There was a story in the Sunday Telegraph today which, if it has a semblance of truth, should send a shiver down the spine of anyone who cherishes democracy and despises the corruption of party patronage.
As it was written by that old bruiser Pat Hennessy, hefted to breaking serious news and trusted by the movers and shakers, we would be unwise to ignore it. The story is that to prop up the flickering fortunes of Clegg David Cameron is drawing up plans for a reformed House of Lords to be elected by PR.
If this is true, then all hell will break loose. The Conservative Party will go into a China Syndrome meltdown and the fallout will contaminate a generation.
PR wears the artificial cloak of political respectability and fairness when in reality it does nothing more than cast electors adrift from decision making. As there is no personal link between electors and the elected there is no incentive to fight their cause. There would be no place for men of principle, already on the endangered species list, and no space for mavericks. The House of Lords would regress from a genuinely independent revising chamber to a mere cipher of the political classes.
Look at the scandal of our selections to the European Parliament. The price for jumping aboard this overpaid and underworked chemin de sauce is to regularly perform a sex act on your party machine. It is a grotesque game of snakes and ladders. And it gives parties supreme power and leverage, far more than the promise of a bauble or the threat of a sexual peccadillo finding its way into the redtops.
It is an outrage. A disgrace. A rape of democracy.
Caroline Crampton wrote an excellent piece recently warning that there is a distinct lack of enthusiasm for the reform of the House of Lords. It is something that politicians assume the public are deeply concerned about when they don’t really give a toss. The trouble is that all parties are in theory committed to it, plonked it into their election manifestos and will proclaim that there will be no need for a referendum as it is the will of the people.
Bollocks. It is like saying that Frankie Boyle is an amusing social commentator.
The reason Lords reform has always hit the political quicksands is that it will be almost impossible to whip through the Commons. The House of Lords would be on an equal footing with the Commons and hence the Salisbury Conventions would be dead. This would no longer be a revising chamber, but one committed by its electoral mandate to introduce controversial bills and oppose or introduce financial measures. Fire up the carriage, it’s back to the nineteenth century.
“Ah”, will say our slimy party hack, “only a proportion of them will be elected”. Brilliant! Political Apartheid. Now that will go down a treat.
I suspect that this story is a rather clunky No 10 toe-in-the-water exercise. If it is, they had better remove it quickly as the water is toxic. If however, it is meant to be a lifeboat for Clegg he would be wise to look at the name on the side: Titanic.
Comments
Jon / April 17 2011 11:17am
So to summarise this piece, you don't understand what 'proportional representation' is? PR isn't a single system, it is an umbrella term of a number of systems that provide a proportional result.
There are plenty of proportional systems that maintain a constituency link and allow you to vote for individual candidates rather than parties. To name a few, the Single Transferable Vote (backed by the Lib Dems), Open List AV+, (proposed by the last Labour government's Jenkins Commission for Commons elections) Open List AMS (supported by the Green Party), even Party List systems like those used for EP elections can be adapted for open lists where voting for an individual candidate is possible.
To use a real world example of PR for upper chambers, Australia's upper house uses the Single Transferable Vote. They run into none of the problems you describe, and you vote for individual candidates rather than a party name.
And I'm afraid I genuinely can't stop laughing at the suggestion that under a proportional system as you describe it "there is no personal link between electors and the elected there is no incentive to fight their cause". What sort of a mandate do you think the Lords currently enjoy from their electors? This is a trick question of course, because they don't have any electors. They're already indebted to the party machine for appointing them in the first place.
I genuinely can't tell whether this is a case of vested-interest-inspired spreading of fear, uncertainty and disinformation, or just plain old Tory 'couldn't-be-arsed-to-even-read-wikipedia' ignorance about electoral systems. Either way it is, I'm afraid, complete rubbish.
Jerry Hayes / April 17 2011 11:40am
Jon, I am well aware of the various permutations of PR. I had hoped I was making it clear that it was the party list system that I find so offensive. What nobody seems able to counter is that the HOL would become a reflection and competitor with the Commons which means it would be far more party political than it is now. I think that that would be very bad for democracy as HOL is an excellent brake on governments and a good revising chamber.if there are to be reforms I would like it's members be be free of Party patronage.
Paul McKeown / April 17 2011 12:22pm
I would be very surprised if the Lib Dems do not wish to see the Lords elected by Single Transferable Vote (STV). This is preferential voting in multi-member seats.
This was used in the past for election to the university seats in the Commons and the old Stormont Parliament in its early days, and is now used for elections in NI to the Assembly, to local government and to European elections and for elections in Scotland to local government. It is also for elections at all levels to Ireland and Malta, to the Indian and Australian Senates and state legislatures and local government in Australian. The good colonial masters left behind what was considered as the most democratic electoral system as they left.
STV is most assuredly not a party list system. Representatives are elected to constituencies and their political fates are tied to how well the represent their constituents.
The Lib Dems have no history of supporting party list elections, so I think your piece is based on false premises.
Tigger / April 17 2011 1:03pm
I suppose it would be far too much of an olive branch to the Lib Dems for David Cameron to suggest that No to AV simply stop lying, prior to the AV vote?
For instance, the absurd claim that a switch to AV will cost £250mn, mainly for the electronic counting machines that will NOT be required?
No-one in the UK favours a party list system as far as I know - except the Tories, and that only for the purposes of frightening the voters, as both The Telegraph and this piece rather strongly underline!
Since we may or may not get the almost-the-same-as-FPTP AV in the House of Commons, it would be a good thing to have STV in the House of Lords to counter the extreme party majorities that frequently allow governments to implement who-knows-what idiotic policy.
But then, I'm just a civilian and interested in democracy, proper economics and the good of the UK, not a politician only interested in party power. :((
If the Irish, Northern Irish and Scottish can cope with STV, why can't we? http://bit.ly/OShWC
I hope Clegg shows a bit more bottle than usual and holds out for 100% STV in the HoL.
Then again, the article you quote is from that well known right-wing-Tory-at-any-price rag, The Telegraph so it's probably not worth the paper it's written on.
While I prefectly well understand why the Lib Dem decision was in the national interest last May, and that financial markets may well still point in the direction of maintaining the coalition to keep the UK out of the line of fire as the euro gradually implodes, the more time goes by, the more I think the Lib Dems should leave the coalition no matter what the consequences in terms of sterling/bond/etc markets and/or a subsequent Labour government who would be just as dishonest and incompetent as your lot
(LOL - and this from a former central banker! I don't say it lightly.)
Really Jerry, your party is *that* bad.
Jerry Hayes / April 17 2011 3:20pm
Paul, I hope you are right, however Jenkins favoured AV plus which involves regional lists. Tigger, you are right about the no vote campaign, which is a disgrace. However not all Tories are *bad*, honest!
Neil McNaughton / April 18 2011 10:03am
I suspect all this may well be academic. The history of attempts at Lords reform is littered with the bleached bones of failed efforts The simple reasons seem to have been two fold. One is that there is usually an alliance between those who think the reforms are too radical (or unnecessary altogether) and those who think they are not radical enough. These coalitions have always proved roo strong and determined for the reformers. The second obstacle has been that nobody can agree on the precise details and so the reform legislation becomes mired in arcane parliamentary procedures and is ultimately lost, sucked down as if in a quicksand.
Personally I am rapidly becoming a convert to a fully elected chamber. The recent record of the Lords is a good one. I know, of course, that it lacks democratic legitimacy and that the persistence of the hereditary element is an affront, but forget that and look at what it has done. Largely freed from the stifling control of party whips, their lordships are making a good job of reviewing legislation simply as an assembly of the 'great and the good'. We have seen examples on tution fees (important amendments and insistence of access requirements), constitutional reforms( the good sense over not partitioning the Isle of Wight are typical), and we are already hearing encouraging noises over NHS reform. The combination of coalition government and an activist revising second chamber which is largely free form party dogma is a rather attractive proposition.
Create a highly pluralistic second house, more subject to party control than the current chamber and you may create either an uncontrollable monster or a supine, meaningless collection of party hacks. The appointments system may need tidying up, but I think I now would make the case for an appointed house.
Paul McKeown / April 18 2011 2:45pm
During the recent GE in the Republic of Ireland, there were some calls for "electoral reform", as some felt that STV - as used there - resulted in TDs who were too independent of the party whip and more concerned with constituency concerns than with broader national concerns. STV really does not encourage party hacks, and although, it is a proportional system, it achieves this in a much more accountable way than a party list system ever can.
The other Irish experience that I find telling is that north of the Irish border, the Stormont Parliament was elected by STV until 1929, at which point the unionists changed it to FPTP, as STV kept returning annoying minority (i.e. nationalist, liberal and labour) party candidates. After the implementation of FPTP, Stormont became an utterly lamentable unionist monolith with enormous majorities that stamped through ridiculous discriminatory legislation and repressed any and all calls for civil rights for the minority population. I'm not making the statement that NI pre 1929 was a political utopia in which minority rights were widely respected: clearly it wasn't, but after 1929, unionist politicians didn't even have to pretend to be deaf at Stormont, there were few voices in opposition.
As I said, I would be very surprised if Nick Clegg was not proposing STV. It seems, in practise, to be a proportional system that encourages independent minded representation (ideal for the new Senate). It would be very surprising if he were to propose a party list in defiance of Liberal party tradition held for a century or so, particularly when much of his message has sought to reconnect with ancient Liberal roots.
As it is, the Lords is a retirement home for party hacks and is offered by the Prime Minister in recognition of a career of toadying or financial support to his or her party. It has no legitimacy as a Chamber of Parliament.
As for the relationship between the Commons and the Senate, surely it will simply evolve? Particularly, if 80% elected is the offer, rather than 100%, with an extended period of grandfathering, perhaps out to three decades or so? Again, an evolutionary change in the British tradition, rather than revolutionary. 20% of the seats in the Senate at the discretion of the party machinery (as now) and 80% (in three tranches) to be elected. Furthermore, the elected seats are (as I understand it) to be held for one long term (15 years) only, to encourage independence of the party whip, as there is no chance of re-election.
barleyherb / April 18 2011 2:55pm
Can I ask a stupid question? How do other countries with bicameral legislatures, both elected (ie most democracies) deal with this issue? You never hear it mentioned as a problem. Is this yet another issue where we loudly claim something couldn't possibly work that other countries use happily?
In the US of course the Senate has very different geographical representation, I get that, but what about in Europe?
Jerry Hayes / April 22 2011 2:37pm
Barleyherb that was a very good question the answer to which I haven't got a clue. Wll do some research when I get time