I put this on Twitter last night:
What Sunak and his far-right allies want to create with their pernicious rhetoric of unity, to which Labour subscribes, is a feeling of inclusion for some in a group from which others are most definitely excluded.
To beat this politics built on hate, austerity and the denial of rights we need to build a politics based on generosity of spirit and material wellbeing coupled with an embrace of the differences that make the unique peculiarities that each of us possess into the people that we are, and wish to be accepted as. Is that an impossible dream?
It was not an ideal Tweet. Instead it was more like a placeholder for an idea based on a number of themes.
One is the ever-growing awareness of how awful the Tories are.
Another is a deep-seated perception of their embrace of the fascist idea of there being an ‘other' who must be vilified.
Then there is Labour's lack of willing to call this out.
But perhaps most of all there is the realisation that the need for a new, unifying, narrative within politics is very high.
After that there is my belief that any such narrative has to simultaneously accept the imperative of collective co-existence and the innate requirement that this be fair whilst at the same time recognising that the differences between us have to be accepted and even celebrated because they are what make us unique so that we can stand out in a world where our obvious need for company and mutuality is ever-present.
A wise person once summarised this as loving our neighbours as ourselves, but I am going further than that.
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The “other” narrative is no different to George W. Bush’s statement: “You’re either with us, or you’re against us”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_are_either_with_us,_or_against_us
This leads on to the fallacy of the false dilemma, that these are the only two options available.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma
Perhaps this is why in France, philosophy is compulsory for all high school students.
Basic logic is a necessity for clear reasoning.
In Scotland philosophy was compulsory for an Arts/Humanities/Social Science degree, at least in the ancient universities; until about the 1980s, when the Thatcher disease became a destructive intellectual plague that seems to have infected, and thoroughly killed off everything that was in its path. This is how ideology works.
Logic? Damned unEnglish, Sir.
I agree-philosophy is an important ‘subject’to study (if a bit esoteric for many, especially teenagers), but what I think is more valuable to consider is how ordinary people treat each other in their day to day dealings, or when crises happen. Watched Ken Loach’s film The Old Oak last night, and while there will always be ‘angry’ people with problems of their own, which they like to off-load onto others, it was heartening to see that in general ‘ordinary’ people do care about their neighbours, whatever their religion/colour. It would be better if our politicians encouraged this compassion rather than stoke up hatred.
Ken Loach was banned from the Labour Party for being on stage with Corbyn. Jamie Driscoll was banned from the Labour Party for being on stage with Ken Loach to talk about his films about poverty in the north east.
This is why I will vote for Jamie Driscoll as North East Mayor.
https://northeastbylines.co.uk/rochdale-racism-and-the-north-east/
Bush was (probably unknowingly) echoing Pompey who used this phrase at the outset of the civil war between himself and Caesar. Caesar countered by saying “all who are not actively against me are with me”, and it was Caesar who emerged victorious.
How different those two phrases are! There’s a lesson to be learned there.
I’ve lately come to characterise the post-War/post 1945 Attlee Settlement as the creation of an “I am my brother’s and sister’s keeper” society.
I think this can easily fit over what you are asking for, Richard, because brothers and sisters can be “other” to each other, even when related by blood, and certainly when nit so related.
Alas, this willfully destroyed by the “me, me, me – there’s no such thing as society” of the post 1979 Thatcherite reign of Neoliberal and Neo-feudal terror, as Mad Meg flailed about, demolishing almost everything of value.
We must rebuild that “I am my brother’s and sister’s keeper” – for which we will undoubtedly need new politics, driven by a peaceful revolution from below, on such models as Martin Luther King’s civil rights campaign, and before that Gandhi’s Indian liberation.
As Marx said “The free development of each, is the precondition of the free development”
So there is no other, as each individual, each one of us, is part of a network of concern ALL the other individuals in the world belong to, each of equal worth, wherever they live, whatever their beliefs, whatever their race, ethnicity, colour, class – whatever all their glorious differences may be!
Glory to humanity!
PS: we mustn’t forget the earth, and all the life it contains. It too is part of this web of mutuality and care.
Thanks Andrew
Andrew you write
“So there is no other, as each individual, each one of us, is part of a network of concern ALL the other individuals in the world belong to, each of equal worth, wherever they live, whatever their beliefs, whatever their race, ethnicity, colour, class – whatever all their glorious differences may be!”
I think it will help as more people understand what science now shows us. That we are all descendants of an ancestral mother (and separately an ancestral father), and that the reason I am white is because my more distant ancestors moved to higher latitudes earlier than more recent arrivals to this country, like our current PM.
In other words, race, ethnicity, and colour are all artificial descriptions used to divide more than celebrate. We are all distant cousins of each other and all just part of one race – the human race.
I know – a bit kumbaya perhaps.
It is factually exact (as far as we know). No need to apologise.
Putting what you said more eloquently & dramatically:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vP4iY1TtS3s
that was almost 60 years ago – & the same old problems seem to persist – it is almost as if the politicos are happy to generate divisiveness coupled to the use of force/rules to keep what they see mostly as serfs in-line.
On a related note, I am currently reading Alain De Botton’s “Religion for Atheists” which makes some very good points – that are highly relevant to the current situation.
I am not comparing myself to MLK
Maybe MLK is a step too far, but you live in the same county as Thomas Paine, and IMO you’re well on the way to be his 21st century presence.
I was not intending to compare Richard to MLK – merely observing that MLK in his speech said very similar things.
That there is a need to restate these things, now, is a very poor reflection on humanity in general and the UK & its politicians, in particular.
The universal truths that MLK spoke of – have not been internalised by society in general and politicians in particular.
I agree with that
Broadcasting House (R4) has just quoted Sunak’s Friday speech, which I had hitherto not heard.
Unashamedly channeling MLK, but getting it so completely wrong. The giveaway is that word “just” sneaking in to the last phrase.
“It is not the colour of your skin, the god you believe in, or where you were born that will determine your success, but just your own hard work and endeavour.”
In other words, you’re on your own mate. The essence of conservatism.
And so utterly and completely untrue
As his own case proves.
Spot on.
Hard work and endeavour are necessary but not sufficient to “succeed” (whatever success might look like), you have to have opportunity and support. I am sure Sunak works hard…. but please don’t tell me he owes nothing to his background!
“The self-made man” is a myth and certainly not one to be idolised. With just one more step we start valuing people merely by what they achieve and then another to discarding the weak entirely.
In the PM’s speech outside 10, Downing Street, 1st March; the full text on the government website has been redacted: (https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pm-address-on-extremism-1-march-2024). Where Sunak says “It is beyond abnormal” (see speech on any source), and goes on to attack the Rochdale election result there is now this bald statement”:
“[Please note political content redacted here.]”
I think it is time that our politicians represented the heartfelt wish of the British electorate, and redacted this government and its PM from office: now.
“It is not the colour of your skin, the god you believe in, or where you were born that will determine your success, but just your own hard work and endeavour.”
What an incomplete sentence when there’s no mention of control over business capital and the need for improved democratic control over it!
The commentator I most find engaging, incisive and brilliant is Andy Beckett, who as a historian looks beneath the surface and back into history to interpret politics.
Beckett’s latest piece is on Michael Gove being the smooth eloquent enabler of rightwing policy over the last 15 years. In his seemingly reasonable way – being a minister for almost the entire time since 2010 – Gove has normalised rightwing policy (ideas that used to be on the nutty fringe) and the end point is that this has enabled the more thuggish political figures such as Anderson and Braverman to spout their bile and hate, and where we are today.
It is – as always from Beckett – an excellent article. Have a read:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/02/lee-anderson-suella-braverman-michael-gove-toxification-tories
He is very good
I wonder if we have a case of doing a double take when someone from a minority group who we already disagree with says something that sounds reasonable if said by anyone else. Everyone surely is against terrorism and intimidation whether it comes from religious groups or nationalist groups. Thank you for explaining the real intent
The whole ‘Westminster Class’ must feeling themselves to be under threat. The disruption of this week’s Opposition Day debate and Rochdale by-election result won’t have brought any comfort.
Once elected it’s easy for many politicians – especially the increasing proportion of career politicians – to detach from the concerns of their constituents. The ‘Westminster village’ revolves around defending the institution and gaining advantage for their parties who demand slavish loyalty. If you are on or aspire to the front benches you are not free to speak. In exchange there are political spoils. Including constituency level spending decisions, which can be used to manage backbenchers.
Politicians themselves are in chains which tighten as parties struggle.
“For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.” Nelson Mandela
I agree with your characterisation of the present Tory party as Fascist and your observation that Labour is unwilling to call this out, but what has worried me ever since the days of Blair/Brown is whether Labour’s position is tactical in order to win an election, in which case is it is regrettable, but understandable given the impact of Tory control of the media on elections results, or whether it reflects genuinely held beliefs, in which case you can only regard the future of this country with deep pessimism.
In the case of Blair/Brown it appeared to be an 80% belief that there really was no alternative to neo-liberalism, the wrongness of which we can see daily in our crumbling country where the enriched beneficiaries of our unacknowledged class war loot, pillage and party-on.
Starmer believes neoliberalism is all there is
As does Reeves
EXACTLY why I call them flat-earther economists = people who have overlooked the Copernicam revolution brought about by the Great Financial Crash of 2008/9 which conclusively demonstrated what nonsense Neoliberal economics is – untrue, unworkable (except for the rich) hocus pocus
For me neoliberalism involves a sort of magical thinking.
I do not regard a view that the solution to a particular problem is to let the market decide together with coherent reasons for thinking so, as being neoliberal even if I vehemently disagree.
Neoliberalism, on the other hand, takes it as an article of faith that markets are a solution to all our woes. I have been told by neoliberals that my problem is that I don’t “believe in” the free market, as if it is possible to make magic work merely by believing in it.
We need to socially change the way we are taught to think. All ideologies are based within a simplified
limited and limiting win or lose Final Solution tautologies.
Your comment put me in mind of a story Peter Ustinov told in one of his one man show about his grandfather in Russia.
Peter was on a porch at their Dacha in the summer where it was becoming unbearable to sit due to swarming flies.
His grandfather gave him a fly swatter and Peter gleefully began dispatching the flies. The grandfather watched him for a while and then grabbed the swatter away from Peter and refused to give it back. Peter asked why and his grandfather replied:
Better some unwelcome guests than to develop a taste for killing.
I’m a baby boomer, but was well into adulthood before I realised that the post-war consensus was a chimera, and my youthful beliefs in almost inevitable social and economic progress were shattered post 1979, with the resurgence of 19thC conservatism and the ‘greed is good’ individualistic mentality.
Now, more cynical, I might trace the actual turning point as the 1976 Labour Party conference which abandoned Keynesianism.
The mantra that if we don’t learn from history we are destined to repeat it seems more of a prediction than a warning in these fragile times, where environmental collapse is synchronous with the emergence of the politics of hate.
There are three books which have been seminal in my own adult education, not merely in terms of historical awareness, but in finding a deeper sense of how crucial it is we avoid these existential man-traps.
All are post WW2 zeitgeist, all cover the “othering” to which Richard refers and where it leads, and how it is manifested.
Primo Levi’s “If this is a Man” 1947
Hannah Arendt’s ” The Origins of Totalitarianism” of 1951
Gordon Allport’s “The Nature of Prejudice” from 1954
There are solutions. But there does not seem to be any will from the political elite to seek them out and there is a huge deficit in empathetic leadership, both nationally and globally.
So, we have to cereate that will
I have long considered 1976 to be the start of our neo-lib problems. Tony Crosland insisted that ‘The Party’s Over’ and Callaghan simply gave up. The ‘boys from Chicago’ had taken over.
People are suffering, people are struggling. Many have to tighten their belts, some are destitute. People are aware that, almost wherever you look, the wheels are coming off. Some are even aware that climate change doesn’t care if the deniers don’t believe in it – it is happening anyway. The present government offers no hope, the prospect of a change of government offers almost no hope. Conversely, as your ‘British values’ list clearly demonstrates, neoliberal government is the root cause of a vast mass of suffering.
And so many of us are to varying extents uneasy, insecure, worried, angry. Not everyone has such concerns of course: there are those who feel – for now – untouched by the problems afflicting the majority. These include the relatively well-off, smug ones who, lacking insight, compassion and empathy, tend to pin the troubles of others on a lack of moral fibre or personality defects.
But, having been infected with the predations of late-stage, neoliberal capitalism, what are the rest of us to do with our dis-ease? This is not France: there won’t be rioting in the streets. Instead, many people will unfortunately go along with the scapegoating that distracts them from the real architects of their woes. There’s only so much mileage in vilifying environmental protestors, and so the the next target has now been selected: Muslims, who have lately been virtually equated with terrorists. A confirmatory tragedy may well be arranged.
Some say ‘with a government like this, who needs terrorists?’ But it is clear that it is the current government itself, feebly supported by Labour, which actually requires distractions such as the fear of terrorism, to keep the population of the unhappy country they have created from (as PSR likes to say) brandishing their pitchforks.
Calling people you don’t agree with ‘extreme’ and ‘far right’ and ‘Facists’. You certainly know all about ‘unity’:
What are horrible little man you are.
You do realise that unity requires that we oppose those who deliberately create division, don’t you?
Richard you by nature are incredibly divisive..anyone who voted Tory or Labour is fair game for abuse. It’s very ironic you see yourself as a voice of unity..
Your problem is that you are making stuff up.
I am deeply unenamoured by the leaderships of those parties – not least because both tolerate genocide, which I think to be illegal. But I don’t condemn those who vote for them, per se. I don’t understand anyone voting Tory, I admit. Nor do I now really understand anyone voting Labour because I consider the leaders of both parties both abusive and active proponents of oppression in a great many ways. But look at Rochdale and the chap who came second – himself beating all the leading parties.
Most people dislike the neoliberal options on the table precisely because they fail us. That opposition is what unites most people now. “None of the above” would be most people’s actual choice if it helped.
What is divisive about saying that? Please explain.
Yolanda Harper-jones,
It matters, however whether the people with whom you disagree are ‘extremists’, or not. Most of the politicians, media, journalists and people who are making accusations of extremism are in Government, in Parliament and in the media. Here is an example of inappropriate use of such accusations, by a Prime Minister, standing in front of 10, Downing Street; using the authority of Office to make an excessive accusation of extremism, by his own official standards. Sunak’s speech on 1st March.
Why can I make and justify that claim? Because the official Government website has redacted the PM’s divisive and irresponsible speech, in spite of the fact that we can still see him making the accusation on news videos, of “It is beyond abnormal ….” (see speech on any source)all that now appears in the official spech is a redaction: “[Please note political content redacted here.]” When a PM requires to be redacted for a public statement that cannot even be hidden; the plot has been lost, and good government trashed.
Is that your idea of unity, or is this your own sense of generosity of spirit: and unity? “What are [sic] horrible little man you are”.
Physician, heal thyself.
On the theme of the poverty of thought usually lurking menacingly behind ‘othering’; I wrote on another thread about my sense of finding common ground with Peter Oborne, whose nostalgic Toryism I had always thought in terms of what I would describe as ‘decayed nostalgicism’.
I have not followed Torsten Bell closely, or frankly thought much about his thought; but today on Sky News he crisply, effectively and with cool dispatch, disposed of the endemic failure of British productivity; as a function of the complete failure of the British private sector to invest in Britain. There it is; the private sector only invests when the roof is already repaired and nothing really risky for their capital is rquired of it. It failed post-financial crash to invest; if there is austerity it will not invest when the Government will not even invest in the country. In a crisis the private sector deserts the ship, and takes all the lifeboats it can acquire. In 1914 it did not invest in the great 3% War Loan the Government issued to fight the war. The Government discovered that in terms of capital, it was all on its own fighting the war.
The private sector does not invest in a crisis. Great fortunes may be made in a crisis (Rothschild, Soros and so on); but that is only because most of the capital is running for cover. The Government can’t run for cover; but if it doesn’t invest the country out of a crisis; the ship sinks.
Taken from John De Val – School of Philosophy and Economic Science – January 2021.
“…… using the Google program N-gram which measures the frequency of words in printed texts over a given period of time. The program was used to chart the frequencies ‘We’ and ‘I’ in all English and American books year by year, from 1900 to 2008. The two graphs are quite different. The use of ‘We’ is relatively stable over time, but the use of the word ‘I’ falls steadily from 1900 to 1965, at which point it begins a precipitate rise. From then on, the first -person singular dominates.
For any social institution to exist, we must be prepared to make sacrifices for the sake of the relationship or the group. That is true of marriage, parenthood, membership in a community, workplace or citizenship in a nation. In these environments we enter a world of We-consciousness, in which we ask, not what is best for me but what is best for all-of-us-together.”
I’m not sure these are sacrifices, except maybe if sense of the ‘I’ is so completely all consumingt,
Compromises maybe.., but reaching genuine consensus is an iterative process, and the ‘we’ and the ‘I’ may both be better off from the start positions evolving.
Consensus changes outlooks, it is not just trade offs from fixed positions.
I am not a great advocate for private education, as I found all of the outstanding, engaging and committed teachers that I still remember were encountered during periods when I attended state schools. Private schools do teach you the entitlement that you can achieve any goal, albeit enhanced by access to wealth. As a dyslexic pupil, I was under constant pressure in the fee paying school my mother worked several jobs to send me to. The one aspect of the experience I had, in schools that were two thirds boarding, was meeting and getting to know children from all over the world, at a time when there were very few foreigners in my home town of Hastings. What I took from this exposure to a multicultural environment was a fascination with the unique differences that made all foreigners intriguing to me.
I am really thankful for that experience in school as it prompted a passionate desire to travel. After leaving home at 17, I spent a great deal of my youth traveling overseas. Often hitchhiking, using low cost transport and crewing on yachts that took me thousands of miles around the globe on a very tight budget. I will never forget the many times that I was welcomed into the homes of local people, often very poor people who treated me like family. Even back then I had to wonder if they would have enjoyed the same hospitality in the UK; sadly I feared they would not. Now I feel sickened by the constant ramping-up of the ‘Hostile Environment’, the othering of migrants, asylum seekers and the lack of compassion towards people suffering in conflicts exacerbated by the warped decisions of our government.
I refuse to buy into that divisive government tactic that seeks to blame foreigners for all that is wrong with the country that the Tories have asset stripped and driven into a shocking state of decline over the past fourteen years. The Tories are desperately trying to find another party, another group of people or a protest movement to blame, so that they can manage to cling onto power. Even the support of a totally impotent opposition Labour Party cannot divert the public from recognizing their catastrophic failure in every area of governance, so in response, any glimmer of hope from the left must be immediately stamped out.
Those being targeted as ‘other’ aren’t just migrants and asylum seekers, they are all foreigners, Muslims, the poor, jobless, sick and disabled as well as everyone who supports Socialism, climate justice, or humane foreign policy, especially if they dare to protest. As ‘Broken Britain’ faces endless austerity, growing homelessness and a dramatic rise in the number of food banks, this failed Tory Government has encouraged rapidly increasing inequality while continuing to blame the working poor for the abject misery their policies have created. They should be facing a lot more protest, not less.
Communities need to take independent action to proactively torpedo hateful Tory rhetoric, and combat the othering inherent in statements about ‘British Values’, with projects targeting the exact opposite. I am totally committed to that objective in my local community. I hope that, if any of my efforts are successful, other towns and cities will see the positive benefits of proposals, like our Global Village in Oxford, that will enhance community cohesion with inclusive learning opportunities for children Waiting for the lottery of so-called ‘Leveling up Funding’ is a hopeless cause and such initiatives do not essentially require council or government intervention or approval. The most inspiring initiatives can be accomplished by people within the community working together towards a common inclusive goal.
“There is no other” an album by Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi. Music can be powerful, and this review speaks to some of these issues.
https://www.npr.org/2019/04/25/716045548/first-listen-rhiannon-giddens-there-is-no-other
https://northeastbylines.co.uk/rochdale-racism-and-the-north-east/
Brilliant article by Jamie Driscoll.
Agreed
Very good
Thanks Jenw – I did find the opening Galloway quote utterly hilarious & I’d hazard a guess that this more than anything else drove Sunak to say what he did & for Starmer to support it.
“Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak are two cheeks of the same backside and they both got well and truly spanked tonight here in Rochdale.”
I suppose a case of (metaphorical) truth/satire striking a mark. Sunak and Starmer can give it, but they can’t take it. It comes to something that in Uk politicis it takes a chancer like Galloway to hit the mark. Much more worrying for S&S (Tory and LINO) is, as Driscoll noted, who came second. Goes to show that independents can make a mark.
First let me say that I have absolutely no time for George Galloway. I regard him as being just as much a part of the far-right as Bavemann and Anderson. I took part in a demonstration, which I had helped organize, outside the Apple store in Covent Garden last month. We were protesting against Apple’s use of forced Uyghur labour. Galloway has consistently denied the Chinese state’s genocide in Xinjiang. Apparently, for him whether or not genocide committed against the indigenous Muslims people of an occupied territory is acceptable depends on who is committing the genocide.
So it gives my no pleasure to see Galloway win a by election. However when practically the whole political establishment denies a truth that is particularly salient to a large proportion of the electors in a constituency, it is only to be expected that a chancer like Galloway will step in to fill the political void.
I was particularly pleased to see how well the independent did. The one caveat I have about PR is that it disadvantages independents. Unfortunately I don’t think much can be done about that.
Mr Hurley,
“The one caveat I have about PR is that it disadvantages independents”.
This is only true of the varieties of PR that pass control of the voting to Parties, rather than to the voter. The Additional Member System (AMS), de Hondt used in Holyrood was deliberately chosen by Westminster to serve Party first, and not the voter. It is a system of Party, and therefore serves central, Westminster control over the voter. It is how a Party, FPTP system as sclerotic as Westminster, replete in fiefdoms, naturally thinks; to serve its own interests: Party first, and last. Westminster and Party has thus served only the complete corruption of the spirit of politics.
There are other PR systems that serve the voter better; Single Transferable Voter (STV), for example. No system is perfect; but a system that serves Party first is too easily corrupted, and never free from corrupt effects.
Bernard Hurley, STV would not have disadvantaged independents at Rochdale. Do you really think all those other voters who voted for other independents would have voted tory or labour?
Galloway was an independent in one way, as he did not have a big party machine behind him.
If PR disadvantages independents, why bother changing the system, or even thinking of changing it?
Jenw,
True, STV does not disadvantage independents, but it is not a form of PR and I do not consider it suitable for a general election. By elections are a totally different matter. I will post something later today on my own preferred PR system, the details of which I am still working on but you will have to bear with me as I try to formulate it clearly.
For now suffice it to say that it preserves the link between constituency and MP while delivering true PR. There would still be by elections in this system and I do propose that STV is used for them. Independents come into their own in by elections when people are not choosing a government, so I see this as a reasonable compromise.
Strange how both the Electoral Reform Society and Make Votes Matter think that STV is an acceptable form of PR.
In May we vote for a new North of England Mayor. Hopefully Jamie Driscoll will be elected. However, the government has recently changed council elections to FPTP, hoping it will give them an advantage.
In the North East even tory councillors support Driscoll. He has managed to collect £150,000 now to fund his attempt to become mayor, because he no longer has a party machine to support him.
The Hare Clarke system
Under Hare-Clark, electors must mark preferences for individual candidates : a stv proportional voting system it has party /independents lists but you can pick and choose any of the candidates. The order of the lists change randomly on voting papers (Robson rotation) .
https://www.tec.tas.gov.au/info/Publications/HareClark.html
Mr Hurley,
My heart sinks when I hear words like “true” PR. The point is to produce a functional form of democratic representation that evades the attempts of Party to control the votes of the elector in his/her own interests (with some flexibility); and preserves the voter’s intentions as well as possible. Politics is not an abstraction. There is nothing that will be perfect; but we know FPTP has served the two Parties that are running the mess that Parliament has become, solely to protect their vested interests in preserving an electoral cartel. FPTP is what they want, but they can manage the system with AMS; but STV is a problem for them, which is why it wasn’t used in Holyrood. That alone provides confidence in STV. It is already used for some elections in Scotland (outside Parliament or Holyrood – and that really is telling). It is proven. It works.
We know that AMS, from Holyrood experience and Westminster interference, is flawed (it is not used in Scottish local elections, where STV is used), and that AMS still serves major Party interests, and stifles effective electoral opposition; but we know also that STV is workable, and avoids the major pitfalls of the other systems. We need something that we already know is effective and workable, supported by major organisations that study electoral systems and their reform, not some untested variety suddenly thrown into the ring; that will frankly now offer solace only to the apologists of FPTP, desperate to find some way to confuse, defer and obstruct. We need reform now. We need it proven and wrkable; now.
@Jenw
“Strange how both the Electoral Reform Society and Make Votes Matter think that STV is an acceptable form of PR.”
Let me dispose of the notion that STV is a form of PR at all, let alone an acceptable form.
Consider an election in which there are 3 parties A, B and C. 34% of the electorate want a government of party A, 34% want a government on party B and 32% want an a government of party C. Given these assumptions, any system that claims to be PR should result in a parliament in which the parties A, B and C are represented in ratios the approximate 34:34:32. Now assume these preferences are reflected in every single constituency, each on which has a candidate from each party and returns an MP using STV. What happens? One thing is certain, that is that the resulting parliament will not contain anyone from party C. As for the number of MPs of party A or B, that depends entirely on the second choice of people whose first choice is C. It could range from 100% party A or 100% party B. What you get is what FPTP would have resulted in had party C never existed, assuming those who favour party C still vote.
First multi-member constituencies do not help as it is still possible to come up with examples where the result is nothing like what you would expect from a system that could reasonably be called PR.
If it is said that in real life more parties are involved, I can come up with examples with any number of parties that reduce essentially to FPTP with a smaller number of parties. If you say that distributions of preferences of the sort I have described are incredibly unlikely, I would agree. But first it is up to you to show how this turns a system that is patently nothing to do with PR into one that can be reasonably be called PR. And second, since these distributions depend on constituency boundaries, how do I know that something like this distribution cannot be obtained by means of gerrymandering? In other words, STV is open to the possibility of smaller parties being gerrymandered out of existence. But the situation is even worse than this. We already know that a FPTP system can be gerrymandered to permanently favour a particular party. If it is possible to gerrymander an STV system into something that is effectively a FPTP with fewer parties, it ought to be possible to do further gerrymander the system to permanently favour one party. Admittedly it would more difficult to do than starting off with a FPTP system, and you would have to know somewhat more about the electorate to do it, but I would be wary of assuming it won’t be done.
I too find it strange that the ERF think STV is a form of PR. Quite honestly, I don’t know what they have been smoking.
@John S Warren
“My heart sinks when I hear words like “true” PR. ”
OK, I probably should have expressed this differently. I was using the term in a technical sense to refer to a system that returns representatives of parties P1, P2,.. Pn in proportions p1:p2:…pn that are as near as possible to the ratios actual preferences q1:q2:…qn by taking account of the following restrictions:
1) No party can have more representatives than candidates they actually field.
2) A certain amount of rounding is necessary as you can’t actually cut people in half.
3) Some process has to be specified to handle ties, perhaps drawing of straws or some other random process.
Now, it is quite possible to devise systems that are true PR in this sense but are unacceptable for other reasons. I promised to outline the system I would prefer, but it has turned out to be more difficult that I expected to explain why it should be acceptable. I will say something about it when I have got my thoughts more in order and will post something then.
Thanks, Bernard Hurley, I feel suitably patronised.
However, even you can’t get away from the fact that parties A, B and C might not be the same order in every constituency.
Rochdale has proved that party D or E can win.
In FPTP many people don’t vote because they think their votes don’t count. In any form of PR, the party that wins must have over 50% of the vote even if they are not first preference votes, and that gives the new MP the mandate from the majority, do you agree?
By the way, everybody can criticise whatever system they want, but eventually they will have to come up with a preferred system.
We need a better referendum than the last one on PR, that’s all.
This is a response to John S Warren’s post at 8:22 am.
Holyrood currently uses a ‘closed list’ system where the voters choose the party and the parties choose the order in which the parties’ candidates get elected. Using an ‘open list’, where the voters choose their preferred candidates and their preferred order of election, would empower the voter and disempower the party. It would be an important improvement without changing to another electoral system.
I am not sure what substantive distinction you are offering, that is different from the explanation I offered in my comment; save perhaps, a desire you may, or may not have (but do not realise), constrains voter liberty to choose their preferences?
I constructed my comment carefully. It is not original. I am, in fact following the PR preferences of the Electoral Reform Society (ERS), it seems to me established for good reason:
“But while open list and panachage systems can almost reach the level of voter power of the Single Transferable Vote (STV) – the ERS’ preferred electoral system – they still fall a little short. While they allow MPs to win seats on their own merits, the preferential nature of STV combines the voter control of a totally open list with the ability to still be represented if their first choice isn’t able to win a seat” (ERS website: ‘What’s the difference between open and closed list proportional representation?’).
No system is perfect. Some people will be elected, of whom we may still fiercely disapprove; that too, is democracy: but what democracy cannot be, and remain ‘democracy’, is the ‘elective dictatorship’ of the majority; or, just as bad (and deeply corrupting) the manipulation of an electoral system for Party vested interest.
This looks interesting. Is this how we could get lots of independent MPs?
https://theecologist.org/2024/feb/26/pirates-and-rebels
Working together but in separate pods.