12 "It's not the voting that's democracy; it's the counting. Tom Stoppard, Jumpers, Act I (Grove Press, 1971) Tony Foley dissects the UK system of First Past the Post and argues that a fair voting system is long overdue Why socialists The exposure of the way MPs have been blatantly, and in some cases fraudulently, squandering tax payers' money has refocused attention on the need for electoral reform.
The "Great and the Good" who pass laws apparently are immune from these same laws themselves. The basic minimum salary of almost £65,000 for MPs is supposedly not enough for them to live on. A recent Tory MPs pronouncement of being "rationed" was not helped by a party colleague's subsequent defence of him telling the media of the poor plight of MPs who have to "look after their families" and who "put their hands in their pockets for charity"
How can these intelligent representatives be trusted if they apparently cannot remember paying off their mortgages or be able to fill in forms properly? How representative therefore are they of voters who have to get by in a more impoverished lifestyle? Most importantly, how in touch are they with the needs and aspirations of ordinary working people - who do they really represent?
There are a number of issues to consider in making the government more accountable to the people.
Parliament is supposed to be a bastion of electoral democracy -an example to the world. Yet the voting system used in this country produces a ruling party that the majority of people didn't vote for. The House of Lords is based on privilege and cronyism. Recently, when Gordon Brown was on holiday, Peter (Lord) Mandelson was left in charge of the country despite never having been voted into his present position?
A Labour Party government has recently taken on board and made a new peer of a capitalist entrepreneur, one should fight for electoral reform of whose claims to fame is his catch phrase of putting people out of work.
In the UK the government can decide for itself when it is best to hold an election, rather than there being a fixed-term parliament. Even the Chartists in the nineteenth century had a fixed term parliament as one of their demands.
An additional factor to be considered in the reform of democratic rights is the recall of MPs. This would give voters more direct control between elections to hold MPs to account, maybe for unacceptable behaviour or complacency in a safe seat. This country is unusual in having an "unwritten constitution". Lost in the mist of time we have to consult these vagaries in Walter Bagehot's work to know what's what. Contrast this with Venezuela where, under president Hugo Chavez, all citizens can educate themselves in their rights every time they go shopping, with articles of the constitution written on the labels of basic foodstuffs.
Recent contributions in the left, as well as mainstream, press have re-ignited the debate on the use of proportional representation (PR) to elect the British Parliament.
The idea of using PR in this country is not new. A form of it known as the 'limited vote' was used between the 1860's and 1880's in 13 of the larger cities. It was designed to ensure that the minor parties in each city retained some representation, with the elector casting two votes in the three-member constituencies.
During the last century there were two brief periods, with the emergence of a new political force, when pressure for reform was a major issue; in the first two decades and in the 1970s. The former period
ELECTORAL REFORM witnessed the beginning of the Labour Party (the introduction of PR was in the Labour Representation Committees manifesto), but with the party's establishment in Parliament it moved away from a demand for PR. In the 1970s came the SDP supported by the Liberals, but Conservative domination in Westminster for 18 years saw off any concerted attempt at reform.
The Labour Party manifesto for the 1997 general election contained a commitment to hold a referendum (at an unspecified date) on whether to change the existing voting system and promised an independent commission to recommend an alternative. The Jenkins Commission duly reported in October 1998 recommending a system known as "Alternative Vote plus" but no referendum ever came about. Perhaps Tony Blair's new government didnt expect such a landslide result in the 1997 election and therefore saw no need to pursue electoral reform or co-operative talks with the Liberal Democrats.
With a restricted electorate the "First-Past-the-Post" (FPTP), or "Simple Plurality" method, was used to elect early parliaments. Mass franchise saw most countries abandon FPTP and it is now widely regarded as an outdated, unfair method of counting votes used most noticeably in Britain and the USA.
This winner-takes-all method, used in this country for local and House of Commons elections, does just that. This has resulted in three out of four close general elections being "wrong" with the party winning fewer votes gaining the most seats. New Labour "won" the last general election in 2005 with 5 million less votes than in
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ELECTORAL REFORM bat Nosival Fore 2 brican Party Procaiming The Chratin P 1987, and has an unassailable majority. This was despite only one in five registered voters (21.6%) having voted Labour (35.2% of a 61.4% turnout) giving them 55.1% of seats.
The FPTP system has resulted in many anomalies. For example, Labour lost power in the 1951 general election even though the party gained almost one per cent more of the overall votes than the Conservatives.
Often cited are the 1979 and 1983 general elections when the Conservatives were elected on a minority vote. In 1979 they gained 339 seats with 43.9% of the vote. If PR had been used they would have gained only 279 seats with the non-Tory seats equalling 356; therefore a potential antiTory majority of 77. In 1983, despite losing 1.9% of the vote compared to 1979 (with the help of boundary changes), the Conservatives increased their number of seats by 58. The Liberal/SDP Alliance polled only 2.2% less than Labour but won only 23 seats to their 209.
To put it another way, the 1983 result meant that it took: Electina for the European Parliament WEST MIDLANDS REGION Vote once (X) in one blank box British Natio yal Party
32,777 votes to elect a
Conservative MP; 40,482 votes
to elect a Labour MP; 338,860
votes to elect an Alliance MP.
If PR had been used in
1983 it would have resulted in
274 Conservative seats; 180
Labour seats; 166 seats for the
Liberal/SDP Alliance; 10 for
the Welsh/Scottish Nationalists
and others 20 (north of Ireland).
This meant a potential majority
of 102 anti-Tory seats. History
cannot be changed, but there
would still have been the GLC
and the metropolitan authorities,
possibly no war over the
Malvinas, no smashing of the
miners' union, no poll tax and
no legacy of Thatcherism in the
shape of Blair and New Labour.
FPTP is undemocratic.
Election results depend in
practice on the outcome of a
small number of marginal seats
and the number of voters in
these seats who might change
their minds is even smaller.
(It was estimated in 2005 to
be only 800,000 electors out
of 45 million). Fundamental principles give way to the pampering of focus groups. Another problem with the BALLOT PAPER ENVELOPE A FPTP system is of extreme vote wastage; for example over 70% of votes (over 19 million) in the 2005 general election were wasted as they were cast for a losing candidate or were surplus to the winners' requirements.
Under PR there is the opportunity for the elections to show a truer reflection of society's make-up, and therefore increase the representation of women and ethnic minority representatives. In a country with 52% women only one-infive MPs are women, and out of a total of 646 MPs only15 are non-white, 13 of them in the Labour Party.
Supporters of the present system offer some very feeble excuses for not introducing PR. For a comprehensive rebuttal of these arguments see PR Mrie by the Electoral Reform
The present electoral system is unfair, out of date and undemocratic, but why is PR better for socialists? FPTP will not change anything, especially true power in this country. The cosy relationship that exists between the mainstream
13 parties will continue if left unchallenged. The incentive under FPTP is to maintain a consensus. The continuation of this is at the expense and to the detriment of the working class. Instead of carrying out manifesto promises the Labour Party, to stay in power, reneges on voters' demands and compromises its true aims.
However, PR will lead to the polarisation of the political landscape and allow the opportunity for smaller parties to advance more radical alternatives, therefore instigating more political awareness and activity amongst the electorate. In a now dated, yet still timeless, article former miners' leader Arthur Scargill says: "proportional representation is a fundamental socialist concept" and that "no socialist seriously committed representation can advocate any other electoral system."4
Recently one left commentator rightly warned of electoral reform becoming a distraction, but equally it is important to be aware of the changes that PR can bring about and articulate these demands for change whenever necessary in the struggle to bring about a more just society. FOOTNOTES 1 Make My Vote Count website:
http://www.makevotescount.
org.uk (analysis of 2005 General
Election) 2 PR Myths, Electoral Reform
Society Quick Guides (London,
June 2008), p.10
http://www.electoral-reform.
org.uk 3 PR Myths, op. cit. 4 Proportional Representation:
A Socialist Concept, Scargill,
Arthur, New Left Review, I/158
(July-August, 1986)
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14 Raphie de Santos examines the banks, the stock market, the Bank of England, and the economy; and concludes the crisis is still with us. Raphie is an economist and a member of the Scottish Socialist Party * RBS suffered a post-tax loss
of £1 billion Over the last few weeks there have been lots of telling economic and financial data from which some commentators have drawn the conclusion that the worst of the economic and financial crisis is over. We set out here to examine this data and determine if these commentators are right by looking at the banks, stock markets, the Bank of England and global economies. The banks The four major banks and the wholly state owned Northern Rock reported their results, which were described as mixed, during the business week ending the 7 August 2009. We show these in the table below -all the figures are in billions of pounds sterling.
The points of interest are: only Barclays made a profit when investment banking revenues are excluded; and the revenues from investment banking are a one off. Stock markets have rallied by nearly 50% from their March 2009 lows and the price fluctuations - called volatility - of financial assets have fallen making derivatives easier to trade and reducing daily profit and loss moves. In the credit markets the cost of buying insurance against bankruptcy has also fallen. All these factors have combined to create bumper investment banking profits. Normally stock markets would move no more than 10% over such a (all figures £billion) Pre-tax profits Investment banking profits Profits excluding investment banking