Two byelections took place in England yesterday, Thursday June 23rd 2021; they were both caused by the two respective Conservative MPs resigning in disgrace – in one case, for a sexual assault conviction; in the other, for watching pornography in the House of Commons.
The first of the two was held in Wakefield, a constituency in Yorkshire, in the North of England. Wakefield is part of the so-called historical “Red Wall,” a group of constituencies in the Midlands, the North of England, and North East Wales which reliably elected Labour MPs until the National Elections of 2019, which saw many of them turning to the Conservatives. “Red Wall” constituencies share some salient crucial socio-economic, political, and demographic features (such as the prominence of a mining and industrial past and an overall prevalence of a pro-Brexit vote in the 2016 EU referendum), although each of these runs the risk of leading to simplified and biased overgeneralisations. Peter Mandelson once infamously declared that Labour did not need worry about these constituencies, because their voters had “nowhere else to go.” 2019 proved him wrong, but possibly – if the Wakefield trajectory turns out to be indicative of a wider trend – only briefly: yesterday, Wakefield elected again a Labour MP with a good margin.
The other byelection took place in Tiverton and Honiton, in the county of Devon in the South West of England. This is a very different part of the country. Tiverton and Honiton had been separate constituencies until 2010, but separately or jointly they had been safely in Conservative hands for over a century. Yesterday, a Liberal Democrat was elected, with a very good margin indeed, and riding the wave of a de facto non-aggression pact with the Labour Party. Tactical voting has always been a feature of UK elections, so many Labour supporters were always going to vote Lib-Dem at this byelection in the hope of ousting the Conservatives – but what happened in Tiverton and Honiton yesterday (and to a lesser extent in Wakefield) went well beyond that. First of all, as pollster Matt Singh wrote on twitter, this was “industrial scale tactical voting;” second of all, whilst the prospects of a proper alliance or even just an electoral coalition among progressive parties in the UK are still miles away, it wouldn’t be totally crazy say that what happened during the campaign leading up to the byelections in both constituencies can be seen as some sort of dress rehearsal.
What will the effects of these two results be? Not Boris Johnson’s resignation, probably. Many would say, however, that this is only a matter of time, and that Johnson is a dead man walking. He recently survived a no-confidence vote, but 41% of his own MPs voted against him. Many traditional Tory voters and Northern backbenchers no longer have faith in him after his handling of the pandemic and the infamous party-gate; whilst many other prominent Tories lament the lack of a genuine, Conservative political line of low-taxation in his government so far. This puts him between a rock and a hard place, with many big names in his party wanting lower taxes and a leaner state whilst the country is in the midst of its strongest economic crisis in decades – with poverty rampant, the cost of living going through the roof, and the strong chance of months of robust industrial dispute in more than one labour sector ahead (more on this below). So yes, at face value the chances of the Conservative Party winning the next election look rather slim at the moment –although Conservative voters in the UK have a very short memory, and many Tory MPs think that ousting Jonson now or very soon, and replacing him with a more presentable PM, might very well revert the tide reasonably swiftly.
Over and above this more straightforward set of considerations, two more issues are worth mentioning. I have already anticipated the first one above. Progressives and keen democrats have been complaining about the UK Party System and its electoral system since, well, both exist. In spite of it, Labour has so far been officially against both a switch to Proportional Representation (or anything resembling it, including at the 2011 referendum) and the idea of an electoral coalition with other progressive forces (such as the Liberal Democrats, the Green Party, and possibly even the Scottish National Party). One wonders whether these byelections might be a turning point in this respect. Many would argue that it has become structurally impossible for Labour to win an election on its own, but one might say that the reverse is also true: there is a clear, and actually pretty robust, structural anti-Tories majority in the country, which needs the right channel to come to the fore – either via a more proportional representative system or a progressive alliance. The former is for the long haul; the latter, however, could in principle happen at the next national election already – either through cooperation and non-belligerent tactics in marginal seats over and above occasional byelections, or even through a declared intention to form an alliance. I am not suggesting this is now likely – but I am saying that this is one of the best possible moments to try this out. What do you think?
Finally, what about Keir Starmer, the leader of the Labour Party? This might seem an odd question to ask, especially to non-UK based readers. What about him, then? He must be doing pretty well, right? The Conservative Party is in shambles; Starmer has championed a much more ethical stance with regard to investigations into possible rule-breaking of COVID restrictions during the pandemic; he consistently gets solid (if not brilliant) marks for his grilling of Johnson at Prime Minister’s Questions; and Labour has just won a byelection. Behind all of this, however, the lack of enthusiasm for Starmer is palpable – it is, many Labour voters and sympathisers complain, not really clear what he stands for. This peaked during the current week, when Starmer fell short of supporting the largest strike of the rail network workforce in decades, and indeed even used the party whip to ask his MPs to stay away from the picket lines (quite a few of them disobeyed). With the rail strikes not being quite as opposed by the general population as many would have expected; the leader of the rail workers union nailing each and every public appearance he has made since the strike was announced; and new industrial action announced or threatened by airline workers, nurses, teachers and possibly (again) academics, Labour needs to take a stand, pronto. The combination of a promising momentum for Labour in principle with a leader that many do not see as up for the task makes one wonder whether the question of leadership might become relevant (more publicly than it has so far) within the Labour Party as well, and not just among Tories.
Please feel free, not just to comment, but also to post interesting pieces on the issues addressed in this blog post. Thanks!
{ 35 comments… read them below or add one }
J-D 06.24.22 at 1:41 pm
The first thought that came to me was to wonder whether similar queries were raised about Harold Wilson in 1963, or Tony Blair in 1995. I don’t know; maybe they weren’t; but I have a hunch they were. (To give a fuller picture, I have the same hunch that similar queries were raised about Ed Miliband in 2012.)
The second thought that came to me was to wonder who might become Labour leader if Keir Starmer were replaced. There are bookmakers who will accept bets on this, and current odds favour, in this order, Andy Burnham, Wes Streeting, Lisa Nandy, and Rachel Reeves, who are, I should add, essentially just names to me. Are Labour voters and sympathisers any clearer about what they stand for than they are in the case of Keir Starmer?
Come to that, is Boris Johnson advantaged by people being clear about what he stands for, or disadvantaged by people not being clear about what he stands for?
Phil 06.24.22 at 3:02 pm
J-D @1 – considering that Wilson in 1963 was a prominent former left-winger who had just made his name with the “white heat of technology” speech, and considering that Blair in 1995 was the ideologue of New Labour (and the party was 15-20% ahead in the polls in any case), I very much doubt that people were asking what they stood for.
In any case, lack of clarity isn’t the real problem with Starmer. The Leader of the Opposition simply can’t “prefer not to” take a stand – and I mean “can’t” in terms of possibility, not desirability: whatever he says or does, he is taking a stand. He and those close to him – such as Rachel Reeves – have adopted a consistent policy of not criticising the government except in terms of competence (“not good enough”, “get a grip”), which necessarily implies they aren’t actually opposing the government. In the case of the rail strike, Starmer has said he wished it wasn’t taking place and told his colleagues not to show any support for it – there’s nothing vague about that. It’s no wonder if party members are disgruntled, or if the public is less than inspired – “we’d do quite similar things to them but we’d do it properly” isn’t really an election-winning message. (If people have the impression that it is, this may derive from imperfect memories of New Labour – who certainly presented themselves as decent, competent, unideological etc, but accompanied this with a quasi-millennial rhetoric of unstoppable renewal and epochal change. Also, they had the advantage of inheriting a 10-15% lead in the polls from the previous leader; nothing succeeds like success, effortless success most of all.)
As for the ‘progressive alliance’, I can see the appeal – I would love to have PR in this country – but I can also see a couple of problems. One is that, unless it was a very specific and focused short-term expedient, it would be really bad for democratic politics.
In a system with national political parties which are membership organisations – in which, broadly speaking, political parties are democratic organisations whose representatives emerge from the base – it has to be possible for a Liberal in Grimsby or a Labour supporter in Budleigh Salterton to find the local party and be active in it. It may not be very likely that they’ll ever get anywhere, but stranger things have happened. In any case, even if it campaigning for that party in that area is likely to be futile, it shouldn’t be impossible. But geographical stand-downs – which would involve standing down Labour across most of the South, presumably – lead directly to the local party organisations atrophying, and in the longer term to the parties ceasing to be national organisations, with the real danger of populist and anti-political formations emerging to fill the gap (“hard-working people of Budleigh Salterton, who speaks for you?”).
The other – complementary – problem is that, even if it was a very specific and focused short-term expedient, it would look really bad, and would risk backfiring.
“Labour know they can’t win fair and square, so they’re trying to get in by the back door. Say No to the stitch-up – vote Conservative!” “We in the Conservative Party stand up for what we believe in – why don’t our opponents?” “Don’t want to vote Labour? Now you don’t have to! Vote Labour, Lib Dem or Green for no choice!” “No shoddy alliances, no back-room deals – vote Reform for a fearless, independent voice!”
And so on.
Obviously propaganda points can be made against any position; the trouble with those propaganda points is that they’re good ones. Labour’s fought every election in living memory as a single party, on the basis that they can win a majority of seats; switching to fighting as an alliance – on the basis of getting a majority by pulling in the votes of Lib Dems – does seem like changing the rules. It could end up massively benefiting the Tory Party, particularly if Farage or someone similar helped out with an anti-Alliance spoiler campaign in seats Labour were likely to win.
J-D 06.25.22 at 12:13 am
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blockquote>J-D @1 – considering that Wilson in 1963 was a prominent former left-winger who had just made his name with the “white heat of technology” speech, and considering that Blair in 1995 was the ideologue of New Labour (and the party was 15-20% ahead in the polls in any case), I very much doubt that people were asking what they stood for.
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blockquote>If you tell me that in 1963 Harold Wilson stood for the white heat of technology, my response would be ‘I don’t know what that means’, and if you then told me that in 1963 most people knew what it meant, my response would be ‘Maybe they thought they knew what it meant, but maybe they were mistaken’.
If you tell me that in 1995 Tony Blair stood for New Labour, my response would be ‘I don’t know what that means’, and if you then told me that in 1995 most people knew what it meant, my response would be ‘Maybe they thought they knew what it meant, but maybe they were mistaken’.
I know that in the years since, one of the things that has been said by some people about Harold Wilson and by some people about Tony Blair is ‘He was an unprincipled opportunist with no genuine political commitments except to his own advancement’*, so it seems fairly likely there were some people saying so in 1963, and some in 1995. As I wrote before, I’m not certain this was so; but the fact that they were associated with well-known slogans doesn’t settle the question.
Personally, I don’t vote on the basis of slogans, and I never have. To me that doesn’t seem a sensible way of making that kind of choice. That doesn’t prove that people don’t vote on that kind of basis. Probably some do. How many? I don’t know.
Neville Morley 06.25.22 at 9:53 am
Just to reinforce Phil’s point @2 about the second issue with any sort of progressive alliance, the Tories are already claiming that the tactical voting in these recent by-elections reveals the existence of a SECRET conspiracy to deprive the British people of a proper choice and demanding that Labour admits to this. In addition, while Labour and the Lib Dem’s are rarely in direct competition (Labour were second placed in Tiverton & Honiton in the last few general elections as a result of the post-coalition meltdown of the LDs, but traditionally the latter were the main opposition), in Scotland any sort of alliance with their direct rival the SNP would be unthinkable.
reason 06.25.22 at 3:31 pm
Neville Morley @4 … “reveals the existence of a SECRET conspiracy to deprive the British people of a proper choice” – yes and it is called First Past the Post.
I’m sorry they may be using that argument but it doesn’t pass the laugh test.
reason 06.25.22 at 3:42 pm
And if labour and liberal democrats and SNP really want to co-operate in some electorates to beat the Tories, then they should move to again to introduce preferential voting so that such co-operation agreements become unnecessary in future.
Alex SL 06.26.22 at 1:10 am
Following UK politics from the outside, so I don’t claim to be the expert here, but it seems to me as in the UK as well as many other countries the centre-leftish party plays the electoral game on a more difficult setting than the main right-wing party, because the owners of the corporate mass media have obvious sympathies for the latter. This means we can easily deduce the outcomes for the main options you may have in a centre-left party leader:
1) Leader who wants to achieve changes for the better that are “radical” enough to actually address the economic, environmental, and institutional crises we are facing (meaning reversion to what were mainstream economic and tax policies of the 1950s-1970s plus shift to 100% renewable energies, both with broad public support). Somebody like that will be sunk by the corporate mass media, who will paint them as the second coming of Pol Pot and blow out of proportion every negative quality they have.
2) Leader who doesn’t rock the boat politically but at least has a colourful personality that makes them potentially inspiring to the voters. Somebody like that will be sunk by the corporate mass media, who have the opportunity to paint them as non-serious and blow out of proportion every “gaffe” they make, regardless of how much they consistently ignore the blatant non-seriousness and gaffes of their conservative opponent.
3) Leader who doesn’t rock the boat politically, promising merely to be a slightly less incompetent manager than the right-wing candidate, and is super-cautious and risk-averse in everything they do and say. Little attack surface for the corporate media, but also somewhat less inspiring to the voting public than a slice of white bread on a white background.
Take your pick, at least until you find a strategy to neuter the tabloid press and rage-propaganda right wing TV channels.
UK Labour has the additional problem of their support base being 1/3 Brexit and 2/3 Remain and can only square that conundrum by not taking a strong stance in either direction, as ridiculous as that is given the 1/3 Brexiters of their supporters are being hit hardest by the consequences of that exercise in national self-harm. I always found it sad to see how many people lambasted Corbyn (whatever his other failings) for his spinelessness on the Brexit issue when it was clear that no other Labour leader could have done differently, as now demonstrated by his successor.
J-D 06.26.22 at 4:20 am
Into which, if any, of those categories would the following fall?
Olaf Scholz
Pedro Sánchez
Anthony Albanese
António Costa
Magdalena Andersson
Mette Frederiksen
Sanna Marin
Jonas Gahr Støre
Jacinda Ardern
Scott P. 06.26.22 at 8:20 am
Just to reinforce Phil’s point @2 about the second issue with any sort of progressive alliance, the Tories are already claiming that the tactical voting in these recent by-elections reveals the existence of a SECRET conspiracy to deprive the British people of a proper choice and demanding that Labour admits to this
And yet the Tories have had comprehensive, centralized and strictly enforced electoral pacts with UKIP in past elections. Should Labour and the Lib Dems be afraid to use the very tactics the Tories have used to gain their majority?
reason 06.26.22 at 2:36 pm
J-D https://crookedtimber.org/2022/06/24/some-thoughts-about-the-uk-byelections-and-beyond/#comment-818001
I think the answer is proportional representation.
Alex SL 06.26.22 at 9:59 pm
J-D,
I don’t know most of them that well, but Albanese has moved Labor to the absolute centre compared with even where it was at the last election (not even mentioning pre-1980s), because they took the lesson that subsidising electric vehicles and doing something about negative gearing was too radical a proposition in 2019; from what I read Ardern is failing to do something serious even about bread-and-butter issues like housing affordability; and Scholz recently compared anti-coal protesters to Nazis.
Ardern is at best type 2 in an environment not shaped by the Murdoch media (which is a big factor in UK, US, Aus but not equally so in all other countries), perhaps even type 3 but seems more interesting a character simply because a young woman as a PM is such a novelty in our patriarchal gerontocracies. The other two are clearly type 3 – watching paint dry is more exciting than hearing them speak. They won only because the right was exhausted after several periods in power, and even at that they have won only on relative terms with what are for their parties historically very, very low vote shares.
Again, I don’t know the others well enough. Just did a quick google, so obviously not definitive, but: Sanchez has supposedly switched from centrism to being more left-wing, but I was unable to find anything about his domestic policies that is more than symbolic (Franco exhumation). On Costa I read that he reversed austerity measures by the previous government, which is better than the alternative, no doubt, but that is just what I mean: the best one can hope for from the centre-left these days is that they repair a fraction of the damage that the right caused on their turn, leave everything else to The Market and personal gumption, and that’s then supposed to be an enormous achievement. I also checked two of the Scandinavians and found nothing on their policies beyond Covid; not a great sign.
So, I don’t doubt that you can get an interesting personality IF you don’t have a media environment dominated by right-wing tabloids and their TV counter-parts dedicated to ripping every leftie to shreds who shows any kind of weakness. But in terms of implementing appropriately transformative policies instead of merely making comforting gestures, I think I can only vaguely wave my arms around to indicate “all this”. And I can’t blame them, because while the public complain loudly about everything being a malaise, they wouldn’t in sufficient numbers vote for somebody who tries to do something about it either.
J-D 06.27.22 at 3:23 am
As can be seen from Alex SL’s subsequent response, that’s not one of the categories in the classification.
Neither do I. There’s no reason why anybody should. However, people whose knowledge is limited should be cautious about their generalisations.
If the generalisation is supposed to be limited to a particular kind of media environment, that makes it significantly less general, and the limitation should be explicitly stated. Maybe other countries–maybe most countries–have media environments similar to those shaped by the Murdoch media–but then again, maybe they don’t. I don’t know, and if I’m being told what’s the case I’d like to know how well informed on the subject is the person who’s telling me: that is, in this specific instance, if somebody tells me that the media environment in other countries is similar, I’d like to know how much that person knows about media environments in other countries.
Miriam Ronzoni 06.27.22 at 1:20 pm
In the meantime, the problem of a Labour Party which refuses to be the voice of the likely upcoming wave of strikes has just become more urgent:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jun/26/labour-heathrow-airline-staff-pay-dispute-unions-david-lammy
reason 06.27.22 at 2:40 pm
J-D
Of course I am aware of that, but it is the most obvious common influence. Somehow there are people who mysteriously think that voting systems don’t matter.
J-D 06.28.22 at 12:25 am
Anthony Albanese does not owe his position to a proportional electoral system.
J-D 06.28.22 at 11:17 am
The problem there is not one of Labour frontbenchers not being prepared to say what they stand for.
Because they are standing for the wrong things, it is worse than not being prepared to say what they stand for, but it is not the same problem.
J-D 06.28.22 at 11:27 am
The basis for Labour’s self-interested doubts about PR is clear, but preferential voting (without PR) would clearly be to Labour’s advantage, purely from a narrowly partisan self-interested point of view.
reason 06.28.22 at 1:41 pm
J-D
This is partly but not wholly true. The (sort of) proportional voting system in the Australian Senate has allowed and encouraged small party growth, and the preferential voting system in the lower house allowed voters to escape the two party stranglehold that first past the post tends to produce. Australians may have historically have had effectively a two party system, but voters are used to the idea of being able to vote their policy preferences without throwing away their votes.
Phil 06.29.22 at 11:58 am
Scott P @9:
the Tories have had comprehensive, centralized and strictly enforced electoral pacts with UKIP in past elections. Should Labour and the Lib Dems be afraid to use the very tactics the Tories have used to gain their majority?
Considering that the Tories would scream the house down if we used that tactic – and that the press is almost entirely on their side – yes, I think we should avoid it.
J-D re: preferential voting: the huge majority of constituencies in Britain are two-party contests, with Labour or the Conservatives facing one main rival and one irrelevance. Labour and the Conservatives both have the Liberal Democrats as a rival. ISTM that there’s no reason to think that AV (proposed a few years ago by the Lib Dems) would benefit Labour – or any party lower down the list than third or fourth – and every reason to think it would benefit the Lib Dems. I’d support PR, but not AV.
J-D 06.30.22 at 12:10 am
True enough; but the preferential voting system is not a proportional one.
The effect that preferential voting would have depends on how people would vote. In Australia, it was introduced by the Liberal Party in the expectation that it would work to their advantage, an expectation which was justified over the next seven decades; in more recent times, however, it has worked (on balance) to the advantage of Labor, not the Liberals. When I say that it would work to Labour’s advantage in the United Kingdom, I don’t mean that this would necessarily remain true into the indefinite future, as the situation evolves; the key assumption I am making is that under current circumstances, and for a significant period into the future, the second preferences of Liberal Democrat voters would favour Labour over the Conservatives.
I don’t mean that all Liberal Democrat voters would make Labour their second choice, or even that an overwhelming majority would; but if their second preferences broke 60-40 for Labour over the Conservatives, or even 55-45, it would be enough to change the results in some seats.
I don’t expect that preferential voting would change the results in large numbers of seats in UK elections; it doesn’t in Australian elections. The partisan advantage it provided, whichever party or parties it accrued to, I would expect to be small in the UK as it is in Australia–but sometimes, in a close election, a small advantage can be enough.
The closest result in any seat in the most recent (2019) UK general election was in Bury North, where the incumbent Labour MP was defeated by a Conservative. The votes for each party’s candidate were as follows: Conservatives 21,660; Labour 21,555; Liberal Democrats 1584; Brexit 1240; Green 802. Anybody can take those numbers and apply their own estimates of what the preferences of the Green, Brexit, and Liberal Democrat voters would have been as between Conservative and Labour. Obviously it’s impossible to demonstrate that one particular result was certain, but just to show what’s possible, I’ll make up some numbers to calculate what might have happened under a preferential voting system if Green voters had favoured Labour over Conservatives 80-20, Brexit voters had favour Conservatives over Labour 70-30, and Liberal Democrats had favoured Labour over Conservatives 55-45. Hypothetically, Labour could have held the seat by just 39 votes. Now, you might think those guesses about preferences are unrealistic. Maybe they are. Maybe Brexit voters would have favoured Conservatives over Labour by a wider margin. Then again, maybe the reverse would have been true. I don’t know. Anybody who wants to can make up their own numbers and plug them in to calculations about specific seats. What I do know, looking at the tabulation of all results, is that there are lots of plausible scenarios where preferential voting would have advantaged Labour and few or none where it would have advantaged the Conservatives.
On just about any plausible scenario, preferential voting would advantage the Liberal Democrats even more than it could possibly advantage Labour. However, looking again at the precise current situation (rather than speculation about ultimate underlying principles), as represented in the tabulation of 2019 results, the number of seats where the Liberal Democrats might have defeated the Conservatives with the help of Labour preferences is much larger than the number of seats where the Liberal Democrats might have defeated Labour on Conservative preferences. If the Conservatives are damaged more than Labour then the nett advantage, as between the two of them, is to Labour.
reason 06.30.22 at 8:17 am
J-D – what you’re good analysis of the results in the UK under a hypothetical preferential system leaves out is the dynamics of party politics. In particular the party most likely to benefit over a longer period of time is the greens. (Again having at least part of the election using proportional representation would make an even impact.) That the Green party won 3 seats in inner city Brisbane in the last Australian election is absolutely amazing. Don’t discount the possibility that the Greens could start winning seats in the UK.
J-D 06.30.22 at 12:46 pm
Yes, it’s totally reasonable to suppose that the introduction of preferential voting in the UK could offer a lot more opportunities for the Greens, and at least by some measures could advantage them more than Labour. That doesn’t change the basis for calculating that as between Labour and the Conservatives preferential voting would favour Labour. The Greens already hold one seat in the UK House of Commons: that may not help Labour particularly, but it certainly doesn’t make their position in relation to the Conservatives any worse, and there’s no reason to think there’d be a different type of effect from more Green MPs.
reason 06.30.22 at 7:23 pm
J-D
I live in Germany, and in at least three (or is it four) State Parliaments the government is a coalition of the CDU and the Greens (or vice-versa). Of course the CDU are not exactly equivalent to the Tories (especially not the current Tory party), but I tend to think of different divisions than just left right. Internal party dynamics will end up being effected by electoral results. The Greens are in the intermediate future as big a threat to the Labour as the anybody else, if they were given the chance to flourish.
TM 06.30.22 at 8:35 pm
I’d mention at least that Proportional Representation, whether or not it happens to benefit your side, is a matter of fairness. Each vote should count approximately the same. It also tends to serve as a cushion against reight wing extremism. Now if actually a majority of voters supports right wing extremism, then PR can’t prevent them from taking power (although their majority would still be smaller) but as long as a majority votes against right wing extremism, they won’t be able to take power under PR.
TM 06.30.22 at 8:48 pm
An additional concern is that PR cannot be gerrimandered whereas under FPTP dedicated authoritarians can manipulate electoral districts to frightening advantage. Interestingly I hear the term gerrimandering only in US discourse. Is this not a concern in UK and Canada, if so why not?
harry b 07.01.22 at 1:01 am
Is Starmer’s lack of appeal really about people not knowing what he stands for? Isn’t it more to do with him being completely uncharismatic in his public persona? If I didn’t live in a State which specializes in electing people without any charisma (both our current US Senators, our last 3 Governors) I’d find it remarkable. They’re currently unhealthily dependent on Johnson remaining leader of the Tories.
harry b 07.01.22 at 1:16 am
On proportional representation and preferential voting.
These are not in the gift of the Labour Party or anyone right now.
Labour members seem to have shifted on this, and are coming to see the virtue of some sort of change in the voting system. Here’s the two traditional objections. First, any sort of PR, and possibly preferential systems, would lead to fragmentation of the Labour Party. Labour is home to a number of different semi-permanent factions, including a one around traditional left wing policy positions, another connected to the unions, and another connected to social movements. If it made sense for them to separate they would — my view is that the left wing faction would not last long if it could sustain itself alone. Second: Under PR, and possibly preferential voting, Labour would never have an absolute majority (even if the fragmentation didn’t occur, which it would). It’s always seemed to me that the prospect of a majority Labour government sometime is so intoxicating that lots of people are willing to put up with a system that, de facto, keeps them completely out of power for a generation at a time (51-64; 79-97; 10-25 or perhaps beyond).
I suppose I’m accusing Labour supporters and members of tribalism, but, I hope, in the nicest possible way. I’ve thought that the electoral system should be changed since I was, I dunno, 12 when I first learned how it works. But I’m not optimistic about Labour doing it if it ever wins an outright majority.
Alex SL 07.01.22 at 5:31 am
One fallacy to be aware of when trying to anticipate the behaviour of parties – here whether one of the two major parties of a country under FPTP will introduce preferential voting or proportional representation – is the blithe assumption that their main motivation is to win a governing majority. It is quite possible that they see their main motivation as being the top dog on their side of the ring*, even if that means their side of the ring being in opposition most of the time. In other words, making it maximally difficult to be replaced as the largest centre-left party by another centre-left party may be more important than maximising the chances of the centre-left collectively being in government.
To generalise this across broader areas of human behaviour, I have frequently found when faced with the question “why would box X do this stupid thing?”, the answer is “because it rationally served faction Y in an internal power struggle inside box X”, where X might be a political party, company, team inside a company, labour union, nation, or whatever.
*) In the USA the calculation seems to be fundraising > winning majority > achieving good outcomes for one’s supporters.
Neville Morley 07.01.22 at 7:00 am
@TM #25: the term ‘gerrymandering’ has cropped up in the UK terms in the last couple of years – see e.g. https://www.thecanary.co/uk/analysis/2021/10/21/the-tories-are-gerrymandering-democracy-to-turn-england-blue/, as evidence of this NOT an endorsement of the article – as there are currently plans both to redraw the boundaries of parliamentary constituencies and to change the process by which this is done. But it’s not remotely the same issue as in the US: partly because it’s done by a (quasi-) independent body, the Boundary Commission, which is supposed to take account of history and community identities as well as equalising voter numbers. The main concern here is a proposed reduction in the total number of urban constituencies, which is likely to disadvantage Labour, rather than the redrawing of boundaries.
J-D 07.01.22 at 8:32 am
German elections use a form of PR. In this discussion I’m not opposing PR but I’m not discussing its effects: I’m discussing the effects of preferential voting (as we call it in Australia, where we use it; also variously referred to as instant run-off voting, the alternative vote, the contingent vote, or ranked-choice voting). What would happen (or would have happened) in German politics if preferential voting were used but PR weren’t, I don’t know. As for what actually is happening in German politics, I checked, and found that there are currently four states where the governing coalition includes both CDU and Greens while the SPD is in opposition, five where it includes both SPD and Greens while the CDU is in opposition, and two where it includes all three of them (in the other five States, the Greens are in opposition). That confirms, unambiguously, that the Greens are willing to work with the CDU in government; it does not confirm that the Greens regard the CDU and the SPD as equally desirable partners.
Beyond that, even if the Greens in the UK, in a hypothetical future in which they won more Commons seats, came to regard Conservatives and Labour as equally desirable partners (which they certainly wouldn’t now), that still wouldn’t actually disadvantage Labour in relation to the Conservatives.
In the UK and Canada, as in Australia, electoral boundaries are determined by non-partisan bodies applying explicitly stated criteria. Some US States have had similar success in eliminating gerrymandering by the same method; the default, however, is that boundaries are determined by the (partisan) State legislatures, on whatever criteria they see fit.
harry b is correct to point out that Labour does not have the power to change the electoral system now. If they win the next election, however, they will, and although this is not something that is certain to happen, it is not a mere chimera. ‘What should Labour do if they win the next election?’ is not the same kind of question as ‘What should the Greens do if they win the next election?’
TM is also correct to point out that there are arguments for PR independent of calculations of partisan advantage. I am aware of this, but at the moment I am choosing not to discuss arguments of this kind for (or against) voting systems, focussing instead on calculations of partisan advantage, not because I think they are the best kinds of reason for action but because it is ridiculous to pretend that calculations of partisan advantage will not be made, so it does make a difference whether they are done accurately.
In the UK, under present conditions*, a Labour politician making a calculation of partisan advantage might have rationally grounded concerns** about the potential downside of a switch to PR***, although on balance it is more likely to be favourable for Labour than otherwise. Meanwhile, preferential voting would have little or none of the same downside, and as far as can be estimated would offer at least as much partisan advantage and possibly more.
This analysis still applies if the Labour politician in question is taking into the calculations the kind of considerations of intra-partisan advantage suggested by Alex SL.
The effects of a change to the voting system are, of course, uncertain. The results of all courses of action, including the option of leaving the voting system just as it is, are uncertain. People have to make decisions under conditions of uncertainty all the time, and perhaps especially politicians.
*and as far into the future as can reasonably be estimated for this kind of a calculation
** although the experience of New Zealand suggests they might be exaggerated
*** I don’t think it makes a major difference to these calculations which form of PR is suggested
Tm 07.01.22 at 4:21 pm
J-D 30: if you take Germany as example, there is no question that the success of the Green Party (and later of the Left Party) has been mostly at the cost of the SPD, which lost vote shares to them. So they weren’t happy about that success. Now one good thing about having a rational and fair electoral system is that tactical considerations have little relevance. If a sufficiently large voter block wants a Green (or Left) party, there will be such a party. There’s nothing the other parties can do about it.
As an aside, the black-red-green coalition is known as a Kenya coalition, as opposed to the Jamaica (black green yellow).
Scott P. 07.03.22 at 5:30 pm
Is Starmer’s lack of appeal really about people not knowing what he stands for? Isn’t it more to do with him being completely uncharismatic in his public persona?
Has the UK had three charismatic prime ministers over the past century+?
J-D 07.04.22 at 6:34 am
If you think about vote share, it is probably the case that the Greens have disadvantaged the SPD more than the CDU. If you think about getting into government, it is probably the other way around. I would not value vote share over getting into government.
TM 07.04.22 at 3:33 pm
J-D: The differentiation of the party system, from three parties in 1960 to four in the 1980s to five in the 1990s and finally six in the 2010s, should in principle help to align the political system with society overall. It doesn’t a priori change any party’s, or any coalition’s, likelihood of getting into government.
Since we are at it, here’s a historical detail. After WWI, the Swiss unions organized a general strike (the first and only ever) as a response to the social hardship that the working class had been subjected to during the war (which Switzerland wasn’t of course a party to but nevertheless workers suffered from some of the effects). The strikers had a list of 9 demands, the first of which was the introduction of proportional representation; some of the others were women’s suffrage, the 48 hour week, and a public pension system (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landesstreik#Forderungskatalog).
The government called in the military and crushed the strike. The only demand they were prepared to meet was PR, which was quickly introduced and doubled the Socialist Party’s seats in parliament. The 48 hour week also became reality within a few years, public pension had to wait until after WWII, and women’s suffrage until 1971.
Election fairness has always been a key demand of progressives. British Labour should have enacted reforms when they had the power to do so. In the end they shot themselves in the foot big time.
J-D 07.06.22 at 1:26 am
My observation that it does affect those likelihoods is an empirical one, not an a priori calculation.
I agree that there are changes to the electoral system which would be a good thing entirely independent of considerations of partisan advantage. But (as I observed previously), it is ridiculous to imagine that calculations of partisan advantage will not be made, so it makes a difference how they are done. I agree that Labour has not made them accurately, or at least has not acted effectively on calculations of partisan advantage (it hasn’t acted effectively on sound non-partisan grounds, either).