No. Politics is intrinsically a pragmatic business, and political parties are intrinsically coalitions involving compromise. Sometimes I vote for things I don't like but you do, so that another time you will vote for things I like but you don't. That's team play. That's how parties are more than just a bunch of individuals of vaguely similar outlooks. Whipping is absolutely essential to getting things done.
But there are different kinds of things one disagrees with. Sometimes one thinks that the policy is right, but the priorities with which they are expressed are all wrong - as in 2001. Sometimes one thinks that the policy is right, but being presented wrongly. Sometimes one thinks the policy is wrong, but is an area of possible compromise. But sometimes a policy is wrong and unacceptable. Offering to change our electoral system - even offering a referendum on the policy which we could oppose - to secure a coalition with the Liberal Democrats is wrong and unacceptable. Conservative MPs should not accept a whip on this matter. A free vote of the Commons on a referendum - fine. A whipped vote - no.
Why do we vote at all? Representative democracy (as versus parliaments, which need not include votes - but more of that another time) developed in this country on two key bases: in earlier periods to gain consent for taxation so as to limit the risk of uprisings when taxes were imposed; and latterly as a mechanism for exchanging one powerful interest group for another without the need to have civil wars (following several centuries where we regularly tried it the other way). In modern times with the universal franchise that latter function expanded to embrace an alternative to popular revolution as well as to elite civil war.
In the 20th Century, with the development of the welfare state and the universal franchise, some on the Left started to think that a key function of democracy was that it allowed the public to express preferences over how public spending was allocated - was education the priority, or health, or the police, or defence, say? Those on the Left are welcome to employ voting information in this way, but that's not what the true function of voting is.
Connected with that thought is the view, on both Right and Left, of what I call Democrats. By this I mean those that believe that public policy derives its legitimacy from its being an expression of the People's Will. Democrats believe that if most people believe that the health service should be nationalised, then that is what ought to happen; that if most people believe that murderers should be hanged then that is what ought to happen; that if most people believe our troops should be withdrawn from Afghanistan then that is what ought to happen. I reject this. In my view, what ought to happen is what is just, what sustains order, what promotes a liberal society of tolerance and peaceful intercourse, what employs our strength, knowledge, and wealth to protect the innocent and righteous in other countries from oppression, and advances engineering, science, art, true religion, and the other virtues of civilisation. But Democrats do not share my priorities. For the Democrat, if the People's Will is that which is illiberal, chaotic, destructive, superstitious and anarchic, then I have no right to stand against it with my paternalism and my arrogant belief that I know better.
For the Democrat, then, it is terribly important that the system of voting gives a proper reflection of the People's Will. If there is some particular voter preference - e.g. hanging; or not bothering to cut public spending until we're reduced to calling in the IMF - that is consistently in the majority but does not command a majority amongst those elected, then the Democrat considers that a problem. I consider it irrelevant unless that preference might motivate people to rise up in revolution or unless they can combine and focus their opinion sufficiently that they can provide a coherent and large segment of the elite to support their view.
The upshot of all of this is that I entirely reject the premises of those seeking proportional representation. It is in no sense whatever a problem that the Liberal Democrats get a much smaller proportion of seats than votes or that the BNP and UKIP get no seats at all.
I am very doubtful that, once one starts down the path of accepting referendums on changing the voting system, the first change one makes will be the end of the matter. It will be very difficult to avoid becoming sucked into proportional representation systems. But let us just focus on the (non-proportional) Alternative Vote system (AV) on offer now. To remind you, under AV, as the Electoral Reform Society explains it
The same constituency boundaries are used [as under first-past-the-post] and voters would elect one person to represent them in parliament, just as we do now. However, rather than marking an 'X' against their preferred candidate, each voter would rank their candidates in an order of preference, putting '1' next to their favourite, a '2' by their second choice and so on. If a candidate receives a majority of first place votes, he or she would be elected just as under the present system. However if no single candidate gets more than 50% of the vote, the second choices for the candidate at the bottom are redistributed. The process is repeated until one candidate gets an absolute majority. The alternative vote is not actually a proportional system, but a majoritarian system. It looks most similar to the current electoral system.
In contrast, under our current voting system - first-past-the-post (FPTP) - we indicate a preference for one candidate and the candidate with the most votes wins. Those that favour AV over FPTP would note that every MP would be elected by majority and everyone would be able to express their first preference without fear of their vote being wasted.
But why would a majority be desirable? Whence comes the idea that getting 55% support versus three others each with 15% is better or in some way "more legitimate" than getting 40% support versus three others each with 20%? Such majoritarian fetishism has no objective or moral meaning, especially given that the "majority" in question would be an illusion, created by transfering votes from others. It would also undermine one of the key functions of democracy. It is a matter of very little interest if 60 groups of 1% of the population each disagree with the current government in a different way, even if their fifth preference for what should be done happens to coincide. It is of great interest if 40% of the population oppose the government in some specific way with some specific alternative programme and only 30% support the government and its programme, because in principle if that 40% decided to resort to arms to pursue their view, denied a constitutional outlet for it, then there would be the chance that they would prevail. The AV concept, since it can produce outcomes that are the motivating preference of relatively few people and can ignore the coherent united view of very large groups, undermines that key purpose of the whole game.
Obviously there are many other things going on here- constituency links, the power of party lists, and so on. But AV can be done with as close a constituency link as FPTP, and I believe that this is the key point: FPTP allows the largest coherent group to rule if it is large enough, even if it does not command a majority of voters. The very lack of majoritarian necessity is a key strength. Another way to put this same point is that FPTP tends to produce outcomes focused around what people want, not what they oppose. AV produces outcomes in which people vote against things, ordering their preferences such that what they dislike most comes last. But what is disliked is irrelevant - all that counts is whether enough of you agree on some specific thing you think better.
That also, of course, means that under FPTP we can produce stable, powerful and focused governments that do not need to command a majority of support. They just need to command a large enough mass of coherently motivated support over a wide enough area of the country. The majoritarian fetish is by-passed; the false and destructive concept that democracy is only legitimate when it constitutes rule by the Will of the Majority is rejected.
But are there any other sorts of consideration here? Let's consider a few
- The Conservatives might do better under AV. Perhaps so. But I don't believe in devising the constitution for partisan gain.
- We need a stable coalition to deal with the deficit, and the economy is the priority. The economy is not the priority over the constitution. It is perfectly plausible that a highly authoritarian regime would result in a richer country, for example. As a less extreme case, would we have favoured entering the euro and the Single European State if we had believed it would make us richer? In the Single European State we would have a reasonably liberal, reasonably orderly state; it just wouldn't have as good a constitution as I hope we can re-create in the UK. Now it is plausible that the economic and constitutional questions are inter-connected here. If we are reduced to calling in the IMF again, for the third time in little more than 40 years, the long-term viability of the UK as a constitutional entity will certainly come into question. But there will be little point in maintaining the UK as a separate constitutional entity if the price of doing that is destroying all the ways in which it is constitutionally superior to the likely alternatives.
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Change is inevitable - best to have it on our own terms. If this were true, it would be the strongest argument. Conservatives should rarely be reactionary ultras, cursing the inevitable, but should instead draw our example from Peel in embracing and moulding change in ways we can support and improve. But change in the voting system is not inevitable. Clegg cannot get PR out of Brown - the Labour MPs won't vote for it. Perhaps he could try forming some "rainbow coalition" over other matters. It's pretty implausible, but let's entertain the thought. How much should we really fear that if there is no fundamental constitutional change involved? To be sure, we would not get the early spending cuts we think essential. But such a rainbow coalition could last no more than a few months and very little legislation could be passed, and its collapse would augur well for our prospects in the General Election that would inevitably follow - say, October or November this year. Once we had won our majority, we could announce our immediate spending cuts and provide markets with the signals required about our intentions.
We don't need to be so desperate. Clegg is bluffing - he can't get a deal out of Labour on PR and won't carry his party without that. And even if he manages to do some kind of general deal with Labour, it can't last long. Furthermore, if AV can be introduced without a referendum on the basis of a passing majority, then it can be replaced with FPTP without a referendum on the basis of a passing majority next time we're in - and we should have no qualms about doing so.
We should not surrender fundamental constitutional principles under intimidation from Clegg and Brown. I haven't been involved in politics these past 25 years, striving above all else to protect the constitutional concepts I believed in and to recover, resuscitate, or reform the classical British constitution, only for it to be the Conservative Party that gives things away. That was precisely our error in the 1990s - from savaging the Right to Silence and Presumption of Innocence to introducing retrospective law to entertaining joining the euro to failing to defend the Lords or reform it on our own terms when we had the chance. The reason so many Conservatives became so obsessed with constitutional niceties (such as Europe) in the 1990s was that the Conservative Party became such an unreliable defender of them. We cannot, we must not, start off in government again by attacking that which we exist to defend.
No. We should not trade bad constitutional changes for short-term partisan advantage. No alternative vote. No referendum on the alternative vote. No whipping of Conservative MPs on any vote on such a referendum in the Commons.
