particular.
Perhaps the sheer unpleasantness of the next few years will encourage people to tear themselves away from their TV screens and get up and think about how the economic system really works, and perhaps something might emerge from the disaster.
If it is any consolation, a Conservative government will at least save the country from an even worse possibility – government by a party of the extreme right. And as long as the UK is in the EU, it is easy to leave if one doesn’t like the place.
Sadly, I don’t think PR would ensure Labour’s presence in the governing coalition after an election under a PR system in the near future anyway. Based on their conference last week, the Liberal Democrats are now split between a left-wing and a right-wing faction. The right wing faction, led by Clegg, is currently calling the shots, and would presumably be happy to go into coalition with the Conservatives.
I think fixing the Labour Party is going to have to wait until after the next election – a defeat will actually help in that process as it will clear out some of the people who have been running the show for the last 12 years. Sadly, it will be an ugly and brutal struggle, nonetheless…
Howard
I suspect so too
But PR would help the successor to Labour get in again
And I think Compass may be right: it could be a successor we are talking about
Richard
I agree that reducing parliamentary seats in favour of the tory party, or indeed any party, is deeply undemocratic. However, on the question of Scottish independence if Scottish MPs loose their representation in parliament through their free choice, yes that would leave a tory majority because in england and wales there is a tory majority! This is democracy pure and simple.
At the end of the day, lab have been in power for 3 terms now and maybe we do need change, it has happened this way for the last century and it is quite naive to think that labour will stay in government forever. Nor will the torys when they get in, in another 2/3 terms it will swing back again.
Either way Richard, if you want to be listened to come the next government you would be wise to sit on the fence when it comes to politics. After all, you can never really second guess which way the wind will blow.
It may be that Trade Union funding for Labour may disappear anyway without Tory intervention. It has stuck me for a while that although the trades unions fund Labour, Labour treats them with scarcely veiled contempt. It may be taht the Unions might have been unwilling to stick a knofe in Labour’s back while they were in power, but when they are gutted at the next election, it may be a different matter. The Unions may look around for a better return on their investment.
Britain needs some form of PR but it must be the right sort. Not like at the EU elections where voters were presented with a party list which the party itself had set in order of preference. Some forms of PR give all the power to party machines, leaving no room for independents, cross-party voting, etc. Other kinds break the link between representatives and constituencies.
Single Transferable Vote sounds like the best option from this point of view but will any of the political establishment give us a chance to choose between systems?
STV is my # too
I want to vote for multiple parties
I vote for people
Richard