There is one thing, more than anything else, that the campaign to rejoin the EU must distance itself from at all costs: proportional representation This week at Labour conference, a protestor got on stage and approached Keir Starmer near the start of the leader’s speech. Strangely enough, the protestor sprinkled glitter onto Sir Keir (I still have no idea why) before starting to shout about his cause. It wasn’t the Palestinians or nationalisation of industry the man began to bellow about, but proportional representation. For someone outside of the Westminster bubble, it must have seemed like gobbledygook. However, only a few words in, I recognised exactly what he was on about and wanted to hide behind a sofa, so deep was the cringe cutting into me.
"might also let a lot of extremist tosspots into government at a time when there are quite a lot of extremist tosspots floating about."
Forgive me for pointing out that the extremist tosspots are currently actually in government.
I come from a country with PR and find it has good results, despite the obvious drawbacks you point out. But I can't see Britain ever going there. It's just too... politically atrophied.
Nick - you are being a little disingenuous. PR is just one element of constitutional ‘reforms’ which I think the U.K. could benefit from; for example a written constitution. The majority of British people just do not know how they are governed - humble address, unwritten conventions, prorogation of Parliament etc. etc. Ask any British citizen how they are ‘legally’ British and they will simply not know, because their right to Britishness is contained in immigration laws - which they have no knowledge of, but which decreed, over time and after clever statutory changes, that ‘subjects’ of the colonies were no longer British. Labour, like the conservatives, has a lot to answer on this particular point.
As for KS, I note that reforms of the House of Lords and the right to vote for EU citizens settled on the U.K. are no longer on the menu. I wonder what happened?!
Also, from memory, I think the glitter protester wanted a Citizens Assembly. The Republic (yes, Republic - the clue is in the name!), of Ireland has one and I’m pretty sure they appreciate it.
Citizens assembly and PR are very different surely? I’m in favour of CA for specific issues but when PR results in coalition across government the results are not always so beneficial.
A system of representation reflects political culture. Each system has its benefits and flaws. ‘The Farage case’ is not compelling I think. That has to do with the legal structure that is in place: countries with a written constitution (!) have PR systems in place, sometimes mixed with other systems (like Germany) and a curfew of percentage of the total votes needed to enter Parliament. But it all starts with values. And the division of power between parliament and the executive.
Discussions about Brexit are part of the political system. PR is as well, but in the present state I see more issues with representative democracy in the UK: the position of parliament and its power to scrutinize and correct the executive. Accountability, scrutinizing, transparency, fraud etc are issues that are to be faced. Traditions are wonderful but is it still the way to deal with the present? All written and observed from the other side of the Channel
My old professor Hans Daalder taught comparative political science. To understand our own system we studied the systems of France, England, Germany and the former USSR.
There's a lot of mentions here of Farage, fantasising that he might one day lead the Tory Party, or a future government in some right wing coalition.
Lets remember that despite being given 50 odd appearances on the BBC's primary political programme, QT, inexplicably without any of the preconditions that apply to anyone else, he has stood in 7 Parliamentary elections and lost all of them, mostly very badly. In the last by election he stood in, Farage easily lost his deposit and was beaten by a man in dolphin suit, who won twice as many votes.
Farage could never sustain any office or position. He's the pied piper, leading the fractious and unhappy "real decent proper people" (racists, xenophobes and nationalists) off into wilderness and pointlessness. He snipes from the sidelines but offers no policy or serious challenge. His headline positions change from week to week, as did his models for leaving the EU.
The large crowd gawping at Farage at the Tory Conference stare at a media created celeb, a mouth that shouts others down but with no substance, legs primed to run out of the back of the hall to avoid the press after he loses another election, a brain that contains no solutions to anything and a spine that would have been damaged from crash landing a glider pulling a UKIP banner, if he had had one.
Farage thrived out of the EU, from a proportional voting system and the money, which he milked by splitting into two groups in the Parliament and pulling in continental fascists, to gain more money, while losing influence from being in a smaller group. He spent it failing in UK elections and committed fraud, but had to re-pay it. He did no representative work there and barely ever voted. He's only ever been after money and prestige and does it by grifting.
A good demolition of an unpleasant and dangerous man. Of course he’ll never be anything other than a political and social arsonist. Someone described him as looking like a frog, which is of course totally unacceptable. Pity, as he really does look like one.
It can't be right that a party that polls perhaps 20% or more nationally should return few, if any MPs. FPTP has done this - not just for the Lib Dems - but for UKIP/Brexit. Yes, Nigel Farage would have more chance of being elected under a PR system. But he would paradoxically have LESS chance of power, because a majority of people don't share his views. PR would ensure that the balance of MPs roughly reflected the balance of votes cast. There are many examples of PR preventing extreme but popular parties (supported by many but not supported by the majority) from gaining power.
Finally, think forward to 2029 - Labour won the 2024 election but they rejected rejoining the SM / CU and the economy has been sluggish. Voters - who in 2024 forgot that just 5 years earlier Labour was a basket case - are similarly now enamoured with the Conservatives, even though they're now led by Nigel Farage. Despite being supported by only 30 odd % of people, it now looks like another Tory government could be elected and it's looking more extreme than ever. If only Labour had embraced PR all those years ago!
My dad was a Nigel Farage fanboy with horrible populist views, travelling salesman from Boston Lincs, not a posh banker type. Seeing him rage about the voting system, I always felt he had a point. The way we voted is definitely tied up with Brexit so you can’t blame people for thinking it’s part of the solution (I’m not entirely sure it is because as you say, PR can deliver right wing government, although given that my dad’s horrible populist views are now UK government, so can FPTP). I agree it’s probably important to keep the Rejoin campaign streamlined for the reasons you describe but people want to safeguard against disasters like Brexit happening again so they’re looking for structural change.
Obviously posh banker types can have horrible populist views as well as travelling salesmen from Boston. I was just trying to paint a picture of my dad.
While a PR voting system would change some votes, I'm not sure they would not do much more than cancel each other out, at least until new parties arrived. On the other hand, if we look at the PR system we had for the mayoral elections outside London until recently, 2nd preferences mattered and the tories lost out as nobody wanted to vote Tory as a 2nd preference., as for most people they are too toxic, divisive and incompetent The Tories then set a precedent they might later regret. They changed a voting system ( to first past the post - of course) in order to benefit them, without a referendum or a mandate from their manifesto.
Nick has quite a bit wrong on this bulletin. The LibDems are not quite like the Tories or easily able to work with them. If you look at the history, the Whigs formed the Liberals while merging with the Radicals, then Labour's stars came out of the Labour Representation Committee inside the old Liberal Party. It was Lloyd George's last ever Liberal government that started the welfare state with National Insurance, pensions, sick pay and unemployment pay. ( and turned around WW1) The NHS was crafted by Beveridge a Liberal who later became an MP. Then the Social Democratic Party came out of the Labour Party and merged with the Liberals to form the hybrid that is the LibDems.
The recent coalition was not formed out of ideological closeness but after Clegg had said they would try to work with the party that came first. If he had not, the right wing press would have called it a coalition of losers and the numbers definitely would not have provided long term stability to recover from the financial crisis.
After working with the Tories, nearly every measure enacted, apart from the increased Income tax allowance and state pension plus equalities in the workplace, nearly every other measure has been cancelled. Even the tripled wind power at sea had George Osborne in 2016 attempting to cancel the contracts, but Ed Davey had anticipated that and made them watertight.
This combined with the Tory targeting of LibDem seats and a pincer movement of hostility to the arrangement from all sides of the press made working with the Tories again, according to Davey a case of "never". LibDems fight the Tories at all levels all over the place and are not natural bedfellows. Now the Tories are far too toxic to work with and too huge and overwhelming to be near, like the sun. The Tory's bedfellows are now just the small and declining DUP and whatever Farage is mixed up in, presently the ReformUK. He is the Chair and 50% owner as it's not a normal party with members, but a company he can make money out of. ReformUk are part of the Canadian play book to knock the Tories to the right that worked over there ( Book: Revolt on the Right).
In every General Election since probably 1951 ( The Tories won by abolishing most wartime rationing), there has been a majority of left plus centre ( Labour + Liberals ) over the combined right parties, usually Tories + N.I Unionists, except for one, 2015. This had the LibDems walloped from all sides and down to 8% and 8 seats, while having UKIP on it's record 12%, taking votes off the Tories AND Labour, a rare combination. In this election the right had the most votes by a tiny margin, which ought to have shown up in a pure proportional system, although not necessarily under benign hybrids such as STV.
But, you may say, the centre, the LibDems would join with the Tories again and give them a majority? Firstly, that is not happening in Britain now or a generation. Secondly, with the possibility of being supported in smaller parties by the electoral system, both big tent parties would almost certainly split, taking out factions into viable separate offerings. We would also get political dynamics by the continual arrival and some deaths of new and possibly old parties.
Nick seems to suggest that present fractious, teetering, big as the sun Tory party would somehow continue as it is after PR voting and be propped up by Liberals. That fantasy is not happening. The other one of the Tories, now on 26% being propped up by Farage's lot presently on 7-8%, or the declining DUP on 7-8 seats, is also not happening.
A lazy opponent of PR always pretends that it allows in extremism. That is a very easy one to scotch. The only effective, albeit incompetent extremists have taken over the Tory Party, now using language more akin to the National Front. There's me thinking FPTP voting over PR cost the LibDems about 100 seats and the Greens about 30, which they would have had under PR. Of course Farage's lot would have got in but it doesn't matter. They would only once in a blue moon be able to become a junior partner in coalition. Wilders in Netherlands regularly gets 15% but nobody will work with him. Then there is the issue of seriousness. UKIP and the Brexits had the worst record for voting in the EU Parliament and they refused to do any representative work for UK constituents and business. They even used the funds allocated to them by the EU for fighting UK elections, a form of fraud and had to re-pay it. Farage's circus of clowns, village idiots, property speculators, disaster capitalists and dinosaurs would be found out and largely slung out by the electorate. But you say, what if an effective right wing dictator type arrived? Well who is there in the world? Trump?, Wilders?, Le Pen? Farage?
OK, PR would produce the new and unexpected and nobody would like everything that resulted, but it can only be far, far more representative, dynamic, inclusive, engaging and less unfair. Governments would tilt more to the centre and left than they have been and extremists would be unable to infiltrate and take over either of the two giant sloths that swap sides every decade or two. Extremists in the Tory Party and Farage's lot would find themselves unable to form coalitions and isolated.
Labour have appointed a front bench spokesperson for Democracy who said in 2020 that PR was long overdue. Labour conference and the big unions have come over for PR. Lets hope it is not another '97 when Labour fought about it, apparently offered it in the manifesto, gained centrists votes for it, then when in power, binned it under pressure of Brown, Prescott and Beckett. So here we are again. God help us.
The point that the Tories changed the voting system without a manifesto notice of this sets the precedent that a govt could change the voting system without its being in the manifesto. Funny, I normally agree with NT on about 90% of things but here I think that he is wrong.
The "cancelling out" point is a good one - after all, isn't that how the EU parliament works - mainly successfully most of the time. Give the likes of Farage some real but very limited responsibility - and they're probably less dangerous than acting as would be demagogues.
The proportional method does not prevent right-wing governments, it prevents a single party with 30% of the votes from governing as if it had obtained 51%.
Among other things, I would like to point out that "first wins all" is an electoral method that is not compatible with the criteria of the Copenhagen Treaty.
And the return to the EU passes through a written constitution, abolition of the unelected House of Lords and stable governments that do not break an international treaty with 40% of the votes.
There will be no exceptions for third countries in the adoption of our rules.
Nick, I don't often disagree with you, and here only partially so. I understand and accept your argument about keeping the campaigns separate. That makes sense.
However
Being governed by a party which received little more than 1 in 4 of the available votes, and it doing so with a massive majority, coupled with my perception of ever-reducing political engagement because of the "what's the point of my voting in this blue/red/yellow tied up constituency" point it is our democracy which needs attention more than what is, after all, only a matter of policy. A big matter, certainly, but only a matter of policy.
If PR means Govt of varying hues and arrangements all well and good; it will likely be far more representative of how we vote than the current farrago of a system
I don't think that the EU would have a FPTP UK back as a member, so I do think that the two issues are linked. It's about the UK becoming a "normal" European country. It probably can't, which is why in twenty years Scotland will be back in the EU and England won't
I think you're underestimating how hard it will be for GB to be allowed to rejoin EU even if Labour manages a slight majority of eg 60%.
GB needs not just to rejoin, or a one-term Labour government: GB society needs to use the whole of Brexit fiasco as a wake-up call for reform of a dozen problems that were swept under the rug previously.
One of these is a broad reform of the whole political system, with a written constitution where all people have the same rights, and the election system represents that. PR is one small part of this.
(Other parts are having a society-wide discussion about what Being British and Being English means, or why all people have rights, not just Tories and well-off white Anglicans. And stopping hate press, if necessary, forbidding openly lying papers.)
Because if GB hasn't become an actual democratic country, with robust institutions and a democratically thinking society, then EU won't let you in.
Rejoining and then dropping out once Labour's one-term is up causes more problems for EU than it's worth. And we have quite enough problems with undemocratic countries like Hungary under Orban and Poland under PiS (let alone Austria and Italy) already in the EU, to accept another country that's not fully committed to EU Human Rights bill and European values.
So far, it seems you want GB to rejoin because it would be better for GB economy. Well, that's a British problem: the Brits broke it, the Brits need to fix it. EU doesn't need another parasite mooching money.
The reforms are necessary for GB, yes - but looking only at rejoin while ignoring the rot that allowed the whole fiasco to happen in the first place will loose both: rejoin will be rejected by EU; and by not reforming the system itself (press, voting, powers of parliament etc.) Labour will loose their one chance after 5 years and the Tories will lock the one-sided system down further.
I know it's easy to say Labour should do the hard work of telling voters the unpleasant hard truth because Daily Heil will slander Labour anyway, and educating citizens is the only long-term route out of this mess, when short-term they will likely be punished (and our own social democrats have lost their spine decades ago, now the greens are afraid, too).
But I don't see any other way. The better way would be what the liberal Yanks did to remove Trump: a broad coalition of NGOs, from women to PoC to enviroment, banding together, and the only available candidate was from the Democrats.
So if enough Brits, not part of Labour, but of a coalition of NGOs to achieve reforms in areas of (education, constitution/political system; press, human rights) did the groundwork of educating people and get the activated; and then Labour Starmer stepped up and said he would work with them to implement A, B, C - I see that as realistic long-term; but obviously that needs years of groundwork laid by the seperate NGOs.
I agree completely and unreservedly! I’ve commented before that the UK needs to make political studies part of its national education curriculum. Only when enough young people understand how flawed the UK political system is, is there any chance of its reform. Can’t see any political party which is able to win under the current system (Labour/Tory) ever agreeing to a change without huge pressure from the electorate. I think a timescale of 20+ years before the UK could hope to join the EU. And who knows if the EU, or any of us, will still be around.😱
Surprise. We don’t have PR and we have a faragist right wing government.
The differences in voting exist. What Labour and Conservative represented was broad multi-faction parties.
What the last decade has demonstrated is those parties have changed. They are single faction parties.
We have a Faragist government. PR will mean the right can vote for parties they want and the left the same. Yep, extremists will get into Parliament. They already are. They just use other party names.
It would mean the “death” of the parties we have. It’s only a problem for those who are deeply embedded in them.
PR has problems. Sure. But the current system has left Britain badly governed.
The argument that FPTP prevents Farage, while allowing Boris Johnson, plus MPs and ministers like Redwood and the pencil and Bravermann and (the despicable rest) - considering that Boris called Cummings just because he wanted to break things and talked about how smart he was for doing that - is for me a distinction without a difference.
Don’t agree with your view on PR, but agree that Rejoin needs to be clinically isolated from it. As regards the “death of the Labour party”, vastly overstated. Even if it were to disintegrate into “shards” of labour parties, we in Germany seem to get by. And before you bludgeon me with AfD, you can’t exclude a significant group of people from politics just because you don’t like them or their policies. If Labour as it is can’t offer attractive policies and competent government, then maybe there is a need to recast it. There are plenty of things that one could do, other than PR, to improve government. Just the exclusion of money from politics would be a game changer. Another would be much stricter rules governing media ownership. I would never propose direct control of media output, but allowing oligarchs to buy up media outlets and then to pursue their own agendas? That I would control. The damage to democracy caused by Rupert Murdoch should exclude him from ownership of any MSM. The trouble with both these propositions is that the party in power, no matter which, benefits, and they are the ones that could change it.
Yes - CA and PR are separate issues, but we must look at what would enhance British democracy, and both have a part to play. As has an appropriate statutory framework to conduct referendums.
Of course PR would lead to a realignment of the major parties. Labour and Tory extremists may well split away, but that wouldn't be the end of either party. I certainly don't see Labour fragmenting into many micro-parties. I would welcome the fact that "populists" like Nigel Farage could be elected as MPs under PR. Distasteful and disgraceful though he is, it would be a price worth paying for a properly democratic Parliament. Yes there would be some right wing populist MPs but there would also be more Green and Lib-Dem MPs to counterbalance them.
Far from ruining the prospect of a campaign to rejoin the EU, PR could help it. Under FPTP, a party with a working majority might by opposed to rejoining even though the popular vote was for parties that were in favour. PR would ensure that the Parliament elected represents the electorate's wishes. If popular opinion is for rejoining then the Parliament would reflect that.
Being in favour of PR is certainly not the preserve of left wing campaigners. There are PR supporters across the political spectrum. PR supporters don't claim it would be the end of right wing governments. The argument is that it would be the end of the disproportionate dominance of the Tory Party. It would certainly be the end of being ruled by single party that most people didn't vote for, usually the Tories. That can only be a good thing. Starmer won't campaign for PR in 2024 because he knows FPTP gives him the best chance of a big majority. Once in power I suspect electoral reform might well be on the cards for the following election.
I think campaigning for PR and rejoining the EU, far from being a destructive combination, is actually a very good fit.
"might also let a lot of extremist tosspots into government at a time when there are quite a lot of extremist tosspots floating about."
Forgive me for pointing out that the extremist tosspots are currently actually in government.
I come from a country with PR and find it has good results, despite the obvious drawbacks you point out. But I can't see Britain ever going there. It's just too... politically atrophied.
Nick - you are being a little disingenuous. PR is just one element of constitutional ‘reforms’ which I think the U.K. could benefit from; for example a written constitution. The majority of British people just do not know how they are governed - humble address, unwritten conventions, prorogation of Parliament etc. etc. Ask any British citizen how they are ‘legally’ British and they will simply not know, because their right to Britishness is contained in immigration laws - which they have no knowledge of, but which decreed, over time and after clever statutory changes, that ‘subjects’ of the colonies were no longer British. Labour, like the conservatives, has a lot to answer on this particular point.
As for KS, I note that reforms of the House of Lords and the right to vote for EU citizens settled on the U.K. are no longer on the menu. I wonder what happened?!
Also, from memory, I think the glitter protester wanted a Citizens Assembly. The Republic (yes, Republic - the clue is in the name!), of Ireland has one and I’m pretty sure they appreciate it.
Citizens assembly and PR are very different surely? I’m in favour of CA for specific issues but when PR results in coalition across government the results are not always so beneficial.
You can have both easily enough
Of course but in the context of the original article I lean towards CA
A system of representation reflects political culture. Each system has its benefits and flaws. ‘The Farage case’ is not compelling I think. That has to do with the legal structure that is in place: countries with a written constitution (!) have PR systems in place, sometimes mixed with other systems (like Germany) and a curfew of percentage of the total votes needed to enter Parliament. But it all starts with values. And the division of power between parliament and the executive.
Discussions about Brexit are part of the political system. PR is as well, but in the present state I see more issues with representative democracy in the UK: the position of parliament and its power to scrutinize and correct the executive. Accountability, scrutinizing, transparency, fraud etc are issues that are to be faced. Traditions are wonderful but is it still the way to deal with the present? All written and observed from the other side of the Channel
Written from the other side, but demonstrating much needed clarity afforded by distance!👍
My old professor Hans Daalder taught comparative political science. To understand our own system we studied the systems of France, England, Germany and the former USSR.
Should be a standard part of the UK school curriculum, from primary school onwards.
There's a lot of mentions here of Farage, fantasising that he might one day lead the Tory Party, or a future government in some right wing coalition.
Lets remember that despite being given 50 odd appearances on the BBC's primary political programme, QT, inexplicably without any of the preconditions that apply to anyone else, he has stood in 7 Parliamentary elections and lost all of them, mostly very badly. In the last by election he stood in, Farage easily lost his deposit and was beaten by a man in dolphin suit, who won twice as many votes.
Farage could never sustain any office or position. He's the pied piper, leading the fractious and unhappy "real decent proper people" (racists, xenophobes and nationalists) off into wilderness and pointlessness. He snipes from the sidelines but offers no policy or serious challenge. His headline positions change from week to week, as did his models for leaving the EU.
The large crowd gawping at Farage at the Tory Conference stare at a media created celeb, a mouth that shouts others down but with no substance, legs primed to run out of the back of the hall to avoid the press after he loses another election, a brain that contains no solutions to anything and a spine that would have been damaged from crash landing a glider pulling a UKIP banner, if he had had one.
Farage thrived out of the EU, from a proportional voting system and the money, which he milked by splitting into two groups in the Parliament and pulling in continental fascists, to gain more money, while losing influence from being in a smaller group. He spent it failing in UK elections and committed fraud, but had to re-pay it. He did no representative work there and barely ever voted. He's only ever been after money and prestige and does it by grifting.
A good demolition of an unpleasant and dangerous man. Of course he’ll never be anything other than a political and social arsonist. Someone described him as looking like a frog, which is of course totally unacceptable. Pity, as he really does look like one.
Speak of the devil, Farage now says he expects to be Tory leader by 2026
I thought he already was 😉
"In this house, we don't use the "f" word" - BBC League of Gentlemen - Harvey gets a toad delivery.
It can't be right that a party that polls perhaps 20% or more nationally should return few, if any MPs. FPTP has done this - not just for the Lib Dems - but for UKIP/Brexit. Yes, Nigel Farage would have more chance of being elected under a PR system. But he would paradoxically have LESS chance of power, because a majority of people don't share his views. PR would ensure that the balance of MPs roughly reflected the balance of votes cast. There are many examples of PR preventing extreme but popular parties (supported by many but not supported by the majority) from gaining power.
Finally, think forward to 2029 - Labour won the 2024 election but they rejected rejoining the SM / CU and the economy has been sluggish. Voters - who in 2024 forgot that just 5 years earlier Labour was a basket case - are similarly now enamoured with the Conservatives, even though they're now led by Nigel Farage. Despite being supported by only 30 odd % of people, it now looks like another Tory government could be elected and it's looking more extreme than ever. If only Labour had embraced PR all those years ago!
Julian, a horrific but realistic scenario for just 5-6 years time.
My dad was a Nigel Farage fanboy with horrible populist views, travelling salesman from Boston Lincs, not a posh banker type. Seeing him rage about the voting system, I always felt he had a point. The way we voted is definitely tied up with Brexit so you can’t blame people for thinking it’s part of the solution (I’m not entirely sure it is because as you say, PR can deliver right wing government, although given that my dad’s horrible populist views are now UK government, so can FPTP). I agree it’s probably important to keep the Rejoin campaign streamlined for the reasons you describe but people want to safeguard against disasters like Brexit happening again so they’re looking for structural change.
Obviously posh banker types can have horrible populist views as well as travelling salesmen from Boston. I was just trying to paint a picture of my dad.
While a PR voting system would change some votes, I'm not sure they would not do much more than cancel each other out, at least until new parties arrived. On the other hand, if we look at the PR system we had for the mayoral elections outside London until recently, 2nd preferences mattered and the tories lost out as nobody wanted to vote Tory as a 2nd preference., as for most people they are too toxic, divisive and incompetent The Tories then set a precedent they might later regret. They changed a voting system ( to first past the post - of course) in order to benefit them, without a referendum or a mandate from their manifesto.
Nick has quite a bit wrong on this bulletin. The LibDems are not quite like the Tories or easily able to work with them. If you look at the history, the Whigs formed the Liberals while merging with the Radicals, then Labour's stars came out of the Labour Representation Committee inside the old Liberal Party. It was Lloyd George's last ever Liberal government that started the welfare state with National Insurance, pensions, sick pay and unemployment pay. ( and turned around WW1) The NHS was crafted by Beveridge a Liberal who later became an MP. Then the Social Democratic Party came out of the Labour Party and merged with the Liberals to form the hybrid that is the LibDems.
The recent coalition was not formed out of ideological closeness but after Clegg had said they would try to work with the party that came first. If he had not, the right wing press would have called it a coalition of losers and the numbers definitely would not have provided long term stability to recover from the financial crisis.
After working with the Tories, nearly every measure enacted, apart from the increased Income tax allowance and state pension plus equalities in the workplace, nearly every other measure has been cancelled. Even the tripled wind power at sea had George Osborne in 2016 attempting to cancel the contracts, but Ed Davey had anticipated that and made them watertight.
This combined with the Tory targeting of LibDem seats and a pincer movement of hostility to the arrangement from all sides of the press made working with the Tories again, according to Davey a case of "never". LibDems fight the Tories at all levels all over the place and are not natural bedfellows. Now the Tories are far too toxic to work with and too huge and overwhelming to be near, like the sun. The Tory's bedfellows are now just the small and declining DUP and whatever Farage is mixed up in, presently the ReformUK. He is the Chair and 50% owner as it's not a normal party with members, but a company he can make money out of. ReformUk are part of the Canadian play book to knock the Tories to the right that worked over there ( Book: Revolt on the Right).
In every General Election since probably 1951 ( The Tories won by abolishing most wartime rationing), there has been a majority of left plus centre ( Labour + Liberals ) over the combined right parties, usually Tories + N.I Unionists, except for one, 2015. This had the LibDems walloped from all sides and down to 8% and 8 seats, while having UKIP on it's record 12%, taking votes off the Tories AND Labour, a rare combination. In this election the right had the most votes by a tiny margin, which ought to have shown up in a pure proportional system, although not necessarily under benign hybrids such as STV.
But, you may say, the centre, the LibDems would join with the Tories again and give them a majority? Firstly, that is not happening in Britain now or a generation. Secondly, with the possibility of being supported in smaller parties by the electoral system, both big tent parties would almost certainly split, taking out factions into viable separate offerings. We would also get political dynamics by the continual arrival and some deaths of new and possibly old parties.
Nick seems to suggest that present fractious, teetering, big as the sun Tory party would somehow continue as it is after PR voting and be propped up by Liberals. That fantasy is not happening. The other one of the Tories, now on 26% being propped up by Farage's lot presently on 7-8%, or the declining DUP on 7-8 seats, is also not happening.
A lazy opponent of PR always pretends that it allows in extremism. That is a very easy one to scotch. The only effective, albeit incompetent extremists have taken over the Tory Party, now using language more akin to the National Front. There's me thinking FPTP voting over PR cost the LibDems about 100 seats and the Greens about 30, which they would have had under PR. Of course Farage's lot would have got in but it doesn't matter. They would only once in a blue moon be able to become a junior partner in coalition. Wilders in Netherlands regularly gets 15% but nobody will work with him. Then there is the issue of seriousness. UKIP and the Brexits had the worst record for voting in the EU Parliament and they refused to do any representative work for UK constituents and business. They even used the funds allocated to them by the EU for fighting UK elections, a form of fraud and had to re-pay it. Farage's circus of clowns, village idiots, property speculators, disaster capitalists and dinosaurs would be found out and largely slung out by the electorate. But you say, what if an effective right wing dictator type arrived? Well who is there in the world? Trump?, Wilders?, Le Pen? Farage?
OK, PR would produce the new and unexpected and nobody would like everything that resulted, but it can only be far, far more representative, dynamic, inclusive, engaging and less unfair. Governments would tilt more to the centre and left than they have been and extremists would be unable to infiltrate and take over either of the two giant sloths that swap sides every decade or two. Extremists in the Tory Party and Farage's lot would find themselves unable to form coalitions and isolated.
Labour have appointed a front bench spokesperson for Democracy who said in 2020 that PR was long overdue. Labour conference and the big unions have come over for PR. Lets hope it is not another '97 when Labour fought about it, apparently offered it in the manifesto, gained centrists votes for it, then when in power, binned it under pressure of Brown, Prescott and Beckett. So here we are again. God help us.
The point that the Tories changed the voting system without a manifesto notice of this sets the precedent that a govt could change the voting system without its being in the manifesto. Funny, I normally agree with NT on about 90% of things but here I think that he is wrong.
The "cancelling out" point is a good one - after all, isn't that how the EU parliament works - mainly successfully most of the time. Give the likes of Farage some real but very limited responsibility - and they're probably less dangerous than acting as would be demagogues.
The proportional method does not prevent right-wing governments, it prevents a single party with 30% of the votes from governing as if it had obtained 51%.
Among other things, I would like to point out that "first wins all" is an electoral method that is not compatible with the criteria of the Copenhagen Treaty.
And the return to the EU passes through a written constitution, abolition of the unelected House of Lords and stable governments that do not break an international treaty with 40% of the votes.
There will be no exceptions for third countries in the adoption of our rules.
Nick, I don't often disagree with you, and here only partially so. I understand and accept your argument about keeping the campaigns separate. That makes sense.
However
Being governed by a party which received little more than 1 in 4 of the available votes, and it doing so with a massive majority, coupled with my perception of ever-reducing political engagement because of the "what's the point of my voting in this blue/red/yellow tied up constituency" point it is our democracy which needs attention more than what is, after all, only a matter of policy. A big matter, certainly, but only a matter of policy.
If PR means Govt of varying hues and arrangements all well and good; it will likely be far more representative of how we vote than the current farrago of a system
I don't think that the EU would have a FPTP UK back as a member, so I do think that the two issues are linked. It's about the UK becoming a "normal" European country. It probably can't, which is why in twenty years Scotland will be back in the EU and England won't
I think you're underestimating how hard it will be for GB to be allowed to rejoin EU even if Labour manages a slight majority of eg 60%.
GB needs not just to rejoin, or a one-term Labour government: GB society needs to use the whole of Brexit fiasco as a wake-up call for reform of a dozen problems that were swept under the rug previously.
One of these is a broad reform of the whole political system, with a written constitution where all people have the same rights, and the election system represents that. PR is one small part of this.
(Other parts are having a society-wide discussion about what Being British and Being English means, or why all people have rights, not just Tories and well-off white Anglicans. And stopping hate press, if necessary, forbidding openly lying papers.)
Because if GB hasn't become an actual democratic country, with robust institutions and a democratically thinking society, then EU won't let you in.
Rejoining and then dropping out once Labour's one-term is up causes more problems for EU than it's worth. And we have quite enough problems with undemocratic countries like Hungary under Orban and Poland under PiS (let alone Austria and Italy) already in the EU, to accept another country that's not fully committed to EU Human Rights bill and European values.
So far, it seems you want GB to rejoin because it would be better for GB economy. Well, that's a British problem: the Brits broke it, the Brits need to fix it. EU doesn't need another parasite mooching money.
I think this strengthens Nick's point to separate PR (and other political reforms) from the rejoin campaign.
These reforms are necessary regardless of whether or not the UK joins the EU at some point in the future.
Tying them together will just make it harder to achieve either.
The reforms are necessary for GB, yes - but looking only at rejoin while ignoring the rot that allowed the whole fiasco to happen in the first place will loose both: rejoin will be rejected by EU; and by not reforming the system itself (press, voting, powers of parliament etc.) Labour will loose their one chance after 5 years and the Tories will lock the one-sided system down further.
I know it's easy to say Labour should do the hard work of telling voters the unpleasant hard truth because Daily Heil will slander Labour anyway, and educating citizens is the only long-term route out of this mess, when short-term they will likely be punished (and our own social democrats have lost their spine decades ago, now the greens are afraid, too).
But I don't see any other way. The better way would be what the liberal Yanks did to remove Trump: a broad coalition of NGOs, from women to PoC to enviroment, banding together, and the only available candidate was from the Democrats.
So if enough Brits, not part of Labour, but of a coalition of NGOs to achieve reforms in areas of (education, constitution/political system; press, human rights) did the groundwork of educating people and get the activated; and then Labour Starmer stepped up and said he would work with them to implement A, B, C - I see that as realistic long-term; but obviously that needs years of groundwork laid by the seperate NGOs.
I agree completely and unreservedly! I’ve commented before that the UK needs to make political studies part of its national education curriculum. Only when enough young people understand how flawed the UK political system is, is there any chance of its reform. Can’t see any political party which is able to win under the current system (Labour/Tory) ever agreeing to a change without huge pressure from the electorate. I think a timescale of 20+ years before the UK could hope to join the EU. And who knows if the EU, or any of us, will still be around.😱
Surprise. We don’t have PR and we have a faragist right wing government.
The differences in voting exist. What Labour and Conservative represented was broad multi-faction parties.
What the last decade has demonstrated is those parties have changed. They are single faction parties.
We have a Faragist government. PR will mean the right can vote for parties they want and the left the same. Yep, extremists will get into Parliament. They already are. They just use other party names.
It would mean the “death” of the parties we have. It’s only a problem for those who are deeply embedded in them.
PR has problems. Sure. But the current system has left Britain badly governed.
The argument that FPTP prevents Farage, while allowing Boris Johnson, plus MPs and ministers like Redwood and the pencil and Bravermann and (the despicable rest) - considering that Boris called Cummings just because he wanted to break things and talked about how smart he was for doing that - is for me a distinction without a difference.
Don’t agree with your view on PR, but agree that Rejoin needs to be clinically isolated from it. As regards the “death of the Labour party”, vastly overstated. Even if it were to disintegrate into “shards” of labour parties, we in Germany seem to get by. And before you bludgeon me with AfD, you can’t exclude a significant group of people from politics just because you don’t like them or their policies. If Labour as it is can’t offer attractive policies and competent government, then maybe there is a need to recast it. There are plenty of things that one could do, other than PR, to improve government. Just the exclusion of money from politics would be a game changer. Another would be much stricter rules governing media ownership. I would never propose direct control of media output, but allowing oligarchs to buy up media outlets and then to pursue their own agendas? That I would control. The damage to democracy caused by Rupert Murdoch should exclude him from ownership of any MSM. The trouble with both these propositions is that the party in power, no matter which, benefits, and they are the ones that could change it.
Yes - CA and PR are separate issues, but we must look at what would enhance British democracy, and both have a part to play. As has an appropriate statutory framework to conduct referendums.
Of course PR would lead to a realignment of the major parties. Labour and Tory extremists may well split away, but that wouldn't be the end of either party. I certainly don't see Labour fragmenting into many micro-parties. I would welcome the fact that "populists" like Nigel Farage could be elected as MPs under PR. Distasteful and disgraceful though he is, it would be a price worth paying for a properly democratic Parliament. Yes there would be some right wing populist MPs but there would also be more Green and Lib-Dem MPs to counterbalance them.
Far from ruining the prospect of a campaign to rejoin the EU, PR could help it. Under FPTP, a party with a working majority might by opposed to rejoining even though the popular vote was for parties that were in favour. PR would ensure that the Parliament elected represents the electorate's wishes. If popular opinion is for rejoining then the Parliament would reflect that.
Being in favour of PR is certainly not the preserve of left wing campaigners. There are PR supporters across the political spectrum. PR supporters don't claim it would be the end of right wing governments. The argument is that it would be the end of the disproportionate dominance of the Tory Party. It would certainly be the end of being ruled by single party that most people didn't vote for, usually the Tories. That can only be a good thing. Starmer won't campaign for PR in 2024 because he knows FPTP gives him the best chance of a big majority. Once in power I suspect electoral reform might well be on the cards for the following election.
I think campaigning for PR and rejoining the EU, far from being a destructive combination, is actually a very good fit.