A’FIDDLING WE WILL GO
We should baptise this period for History as ‘The Fiddlers’ Parliament’ and memorialise it for its exceptionality. The scale and detail of the rank dishonesty is truly startling and will neither be forgotten nor forgiven. These must have been halcyon days for those ever so honourable members of the House: an expenses system which allowed you, if you were without principle or any notion of morality, to abuse it so readily that it might as well not have existed at all. How lovely it must have been to go shopping for houses, furniture, food and virtually anything under the sun and not have to pay for it, whilst all the time claiming legitimacy of intent within the rules. Some MPs certainly appear to have an outstanding talent for creative cheating and this should be recognised in a ‘Dishonour Awards System’ such as Cardinal of Corruption or Baroness of Roguery. It took a Hercules of old to clean up the Augean Stables but no such figure of comparable stature is around today in any of the political parties. I was hoping that a reasonably clean figure would emerge from all this and I note that Geoffrey Robinson of Coventry made no claims at all. Presumably, this is because he is wealthy enough not to bother with the system (and not all wealthy MPs do this) but I do not see him as a Hercules, far from it. This should tell us to look for the MPs with legitimate and honest claims, and to avoid thinking that we are governed only by liars.
GOLDMAN SACHS WITH SACKS OF GOLD
The £2.1 billion profits recorded by the investment bank Goldman Sachs, in the second quarter, are certainly good news for the bankers as they will benefit from the obscene but perdurable bonus culture which has cost so many people their jobs, their houses and their security. Just ten months ago this very same bank took a bevy of mendicants to the US government asking it to rescue them from possible collapse. Now they are back to the pathways which took them to the edge of the precipice in the first place and we must surely once again be asking questions about regulation and accountability. Whenever things like this happen, I go to Cabletalk to find out what he thinks. He is the man who declared that the banks, during the crunch, should be coerced into operating for the benefit of the public and taken into temporary public ownership until the crisis was over and then they should be allowed to pursue their own agenda (snouts in the trough for fat bonuses for themselves and tant pis pour les autres and the rest of the world). I thought Vince would think that, now GS is up and running and making super profits, he would accept its recovery. It seems, however, that Cabletalk disapproves of the bank despite its ‘success’ and is spinning round in a kayak on this issue but doesn’t know how to paddle. Here we have an economic liberal at heart who wants regulation to secure financial security but only in times of trouble. Why not have it all the time and end the casino economy that puts profits before people?
LRC LOSING ITS WAY IN PR FICTIONS?
Ray Davison reviews: The Left Case for Proportional Representation. A Discussion Paper for the LRC by Michael Calderbank, Political Campaigns Officer, Electoral Reform Society Writing in a Personal Capacity.
This eight page article aims to present the case for the LRC to adopt as policy support for the introduction of proportional representation for elections to the Commons and for local councils in England and Wales. It is a most curious piece of writing for several reasons, although I personally would not undervalue it for its soporific qualities. First, incredibly, it does not argue for any particular system of PR, among the numerous on offer, but just for the principle. For the carnivorous tippler like myself, this is the electoral equivalent of a pub with no beer or Sunday lunch with quorn and no beef. Everything about PR is in the detail of the system and a left case without this is inadequately made. Second, Calderbank pays hardly any attention to what he means politically by a left case. Surely if there is a cogent case to be made, he must demonstrate how a particular proportional voting system can advance left-wing objectives such as promoting equal opportunites, opening blocked horizons, ending discrimination and exploitation and so forth. He may not see such notions as progressive or even left but his paper sets out no political programme of his own and he does not relate his PR arguments to any substantial political agenda. Instead, we are once again exposed to the tired and tedious preoccupation with fair voting of the Make Votes Count campaigners who do not seem at all concerned about whether what they call ‘fair votin’ would actually foster reactionary policies and immobilize political advance.
Although Calderbank refuses to back any particular PR horse, it is easy to see where his preferences are. He clearly does not like single member Constituencies as they, in his view, restrict voter choice. In another curious moment of this asymptotic article, he argues that a Blairite in Islington would have no choice but to vote for Corbyn, whilst the Labour left in Stalybridge and Hyde would be restricted to Purnell. Thus, the reader is able to see that the writer favours multi- member constituencies. Calderbank also accepts that restrictions on voter choice and concentrations of Party power come from closed list systems of PR, providing us with a further indication of his preferences-an open list system. We are by now not far from identifying where his true persuasion lies: STV with open lists and the possible refinement and complication of cross voting. This is the system which will challenge the brains of a sizeable proportion of the electorate, produce results like gasometer readings and take an eternity to finalize but for the boffinesque members of the Electoral Society, it is the stuff and nectar of their PR dreams of fairness.
Elsewhere, there are sections in this paper dismissing as myths of FPTP advocates the claim that PR helps the far right and gives too much power to party machines. In both sections the arguments advanced are terminally weak, amounting to little more than a statement to this effect. No supporter of FPTP would argue that that system does not produce BNP successes and mavericks and white suiters or that it can produce coalitions, but there is objective evidence that PR makes this much more likely and almost inevitable. ERS itself stresses that FPTP is ‘unfair’ to small Parties. As for Party machines, Calderbank concedes that closed lists and parachutings are undesirable but largely what he claims are myths of FPTP resist his assaults and survive as reasonable criticisms of PR.
Another big assumption of this article and of Make Votes Count in general is the claim that FPTP produces ‘wasted’ votes. Thus, we are told that, in the general election of 2005, over 19 million votes cast made no difference whatsoever to the outcome-70% of all votes cast. Well we all know about statistical fiddles but this one is off the radar. Of course, it will be the case that in single member constituencies with simple majority voting, there will be losing votes but these votes have been counted. It is clearly just a strategy to call them wasted. More importantly, there will be a winner who commanded more votes than any other candidate and that person is a dog wagging its tail! There are points in this section about targets and swing-voter concentration which are well made and it is clear that the way Parties focus their efforts on marginal seats can be very alienating for second and third parties in safe seats but FPTP supporters often make the same points.
At a certain moment, Calderbank makes a crucial point: ‘It is understandable’, he says, ‘ that some Labour Party members are reluctant to give up a system that has rewarded their party with three consecutive majorities… .’Well never was there a greater expression of the obvious and we accept that these victories were ‘disproportionate’ but Labour Party socialists are in the business of securing Labour governments, preferably left-leaning ones, because that ways lies progress and ‘fairness’. Electoral systems are part of political struggle and not some academic abstract exercise. If there is a left case for PR, it has got to demonstrate a cogent political argument that there is a link between ‘fair’ voting (properly conceptualized and defined) and political progress. This paper does not produce such a case and seems very close to the right-wing case most of the time. The LRC should send it back for amplification.
