Why Vote Liberal Democrat 2015 by Browne Jeremy;

Author:Browne, Jeremy; [Jeremy Browne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 1811414
Publisher: Biteback Publishing
Published: 2014-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

The essential precondition for reinventing our politics is to understand that the process is necessary. Most people would be anxious to discover that the core assumptions on which they built their lives and careers no longer held true – and the same is true for most politicians. When such a conclusion can no longer be denied, the temptation is to search for superficial responses which give the impression of change while actually preserving the status quo. That will be the approach of many politicians in 2015.

This temptation will be strongest for those politicians who have most to lose from change. Labour and the Conservatives believe they have a right to govern alone. They have clung to this view even as they have each seen their support ebb away to around a third of those who bother to vote. Understandably, they hark after the certainties of the old class-based order where the two parties took it in turn to govern.

Although there is no silver bullet that will address our political malaise, a useful place to start is by looking at the electoral system which sustains our increasingly dated two-party political infrastructure.

There is no perfect electoral system. One benefit of the existing system is the link between the individual MP and his or her constituency. It personalises what can otherwise be an impersonal relationship between the individual and the state, and it improves accountability. Nearly every other electoral system, to varying degrees, would diminish this link.

So it is more helpful to reflect on what an election – and an electoral system – is designed to achieve. British general elections allow people to choose both a government (indirectly) and their own Member of Parliament (directly). Supporters of the status quo – including both Labour and the Conservatives – argue that the existing system provides strong one-party government. The problem with their argument is two-fold. One: it is no longer true. Two: the appetite for one party to provide its version of strong government has waned.

What we are saddled with, as a result, is an electoral system which horribly disfigures the will of the electorate. In an era of greater consumer choice it is an anachronism. The votes of significant sections of the population – UKIP supporters, for example – are effectively disregarded. The business-as-usual politicians assume that just because those views are not represented in the House of Commons they do not exist. But they do, and those who hold them rightly resent being ignored. What is more, the system requires even the two old class-based parties to mask their own internal divisions in order to hold their own uneasy coalitions together. Tony Blair shares almost no beliefs with members of the Labour left while many politicians on the Conservative right have more in common with UKIP than they do with their own leader.

To carry on as if the existing arrangement accurately reflects popular opinion is to treat the electorate with contempt.

When the referendum on the Alternative Vote was lost in 2011, most

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