Last week's decision by Labour's Plant Commission to
recommend the "supplementary vote" electoral system for the House of
Commons marks a disastrous failure of nerve.
The supplementary vote, which retains single-member
constituencies but allows voters an optional second-preference vote which comes
into play only if no candidate takes 50 per cent of first preferences, is a
mechanism for easing tactical voting – and nothing else. It is no more a system
of proportional representation than the first-past-the-post status quo.
As such, it is open to the same objections as the status
quo. A supplementary vote system would still deliver thumping parliamentary
majorities to parties commanding a minority of votes in the country as a
whole. Parliament would still systematically under-represent those who don't
vote for the two biggest parties, as well as Labour voters in the south and
Tory voters in the north.
The upshot is that the supplementary vote will not convince
anyone who thinks that first past the post is unfair – which is the only worry
about the electoral system that is at all common among voters.
The Plant decision does nothing to address the widespread
(and justifiable) outrage that the Tories have formed the government for more
than a decade without once being supported by more than 45 per cent of voters
in a general election; It does nothing either about the equally widespread
sense that there is something deeply wrong when the Liberal Democrats get a
handful of MPs in return for one-fifth of the vote or the Greens are denied
representation in the European Parliament after winning more than 2 million
votes.
Next to all this, any worries that Labour might have about the
alleged "dangers of coalition politics" under a proportional
representation system – as if Labour were not itself a coalition – are
piffling.
To make matters worse, the supplementary vote is even
inferior to the status quo in one crucial respect. If voters' second preferences
counted in elections, even more MPs would be elected as "lesser
evils" than is now the case. It is difficult to think of a more effective
way of making politics even more bland and unpopular.
Far from taking a "step in the right direction",
the Plant Commission has come up with an old-style Labour fudge that has more
to do with MPs wanting to keep their snouts in the Westminster trough than with
any consideration of principle. After two years of chewing the cud, it should
have done better: one can only hope that the choice of the supplementary vote
was not the result of the Labour leadership leaning on the commission, as some
insiders have alleged.
When it meets later this month, Labour's National Executive
Committee should unceremoniously throw out the commission's recommendation and
sign up for the additional member system of proportional representation.
If Labour does not have the courage to embrace proportional
representation, its claims to offer a programme of renewing British democracy
will be incredible, however much it bangs on about a Bill of Rights and
abolishing the House of Lords.
