Despite having no parliamentary majority, and do having no mandate for fundamental constitutional change, the government is permitting work to continue on the reduction in the number of MPs from 650 to 600.
This is a fundamentally undemocratic move. I know all the arguments about supposedly delivering proportionality. If that's the desire then my answer is simple: deliver what we really need to create that, which is proportional representation.
But if instead we are to have first past the post and the continuing pretence that one person can represent all the interests of the people in their community, even if many would never have voted for them, then at the very least there has to be a very profound dedication to the principle that constituencies must represent real communities, and not gerrymandered blocks of the population who happen to fit a geographically based, statistically consistent, model that has no bearing to the places where people live.
The reality is, of course, that this current model of reform was designed to symbolise the failed, and now near enough abandoned, model of austerity and was engineered by Osborne and Cameron to curtail the democracy they so despised. If those MPs sitting now have any respect for people, the institution they sit in and democracy itself the very least they can do is consign it to the bin where it belongs.
And if they don't this will be another step on the way to creating the rotten state that will need to be peacefully reformed in due course.
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It does seem the constituency boundaries favor labour, which if I am not mistaken didn’t labour change for that reason? And yet when the tories were doubtless going to do the same the left were aghast about the similar schemes being done by and for the tories. And when/if labour gets elected I am sure they will do the same again but couch it in anything but what it would be which is gerrymandering.
The Boundaries are set by The Boundary Commission
The change I refer to is imposed by reducing the number of MPs
You are conflating two or more issues erroneously
The Guardian article about this finishes with “When the initial proposals were published last year, Labour said the plans were politically motivated and queried why the boundary commissions were told to use electoral data from December 2015, before an estimated 2 million new voters signed up for the Brexit referendum.” . So the approx. 75,000 people per seat may be well wide of the mark as well.
Hi Richard
They had some chap from the boundaries commission on the radio this morning and he said they did take communities into account and not simply arbitrarially push numbers of voters around. Hopefully this reassures you.
Is Sam (above) right when he says the current system favours Labour? I do vaguely remember that UKIP got 4 million plus votes in 2015 but only 1 MP which must have outraged you as a PR supporter.
How many MPs do you think there should be?
Your Hugh
I am not reassured in the slightest
And yes, UKIP should have more MPs. Poole want that, or did.
As for how many MPs? It’s a tough job. I could live with 750 and 300 in a second chamber – a net reduction of 400 legislators
When I did a quick calculation after the last election, the labour representation in parliament was roughly in line with the proportion of votes cast. Conservatives were over-represented and ukip, lib dens, and greens were under-represented.
Of course, taking votes cast in a fptp system and applying straight PR to them is misleading, since it takes no account of tactical voting and voter apathy in safe seats.
I think that is right
These were the numbers of MPs I calculated (650 X percentage of popular vote)
Conservative 276 (actual 316)
Labour 260 (262)
Lib Dem 48 (12)
Snp 19 (35)
Ukip 12 (0)
Green 10 (1)
Others 25
Note my comment above about the problems with this calculation. Having said that, my fantasy PR parliament would result in Lib dems choosing between labour and conservatives – would they make the same mistake twice? 🙂
Interesting that the system so biases Tories now
But they claim it penalises them
Thank you
All the PR systems around seem to have inherent problems and usually opposed by MP’s because it breaks the link between the MP and a defined constituency.
An alternative would be to elect MP’s as now but their voting in parliament is based upon the number of votes cast nationally. This would meet the constituency link requirement but make every vote count. This is similar to the German system but without the two classes of MP.
I also was under the impression that inner city constituencies were historically smaller than county constituencies because the their population was more mobile and less likely to be registered.
This constituency nonsense is just that
You have multi member larger constituencies, that is all
Have you seen how big some rural constituencies already are? It can be done
Handled correctly, multi-member constituencies could even be an improvement, since it would give you a choice of which MP to go to with your problem. You could pick one whose views were closest to your own, or who you felt was best able to help you.
Agreed
“When I did a quick calculation after the last election, the labour representation in parliament was roughly in line with the proportion of votes cast. Conservatives were over-represented and ukip, lib dens, and greens were under-represented.”
That is a misleading statistic though. If you look at the average number of votes cast in seats won by each party, the winning vote of a Labour candidate was less than that of a winning Conservative.
But Neil offered some quite convincing data, overall
Do you disagree?
It is not at all reliable to assume that votes cast under FPTP would equate to votes under a PR system.
Sure it gives an impression of rough proportions and gross distortions where small parties poll well across the patch but don’t get a seat, but voter intentions are key.
Tactical voting means that so very often a vote for party X will be ‘wasted’ so a default vote against becomes the sensible option. This must skew numerical results enormously. And has given the UK default government for great deal of the past forty years at times with very unhealthy, and unrepresentative, landslide majorities.
I like the Scottish PR system where you get to vote for a local candidate and have a second party preference vote. (which can be for the same or a different party). Where I am, to vote Green expecting a candidate would be to court disappointment, but the second vote for the Green Party would add to the national tally and ‘we’ may get a list candidate elected to the parliament.
I don’t think the concept is difficult for voters to grasp and it produces reasonable results I feel.
Ruth Davidson was elected (and able to take her party leader role) despite polling only 7% in her own constituency. So there is a kind of downside, (if you don’t like RD) but like it or not she represents a significant body of opinion. I believe that no one is allowed to serve more than two terms without winning a constituency. That seems a reasonable way to dispose of eternal deadbeats.
It is alleged by SNP supporters that the system was chosen specifically to prevent the SNP gaining a working majority. It didn’t. FPTP on the other hand is claimed by its supporters to be good at producing a working majority and frequently fails to do so unless the losing party is in total disarray. (More disarray than normal) Both Thatcher and Blair benefitted from opposition chaos in extending their Prime Ministerial careers into multiple terms. Neither of them was convincingly re-elected on overall voting numbers.
Sure voting patterns would change
But existing votes are pretty good indication that existing intentions are not met by the existing system
Don’t dismiss available evidence too lightly
“But existing votes are pretty good indication that existing intentions are not met by the existing system”
I totally agree that distortion of representation shows up. But people like to say on these figures that result would equate to x number of seats and that doesn’t work. I think that’s all I was really trying to say.
And with reference to the Scottish system, that I like it.
The ease with which voters were conned by the Tory campaign of the three horse race before the PR referendum is a sobering lesson in the power of persuasive misinformation.
This is a Reply to Philip (in case it appears in the wrong place!)
“That is a misleading statistic though. If you look at the average number of votes cast in seats won by each party, the winning vote of a Labour candidate was less than that of a winning Conservative.”
I accept to a degree the first sentence (and the original figures had that caveat on them).
However the 2nd sentence introduces something that is even more unclear. Why is the conservative winning vote higher? Is it because these constituencies are more competitive and therefore drive up the competing votes or for some other reason (I genuinely don’t know)? You can argue the effect of fptp on voter turnout in so many ways. The main effect I am aware of is the “there’s no point voting in my constituency because the result is a foregone conclusion”. My constituency is like that (as indeed are most of them)- in my specific case it has always been conservative and probably always will be.
I would suggest that the only (imperfect) guide we have to what a PR parliament would look like is to take actual voting figures. Further (circumstantial) evidence comes from post-election polling data which would indicate that the overall wants of the electorate (separated to an extent from constituency factors) are not a million miles from the GE vote share.
I agree with your last para
It’s the best data we have
I strongly believe that the tactical voting and voter apathy effect would have far bigger consequences than people take into account when doing simple translations of FPTP results into PR results.
For instance I have voted in every single general election since I was 18. Yet I have never voted for the party I wanted to, as they are in distinct third place. Nor have 5 of my close friends. A majority of other people I know don’t bother voting as they are in safe seats which haven’t come close to changing hands for decades.
Look what happened with Brexit when people knew their vote would actually count for something.
It is possible this would all balance out. But it is just as possible it would not. I think it is quite hard to know what the end result would be. Translating the FPTP results seems a bit meaningless.
Andy
Maybe I’m getting too defensive but here goes…
You say “I totally agree that distortion of representation shows up. But people like to say on these figures that result would equate to x number of seats and that doesn’t work. I think that’s all I was really trying to say.”
In response I would say that that assertion cannot possibly be proven one way or the other, but it’s the best we’ve got!
Neil,
“In response I would say that that assertion cannot possibly be proven one way or the other, but it’s the best we’ve got!”
I think we’re in agreement that some form of PR is the only sensible way to run any election contest where there is more than a binary option.?
All I’m saying is that the breakdown of figures you produced (the sort of thing I can’t often be arsed to do,- so thankyou) makes the case for PR but the proportions aren’t a reliable estimate of what would have happened if the voting system had been different because all voters could have voted FOR what they wanted rather than in many cases voting against what they didn’t want. You probably don’t need me to spell that out to you (except to say that that’s what I’m trying to say if you see what I mean.)
Some opponents of PR would say,using your figures, that the minority parties are getting (in some cases) such a small proportion of the vote that it’s not worth changing the voting system to accommodate them. I think that’s a false argument because with PR a vote for a minority party would stand a better chance of yielding a seat in the house. Smaller parties therefore could/should be expected to poll more votes than are suggested by the best figures we’ve got from the FPTP results.
Some discussions of PR that I have seen don’t seem to consider that. Or maybe they take it as read and don’t consider it worth saying so.
Hi Andy,
Doing that calculation probably makes me a “politics wonk” and most definitely the life and soul of the party 🙂
I agree with your points.
The other thing that would happen if we had true PR is the loose coalitions in the 2 main parties would be blown apart – so it wouldn’t be the same choice of political parties anyway.
Neil,
“….The other thing that would happen if we had true PR is the loose coalitions in the 2 main parties would be blown apart — so it wouldn’t be the same choice of political parties anyway….”
Yes, I hadn’t really considered that, but it would wouldn’t it.?
That would make a lot of issues much more clear.
For example It would have necessitated a post-election coalition to negotiate Brexit which is actually what the GE result told everybody was what voters wanted. The hard Brexit faction would have been one minority amongst several. Theresa May didn’t (IMO) have a strong preference either way hard or soft ; she just asked for a mandate and didn’t get it.
Oh, I saw a reference to her saying the DWP were going to stop charging premium rates to claimants making benefit queries. She’s not completely deaf then.?
H Jarce,
” UKIP got 4 million plus votes in 2015 but only 1 MP which must have outraged you as a PR supporter….”
I certainly think it outrageous. I’m of the ‘UKIP members must be knuckle draggers school’. But, Knuckle draggers are part of the political landscape and their views deserve to be considered and challenged in the proper manner of civilised discussion. Not on the streets with bottles, bricks and baseball bats. UKIP supporters never degenerated to the level of violence as far as I am aware, but the potential was always there to wind up a right wing violent street politics.
Some commentators point out that UKIP may have had very little electoral success because they have pushed the Conservative party further to the right.
What surprised many was the extent to which UKIP chimed with the ‘little Englander tendency’ in the Labour constituencies. The traditional British working class was always predominantly socially conservative. Often fiercely so.
Is it helpful to have two major parties each of which is an impracticably ‘broad church’? I don’t think so. Both Labour and the Conservatives parties are riven. The Lib Dems were split at inception – a very promising departure from two party politics completely wasted IMO.
We pretend that we avoid coalition by having FPTP, but in reality have a choice between two parties which are both uncomfortably broad coalitions anyway.
Elections are rarely won; they are lost. We have had four decades of government by default as the opposition has been alternately shambolic.
When people seem to be alienated from politics, it seems crazy to create a situation where each MP has to represent even more constituents. I would prefer that the house of Lords was reformed/reduced in size and the number of MPs was increased.
The savings that are claimed for the reduction are utterly insignificant to a country the size of the UK.
I would also prefer proper PR, but the chances of that were dealt a near-fatal blow by the travesty of a vote on the subject that was delivered by Clegg. Remembering the “debate” over STV makes me angry to this day. It seems that a feature of referenda is to depress the already low level of political discourse in this country to an utterly abysmal level!
From Scotland comes one reply; Amen to the political discourse being reduced to abysmal levels. Thanks to Cambridge Analytica for that.
But PR arrangements and the very large constituencies (and Local Authority wards) seem not to bring elected and electors into any closer communication. Two-tier MSPs have led to befuddling and confusion. And to one of six MSPs being overloaded with five mainly aimless except as vote fodder.
For that reason I am somewhat attracted to the idea (mentioned elsewhere on this thread) of voting in a single candidate for a constituency but having their voting power in parliament adjusted so that the total votes for a party equal their share of the popular vote.
But there are problems with this idea: Would it be right to have a single member of parliament for e.g. the greens where their vote counted as 12? What do you do if a party wins a high percentage of the vote but no elected representatives at all (e.g. UKIP)?
This leads me to think that one of the PR methods that has already been tested out would be the least bad option.
Perhaps democracy might be better served by a smaller centre and more dispersed powers. The USA has only 435 in its lower chamber. Many nations, including large ones seem to manage on essentially fewer. My view is that the House of Commons could be taken down to say 350 to 400 in this digital age. The second chamber, reflecting not so much the numerical balance as the regional at about 200 with defined roles in legislation. At the same time each would be allowed offices equipped and able to deal with the information flow etc.. Democracy does not need large numbers of part time persons at Westminster, again in this new world of the 21st Century. It needs a very different model from the one we have inherited from our imperial past.
If we have fully empowered regional government I would have some sympathy
And all with PR
And no more Micky Mouse mayors
I whole heartedly support all three of those propositions Richard!
Demetrius comment: The USA has only 435 in its lower chamber.
Having such a low number with FPTP is a bit of a disaster for democracy.
You might not have noticed but 2 of the last 4 elections in the USA the loser by share of the popular vote actually became president!
Also it appears many are disenfranchised as around 40% didn’t vote.
Demetrius,
This crucially overlooks the fact that each of the States has its own legislature, mainly bi-cameral, although some are unicameral, as well as an elected Governor. Then below that, America has a rich offering of much more responsive local government, in the form of elected Mayors and Councils. And below that they have more than a semblance of real democracy in the form of Town Hall Meetings, which have been proving so effective, that Republican elected members have been refusing to attend them – see https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/6/27/15880904/republicans-town-hall-health-care
In other words, unlike the UK, the USA has several layers of gearing between the grassroots and Federal levels, so that they can manage on only 435 Representatives – who, remember, are elected for only 2 years, so that America has a Lower House General Election every two years!!
The British system of a lumpenproletariat, who only get to cast a ballot every 5 years, with no real gearing and transmission of power between them and Westminster, given that local Government has been reduced to the role of postman and messenger, conveying the “orders” from the centre, is ripe for real democratisation of the sort that has been happening in Catalonia, as described in this article https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/oct/15/catalonia-independence-neighbourhood-nationhood-referendum?, entitled “Catalonia’s fight is driven by a passion for neighbourhood, not nationhood” by Ignasi Bernat and David Whyte.
Catalonia – and for that matter the Common Weal model in Scotland – are the models we should be following, bypassing the sclerotic Westminster Parliament, which can apparently only accumulate power, with no idea how to wield it, beyond beating the majority of the electorate over its collective head.
But macroeconomic power always rests in the currency
“…If those MPs sitting now have any respect for people, the institution they sit in and democracy itself….”
The ‘if ‘says it.
Some of the proposed Scottish constituencies will cover areas in the region of 5,000 square miles, and will take more than 3 hours to traverse the well over 100 miles from one side to the other, and that’s not taking into account the outlying islands. My own constituency would stretch from the south east wedge of Edinburgh to near Beattock Summit on the M74; the idea that this represents any kind of identifiable, contiguous community is laughable. Scotland’s representation will have shrunk from 72 to 53 in less than 2 decades, despite an increasing population.
This will simply entrench the domination of the UK by the Tory South East of England, and increase the alienation of the struggling communities in the former industrial heartlands, who already feel no-one listens to them.
Agreed
Edinburgh to Beattock s a might long way…..
Bizarrely the DUP will be very against this
The NI constituencies are heavily gerrymandered in their favour so almost any changes will make things wworse
Ageee completely we need more representation and my preference is for STV PR as in Ireland
Admittedly the electorate there has tactical voting down to a fine art but thats no bad thing
Agreed!
Hi Richard
I completely agree with your assessment here.
I cannot see any democratic reason for reducing the number of MPs to lower than at any point since the second world war. Over the same time the population has increased by over 20%.
Many thanks
Ditto. And lot’s of other comments to agree with too – the one’s endorsed by your goodself, Richard.
It seems unlikely that these proposals will get through Parliament unless the Northern Ireland Boundary Commission proposals (published early next year) are very different from the last set of proposals, which the DUP hated. Without DUP support the Tories have no chance of winning a vote on the new boundaries – and even with DUP support it may be difficult (only takes a few Tories to be pissed off about their seats being abolished, etc.)
I am already surprise this is not on the bonfire of promises
One of the things that strikes me as odd about the boundary review itself is that it is being done on the basis of registered voters rather than population. Surely the purpose of MPs is to represent people not just voters? I don’t know whether this is the way that previous reviews have been done or not.
Neil,
That is a very salient point you make.
Recently I wished to make contact with my local party (SNP) to raise a query at the local party level. I went to the constituency sitting MSP member’s office to be told that, ‘No they were not the SNP office they were the constituency office and therefore strictly not partisan’.
I was pleasantly surprised that this is operating as it is theoretically supposed to do. Though I hadn’t known that it would.
Contact details of the local SNP office they could supply and did so, but would have been equally happy to supply similar details of any other party. And they were quite happy to listen to me whinge about another matter entirely and point me in the direction of the local council because it was a local council matter.
I wonder if this happens like this everywhere. I’ve never been in a constituency office before.