There is an air of unreality about the Labour
Party's deliberations on electoral reform, which looks set to be the most
controversial policy topic at the party's annual conference in Brighton next
week.
Everyone knows that Labour's prime task is to win
the next election under the existing first-past-the-post system; and everyone
knows that it is unlikely that supporters of change will convince conference to
back anything more specific, at least for the House of Commons, than keeping
all options open, except for ruling out the multi-member constituency, single
transferable vote system favoured by the Liberal Democrats.
That, in a nutshell, is the position taken in July
by the interim report of the Labour Party's commission on electoral reform
chaired by Raymond Plant, and it is the only one that will preserve party
unity. This does not mean, however, that Labour Party members need not bother
to work out what they think. Keeping options open is a temporary measure: soon
after the election, however Britain votes, Labour will be forced to make up its
mind.
Plant laid down a series of criteria for judging
electoral systems, the most important of which were whether a system would
yield parliaments in which the number of seats held by a party is proportional
to the votes cast for it, whether a system would maintain a close link between
MPs and their constituents, and whether a system would produce stable and
effective governments.
In the past couple of months, three options have
emerged with significant support: no change, the Alternative Vote, and the
Additional Member System. On balance, the system that satisfies most of
Plant's criteria is AMS, in which MPs elected in single-member constituencies
are topped up from regional lists. Crucially, neither no change nor AV, in
which single-member constituencies are maintained but voters list their
preferences among candidates, adequately satisfy the criterion of
proportionality.
Critics of AMS argue that it would hand
disproportionate influence to centre or fringe parties, would create two
classes of MP and would allow party machines too much influence in determining
candidates for the regional top-up seats.
The last of these objections is the least serious: a
democratic regional party selection process would ensure that parly members and
not party bureaucrats would determine the party list. The "two classes of
MP" argument is stronger, though hardly decisive: it would be easy enough
to organise a system whereby regional list MPs were allocated constituency-type
duties in areas of their region where no single-member constituency MP had been
elected.
The most important argument against AMS is that it
gives Centre or fringe parties too much influence, inevitably yielding
coalition governments which emerge after secret wheeling and dealing behind
closed doors in the immediate aftermath of an election. Against this, it is
rightly said that political parties are themselves coalitions, that no system,
even FPTP, rules out coalition government, and that AMS would not rule out
creation of a single party forming a government if it really had majority
support among the electorate.
Nevertheless,
the issue of disproportionate centre or fringe party influence - which also applies
to AV - cannot be ducked. The choice in the end is between a system in which
the centre or the political fringe might have greater influence than their
support warrants and one which has given the Tories 12 years of massive
parliamentary majorities on a minority vote. On balance, the former has to be
the lesser evil.
