Mapping the West European Left by Perry Anderson & Patrick Camiller

Author:Perry Anderson & Patrick Camiller [Anderson, Perry & Camiller, Patrick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: political science, General, Political Ideologies
ISBN: 9780860912132
Google: VeQEAQAAIAAJ
Publisher: Verso
Published: 1994-11-15T00:34:42.687551+00:00

The Consequences of Reform

Whether Labour itself becomes converted to electoral reform, or whether it is forced into that position as a condition of acquiring Liberal backing within a future hung parliament, its endorsement will clearly be required if the British electoral system is ever to be changed in the foreseeable future. The Conservatives, unsurprisingly, are resolutely opposed to reform, and the Liberal Democrats remain too weak to effect a change on their own.

The Plant Report does favour reform, albeit guardedly. Its reluctance to move away from the use of single-member constituencies effectively rules out the adoption of either STV or any one of a variety of straight party-list types of proportional representation, excluding even those which allow voters to express alternative candidate preferences within the list. The Report also clearly reflects a desire to ensure stability and political authority within the House of Commons, and a concern at the prospect that a more proportional system might enable too many new parties to enter it – a feeling no doubt shared even by more committed reformers within the Labour Party. Admitting that new parties may well be squeezed out by the present British system, the document nevertheless also invokes the argument that these ‘are not necessary when [the established] parties are doing their job well’ (p. 63) – and adds: ‘it is at least arguable that if a new entrant party does represent a significant range of public opinion, then under plurality systems parties have an incentive to incorporate those aspirations and policies in its [ sic ] own raft of values and policies’ (p. 75). The logic of such a view is that small parties, rather than seeking a mandate of their own, can best serve democracy by flagging issues to be taken up by their bigger and more established opponents – in much the same way that the role of small firms in the marketplace should be to indicate gaps in the product ranges of the larger conglomerates. Still, whatever the limitation of current party thinking, Labour support for some form of fairer voting procedure would clearly increase the likelihood of electoral reform in the United Kingdom, and to the extent that more proportional outcomes are achieved, this might in turn transform the structure of party competition.

As yet, of course, all of this remains uncertain. The final Plant Report, which was submitted to Labour’s annual conference in September 1993, endorsed the adoption of PR for elections to a new upper house, as well as for elections to devolved assemblies in Scotland and Wales, but nevertheless shied away from proportionalism in the House of Commons. Its majority opted instead for the wholesale maintenance of single-member districts, modified only by a novel counting process which falls somewhere betwen the French double ballot and the Alternative Vote. In this system, voters would indicate both a first and a second preference. Should no candidate achieve an absolute majority (50 per cent + 1) of the first preferences, then all but the two leading

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