After all the sleaze that has been reported in recent years, the UK parliamentary system has come under a lot of scrutiny. A set of changes has been proposed to the way in which MPs operate, and in a future post I will put my opinion forward. However, today I want to propose a way to change the way that our MPs are elected and, more importantly, how policies carried out by the government reflect more fully the wishes of the electorate.
Our current system is risible, and it is quite amazing how we have managed to survive under it for so long. It is a testament to the character of our population that we can accept rule by what is almost always a government chosen by a minority of the population. It is rare to have a government formed that has more than 40% of the vote. In our system, even this minority of votes can lead to a huge majority in the House of Commons because of the way that consituency boundaries are defined.
Very simply, what happens at the moment can be described in three steps:
- The population vote in 646 areas of the country, called constituencies. Any political party can enter one candidate in each constituency. Some constituencies might be lucky enough to have one or more independent candidates as well, who are not affiliated to any political party.
- The candidate who gets the most votes in their constituency wins the “seat” and becomes the MP for that constituency.
- The political party that ends up with the most seats forms the government.
This system would be fine, were it not for several drawbacks:
- Because of the way in which constituencies are defined, most of them have substantial majorities of voters who will always vote for a particular party. This leads to the situation whereby many votes are wasted. For example, if you need 10,000 votes to win a seat, but 18,000 people vote for you, that excess 8,000 votes has no effect on the overall result.
- As already mentioned, the system leads to governments who are not the first choice of a majority of the population.
- The assumption is that you vote for a party because you think it has the best policies. This is a major simplification of life. Most people think that the broad policy areas are better handled by different parties. For example, Labour is traditionally seen as “better” for the health service, whereas the Conservatives are “better” for defence. Therefore, the neutral voter has to decide for themselves which single area of policy is most important to them and vote accordingly. They also need to take account of other declared policies of the parties to make sure nothing too awful will happen if they vote for a particular party.
In simpler times, the lines between parties were more distinct, but in our sophisticated world the lines are increasingly blurred. The only thing about the system that is generally perceived as a good thing is the direct connection that the voters have with their constituency MP. This has often been quoted as a reason for not switching to any form of proportional representation that breaks this connection. My proposal for voting reform retains this connection, yet manages to take account of how many people actually vote for any given party. It is essentially a variant of the mixed-member system, but I have a twist on it that removes the dilemma that many people feel about voting outside their “natural” affiliation. At the same time, it takes away the power of political parties and gives power back to the electorate. Let’s see how it works.
- The population vote in 323 areas of the country, called constituencies. Any political party can enter one candidate in each constituency. Some constituencies might be lucky enough to have one or more independent candidates as well, who are not affiliated to any political party.
- You have two votes: one for your chosen candidate and one for your choice of party. This enables you to vote a party in, but also enables you to punish a poor MP.
- In each of the major policy areas, you vote for the policy of the party that you think has the best approach. These policy areas would of course be defined, but I would guess that the list of health, education, defence, finance, environment, home affairs and foreign affairs would be a good set to use as an example. You might therefore tick Labour for health, Liberal Democrat for environment, and Conservative for defence. The point is, you no longer have to sacrifice your own principles in any policy area.
- The candidate who gets the most votes in their constituency wins the “seat” and becomes one of the MPs for that constituency.
- All votes are counted to determine the proportion of the vote gained by each political party.
- The second MP in each constituency is allocated so that the overall proportion of MPs for each party reflects the proportion of the vote for that party. Wherever possible, the candidate that finished second in each constituency will be allocated to make up the proportion. In some cases, it might not be possible for the runner-up in a constituency to be the second MP because it would take their party over their proportion of MPs.
Now comes the clever part. The prime minister (PM) is the leader of the party with the most MPs, which will automatically now be the party with the most votes as well. However, the PM no longer has much choice over his cabinet. The cabinet members will be taken from the party who won the policy vote. In our example, the Health secretary would be from Labour, the Environment secretary from the Liberal Democrats, and the Foreign secretary from the Conservatives. The government would be bound to carry out the policies voted for by the people, regardless of which party originated the idea. Politicians would be forced to work together and cooperate. Junior positions in the various departments would be the responsibility of the relevant minister, not the PM. They would be free to choose the best available people in parliament, not just in their party. Best of all, the policies being carried out are representative of the desires of the population. They are admittedly “first past the post”, but the policy voting could also be modifed to single transferrable vote after the electorate get used to the more complicated voting system.
I know it is a radical change. I know it sounds complicated. However, I am positive that it is a change that would reenergise democracy in the UK and go some way to eliminating the cynicism and impotency felt by many of the electorate. It has my vote…