I've written a short-piece for the Electoral Reform Society, to coincide with the publication of their Towards One Nation report ... my brief thoughts are below:
It’s
a simple theory – everything was someone else’s fault, we have no
responsibility, and if only the electoral system had stayed the same then all
would have been fine?
Unfortunately,
for those who propound it, this theory is also a million miles from the truth.
For
one thing --- so much has changed in the last decade: technology, communications,
twitter, facebook, banking collapse, crisis of the elites, the decline of deference,
a Westminster Coalition Government, the rise of UKIP in England, and general
institutional decline – right across the media-spectrum from the BBC to the
tabloid press.
The
idea that whatever happens, the Labour Party simply has to stay the same and
try and keep everything as it was at the time we were most electorally successful,
is frankly the worst kind of conservatism.
The
truth is that all healthy, advanced democracies in Europe use voting systems
that deliver seats broadly in proportion to the voters’ wishes.
Regrettably,
the UK lies 16th out of the 25 countries considered full democracies, in the Economist
Intelligence Unit 2012 Democracy Index[1] ---
and all of those above us, have forms of PR for their elections except Canada.
And,
of course, it was a Labour-led Administration and a Labour First Minister that
actually brought in the 2007 electoral changes - not from narrow party interest,
because the changes did initially hurt Labour to begin with.
It is
all too easy to be principled when it’s in your own interests, much more difficult
when it might harm them. Sometimes though, when you do the right thing, the right
things eventually happen.
And
the truth now, in 2014, is that on many measures Labour is in a better position
in Scotland’s councils under STV-PR that we were under FPTP:
- more Leaders than in 2003 (16 now compared to 14 in 2003)
- a say in governing more councils (19 now compared to 17 in 2003)
- Labour Councillors and Labour in Administration/s in places that we had never had them before i.e. Aberdeenshire
The Labour Councillors who were so heavily concentrated in certain parts of the country, are now spread more thinly but more widely across the whole country, doing away with ‘them and us’ areas and helping to create a real ‘One Nation Labour’.
And
while throughout the time of recent Labour Governments at Westminster, Labour
haemorrhaged council seats – losing 58% of all the councils it had held at the
start of the decade – Labour has held, and actually gained councils, in
Scotland under STV-PR.
As
shown in the Electoral Reform Society’s recent report , ‘Towards
One Nation’ [2] if Ed Miliband really wants
to modernise British politics and to make the UK a better democracy, then
seeking to adopt the Scottish Local Government electoral system for English and
Welsh council elections would go a long way to achieving his goals.
By
doing the right thing by the country, he may well do the right thing by the Party;
and finally give Labour some control in Councils in the South of England.
Now,
that really would be ‘One Nation’ –
undivided.
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