The Mother of All Elections

The election took place four days ago, but the people still don’t know which party (or parties) will form their next government.  There are reports of citizens being denied the right to vote, either because there were insufficient ballot papers or because the doors of polling stations were slammed shut in their faces after they’d waited for hours in line.  Legal challenges are threatened.  The results of the election are inconclusive and talks drag on behind closed doors about potential coalitions.  Secret deals are being cut.  The knives are out for the party leaders.  There are renewed demands to reform an electoral system that benefits entrenched political interests.

It sounds like a scenario from what we in the West condescendingly refer to as a “third-world country”.  Zimbabwe maybe?  But it’s not. It’s Britain, the so-called mother of democracy.

Each of the three major parties can spin last week’s election as a triumph of sorts.  Yet equally each emerges a loser.  The election will likely bring down the curtain on Labour’s 13 years in office and the beleaguered Prime Minister Gordon Brown has already announced his intention to step down as party leader.  Yet it is no small measure of its political resiliency that in the midst of a severe recession, continuing opposition to Britain’s involvement in Afghanistan, and Gordon Brown’s personal unpopularity (exacerbated when a live microphone recorded him referring to a lifelong Labour voter with whom he had just met as a “bigoted woman”), Labor did well enough to prevent an outright Tory majority.  The electorate may not have liked Gordon Brown, but they certainly didn't embrace either of his rivals.  Many potential Labour defectors presumably felt that the austere and dour PM was better equipped than David Cameron and his lightweight shadow Chancellor to steer the country out of its worst economic crisis in decades.  In watching the closing stages of the contest I was reminded that in his final campaign some decades ago, the late Philadelphia mayor Frank Rizzo unveiled a novel campaign slogan  – “You Don’t Have to Like Frank Rizzo to Vote for Him.”  One sensed much the same message from Gordon Brown.

For their part the Tories have declared victory, and indeed they did garner more popular votes and a greater number of seats than any other party.  But they also saw a double-digit lead in the opinion polls evaporate in the weeks leading up to the election, and with it their hopes of an outright parliamentary majority.  Party activists blame leader David Cameron, whose days also look numbered unless he is able to cobble together a coalition with the Liberal Democrats and form a government.  Cameron is a smooth character.  Thanks to his efforts at reforming the Conservative Party, some him likened to Tony Blair, but that comparison serves him poorly in times that demand tough measures and straight talk.

The LibDems find themselves in perhaps the greatest quandary of all.  Leader Nick Clegg’s credible performance in the televised leaders’ debates (a first in British electoral history) saw their poll ratings soar.  They briefly entertained hopes of beating Labour into second place in the popular vote and pollsters predicted they could increase their tally of parliamentary seats from 62 to 90 or more.  But it was not to be, and the LibDems actually lost 5 seats.  Clearly, when the time came to mark their ballot papers, many voters who felt ideologically most comfortable with the LibDems chose instead to support either of the “two old parties”, as Clegg had dismissively branded them.  The belief that a vote for the LibDems is a “wasted vote” is, apparently, alive and well among the British electorate.

Ironically, despite his party’s disappointing performance at the polls, Clegg now finds himself in the role of kingmaker – currently negotiating a coalition with the Tories, but with the possible option of joining in a “Progressive Alliance” (or a “Coalition of Losers”, depending on one’s political perspective) with Labour and assorted other parties, that could, albeit barely, command a parliamentary majority.

But the role of kingmaker has its risks.  The LibDems have long advocated electoral reform and the introduction of proportional representation, something hard-core Tories adamantly oppose.  Clegg’s future as party leader will depend on the the assurances he is able to extract on electoral reform from whichever party be eventually gets into bed with, and how those assurances translate into legislation.  But the biggest concession Cameron is likely to make (or indeed could make without facing a major backbench revolt) is the creation of a commission to study the issue (something LibDems activists would rightly regard as a meaningless gesture) and/or a referendum, albiet one in which the Tories would campaign vigorously to maintain the status quo.  And if the LibDems throw in their lot with the Tories, Clegg needn't look to Labour for any support in a referendum.

But the problem for Clegg goes much further. If the LibDems join in a coalition with the Conservatives they may enjoy a brief taste of power – perhaps a couple of members in Cabinet, though none, doubtless, holding any of the major offices of State.  But it would be the beginning of the end of the LibDems as a viable progressive party in Britain.  Thanks largely to the Blair legacy, the LibDem agenda is, if anything, more progressive than that of so-called “New Labor”.  I would venture to suggest that few people who voted LibDem last week did so in the hope that it would help get the Tories back into office.  But whatever the outcome of the current political wheeling and dealing, another election seems likely within the next two years.  It is safe to say there will be no genuine electoral reform under a Cameron-led coalition and the LibDems would remain at an electoral disadvantage next time around.  But it won’t matter, because LibDem voters, disenchanted with their party’s support for the coalition and the measures it will enact, will defect en masse to Labour anyway.   "New Labour" would portray the LibDems as the "New Tories" and I predict (admittedly with no scientific basis) that the LibDems would lose 20 or more seats.  

And therein lies the ultimate irony.  For Labour, the best outcome could well be a Tory-LibDem alliance.  Given those two parties’ philosophical differences, especially at the grass roots level, the alliance would probably last just long enough for the new Labour leader to stamp his or her mark on the party and get geared up for an election with fresh faces and – maybe – some fresh ideas.  The economy certainly won’t get better quickly, and any government will have no choice but to make significant cuts in public services.  They will doubtless face the wrath of the voters for their efforts. 

So what then should Clegg do?  In my view, he should discontinue talks with Cameron and pursue the Progressive Alliance alternative. A Tory-LibDem alliance is probably doomed to failure anyway because of the policy differences that will inevitably arise, or due to the failure to make progress on electoral reform.  The LibDems could pull out of the coalition, leaving Cameron to lead a minority government.  But that simply presents Clegg with a fresh dilemma – join opposition parties in a no-confidence vote that would bring down the Cameron government but in so doing precipitate an early election that the LibDems couldn’t afford to fight, or sit on his hands and be accused of propping Cameron up.  The arguments would be re-hashed  before every major vote, and the longer it went on the more irrelevant and compromised the LibDems would seem to become.   In a Progressive Alliance, the support of the LibDems would be critical; that would translate into greater influence in policymaking – including on the key issue of electoral reform.

A brief digression on that topic. The existing system, under which the candidate with the most votes wins, is commonly referred to as “First Past the Post”.  But it’s really nothing of the kind, at least if the “post” is fifty percent of the votes cast.  It is not uncommon for a candidate to win with a plurality of votes, but not an overall majority.  A candidate who wins with, say, 40 percent of the votes has not even reached the post, let alone been first past it.

The most attractive alternative is the system known as “Single Transferable Vote”.  Under STV, voters rank the candidates in order of choice.  If no candidate achieves a majority of first preference votes, the bottom candidate is eliminated, and his or her votes redistributed to the remaining candidates according to the preference on the ballots, and the process continues until one candidate has an absolute majority.  The Electoral Reform Society, quoted in the New Statesman magazine, estimates based on polling research that if STV been in effect in the recent election, the Conservatives would have won 246 seats (as opposed to 306, a loss of 60), Labour 207 (as opposed to 258, a loss of 51) and the LibDems 162 (as opposed to 57, a gain of 105).  While no party would have had a majority, the principal progressive parties, Labour and LibDem, would have collectively 369 seats, a comfortable working majority.

It is unfortunate that debate on the issue of electoral reform is confused by the terminology.  The existing system of “First Past the Post” in many cases is not that at all, for the reasons explained above.  And I view STV not as “proportional representation” as many people understand it, but a better form of “First Past the Post”.  Because it is a constituency-based system, STV - unlike other forms of proportional representation - would not destroy the direct relationship between members of Parliament and the people that vote for them. And it would not give extremist parties, such as the ultra-right wing BNP, a seat at the table.  The argument against STV is that it would lead to more coalition governments,  but there is no evidence that this would result in weak or indecisive government, as opponents allege.  Aside from naked political self-interest, I don’t understand why anyone would oppose STV.  But one thing is clear:  there is something fundamentally unfair about a system under which, in the recent election, the Labour and the Conservative vote totals each translated into under 35,000 votes per seat in Westminster, whereas the LibDems total exceeded 338,000 per seat.

Fate has provided Nick Clegg a potentially unique opportunity to help secure for his party and the British people the electoral reform the LibDems and before it the Liberal Party have sought unsuccessfully for years.  It won’t be easy constructing a “Progressive Alliance” but it is worth the effort.   The country would benefit not only from a fairer electoral system, but also from a continuation of financial policies that, in large measure, have served the country well during difficult times.  Or Mr. Clegg can take what at first instance may appear the easier course, throw in his lot with the Tories, accept a meaningless post in the Cabinet, and watch as his party sinks into irrelevancy and oblivion.  Sadly, I suspect he will chose the latter.