So, the seductive whispering of Fair Votes (I want to write Fair Votessssss) is upon the heavy summer air once more. What is Fair Votes? It's the disingenuous phrase developed by those in favour of replacing First Past The Post (FPTP; another stupid name) elections with those conducted under one of the myriad forms of proportional representation (PR). When the proponents of an argument make up a name for it, such that the name carries a sense of goodness in its English meaning, you have to be worried. Cf Human Rights Act. What sort of monster could be against rights for human beings? Or, indeed, votes which are fair? Grrrr [that's me being a monster]. One of the least-remarked upon streaks of intellectual dishonesty, taking place just now, is that the Fair Vote Advocators are taking advantage of anger with MPs to push their historically unpopular little agenda. If we are not careful we will find ourselves in a cultural position whereby opposition to PR is 'felt' - without the requirement to be spelled out, in black and white - to be a subliminal support for the current unethical system of expenses.
Of course there's the irony, which would be delicious were its likely outcome not so horrendous, that the key advocators of PR are among the set of people who are now living in fear that the BNP will gain representation in the Euro Parliament, an outcome which, should it happen, would occur almost entirely as a result of the system of PR being used in those elections, a system which was inflicted on us by those same key advocators of PR. This is an unpleasant irony, though in and of itself is obviously not a reason to be for or against PR.
There are obvious reasons for being against PR, which are extremely well-rehearsed. You either think it important to have an Executive platform which can move implement its manifesto through the Commons, or you do not. End of?
Not quite. There's an inherently absurd driver to the PR proposition that isn't as often discussed. We should look at it for a moment. It is the concept of arithmetical majoritarianism, what I think of as a Pythagorean obsession with instantaneous electoral arithmetic, to which supporters of PR implicitly adhere. Pythagoreans believed that numbers revealed the true nature of things (let me admit, I am not averse to such a belief myself; but the loneliness of the long-distance statistician should not be used as a reason to re-engineer a voting system). PR supporters believe that an Executive lacks moral legitimacy if it was not, at one instant in time, supported by an arithmetic majority of the current population. The legitimacy of an Executive, for the PR Supporter is entailed, it flows from, this instant of numerical superiority.
In other words, FPTP is 'unfair' because the Executive is composed of a party which may have less than 50% support of the electorate on the day of the election. Why, though, is 50% so crucial? Why not 65%? Why not 30% for some issues, and 90% for others? And why just that one instant in time? Can no measure which commands the support of less than 50% of the electorate be good, in any sense? Must every measure which commands - at a single point in time - the support of more than 50% of the electorate, similarly be good? Is it entailed by arithmetic which policy an Executive must implement? At each and every instant of time? The reductio ad absurdum consequence of PR is that every human voter would be constantly hardwired to a polling device, and government policy on everything would fluctuate, constantly, as all possible manifesto pledges move above and beneath this crucial 50% mark. On Thursday we would reintroduce capital punishment, but next Tuesday we would abolish it. This might be amusing, but it's not a government.
In practice, PR supporters do not advocate a temporal-dynamic to their arithmetic fetish; they retain a belief (unexplained) that this majoritarianism should hold only at fixed points in time. But from this adjustment to their fetish flows two greater flaws: a lack of transparency, and a reduction in voter-power.
Transparency. When David Cameron first employed the zeitgeisty phrase The Post-Bureaucratic Age, he was much-sniggered at, not least by those public servants at the BBC who, I predict, are in for a shock when the next Conservative government implements the transparency agenda entailed by an acceptance of the norms of the modern age. Crime maps. Expenses online. All government contracts online. These and other measures will transform the power-dynamic between the governed and their governors: personal accountability, and shame at transgression, will make a much-required re-entry into public life.
Yet if we adopt PR we would decrease, not increase, the amount of transparency in our system. If the AV system, supported by Roy Jenkins and now Alan Johnson is employed, part of it will function as follows. No longer would a voter, a human being - say, Graeme Archer - cast his vote for another human being - say, Simon Nayyar - but he (Graeme) will also cast a vote for a party flag. Quite what moral worth I would be able to impute to that party flag is never explained. I can interrogate Simon Nayyar on the hustings and determine his position on any number of subjects which may determine the level of trust I would place on him to act as my representative (Simon is wonderful, and has my entire trust). I am very fond (unfashionably so, I know, in the world of Conservative Home) of the Oak Tree logo, but it is a poor substitute as the repository of my trust, in comparison to the flesh-and-blood Simon.
Transparency takes a knock post-voting too, when those votes for the inert party logos are translated into top-up parliamentarians, selected by party central commands, and inflicted on the legislature. The outcome is all too predictable: the programme of the government is determined entirely post-election. The Executive's programme is most probably one for which precisely no human being has previously voted.
Voter-potency We require more control over the Executive, where 'we' are the voters and also our elected legislature. I've already pointed out the consequence of a post-PR parliament where the executive's programme may well be selected by precisely no-one during the election. Now suppose that the government programme becomes a disaster and, to coin a phrase, we want the rascals out. The single best argument in favour of FPTP is that it is possible at times for the popular will to be inflicted on the entire House and for the rascal-kicking to occur, quickly and cathartically. Such catharsis would be but a distant memory were the voting system to be changed. A poor election result for the largest party in government would probably force a change of Prime Minister. But his or her lieutenants would still be there in any post-election government, cobbled together from the non-changing cadre of human representatives for that party logo in which your PR-vote is to be entrusted. I love Italy - I started to write this post in Verona. But its post-war government of near-constant, ultimately corrupt Christian Democracy is not one I wish to see emulated in Britain.
We have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to do good as a result of the unfolding crisis. We should not allow the debate about What Is To Be Done to be dominated by the siren voices of Fair Votes. The key to constitutional renewal is the commitment to Executive transparency offered by David Cameron, and the implementation of open primaries, automatic re-selection procedures for all sitting MPs (no more safe seats) and a recall mechanism to allow voters to maintain a connection with their flesh-and-blood representative. PR is at best a distraction, and at worst a definite roadblock, to constitutional renewal.
