{"id":172,"date":"2019-01-21T08:11:23","date_gmt":"2019-01-21T08:11:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.cranleigh.org\/politics\/?p=172"},"modified":"2023-11-15T08:48:26","modified_gmt":"2023-11-15T08:48:26","slug":"first-past-the-post-and-the-structure-of-uk-party-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cranleigh.org\/politics\/2019\/01\/21\/first-past-the-post-and-the-structure-of-uk-party-politics\/","title":{"rendered":"First Past the Post and the structure of UK party politics"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I roundly support Nick P\u2019s excellent blog post<\/a> in support of our Westminster First Past the Post electoral system. I urge you to read his excellent defence of a system often derided as unfair by, unsurprisingly, those who lose by it. Its simplicity, transparency and decisiveness are very effectively commended. He also makes the very important point that no part of our constitution ought to change unless there is overwhelming and long-lasting demand for it. This is the case for our electoral system. The debate may excite Liberal Democrat policy wonks with social sciences degrees, but Joe Public isn\u2019t interested. If it\u2019s not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This last sentence is a core conservative mantra. Change\nought only to happen if urgently necessary. Altering our electoral system would\nhave unforeseen and potentially destabilising effects on the rest of our\nconstitution, which the reform had not been intended to bring about. Of course\nI have no crystal ball, but let me speculate what two of these changes might\nbe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Firstly, it might cryogenically preserve and entrench\npolitical parties in a way that prevents adaptive change. Any system based\nwholly or partly on a party list \u2013 the Alternative Member System used in\nScotland for example \u2013 would embed the power of party over candidate, and give\nvoters a choice not of people but of banners. We ought to remember that party\npolitics only emerged in the late 19th<\/sup> century in anything like the\ninstitutionalised way it now exists. If we moved our elections towards a system\nwhich pre-supposes both the existence and dominance of parties as a permanent\nfeature, we would entrench this system. This would have the consequence of\nblocking independents, or preventing any possible move actually away from\nparties which, given the march of modern social media technology and the\ndemocratisation of political discourse, may yet be the path of travel of 21st<\/sup>\nCentury politics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Secondly, and far more predictably, the party system itself would drastically alter. Those who advocate more proportional systems imagine \u201cfairness\u201d when, say, the Liberal Democrats or Greens get more seats. They can reasonably point to the way that AMS prevents total domination of the Scottish Parliament by the SNP. They decry the long-standing dominance of the two major parties in the UK at large. These are valid points of course, but they assume that this very configuration in parties would survive a change of system. Far more likely would be, long-run, a radical fracturing of the party system into smaller factions once the incentive for ideologically broad parties is eroded or removed entirely by a proportional voting system. Currently, our Conservative Party is in fact a quite broad coalition between what can be recognisably characterised as One Nation and New Right Conservatives. In time, a proportional system would probably create a One Nation Party and a New Right Party. As for Labour, Corbynite Social Democrats and Blairite Neo-revisionists have such different views on the role of the state that eventually they two would be likely to fracture in the same way, knowing that in a proportional system this would not be electoral suicide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even the Liberal Democrats have their own internal fissures between so-called \u201cOrange Book\u201d free-market classical liberals and big-state modern liberals. Who is to say that they too would not split? Famously, the Greens are divided between so-called Watermelons and Mangos \u2013 those who are green on the outside but red on the inside (socialists who see capitalism as the enemy of the environment), and green on the outside but yellow on the inside (liberals who regard capitalism as the potential saviour of the environment). Without a majoritarian First Past the Post voting system that punishes party splinters and splits, we could end up with far more parties with much narrower ideological bases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet would this be a bad thing? It is easy to argue that it\nwould supply voters with greater choice, particularly given that many\nproportional systems also actively encourage or even require more than one\ncandidate to receive a vote. It might create parties that were closer to\nindividual\u2019s specific beliefs. Doubtless it would of course be \u201cfairer\u201d at\nrepresenting all views.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But this is to assume that choice and \u201cfairness\u201d are\nimportant and good for democracy. They are not. To start with, I don\u2019t want\nfairness for more extreme parties. The rise of communism and fascism in Germany\nand Italy within very proportional voting systems needs little introduction. In\nour system these tendencies were, in the same epoch, either side-lined into\nineffective street politics or absorbed into the larger umbrella parties of the\nTories and Labour. Do not for a second suppose that such extremist parties\ncould not have arisen and contested power in Britain in the same era simply\nbecause the British don\u2019t do that sort of thing. Of course Germany was going\nthrough the pain of defeat, but Italy had won the war as had France which was\nravaged at the same time by parliamentary communism. Politics may be different\nthese days, but it is hardly a coincidence that the dangerous and inept parties\non the extremes of left and right across the continent have arisen within\nproportional systems and are now in power or on the cusp of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also regard \u201cchoice\u201d and \u201cfairness\u201d as the enemies of\nlegitimacy, accountability, and effective government. Again I can cite the\nshambles of the Weimar Republic or the French Third and Fourth Republics, or\njust say one word: Italy. If our electoral pie chart \u2013 which currently has two\ngreat big slices of red and blue and a couple of yellow slithers \u2013 were to be\ncomprised of an array of much smaller coloured slices, and if coalition\ngovernment were to become a permanent feature, then whose manifesto gets\ndelivered? Who is held to account? Where is the public input and approval into\nthe back-room coalition negotiation? Where is the clear channel from election\nto legitimacy? Our current party system gives us pre-packaged, established and\ninstitutionalised ideological coalitions with clear programmes for government\nthat have at least a chance of being delivered decisively and effectively in\nthe public interest. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And yet, some may say, surely permanent coalition would\nbring about a more consensual style of politics, more mature debate and\ncompromise. People point to the regular stead-Eddy coalitions of German\npost-war history as an example. But these were peculiar circumstances in which\nextreme parties had for obvious reasons been entirely discredited and there was\nbroad national consensus on rebuilding Germany. Far more typical are the\nsquabbling and shaky coalitions we see today and throughout 20th<\/sup>\nCentury history in other European states, which mismanage their affairs and\ndegrade public trust in democracy. The intelligent fools who say that somehow,\nwith a different voting system and a more diverse choice of parties and\ncoalition government, the tone of politics would change into a sort of\nenlightened Socratic debating society are thinking of a different species.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But then people who think that you can rationally re-design\nconstitutions when there is no pressing demand always are intelligent fools;\nor, as they\u2019re officially known, Liberal Democrats.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I roundly support Nick P\u2019s excellent blog post in support of our Westminster First Past the Post electoral system. I…
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