What if Labour thinks it may lose? (PR vs 'first past the post')

Member Name: mikeb

Product:	PR vs 'first past the post'
Date:	27/01/01 (45 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Maybe only the Lib Dem voters would be really pleased as a result of PR.

Disadvantages: First past the post appears undemocratic and unfair to the smaller parties

The debate about the reletive merits of first past the post (FPTP) and proportional representation (PR) has been going on in Britain for some time now but may be reaching the point when the matter is put to rest, at least in the short term.

The main party that has campaigned for PR are the Liberal Democrats, though it could be argued that this enthusiasm is mainly one of self interest, being the only realistic way of achieving any real political power in the forseeable future. Their principal objection to FPTP is that this system does not reward parties with a fair number of parliamentary seats for the percentage of overall votes they receive. A typical example of this perceived unfairness is that the Liberal Democrats were in second place in many constituencies at the last general election, in both Labour and Conservative won seats. This inevitably means the Liberals receive a high percentage of the vote but win no seats in parliament for them.

Although this sounds a pretty convincing argument to change to some form of PR, it is countered by the fact that many of the electorate vote tactically and because Labour and the Tories are the two main parties a tactical vote is likely to favour the Lib Dems, to try to prevent one or the other winning. Another thing that the Lib Dems previous leader Paddy Ashdown said before the last election is also an insight into the way a point of opinion can be put forward to either strengthen or weaken the case for change. Mr Ashdown said that if the result of the election was a hung parliament with no clear majority for any one party, it would mean that it was the will of the British people that this situation had occurred and therefore everbody should accept it. This would mean the Lib Dems would hold the balance of power and effectively be able to use this to push policies they agreed with and block those that they didn’t, despite the fact that they only held a fraction of the seats of the main two parties.
In my opinion this is a very dubious way of interpreting the facts and a fairer assessment is that a hung parliament means the majority of British voters would not get what they wished, Labour and Conservative, and the Lib Dems would be exploiting the situation for their own political ends.

Having disputed above that the percentage of votes gained by each party truly reflects their actual popularity, it is still fair to say that the current system does appear to result in an unfair representation of seats for each party. The smaller but reletively popular parties like the Greens can get a large amount of votes with absolutely no seats. For this reason alone I think there is a case for change and my personal favourite is a PR system based on the single transferrable vote (STV) which involves the electorate casting their votes in order of preference, this results in a proportion of the overall parliamentary seats being awarded according to the overall wishes of the voters. There are several versions of the STV and these would each have to be evaluated if the decision were taken to change to PR. I put STV into a search engine box and 831 results were returned so there is plenty of information about the different options available already in the public domain.

So were does this leave Britain and the prospect of electoral change?

Of the main two parties Conservatives members are certainly more sceptical about PR than Labour, though there are supporters of it in both parties. The Tories as party policy do not agree with PR and this is not likely to change in the future as they would see it as handing power to a Labour/Lib Dem coalition, as these parties have a combined overall majority of votes between them. As long as Labour has got a masive parliamentary majority, it is also highly unlikely they would consider a change to PR because they would effectively be handing over some of their power to the Liberal Democrats for no reason.

W
hat will be interesting, and why I say at the start that this matter may be resolved soon, is if Labour look like going into an election unsure about maintaining their overall majority or even losing to the Conservatives. In such an eventuality Labour may decide to go for PR as a way of keeping the Conservatives out of power, choosing a long term arrangement with the Lib Dems instead. Although this probably wouldn’t be popular with some members, it is true to say that Labour and Lib Dem policies are closer than Tory and Lib Dem so they may view a coalition as the lesser of two evils.

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