During the election campaign there was a lot of talk about PR and tactical voting, however given the result, PR is not likely to be on the agenda anytime soon. The new government has said it will involve regional Mayors and leave it to local government to deliver against mandatory targets for housing but we need a lot more than regional mayors to fix democracy on the UK.
What just happened and why it matters
Them’s the rules. Labour won a huge majority of 172 seats. The way Rishi Sunak accepted the defeat and the smooth transfer of power is no small achievement and should be a source of comfort to everyone who values democracy - contrast it to what Trump and his supporters did when Biden was elected. It is all too easy to overlook what is good about our system - a period of competence is more than welcome. I merely ask the question: besides having a huge majority does Labour have a huge mandate?
During the campaign there was a big concentration on tactical voting. It is estimated that up to 20% of people voted tactically - this means even people who helped get labour in are not signed up supporters, they are not providing a mandate.
Paul Nowak, General Secretary of the TUC, clearly thinks a majority of seats equals a mandate. He said “…a prime minister with a 170 working majority and it’s a thumping mandate from the public…[talking about workers rights]…people should respect that mandate”. Labour won using the current rules and won big, this is a tribute to the professionalism of the Labour election machine (for machine it is) and it is is already thinking about the 2029 election [1]
Gaming the system?
There is no doubt that this time around the system has been treated in a more disciplined and professional way than ever before; I think we may now say that politicians are gaming the system [2]. Thenumbers alone provide strong circumstantial evidence.
Only 34% of people voted for this government and even more, 40%, didn’t vote at all. This was not just a record majority of seats it was a record low turnout. The labour vote has declined steadily; it was 9,731,363 in 2024 compared to 10,269,051 in 2019 and 12,877,918 in 2017. In other words in 2019 the result Corbyn was ridiculed for Labour still got more votes than it did with Kier Starmer who emphasised how much he had changed the party.
The fact that a slump in support of this magnitude and so much disengagement can deliver 63% of the seats maybe the rules but it also makes a travesty of democracy. Yes we do need but it is only a necessary and not sufficient measure to fix our broken democracy.
With these numbers Labour can do what it likes - including not much. It is not clear, so far if the new government will take up the Lib-Dems offer to work on a cross-party solution to fix health and social care [3]
Approaching the nadir of long trend
Since the 1990’s the extent of professionalism in electioneering has been steadily increasing. The roots go back even further and are to do with the emergence of the party and the use of whips. It is more recently that we have seen the switch from persuasion to selling. There has been the emergence of a more professional “political class” on both left and right; they have been able to use social media and data analysis to fine tune their targeting. Too often (and there are many honourable exceptions) politics is seen as a career that moves the graduate to the intern, the advisor to the MP and the MP to Minister with no real world experience getting in the way, often Westminster is just a step on the way to the boardroom or world stage.
We face an acute morale hazard with first past the post as it has evolved in 2024. The process is simple, a faction with an extreme view won control of a party, and imposed its views. Historically it was claimed the left would do this in the Labour Party. Getting rid of Militant was the whole thrust of Neil Kinnock’s campaign. Kier Starmer has echoed it with his changes to the Labour Party [4].
In fact whilst everyone was looking the wrong way, it was the tory party that was taken over by a right wing libertarian clique that imposed its will, the ERG with its vision of small state, no regulation and no safety net, [5] Hard Brexit was only the start, charter cities would take it further. The hard right is still mobilising around the world. Farage and Truss attend the US Republican Convention [6] which is now dominated by the MAGA faction. Suella Braverman and Steve Bannon are headline Speakers at US National Conservatism Conference [7].
PR on its own is no good
We can see that PR is not a “silver bullet” and can go wrong; there seems to be a permanent right wing minority in charge of Israel, Belgium can take over a year to form a government. Clearly PR on its own is not the answer. Too often it is treated this way and single issue campaigning does not help.
Since the election I have heard the response that we shouldn’t do PR because we will be helping get Reform into parliament so the fact that Labour with its majority is unlikely to bring in PR is OK. This argument is plain wrong - groups like Reform have to be taken on and beaten by debate, by the hard glare of publicity, they cannot be excluded because we disagree with them - this is simply censorship and cowardice. We should be more confident, there is a natural “progressive” majority in the UK - see polling by More in Common and others. We know how to handle transitions of power when elections call for it. PR is a necessary change but not sufficient step towards a more democratic future, there must also be devolution, participatory democracy and most importantly a culture of cooperation. What was in the Kings Speech doesn’t come close.
Undemocratic across the board
Even without PR we have just been subjected to the dominance of a minority view taking over a party and forcing it through as I have described above.
The party system has become so strong that it can impose a PM against the wishes of the same parties MPs, let alone the public. It nearly happened with Labour, but Gordon Brown was elected unopposed and quickly went to the country. Truss just went for it with consequences we are still living with.
The Labour Party has such centralised and strong discipline it no longer resembles a broad church, candidates can be imposed on local parties, against their wishes, good local candidates can be sidelined.
The party system itself relies on whipping and discipline to an extent that is out of fit with “broad church” coalitions put together outside parliament - which was a justification for first past the post.
We have a long deep history (and culture) of top down imposition to overcome [8]
There are legitimate concerns about the extent to which big business interests are being privileged in policy making [9]
There is a whole hinterland of ALMOS, Agencies and recently created charities. In many cases ministerial review is at best bi-annual, chairs are appointed through a patronage system. Charities are a bit better but attract “people like us” and volunteerism limits the view to interest groups not the wider public, it can easily become blinkered or patronising.
Outsourcing services removes them from public scrutiny altogether, contracts are hidden from view (commercial sensitivity), when these are run to “maximise shareholder returns” it is against the public interest. Water companies payed large dividends through borrowing, and a reason given for not nationalising this is that we would pick up this debt.
Wes Streeting is adamant - we are going to get more outsourcing in the NHS, it’s the pragmatic way - it isn’t.
People, democratic renewal and consensus building
Thomas Paine said “Mankind, as it appears to me, are always ripe enough to understand their true interest, provided it be presented clearly to their understanding, and that in a manner not to create suspicion by anything like self-design, nor offend by assuming too much. Where we would wish to reform we must not reproach.” (The Rights of Man). The disability movement has a useful slogan “anything for me, without me, is against me”
Top down does not work; done from a minority position (masquerading under a majority of seats) it is certain to cause more dissent, disillusion and or disengagement, it creates ripe ground for populists of either the left or the right.
Building a more democratic future means; trusting the people to do right if they are empowered, giving up pet projects (the spread of opinion is large, my view is just one amongst many), the future has to be negotiated.
Negotiating the future isn’t happening right now, the future is being made by rich and powerful people who avoid scrutiny and try to hi-jack governments. Professional politicians have to suck up to them or face the onslaught from the tabloids and billionaire funded think tanks (see notes on my blog Ending Austerity about the pressure to become an insider).
Surely it’s time to put together a movement to develop the design of truly democratic institutions, to make politics a quest for good governance, and business a quest to create the common wealth.
Let’s start working towards a Great Reform Act of 2032 and systemically address all these issues. Two hundred years after the first great reform act it would be appropriate, we just about have time.
Notes, Sources and Further Reading
[1] Thinking about 2029, Guardian article https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jul/13/labour-to-fight-2029-election-like-an-insurgent-as-preparations-begin?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
[2] Gaming the system (also rigging, abusing, cheating, milking, playing, working, breaking the system, gaming, or bending the rules) can be defined as using the rules and procedures meant to protect a system to, instead, manipulate the system for a desired outcome. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaming_the_system#:~:text=Gaming%20the%20system%20(also%20rigging,system%20for%20a%20desired%20outcome.
When the leadership says we will do whatever it takes to win, and abandons policies that are widely popular because they don’t match the profile of the swing voters who need to be targeted, when the pursuit of power beats policy I think it is fair to say that this is manipulating the system (concentrating on marginals to the exclusion of all else) for a desired outcome (to win power). By the way, any system can be gamed, and even checks and balances can fail, that doesn’t mean we stop trying to design better systems, we just need to be realistic. That is why PR is necessary but not sufficient.
[3] Lib Dems offer cross party working on social carehttps://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/mar/16/ed-davey-we-need-a-cross-party-agreement-on-social-care Remember a lot of the 1945 post war settlement was worked out by cross party working in the wartime coalition, Beverage was a liberal.
[4] Changes to the Labour Party. I would argue that there are legitimate left wing traditions in the Labour Party which used to be covered by its description using the cliche “broad church”. This survived under Kinnock, Smith, and to some extent Brown but the infighting and backstabbing engendered by Iraq was disastrous. Harold Wilson was the last labour PM to have all sides round the cabinet table and work on balance. Blair notoriously practiced talk on the sofa (divide and rule). Kier Starmer has gone in for straight forward political centralisation and the sidelining or expelling any who disagree; it was right to tackle a small amount of anti-semitism but that has also provided a smoke screen for remaking the Labour as centre right party. I have not been a member since 1997.
[5] small state, no regulation and no safety net - proposed by the ERG and its allies, the Brexit Party, UKIP now Reform. That they have an extreme vision. A of this can be found in The Sovereign Individual, William Rees Mogg and James Dale Davison, 1997, Touchstone Edition 2020, ISBN 978-0-684-83272-2 (it has an introduction by Peter Thiel - he of ‘competition is for losers” fame). Here is a taster “The new mega political conditions … will allow market tests to regulate areas formally dominated by politics…the market paradigm presupposes that results can better be regulated by rewarding desirable outcomes and penalising undesirable ones. To be poor is undesirable, and to become rich is desirable” p239 (what isn’t addressed is that rich empowers and poor disempowers). It goes on to predict and welcome the end of the nation state. Getting the UK out of the EU is just the beginning in this mindset.
[6] Farage and Truss attend the US Republican Convention https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/15/nigel-farage-liz-truss-republican-national-convention
[7] Suella Braverman and Steve Bannon are headline Speakers at US National Conservatism Conference https://bylinetimes.com/2024/05/28/suella-braverman-joins-steve-bannon-as-headline-speaker-at-us-national-conservatism-conference/
[8] long history of top down - as a thought experiment consider the way in which the slum clearance programmes were conducted in the 1960-70s. Although conducted by local councils the process was often brutal and destroyed local communities by splitting them up, people were not involved in the design of the new homes, there was often a lack of community facilities, there were also issues associated with business dealings, notoriously the Poulson scandle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Poulson)
[9] Business interests privileged in policy, the lobbying of Labour in the run up to the election is explained in great detail here https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/dark-money-investigations/lovebombed-by-lobbyists-how-starmer-labour-became-the-party-of-big-business/?utm_source=Newsletter%3A%20oD%20daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Lovebombed%20by%20lobbyists%20❤%EF%B8%8F&_kx=WnBqbVefjJw8X_OL4mAJ25IN_zzdJsP5_QrUJkjeDMI.YjCYwm
Useful tool to see who is funding your MP
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/funding-mp-register-of-interests-consolidate-uk-election/?utm_source=Newsletter%3A%20oD%20daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Who’s%20funding%20your%20MP%3F&_kx=WnBqbVefjJw8X_OL4mAJ25IN_zzdJsP5_QrUJkjeDMI.YjCYwm
Ultimately this can become state capture, I don’t think we are anywhere near there yet but companies like G4 get most of the work, and we used Carillion despite issues being in the public domain. Virgin takes on health contracts and takes the NHS to court, The Spire seem to have key people on the inside
Proposal for House of Citizens
https://www.sortitionfoundation.org/support_a_house_of_citizens