No party able to govern on its own; a disappointing result for the Liberal Dems, who were still left playing the role of king maker; unusual variations in party support between and within regions; voters turned away from ill-prepared polling stations – the British election was extraordinary in many ways. In this article David Beetham, Professor Emeritus at the University of Leeds, and Associate Director of Democratic Audit UK, gives an overview of the election and its implications for the electoral system.
The UK – Beyond Majoritarianism?
by David Beetham
The general election of May 6th proved to be an extraordinary one in a number of respects. First, and most notably, the first past the post (FPTP) electoral system, whose chief merit in the eyes of its proponents is that it delivers single-party government, produced an indecisive outcome. No party won sufficient confidence of the electorate to govern on its own. Secondly, the opinion poll surge for the Liberal Democratic Party brought on by its leader Nick Clegg’s performance in the televised leaders’ debates evaporated unexpectedly at the polls, for reasons still to be explained, yet still left him playing the role of king maker or breaker. So the UK had to get used to the kind of coalition discussions which are taken for granted as normal elsewhere, albeit with the much shorter time-scale demanded by an impatient media. Thirdly, the popular vote showed unusual and unpredictable variation between and within regions, as it played out in individual constituency results, not altogether explicable by an ‘incumbency’ effect, or candidates tarnished by the expenses scandal. Finally, there were grotesque scenes of voters being turned away from polling stations up and down the country, because these were understaffed, had run out of ballot papers, or had not got an up-to-date register of electors. And all because the turnout of electors had risen from a meagre 60% in 2005 to a feverish 66% in 2010.
During the campaign Nick Clegg reiterated the familiar Liberal Democrat complaint about the ‘unfairness’ of the electoral system, and to an extent this is a perfectly valid complaint, echoed by others. Because his party’s vote is more evenly spread than that of the other two main parties, it delivers far fewer parliamentary seats for the number of votes cast. In this election, for 23% of the popular vote the party got fewer than 10% of the seats. However, an appeal to ‘fairness’ is also a mistake. It can too easily be presented as the self-regarding complaint of a child who gets a smaller slice of the cake than the others, and as a narrowly partisan demand when times demand attention to the ‘national interest’. A much stronger and less partisan case can be made that the current system compromises the quality of democracy for everyone. The arguments should be familiar, but are worth rehearsing in the context of the recent election, and before they become submerged by the events of the past week. They concern how the system treats voters; what kind of parliament it produces; and the quality of government it gives rise to. I take each of these in turn.
Treating all voters equally
A fundamental principle of democracy is that of political equality: in Bentham’s phrase, ‘everyone counts for one and none for more than one’. Although the UK’s Boundary Commission works hard to equalise the size of constituencies so that the value of the vote is the same wherever you live, under FPTP people’s votes still have markedly differential value. They differ according to which party you vote for: in this election it took around 120,000 votes to elect each Liberal Democratic MP in comparison with 34,000 for each Conservative and 33,000 for each Labour one. Votes also vary in value according to whether you live in one of the marginal constituencies where an election outcome is decided. The pollster Bob Worcester reckons that elections are determined by the one in 25 ‘swing’ voters in marginal constituencies who may or may not change their party allegiance. Others reckon the figure to be much smaller, as few as 100,000 voters. It is on these voters that the parties focus all their money, attention and electoral effort, not to mention their policies. Voters in safe seats can be safely ignored. It is hardly surprising that the electoral turnout in these seats is systematically lower, because voting can make no difference to the outcome, and electors have correspondingly less incentive to vote. Even when voters have an incentive to turn out, they are often obliged to vote against the party they most dislike rather than for the one whose policies they would rather support, and to do so on the basis of the last election figures in their constituency and second guessing what other voters will do.
Creating a Parliament that is representative.
A basic requirement of an elected assembly is that it should be representative of the diversity of the electorate. Much is rightly made of the failure of legislatures to reflect the social diversity of the population in terms of gender, ethnicity or class. Even more fundamental, however, is that a parliament should reflect the diversity of political opinion in the country, as expressed in votes for the respective parties, and should do so without substantial distortion. Under contemporary UK conditions FPTP fails this basic test. Since the 1970s the UK electorate has become politically diverse, voting for multiple parties; yet the electoral system suppresses this diversity, as it limits the effective choice of governing party to the duopoly of Labour or Conservative, with their respectively narrow social bases in different regions of the country. At the same time the system can produce perverse results, with a party winning more votes and fewer seats, as happened to the Liberal Democrats this time. Even more bizarre were some of the projections made at different stages of the recent electoral campaign, with the possibility of the party coming third in the popular vote winning most seats, or the one coming first winning fewer than the other two. It is hardly surprising that when the new assemblies were created under devolution for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, using the FPTP electoral system was never seriously considered.
Securing an effective government
The chief advantage of FPTP, according to its supporters, is that single-party rule produces strong government, and the coalition governments typical of a proportional system only weak ones. Any glance at the record of coalition governments in continental Europe will readily dismiss the second part of this proposition. Coming closer to home, the experience of Scotland and Wales shows that coalition government, or even a minority government as recently in Scotland, can be perfectly effective. And now we have the new Prime Minister, David Cameron, justifying his successful attempt to forge a coalition government on the grounds that it is the only one that can produce ‘strong and stable government’. As to the first part of the proposition, the British record of the past twenty years shows that single-party rule can produce downright bad government. The executive dominance over parliament produced by a ruthless whipping system leaves parliamentary oversight and scrutiny far too weak, and makes government all too prone to policy disasters: the poll tax under Thatcher, the rail privatisation under Major, and the Iraq war under Blair, to give only the most notable examples. In this context, for a ruling party to have to debate and convince a coalition partner or even an opposition could be seen to be a positive advantage, and make for more considered, and hence effective, government. It is doubtful that a repeat of the 2005 election result, in which Labour won a decisive parliamentary majority with only 36% of the popular vote, would be accepted again as legitimate, or carry public support for tough decisions.
Prospects for change
The creation of a coalition government between Conservatives and Liberal Democrats (‘Conrats’ or ‘Liberatives’ according to choice) has been describes as a typically British revolution, though it was the only sustainable administration that the Parliamentary arithmetic would allow. The key question is whether it will prove a one-off exception, or will lead to a permanent change in the character of British government, mirroring that which has already taken place in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Cameron was prepared to go surprisingly far to meet the Liberal democrats’ demands for constitutional reform: a fixed-term Parliament, a mainly elected upper chamber, legislation on the Wright Committee reforms to make Parliament more independent of the executive, and a referendum on changing FPTP to the alternative vote (AV), with the proviso that Conservatives would be free to campaign against it. AV is in no sense a proportional system, and would only go some way towards redressing the defects of FPTP enumerated above; in addition, there is no guarantee that it will pass a referendum, given the visceral opposition of many Labour as well as Conservative MPs towards it. Yet that very opposition acknowledges what a shift in the long-term character of government it could still produce, with coalitions more the norm than the exception. If the new government does indeed prove sustainable over time, then that fact in itself will go far to removing the bogey of a ‘hung parliament’ from public discourse, for all that it has taken the most unrepresentative group of parliamentarians in terms of gender and class to bring it about. •
David Beetham is Professor Emeritus, University of Leeds, and Associate Director, Democratic Audit UK
