By Michael Faulkner - May 09, 2010
This election campaign is turning out to be one of the most
interesting for many years. Until
little more than two weeks ago it was a pretty dull affair promising an outcome
easy to predict – a Tory victory. It still may turn out that way, but it
is by no means certain any longer. All the indications are that we could finish
up with a hung parliament, that is, with no single party winning enough seats
to give them a majority over all others. For the benefit of readers in the U.S.
who may be unfamiliar with the British electoral system, a word of explanation
is needed.
The electoral system in the U.K. is usually referred to as
‘first past the post.’ Each of the
646 Westminster parliamentary constituencies (including Northern Ireland)
returns one member of parliament. For the sake of simplicity, let us assume
that in constituency ‘A’ there are 35,000 eligible voters, only 20.000 of whom
vote. There are three candidates, Labor, Tory and Liberal Democrat. The
distribution of votes may be as follows: Labor 7.000: Tory 6.800: Lib.
Dem:6.200. The Labor candidate is ‘first past the post’, having beaten the
runner-up, and is therefore elected as M.P. for the constituency on the basis
of 35% of the poll – or of 20% of the eligible electorate. The
13.000 - the majority of the
electorate - who voted for other candidates, gain no representation. Their
votes are in a sense wasted.
There are 646 seats in the House of Commons. In the 2005
election Labor won 356 of them, the Tories 193 and the Lib. Dems. 63. The
remaining 45 seats went to smaller parties. This result was based on Labor
winning only 35.3% (9.562.122) of the popular vote – of those who
bothered to vote. This was the lowest share of the popular vote ever obtained
by a party that went on to form a government. Counting those eligible to vote,
Labor’s share worked out at about 22%. The Tories took 32.3% (8.772.598) and
the Lib. Dems. 22.1% (5.981.874) of the popular vote. The turn-out in that
election was 61% - 2% up on the 2001 election which was the lowest since 1945.
On this, Labor finished with a majority of 56 seats over all other parties.
That’s how the first past the post system works. It is a very unfair system.
The most prominent casualties of this system are the Liberal
Democrats. One need only compare their results (22.1% = 63 seats) with those of
the Labor Party (35.3% = 356 seats) to get the picture. Needless to say both
Labor and Tory parties, who have historically been its main beneficiaries, have
always rejected any attempt to reform the electoral system. A proportional
representation (PR) system would dramatically change the outcome of elections
in this country, making it virtually impossible for single party government to
survive. In the 20th century there were two periods of genuine
coalition government, during the first and second world wars. The so-called
‘National Government’ that was in office from 1931 to 1940 was not a real
coalition but a thinly disguised Tory government. Apart from this there has
been only one period of informal coalition, between 1974 and 1979, when the
minority Labor government was sustained in office by the Liberal party. Liberal
fortunes, which waned after the first world war as Labor began to replace them
as the party supported by the working class, have never really revived. This is
in large measure due to an electoral system biased against third parties. For
the first time ever, it looks as though things may be about to change.
As remarked in earlier Letters from the U.K., it has been a
matter of some surprise that the Liberal Democrats have not been able to break
through their opinion poll rating which has been stuck at around 18%. This is
surprising because since the onset of the financial crisis in 2008, of the
mainstream parties the Lib. Dems have adopted a more critical stance towards
the banks. They have also been less tainted with scandal than the Tories and
Labor. They opposed the Iraq war, although it must be said that they have
consistently supported the war in Afghanistan. Also, they have been alone in
arguing against the renewal of the so-called nuclear deterrent, Trident.
The picture changed in mid April. The leaders of the three
main political parties agreed to participate in a series of 90 minute televised
debates inspired by those long established in U.S. presidential campaigns. It
was not proposed that any other parties would be included and, understandably,
the Scottish Nationalists who govern the Edinburgh Assembly and their counterparts
in Wales feel aggrieved. All three debates have now taken place. They were big
media events staged in front of carefully selected audiences, attracting
millions of viewers. Under careful stage management, selected members of the
audience were allowed to put questions to the candidates. The first debate
caused a big stir and overnight all the complacent certainties about an
outright Tory victory were called into question. The reason for this was the
leader of the Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg.
The party leaders, including Clegg offered nothing new.
Anyone hoping for a radical left wing approach to the existing financial and
economic crisis would have hoped in vain. But what these events did was to blow
open the dull duopoly of Brown and Cameron spouting carefully rehearsed
platitudes while scrupulously avoiding confronting the seriousness of the
crisis facing the country. Clegg presented himself as the outsider and cleverly
played on public suspicion and disenchantment with Westminster politicians. The
debates were intended to present the party leaders rather as presidential
candidates, judged according to the degree of charisma generated by each in the
competition. Yes, this is the base level to which politics has been dragged in
this phony age of celebrity. And in this game, Clegg came up trumps. Young and
personable he outshone his rivals and the opinion polls judged him the
‘winner’. Overnight the Liberal Democrats broke through in the polls,
increasing their rating in some cases by more than ten points. In a rough
average of the polls during the week following the first debate they had
displaced Labor from second place behind the Tories. Both Labor and the Tories had
lost support to them. Labor was pushed down to 28% or lower and the Tories were
down to the low 30s, running pretty much neck-and-neck with the Lib. Dems.
The press reaction was highly instructive. In Britain there
are nine national daily newspapers. Of these, four are tabloids and five
broadsheets. Of the mass-circulation tabloids three, The Sun, The Daily Mail
and The Daily Express are right-wing and strongly support the Tories. Only the
Daily Mirror supports Labor. Of the serious broadsheets The Times and The Daily
Telegraph support the Tories. The Independent and The Guardian have been
generally sympathetic to Labor. After the first debate there was a clearly
coordinated, hysterical campaign of character assassination against Clegg. No
stone had been left unturned in the drive to damage him. He was ludicrously
accused of having eight years earlier claimed that Britain was more at fault in
world war two than Nazi Germany; he was accused of financial chicanery, and, as
his wife is Spanish, of favoring foreigners over Brits. The right-wing press
here exposed themselves as the equals of U.S Republican Tea Partygoers in the
arts of scurrilous defamation. Why have they reacted so hysterically?
The Tory-supporting newspapers, particularly Murdoch’s News
International which owns The Sun, The Times, The Sunday Times and the News of
the World reflect the political views of the powerful corporate interests they
serve. They are committed to a Tory victory and suddenly they have been faced
with the real prospect of a hung parliament in which the Liberal Democrats
would hold the balance of power. The Lib. Dems would only agree to support a
minority government led by one of the two larger parties on condition there is
immediate legislation to reform the electoral system. Should this happen it
will mean that the Tories will never again be able to govern alone as they will
never be able to gain an overall majority. The Tories in particular are
terrified of a really democratic electoral system. The prospect of a hung
parliament in which Labor polls fewer votes than the Tories but winds up with
more seats, is real. It is even possible that Labor may fall behind the Lib.
Dems in its percentage of the popular vote and still win the largest number of
seats. Should anything like this happen on May 6th it will be the
most blatant exposure of a grotesquely unfair electoral system. But the Tories
will be unable to condemn it as this is the system they are desperate to
preserve.
The final two debates did not substantially alter the
balance between the parties in the polls. Labor has fallen back and there is no
doubt that Brown is highly unpopular, but the Lib. Dems have held their own.
Should there be a hung parliament following the election it could spark a
political crisis. Is there any point in making predictions?
At the moment (May 1st) a hung parliament still
looks the most likely outcome. Should this happen, it is almost certain that
the Tories will have a larger percentage of the popular vote than Labor. It is
also likely that the Lib. Dems will increase their parliamentary representation
by as many as 35 or 40 seats, giving them over a hundred MPs. The Tories will
have the best claim to form a government but the Lib. Dems will not agree to
back them unless there is a commitment to electoral reform. This the Tories
cannot accept. Interesting times could be ahead.
A Tory majority government, still a possibility, would be
the worst possible outcome as economically we would immediately enter the
terrain of slashing and burning of public services and a double-dip recession.
But the alternative will also be frightening as neither the Lib. Dems nor Labor
has accepted a really radical Keynesian approach to the crisis. So whatever
happens, the prospects are bleak. The storm clouds now breaking over Greece are
almost certainly coming this way. What next? Spain, Portugal, Italy, Ireland.
The U.K.? The real question is whether the millions who will be expected to pay
the bill for the financial and economic crisis will succumb or mobilize for
resistance?