Whose reform?
Norman Lamont
Anyone who confused the Hansard Society Report on Electoral Reform with a Royal Commission could be forgiven. The very word 'Commission', the red cover, the imposing list of the great and the good at the front, the respectful attention of the leader writers--all these seemed designed to encourage confusion. No doubt the authors would not be too upset by such a mistake. We have become mesmerised by Royal Commissions, forgetting that the views of official reports are only those of their members: they are Bow Groups pamphlets with more imposing covers. Certainly the Hansard Society report is no more objective or disinterested than a political pamphlet.
One only has to look at its list of witnesses and members to see that its conclusions Were pre-determined from the day it was set up.
The report does make one good point which should be remembered by all involved in the electoral reform debate. It emphasises several times that the consequences of changes in the electoral system are totally uncertain, and that reform, even if successful in its aims, Will not by itself solve Britain's fundamental problems. Perhaps someone will send a copy of the report to Lord Harlech who announced at his recent press conference that electoral reform was essential for the 'regeneration of Britain'—a claim with no more justification than the wildest economic fantasies of the original author of that stale phrase.
The report's tendentiousness can be seen in some surprising assertions. A table of election results since 1945 purports to show a declining share of votes for the two major political parties. It shows nothing of the sort. The share of the two major parties in 1970 was just the same as in 1945. It was a lot lower in the freak conditions of 1974, but if one looks at the figures back in the 1920s the share of the two parties has actually increased. Again, in a passage which seems to have been lifted bodily from the literature of the Electoral Reform Society, we are told that France is wrongly instanced by opponents of change, and that France only had a pure proportional system in 1954 and 1946. To put it at its mildest that is very much a matter of opinion. In 1945 and 1946 France used the d'Hondt system in multi-member constituencies. In the 1951 elections for the Assembly seats won by alliances of parties on an absolute majority basis were then divided between parties on a highest average system. Many academics describe that as a proportional system and are convinced that it was responsible for the heterogeneity of the coalitions that so rapidly succeeded one another in the Fourth Republic. Nowhere in the whole 'report is the argument that systems of proportional representation lead to a fragmentation of the party system seriously considered at all.
Supporters of electoral reform are not above using incompatible arguments for different audiences. In front of Conservatives the purpose of reform is to stop the ratchet move towards a Socialist state. For Other audiences the object is to prevent Uturns and doctrinaire lurches by both Parties. The report uses the U-turn argument and we are told about the effect on investment, and of changes in land development, economic planning, industrial relations. In fact, when businessmen talk about lack of continuity they are usually referring to none of these things but to something much more important : the stop-go cycle which stems not from our political system but from our fundamental lack of competitiveness. What the Committee ignores is that the most dramatic changes in policy usually happen within the life of a government and after the failure of other policies. If it was changes of government that caused most reversals of policy we should have had considerable continuity. Since the war, we have had two six-year periods of Labour government, and one thirteen-year period of the Tories.
The premise on which the Hansard Society build their argument, the need to prevent 'flagrant minority rule', is a thin one. Even if the abuse of power were a correct analysis of our problems, it does not follow that the way to deal with it is to change the electoral system.
The Committee seem bewitched by the magic of '50 per cent', or a majority. Yet a majority is surely a phantom concept. It is doubtful whether a majority of voters could agree on more than two political issues simultaneously. To try and create a majority for a government through additional members, or third preferences, is to pursue an unreal goal by the most synthetic means. In any case, the destruction of liberty or the expropriation of property is no more morally justified when backed by a majority.
The carefully engineered chaos of a multiParty system is no substitute for a proper system of constitutional checks and balances. If flagrant minority rule is our problem, it would have been far better if the Committee had spent its time considering ideas for strengthening the control of the House of Commons over the Executive, for reform of the House of Lords, for a fixed term for Parliament, and for a Bill of Rights.
The irony of the Committee's obsession with 50 per cent is that they themselves point out that the day of majority governments may have gone anyway. If, at each of the ten elections since the war, there had been the same number of members not supporting either of the two major parties as in October 1974, then five of the elections would have produced a House of Commons in which no Party had an overall majority. If there is to be a political realignment in this country It may easily come about under our existing system. The belief that politics are already becoming fluid is not an argument for accelerating the disintegration of the party system as we know it.
The Commission's proposals would make coalition government the rule rather than the exception. We are to jettison the principle of alternating parties in government, which is in many ways a very desirable practice. It gives the electorate the right to throw out one lot of politicians who have made a complete mess of it and replace them with another. Once you have moved from that to a system where votes only alter the size of the different factions within a government you are on the highroad to the 'immobilism' of Italy and disillusionment with politics on a scale greater than anything we have so far seen.
In the short run the effect of the Committee's proposals would be to leave the effective choice of government to the Liberal Party. That the Liberals would be most likely to support Labour is only a secondary objection. More importantly, nothing that has happened in the Liberal Party in recent years gives one any confidence that power would be exercised responsibly.
One cannot tell what would happen and the uncertainty is itself an argument against change. A belief that if you break up the party system, throw the bits in the air, they will come down to form a cordon sanitaire against Socialism is surely unconvincing. If the trade union-based Left were the largest single party, how far could one rely on the willpower of a motley group of nonSocialist parties, some with very limited or regional aspirations ?
We have already seen in this Parliament how the Labour government has been able to push through legislation because of the indifference of minor parties, and in the case of the Scottish Nationals by sheer bribery. If there is one thing that the history of multiparty systems demonstrates it is that the most unlikely and surprising alliances occur again and again.
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