The British political scene
Sep
There is constant realignment on the British political scene. This is not always obvious, as for many decades the House of Commons has been dominated by two political parties, the Conservatives and Labour, who have both formed many governments over this period. But the realignments have involved the emergence of the Social Democrats some decades ago, who later joined with the Liberal Party to become the Liberal Democrats, and the resultant lurch to the Thatcherite right of the Labour Party, which has now become informally known as New Labour. It bears very little resemblance to old Labour, seeking to pander to the property owning, get-rich-quick middle-class ‘yuppy’ type voters, and abandoning its traditional working-class base.
The ‘first past the post’ electoral system used in Britain, and also in the USA, ensures strong governments with large majorities, but often based on minority votes. This is because most votes are completely wasted under this very undemocratic system. Governments are decided by relatively few voters, nearly all of them living in constituencies which are ‘marginal’ with regard to the two main political parties. The rest of us are, effectively, disenfranchized.
If we live in a constituency where the sitting MP has a huge majority, not only is there very little possibility of unseating him or her, but whichever candidate or party you vote for will be a complete waste of time. In effect, you don’t have a vote. At least not one which counts.
All a candidate needs to be elected under our system is a majority of 1 vote. All the votes in excess of this are thus wasted and effectively not counted, and votes for all the other candidates are similarly wasted and count for nothing. Thus all these voters, probably the majority in the constituency, have effectively been disenfranchized.
Take this hypothetical simplified example, where Party A wins the election in a constituency by getting 20,000 votes, Party B gets 19,000 votes and Party C gets 18,000 votes. Under our ‘first past the post’ system, the candidate for Party A gets elected with a 1,000 majority, all other candidates lose.
In this example, it can clearly be seen that only 19,001 of the votes actually had any effect whatsoever on the result of the election. Thus of the 57,000 votes cast, 37,999 were totally wasted. The candidate elected had 20,000 people vote for them, and 37,000 vote against them (999 votes for the winning candidate were ‘wasted’, these electors might just as well have not voted at all.) Then imagine this being repeated throughout the country, and it is easy to see why we get governments with big majorities of MPs, but most of the electorate have not voted for the Party in government.
In most European countries there are different forms of voting which are much fairer. Either true proportional representation, where EVERY vote counts, and those for losing candidates are totted up nationally, and if a certain threshold is reached, extra candidates are deemed elected. Or second and maybe third rounds of voting, where the candidates with the lowest votes drop out, and people who voted for them can then choose between the remaining candidates. Or the ‘alternative transferable vote’ systems whereby there is one round of voting, but the electorate can indicate their second choice if their first choice doesn’t receive enough votes to get elected.
The advantage of the ‘first past the post’ system, often quoted by its supporters, are that it gives strong government by single parties with large majorities. The disadvantages are obvious: these strong governments are often undemocratically elected by a minority of the voters. Thus we are constantly saddled with governments most people haven’t voted for, but the ruling government can then do more or less what it likes as the opposition parties can rarely muster a majority of MPs in Parliament to vote against any Bill. This is because the ruling party is over-represented with far more MPs than it is entitled to, and all other parties are under-represented with far fewer MPs that they should have.
PR and the other alternative voting systems frequently give rise to situations where no party has an absolute majority, and so coalitions have to be formed. These involve agreements and compromise between various political parties to achieve a consensus. So it could be argued that nobody gets exactly what they voted for. But at least everyone’s vote counts, and perhaps compromise and consensus is what is needed in politics.
Of course when one political party is elected with a huge majority under our political system, all the members and supporters of that party think ‘first past the post’ is a great system. The landslide victory for the Labour Party in the 1945 election, for instance, led to a triumphant march towards Socialism in the ensuing years, with the taking into public ownership of many industries and services, and the setting up of the National Health Service. This would probably not have been possible under a coalition government elected under a system of PR.
On the other hand, the ensuing years resulted in governments of different political persuasions, and eventually privatization of most of the industries/services once nationalized. This was partly ideological, but it must also be admitted that some of these nationalized industries and services were wasteful and inefficient.
Had the 1945 Labour victory resulted in a Labour-led coalition of political parties forming a government, then perhaps full-scale nationalization, creating huge State monopolies, would not have occurred in all these industries and services. We may, for instance, have had instead a compromise whereby individual companies were kept intact, albeit now publicly owned, either as cooperatives or as just publicly owned companies. The system which operated in former Yugoslavia, and which was, by and large, far more dynamic, competitive and successful than the British/Soviet model of huge State monopolies.
Then we come to our unwritten constitution, which is that of an unelected Head of State, i.e. the Monarchy. This too is quite undemocratic, even though the power of the constitutional monarch is reduced to a puppet or ‘rubber stamp’ of the undemocratically elected government of the day. But surely the electorate should have a say in who is our Head of State, who represents us abroad, who officially receives foreign Heads of State, and who we are required to swear allegiance to in our courts of law, etc.? I strongly objected, when doing jury service, first to being asked to swear on a Bible I didn’t believe in (I was able to affirm), and then to have to swear allegiance to a Queen I didn’t even recognize as a legitimate Head of State since nobody had voted for her, however good or bad she was at the job.
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EU flag
We are now members of the European Union, and despite what politicians say, it is likely that this will either collapse completely, or eventually develop into a federal super-state along the lines of the USA. I see little scope for unelected monarchies or quaint undemocratic ‘first past the post’ electoral systems in a federal European structure. Nor, of course, for currencies like the pound sterling. In a federal European republic we would have one voting system based on proportional representation or some sort of alternative transferrable vote or a second and possibly third round of elections, and of course one currency - the Euro. And the sooner the better as far as I am concerned. The EU has already resulted in much progressive legislation in Britain, including the equalization of the age of consent for gay men, the sweeping away of other discriminations against gays generally, the eventual achievement of equalization in the age of retirement for men and women, etc..
As a Socialist, I would dearly like to see the Labour Party return to its Marxist working-class roots, and the same would apply to its sister parties in what was once known as the Socialist International - the various Socialist/Social Democratic parties in other countries.
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How an ESU (European Socialist Union) flag might look
Ideally, in the distant future, I’d like there to be the opportunity to establish Socialist constitutions in Britain and other European countries, and for these states to break away from the EU and form a Socialist European federation. These constitutions would enshrine the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange as the basis for the economy, but would allow all shades of political opinion to be freely expressed and voted for, and would allow all democratic political parties/organizations to exist and contest genuine free elections. Any political party or coalition elected and forming a government, could then implement its own brand of Socialism (and there are many).
Alternatively, the government elected could then announce a referendum on the Socialist Constitution, proposing an alternative. If they won a substantial majority in the referendum, say two-thirds of the vote, then a new constitution would be put in place - be it one based on private enterprise, a constitutional monarchy, or even perhaps a Communist constitution in which the State starts to ‘wither away’. All options would be open.
Meanwhile, back to reality. We are faced with three major political parties, only two of which, Labour and Conservative, stand any chance whatsoever of forming a government under our first-past-the-post electoral system. Both parties follow Thatcherite policies, and at the moment there seems little prospect of this changing in the near future.
The most those of us who disagree with these policies can do is register our opinions in protest votes (which might unseat a few MPs in marginal constituencies) and in extra-parliamentary activity, such as demonstrations, strikes, etc..
The whole political scene, with the Press and media dominated by The Establishment and the political rightwing (even newspapers like The Independent and The Guardian are hardly leftwing voices for some sort of Socialist alternative to capitalism), is thus very depressing. We can only hope the continuing crises of capitalism results in a resurgence of Socialist ideas, and that a more representative electoral system is introduced in Britain so that at least, if we vote for the minor parties, we know our votes will not be wasted.