ConservativeHome's Platform

Conor Burns: The House needs a new servant

Conor Burns looks at the history of the important role of Speaker, and concludes that it is time for Speaker Martin to retire with dignity.

"May it please your Majesty, I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place but as the House is pleased to direct me, whose servant I am here."
- Speaker William Lenthall to King Charles I in 1642

There have been a vast number of holders of the office of Speaker of the House of Commons. I well remember studying the history of Parliament and the role of the Speaker at University and have been interested in it ever since. George Thomas, later Viscount Tonypandy, and the last Speaker to be rewarded with a Viscountcy on retiring in 1983, speaks in his memoirs of being “Speaker of a tradition that goes back nearly 700 years, a thought that always makes my blood tingle.”

As with any ancient office there are lots of statistics about the occupants of the famous Chair. Six Speakers have been Speaker on two occasions.  Two have been Speaker three times.  Only one, William Lenthall, has managed the feat of being Speaker on four occasions.  Two Speakers have managed, impressive in this very well documented and portraited role, to be completely unknown to history (1383-1392 and 1412-1413). The longest serving Speaker, Arthur Onslow, managed to stay in the role for 33 years between 1728 and 1761. Several Speakers have resigned in order to take up Ministerial office including William Bromley (1713 to become Secretary of State for the ‘Northern Department’), William Grenville (1789 to become Home Secretary) and, in 1801, Henry Addington who resigned the chair to become Prime Minister. John Henry Whitley, the Member for Halixfax, was the last Speaker to decline a Peerage upon giving up office. The widows of the two most recent occupants of the Chair who died in office (Edward Fitzroy 1928-43 and Sir Henry Hylton-Foster 1959-65) were given Peerages – Fitzroy as a Viscountess.

The office of Speaker of the House of Commons is several things all at the same time.  Ancient.  Symbolic. Important.  Relevant.

Conor Burns: It's time for Conservatives to embrace limited electoral reform

Conor Burns fought the Eastleigh constituency in the general elections of 2001 and 2005. He is a former member of Southampton City Council. He is the Senior Honorary Vice President of Conservative Future.

Let me begin with a health warning for any LibDems tempted to read beyond the first paragraph of this article: Don't.  It will raise your blood pressure.  I am a supporter of first-past-the-post. I always have been and almost certainly always will be.  I've yet to see a model of PR that does not in some way sever the constituency link or deliver almost perpetual power to a small party who act as eternal power broker. That power is corrosive to radical thinking and decisive action.

Our whole parliamentary system is based on the adversarial approach.  The cut and thrust of debate and a clash of beliefs which exposes ill thought out and unsound ideas. A system underpinned by the simple dynamic that if you don't like the Government in office you can change it at the next general election.

Yet that is not as easy as it once was.  All Conservatives are rightly thrilled to see our Party above the all important 40% for the first time in far too long.  In any decade until the 1990s that would probably have seen us returned to office.  No longer.

The electoral expert Professor John Curtis of Strathclyde University (who I make no apology for citing frequently) now writes of "electoral bias."

He writes:

"To understand what happened we have to look at a separate feature of the electoral system, electoral bias.  By electoral bias we do not mean that one party acquires a higher or lower share of the seats won than it did of votes cast. Rather by electoral bias we mean that one of the two main parties gets a higher proportion of the seats for any given proportion of the votes than the other main party would get if it were to win the same proportion of the votes. In other words any exaggeration of votes into seats from which both main parties can benefit is not bias but simply the exaggerative quality of the electoral system.  Bias refers only to any exaggeration from which one party is able to benefit but not the other." [i]

BACKGROUND

In 1945 the House of Commons was increased from 615 to 640 members. It was also decided that there should be a routine redistribution in the life of every Parliament.  The Representation of the People Act 1948 provided for a 625 House and almost all constituencies were within 25% of the national quotas. This measure also abolished the remaining double member seats. When the first routine distribution was effected in 1955 (which raised the House to 630) 270 constituencies had their boundaries significantly altered.  This resulted in huge anger among MPs and led to the Redistribution of Seats Act 1958 providing that neutral Boundary Commissioners need only take action every 15 years.

PREVIOUS ANOMALIES

Any 'first past the post' electoral system will, on occasion, throw up an 'unfair' result.  This is accepted by believers in this system because it outweighs the flaws in alternative systems. So it was in the 1950s. Labour accepted with relative tranquillity its defeat by the Conservatives in 1951 although it had 0.8% more of the national vote.  Ted Heath did use the fact that the Conservatives had gained more votes in 1974 as the basis for his abortive attempts to negotiate with Jeremy Thorpe.  Although he largely then went quiet on the subject he did not tire, even at the end of his life, of reminding people the he had in fact 'won' two general elections.

However these anomalies were small in comparison to what could now lie ahead.

A DETERIORATING CONSERVATIVE POSITION 1992 - PRESENT

In the last four general elections the voting system has delivered significant bias against the Conservative party. Labour gains an advantage to begin with from its seats in the inner cities and industrial areas with declining populations and lower turnouts. Conservatives suffer from doing well in rural and suburban areas.  It is a stark fact that Labour seats have fewer electors than Conservative ones – in 1997 5200 fewer, in 2001 6400 fewer and in 2005 6200 fewer.  ('J Curtice 'General Election 2001: repeat or revolution?')

It is worth looking in some detail at how the situation has got markedly worse for the Conservative Party over recent elections.

Conor Burns: It's time for fixed-term parliaments

Conor was the Conservative Candidate in Eastleigh at the last two General Elections. He was recently appointed Senior Hon Vice President of Conservative Future.

If, as he obviously wanted to do, Brown had called an election in November where would Nov ’07 have sat in the context of the elections since the Second World War?

There have been fifteen complete parliaments since the war. Only two have run their full term (1959-64 and 1992-97). Three Parliaments were dissolved after 19 months at most because of small or non-existent majorities. All the rest lasted over three and a half years.

In April 1955 Sir Anthony Eden wanted a personal mandate when he took over from Churchill – although the Parliament was already three and a half years old.  In February 1974 Ted Heath was, after three and a half years, forced by the miner’s strike into an appeal to the country. In her two successful re-election campaigns Margaret Thatcher went to the country after just four years in 1983 and in 1987. Wilson did likewise when Labour’s fortunes improved in the polls in 1970.