Welcome to my blog. I am a former local journalist who now works in PR and a Conservative and community activist in Woking and Horsell. This blog will keep updated on local issues as well as my interests and quirky news stories.
During the last few days, the Lib Dems have been playing a clever PR game by trying to link electoral reform – by which they mean proportional representation’s introduction as our voting system – with “new”, post-expenses, politics.
I’m not altogether against electoral reform. I think that the boundaries currently used for our first-past-the-post system are unfair and give Labour a huge advantage by handing them a built-in majority of about 90 seats, according to Electoral Calculus. I want to see those boundaries re-drawn and the number of seats re-calculated to make for a fairer local representative system – and that includes fairer to the Lib Dems as well.
You routinely hear commentators in the press and the BBC say that the FPTP system discriminates against the third party, as if they had done some research on it and drawn a scientific conclusion. That’s rubbish. All that conclusion is based upon is the realities and record of the system – there is no reason why the Liberal Democrats should have any more difficulty in winning constituencies than anyone else.
The reason it is biased against them is quite simple – they pretend to be a centre-right alternative to the Conservatives in London and the South and a hard-left alternative to old Labour in the north and Scotland. Their manifesto for 2010 cleverly leaves either possibility open. But it does mean that such a dual-personality party cannot hold a “core” vote sufficient for it to win constituencies in sufficient numbers to hold power in FPTP. If the Lib Dems decided what they wanted to be – rather than just pitching for whatever they think they can get away with – their vote in some areas would harden and in others soften. It’s their choice to be at a disadvantage in the system.
But they’re quite happy to overlook that. What they want to do is hold the country to ransom by demanding a referendum on proportional representation in return for offering stability in the event of no party receiving a majority. PR, of course, would not only allow them to hold the balance of power, it would help put pay to their biggest weakness – the idea that a vote for the Lib Dems is a “wasted vote”. It would also allow them to pretend to be “savage cutters” in the south and “tax the richers” in the north while scooping the maximum value from each deluded voter.
It’s not a bad strategy for them – but it should be ringing alarm bells with every single previous Conservative supporter who’s thinking of giving Clegg a chance because he came over well on telly. If you give him the chance he wants, he’ll go into coalition with Brown (or more likely Miliband). They’ll embark on a series of tax hikes and spending cuts not witnessed before in the post-war era. That’s not necessarily to their discredit because any government will have to do the same.
But if you decide after four years that you don’t like them, if Clegg turns out to be not quite what you thought (on Europe, immigration and law and order) and you think in 2014/5 that you’re going to give the Conservatives a chance after all – well, you won’t be able to. Because Lib/Lab will have changed the way things are done and neither the Conservative Party nor Labour would ever be able to govern on their own again. And guess who the beneficiaries of this gerrymandering will be? That’s right, the Lib Dems.
They may call themselves Liberal Democrats, but that doesn’t seem very liberal or democratic to me.
Recent polls show that the Lib-Dems could get the most votes and still come in third in seats, while Labour could poll third in votes and win the most seats.
How can anyone still pretend that this is a fair, or even tolerable voting system?
It’s not. Which is why the boundaries need to be reviewed to ensure that Labour’s in-built majority is stopped. And as for the Lib Dems, proportional representation is merely a tool for them so that they can carry on being a split-personality party and mop up votes as the hard-left in the north and centre-right in the south. I think it’s “intolerable” that any party ought to be able to do that.
But then you are just stuck in the old two sided system – left or right with no middle ground or variation. The Labservatives don’t appreciate other parties breaking up their cosy two party system.
Why is it that the Lib Dems have intrinsically less chance of winning a constituency than anyone else? They don’t – there is no “in-built” majority into the FPTP system. You’ve won plenty of constituencies in the past. The reason you have to work harder than everyone else is simply your choice of being all things to all people. If you positioned yourself clearly as the party of the left nationally you would find it easier to win more seats in the north (as I think you will). The difficulty only arises because in the south you have to convince people you are something else altogether, which is why you usually concentrate on a) the personalities and background of the candidates and b) local issues.
Sometimes it works (Guildford 2001) and sometimes it doesn’t (SW Surrey 2005) – I’m not saying it’s not a good tactic for you but please don’t blame the mythical “old” system (incidentally, half of your party existed long before the Great Reform Act that set the modern FPTP system in stone). Both Labour and the Conservatives suffer regional “disadvantage” identical to the Lib Dems – the Conservatives in the north/Scotland because we are perceived as the party of the rural rich and the Labour Party in the South because it is thought of as a force of urban socialism. Both parties have to battle against this in these areas but have strong core votes to help them in FPTP. The Lib Dems face this problem everywhere except the South West because you refuse to position yourselves clearly on this continuum and pretend to be the party for and against both, leaving you with a largely remnant and protest core vote.
PR is just a way to codify the advantages of doing that and I feel that’s wrong – it was set up assuming that political parties would be clear about their ticket and you can’t seek to change it just because you don’t like the idea of that, admittedly “old”, concept.
The reason you and the Conservatives dont like PR Simon is because there is a strong likelihood that it would consign your party to the political wilderness for a generation and give the lesser parties a voice and the right to be heard.
The two so called main parties have had their day and it is now time for real democracy to have a chance. Listen to the electorate. Its what they want. To ignore it and just protest to protect your own parties ideologies is vanity and arrogance.
Well, I’ve stated the reason I don’t like the idea of PR above. I’m not sure why you’re in a position to tell me that I actually think something else when I’ve already said what I think.
I’m listening to the electorate. They don’t want Gordon. And they don’t think a hung parliament is going to deliver strong government either. And I can’t see any evidence that they want PR.
The Lib Dems want weak governments in perpetuity that they can prop up on their terms. That’s not democracy, it’s institutionalised political extortion and I don’t see how it’s in the interests of Britain. If you developed a core vote, you’d have the same chance as anyone else to win under FPTP. And if Clegg was PM under FPTP, I’d accept that as the view of the electorate. Changing the rules to get in is a tawdry admission that you’re not popular enough to win any other way.
And of course I’m trying to protect my party’s ideology as an option for voters – that’s one of the things politics (and democracy, actually) is about! If you think it’s “vanity and arrogance”, how is it different to you protecting your party’s interest through promoting PR?