Proportionate Representation will disenfranchise the most vulnerable not secure democracy.
Saturday, May 8, 2010 at 7:58PM 
Now that the UK General Election is over, urr, I mean the results are still being discussed; many Liberal Democrats are making the political system of Proportional Representation (PR) their sine qua non of any coalition deal with the other two parties. Is PR the great saviour of the UK election system that some are claiming it to be?
The racist British National Party (BNP) did not win any seats this year but it would have done so under PR; the system that matches the proportion of votes a party gets nationally with the proportion of seats it wins in parliament. PR would have brought the BNP directly into the legislature because, although they win very little local support, they are winning enough votes (proportionately) across the nation to get in.
Throughout Europe, countries with PR are suffering with the worst kind of politics of hate because fringe parties gain access to power and then scapegoat minorities to increase their own popularity. In Eastern Europe the targets are Jews, gypsies, and gays. In Western Europe it is Muslims. Tensions are mounting and violence is escalating. It can happen in the UK too if PR brings fringe parties into the mainstream where they can vote and propose legislation.
Under the First Past the Post system that the UK electorate currently uses, local people vote for their local candidate to represent them nationally. This is keeping the BNP at bay because so few people in every region really want to have the BNP representing them. Those who support PR are therefore missing a key point. Yes, it is not fair that parties with large national shares of the vote may not see this translate into parliamentary seats. But under First Past the Post, UK elections, and more importantly democracy, is not simply reduced to national parties winning enough seats in parliament to form a government. It is about local issue effecting local people and having the power to choose local leaders.
PR will mean that although the BNP receive only a small percentage of a local vote, some local areas would have to suffer a divisive BNP politician representing them because of the percentage of the national vote that they gain. This is bad news if you are black, Muslim, or gay!! PR will threaten the fragile social cohesion of the UK, dramatically increasing local tension as it does across Europe. Sadly the UK has suffered many race riots over the last 30 years. PR will only stoke these fires further.
Reader Comments (8)
Thoughtful article Dan. While I'd agree that PR has a lot of drawbacks I don't believe keeping one party out should be a reason to dismiss it. I believe that for Wales, Scotland and London - which all have a form of PR - there is a threshold level that parties have to overcome before they are entitled to a seat from their list. You could argue that it's not high enough because, in the GLA at least, the BNP passed the threshold level but I think that was more the result of an exceptionally low turnout.
Thanks Roger, very fare points about Wales, Scotland, and London...Certainly PR is not without many plus points., although local and regional elections are slightly different and PR is, admittedly, well placed to service local government.
My concern however was less about using the electoral system to actively deny certain parties access to power. Rather, FPTP is the only system that allows the electorate the opportunity to deny certain parties access to power. If only a few % of local people vote for the BNP, why should they be subject to a BNP politician who is put there by default of the votes gained by the national party?
Its abundantly clear the that PR system is completely unsuitable as a replacement for First past the post in the UK due to its wealth of minor parties. A much more practical system is Preferential Voting (also known as Alternative Voting) This system DOESNT result in frequent hung parliaments or unworkable minority governments yet will still give any minor party worth its salt parliamentary representation. I am currently analysing the UK 2010 Election result using this system and will email you the spreadsheet result if you are interested (66 out of 650 seats calculated so far, Im doing this manually so its a little slow)
Regards
Andrew
....Additionally parties such as a BNP would end up with no seats as they would still require 50%+ of first preferences in an individual seat to gain an MP, because there vote appears to be dispersed nationally there tactic of running additional candidates to increase raw vote count does not work. Liberla Democrat, Labour and Conservative MP numbers remain about the same although more closely aligned with actual vote percentage.
Thanks Andrew,
yes AV might do it but it is not currently on the table since Labour's Plant report got shot down in the 90's. However it would make this discussion more balanced if other parties and think tanks brought other electoral alternatives into the discussion. I can't see room for this in the debate unless other voices make more noise.
Andrew - I guess AV is back on the table as of today with William Hague's promise to hold a referendum on it! Wow, I didn't see that one coming....
Well Dan, I said you might see me commenting on your blog when you posted something that touched one one of my pet subjects...
This hasn't really been a pet subject of mine long term, but it has been something that has been amazing me more and more over the last few days...
That is, the number of people whose main objection to PR seems to be that it would give seats to the BNP and UKIP. Frankly, it strikes me as well...undemocratic.
I realise your objection centered on the direct representation of one constituency by a BNP MP when they had only recieved a minority of the vote there, but not all systems of PR would lead to that. The Single Transferable Vote, which has been the Lib Dems preference as I understand, has large multi-member constituencies. The system used for the Scottish Parliament has some members selected on a constituency and others awarded on a regional basis by party vote. The AV+ system Nick Clegg ahs expressed willingness to support would give perhaps 100 MPs selected purely on the basis of party vote on top of the constituency MPs. These systems might lead to some BNP representation, but not on the same constituency relationship as under FPTP.
But to get back to the issue that concerns me: I think you see clearly the negative effects of MPs from small "extremist parties", but I don't think you see any of the positives. To me there are arguably good reasons why there SHOULD be BNP MPs in this Parliament - or more generally, why a more genuinely representative system would be better, even if it meant BNP MPs:
1. Democracy: nearly 600,000 people voted for the BNP - thats 1% of the population. I don't know what % of the electorate it is, but it was nearly 2% of the turnout on Thursday. I find it hard to justify saying that 1 in 50 of those who bothered to vote don't deserve to be represented. UKIP won 3.1% - about 1 in 30 voters. Do you really believe that 1 in 50 of those who voted are vicious racists? Is it not possible that they represent a demographic who have tended to be neglected by all parties in recent years, and who deserve to be represented? 12 BNP MPs would not reshape Immigration policy for the next decade - they might however, force the major parties to look harder at problems they'd prefer to sweep under the carpet.
I guess I am forced to say now (though I don't really feel why I should have to - it should be possible to discuss political theory without fearing accusations of prejudice...) that I hold no brief for the BNP: I think many of their policies are deeply distasteful, and some just foolish. But neither am I willing to let "society", far less the media or politicians, define what political opinions are acceptable to hold, speak and vote for and acheive representation. J.S. Mills, when writing on Freedom of Speech in "On Liberty" wrote that all speech must be protected, even that considered outrageous and disgraceful, because one ages disgrace is frequently seen as a vital truth later - and this is a vital part of new ideas coming into society. 100 years ago many saw Women's Suffrage as a dangerous, subversive idea. 210 years ago opposition to the Slave Trade was denounced as religious fanaticism and economic madness. Today I know that there are a significant number of people in the UK who believe that my most dearly held beliefs are irrational, evil, and despicable, and have no place in a modern democracy. Some of them have regular columns in national broadsheets...
Which brings me to my second point: The centralizing, moderating effect of FPTP has major negative as well as positive effects upon our "body politic".
FPTP tends to drive all major parties towards the centre. Now you may think this is a good thing, excluding extremists and promoting co-operation. But the negative side is that also tends to exclude any genuinely new or innovative ideas, and create a sort of lowest-common-denominator politics of fear. Any real innovation by any party, any stepping outside the bounds, almost never reaches beyond the "think-tanks" to real policy commitment - because each side is afraid the other will portray them as crazy right-wing/left wing extremist ideologues. Frankly, its hard to see the last several elections in Britain as more than 2 parties competing to see who could scare the middle class of the other side more, while scaring them the least themselves. This does not promote intelligent or thoughtful government...
A more representative system would allow politicians and parties to genuinely express their beliefs, and the public to vote accordingly. The presence of realistic opponents for office with more "extreme" views on certain subjects might force others to actually provide principled objections to those views, rather than simply playing the "evil extremist" card.
I guess part of what has motivated me is that since coming to the USA I've realised just how narrow is the range of British politics. The metaphor of a straight Right/left line is perhaps not really the most useful any more in modern politics, but I'll use if for convenience: If the Political spectrum was a line 100 yards long, the 3 major parties in Britain would all be clustered within 10 - 15 yards of the centre point in each direction. And they would all denounce anyone outside that arbitary boundary as a foolish or dangerous extremist. Any ideas, from the left or right, outside that narrow range, are simply considered beyond the pale. In contrast, in the US the "acceptable" portion of political opinion would be strung out over 75 yards of the line, with only the very farthest reaches considered as those who have no legitimate voice. The US House of Representatives includes a pure libertarian and a old-fashioned socialist - and its the richer for it. Of course, in the US part of the reason for this is the Federal system, which dilutes the centralising effect of FPTP somewhat - tho' it is still very apparent in Presidential elections.
A couple of years back i read an absolutely fascinating book by James Skillen of the Center for Public Justice - a definitely non-typical US Conservative Christian think-tank. Its called "Recharging the American Experiment", but its general principles are applicable to any democracy. He recommended that the US House of Representatives (the lower House) switch to PR, essentailly for the reasons I've outlined. Of course, the House of Commons does not directly equate to the lower house of Congress, but i think much of the reasoning holds. In a system where the lower house overwhelming holds the balance of power, I'm not sure I would want pure PR. But something like the AV+ system, where a proportion of seats were awarded by party vote, seems like a good idea to me.
My apologies for, as usual, writing far too much...
When looking at the question of PR or not PR, we need to ask what we want out of an electoral system. Do we want a 'national assembly' or a Parliament which can support a stable Government? Pure PR renders the latter unlikely, although PR with a high threshold and a retention of the constituency link makes it less likely. London cannot be taken as an exemplar for the UK, as it's a form of presidential politics. The executive and legislative arms of Government are separate. In Wales, the system was in fact designed to give a dominant party (Labour) an slender majority, in a situation where First Past the Post would have led to eternal one-party rule, and so would never have been approved in a referendum. Ditto Scotland.
Most countries which have PR also have multi-party politics, and had that before PR was brought in; for example Denmark. In such cases, PR was the logical outcome of a pre-existing situation. The difference between this and the British situation is that while in Scotland and Wales multi-party systems exist, in England the situation is two opposing parties with the Liberal sat in the middle, absorbing large quantities of protest votes, from where exactly we can't know. Clearly, in a three-party set up, the party in the middle would, under PR, have a great deal more power than the other parties, even if it were the smallest, as neither side could form a Government without them. The prospect would be that of the Free Democrats in Germany, who were a part of every Government until 1998, when the rise of the Greens led to true four-party politics (in reality two-party politics, but with blocs rather than parties).
In other words, PR under the current situation would favour the Liberals, but just about no-one else.