Coalition, electoral reform and devolution

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ACCESS UPDATE: COALITION, ELECTORAL REFORM AND DEVOLUTION NEW POLITICAL LANDSCAPES IN THE UK?

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Coalition, Electoral Reform and Devolution – New Political Landscapes in the UK?

By Richard Burgess Published 28.10 2010

Every time there is general election in Britain the media tends to dish out the hyperbole about “seachanges”, “seismic shifts” and “watersheds”. Of course, every election is an important event with very real consequences at every level of society, particularly in a country where two-party, adversarial politics has been the norm and where the voting system has a tendency to turn relatively small changes in voting patterns into decisive shifts in the parliamentary balance of power. But for that very reason, we can perhaps be forgiven for using a bit of hyperbole about the election 2010. After all, for the first time since the Second World War, Britain has a coalition government.

For the first time since 1918 the Liberal Party (or, to be precise, its modern descendant the Liberal Democrats) are back in office in peacetime. And for the first time since 1983 the Labour Party polled less than 30% of the popular vote.

The Coalition – a forced marriage

Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, London

The election result in May presented voters with the unusual spectacle of all three major parties in defeat. Labour’s defeat was unequivocal, and widely predicted. 13 years in power had taken its toll and Gordon Brown, who succeeded Tony Blair as Prime Minister in 2007, had gradually proved to be something of a liability for his party. The Liberal Democrats, whose quick-witted and smoothtalking leader Nick Clegg had captured the headlines with his television performances, failed to deliver at the final hurdle, losing 5 parliamentary seats. Not even the Conservatives, who emerged as the largest party, could call themselves winners with any real conviction. After all those years in

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opposition and an election campaign against a Prime Minister of such monumental unpopularity, a result that left them twenty seats short of an overall majority could hardly be seen as a success.

Neither could the coalition government that emerged after a week of frenzied negotiations be called a love match. Most Liberal voters, and indeed many Liberal MPs, would have preferred a coalition with the Labour Party, with whom they had more in common on a number of important issues. But the arithmetic was against such a solution; even together the Lib Dems and Labour would still have been a minority in Parliament, at the mercy of the smaller, nationalist parties from vote to vote. Some sort of cooperation between the Lib Dems and the Tories was the only viable alternative. So David Cameron and Nick Clegg were forced to bury the hatchet (which had been fairly well sharpened during the election campaign) and become “Nick ‘n’ Dave”, the new doubleact of British politics. On the 12th May they met the press together on the lawn of 10 Downing Street, blushing like a couple of newly-weds.

Actually, Cameron is probably more pleased with the marriage than he dare admit. Analysts point out that there are deep divisions within the Conservative party, and that many backbenchers are secretly sceptical of their moderate, charismatic leader. Had the Tories won an overall majority, analysts say, these divisions would quickly have come to the surface, with the party’s right-wingers demanding good, old-fashioned Tory policies rather than the centrist, “one-nation” line favoured by Cameron. But coalition with the Lib Dems gives him cover; he can always “blame” his coalition partners if there are compromises. And if the coalition should fall apart, he can play the “uncompromising leader” card and strengthen his hand within his own party.

Things are a little more precarious for Nick Clegg, whose future very much depends on making this marriage work. If it does not, there is a fair chance that the Lib Dems would be severely punished by the electorate at the next crossroads. Labour MPs have already signalled that the long-term prospect of cooperation with the Lib Dems, at least with Clegg at the helm, has been severely compromised by their present choice of bedfellows. On the other hand, Clegg must be careful not to be seen to be sacrificing too much for the marriage. If it lasts, Clegg still needs to make it clear to

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his supporters and the rest of the electorate that a dividing line remains between the two parties, that the Lib Dems have a soul of their own. He can only do this by bringing a distinctively Liberal agenda into government.

Prime Minister David Cameron (Cons.) (left) and Deputy Prime Minster Nick Clegg (LibDem)

The first big test of Lib Dem influence came with the public spending cuts that were introduced in October. These cuts are the deepest and most far-reaching since the end of the Second World War – some 81 billion pounds, to cover a huge borrowing deficit now costing around 120 million pounds a day in interest. Coalition politicians have talked darkly of Britain being on “the brink of bankruptcy” and blame the deficit on Labour’s economic mismanagement. Labour, on the other hand, point to the worldwide recession. But although they may differ about whose fault it is, there is a general consensus across the political spectrum in Britain (unlike in some other European countries) that drastic cuts do need to be made and that Britons should be prepared for a period of austerity.

The question is: how drastic and how austere? Labour, as the party of opposition, has unsurprisingly declared that the medicine is too strong and too quick and risks killing the patient off rather than curing him. Secretly, however, many were surprised at the influence that the Lib Dems seem to have had on the social profile of the cuts: direct funding of state schools, the NHS, climate change measures and international aid – all Lib Dem priorities – have all been largely exempted.

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Even so, the pace and depth of the cuts proposed in welfare may well prove a stumbling block for the coalition. For one thing, there are suspicions among some Lib Dems that the Tories are secretly rubbing their hands in glee: At last, under the cover of a borrowing deficit, they can do what Conservative governments traditionally like doing most; rolling back the state, cutting public spending, introducing “small government”.

Electoral reform Another issue that will test the cohesion of the coalition is electoral reform. The issue has been at the top of the Liberal agenda for half a century, and for obvious reasons; the present first-past-thepost (FPTP) system has effectively kept them out of power since they lost their dominant position on the left of British politics to the Labour Party back in the 1920s. As the third party in what is essentially a two-horse race, they have consistently been underrepresented in Parliament compared to their percentage of the popular vote (at the last election 23% of the votes gave them 8.8% of the seats). Sympathy for their cause extends far beyond their own voters, and Labour itself had electoral reform among its election pledges.

The Conservative Party, however, has traditionally opposed changes to a voting system that has served them very well for a couple of centuries. Tory backbenchers were therefore taken aback when it was announced that Cameron and Clegg, in their post-election negotiations, had done a deal on electoral reform. In May 2011, on the same day as the elections for the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly, there will be a referendum on whether FPTP should be replaced. It has since been alleged that Clegg achieved this agreement by means of a bluff; he got Cameron to believe that Gordon Brown had offered the Lib Dems electoral reform without a referendum, thereby pressing Cameron to make greater concessions than he would have done otherwise.

Whatever the truth of this, the British electorate has for the first time the chance to change the way it goes about choosing its governments. However, the alternative to FPTP that it is being presented with is not what many had hoped. In fact, the system being proposed – the Alternative Vote (AV) is not one that either party feel happy about. “Nick’n’Dave’s unwanted child”, one commentator called it. Briefly, the AV system entails that the present constituency system is retained, with one representative for each constituency. But instead of voting for just one candidate, voters may vote for several, putting them in numerical order. If any candidate polls over

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50% on the first preference, he or she is elected. If not, then the second preferences are taken into consideration: and so on, down the list, until there is an outright winner. The system has the advantage, seen from a traditionalist perspective, that it retains the “sacred” bond between the voter and his/her MP, whilst at the same time ensuring that the MP actually has majority support.

Statistically, the system is also likely to elect parties with a clear majority. For the smaller parties, though, AV is not particularly good news. It will still mean an enormous number of “wasted votes”.

For the Liberal Democrats there are gains to be made by the AV system – for example, it would have gained them 22 more seats at the last election. But AV is far cry from the system of proportional representation that they have been advocating, and that works well enough in the devolved assemblies. Proportional representation would very likely change the whole ballgame of British politics, breaking the back of the two-party system, opening up for smaller parties and making coalition government the norm rather than the exception. For the Lib Dems AV reform, should the electorate endorse it, is a step on the way rather than a final destination.

Devolution – a runaway train?

Even without AV reform, the ballgame of British politics has already changed significantly since the Conservatives were last in power. Large areas of the United Kingdom are actually beyond the direct control of the coalition government in a number of key areas. A decade after Wales gained its Assembly and Scotland its Parliament, the process of devolution is now firmly embedded in the political life of the UK. Even in sectarian Northern Ireland a devolved Assembly has been functioning uninterruptedly since 2007, after several years of intermittent suspension.

It is worth remembering how the present dynamic of devolution came about. Under Margaret Thatcher

Welsh Assembly debating chamber, Cardiff

nationalist sentiment and deep frustration had grown as a result of her free-market economic policies that hit Scotland and Wales particularly hard. Her crusade against the unions and, not least, her refusal to save a failing coal mining industry that had formed the backbone of many communities, made her very unpopular with Welsh and Scottish

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voters. The election results of the time speak of a divided nation. In 1987, for example, the Conservatives won comfortably over Labour in the UK as a whole, but were reduced to their lowest representation in Scotland since the First World War. This was the perfect seedbed for separatist nationalist parties that had walked in the shadows for decades. As the queues of the unemployed grew and economic decline deepened, they could argue, quite correctly, that their fate was being dictated by English politicians they had not voted for. In short, Scotland was “occupied territory”.

Tony Blair, who took over the Labour leadership in 1994, was quick to register the rise of nationalist sentiment in Scotland and Wales, and made devolution one of the key policies of his “New” Labour, promising a referendum in both countries on the question of devolved assemblies. It is important to understand his motives in doing this. Voting patterns in both countries showed that the Scottish National Party (SNP) and Plaid Cymru, who were both left of centre, were likely to “steal” voters, not from the Conservatives, but from Labour.

Blair’s espousal of the cause of devolution was not motivated by any long-term wish to see the dismantling of the United Kingdom. Rather the opposite – the hope was that by setting up national assemblies, some of the steam would be taken out of the separatist movements. Once the nationalists were transformed from raucous activists to responsible, budget-bound politicians, the theory ran, their public support would tail off.

The Scottish Parliament, Edinburgh

A decade later we can conclude that the theory was mistaken. Once it is set in motion, devolution has had a dynamic of its own. Like a dog on an ever-longer leash, the nationalist cause has celebrated its new influence by demanding greater fiscal freedom and political clout for the devolved assemblies, and its popularity shows no sign of tailing off. In the 2007 election to the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood, support for the SNP rose by 9%, making them the largest party, one seat ahead of Labour.

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The ultimate aim for the SNP is not simply devolution, but full independence. A planned Referendum Bill was shelved by the SNP in September because they realised that a combined opposition at Holyrood would defeat it. But Alex Salmond, the SNP leader, promises to make the referendum the key issue in the 2011 Scottish elections. Scottish independence, once the distant dream of a few romantic poets, is now looming on the horizon as a real possibility – even a likelihood, in the view of some commentators. The separatist cause has less support in Wales, where Plaid Cymru still come a poor second behind Labour in terms of electoral support. But no one is in any doubt – the union of England and Scotland is at the core of the UK. Scottish secession would mean the end of Britain as a nation.

Northern Ireland, of course, remains a special case on the question of devolution. Here the nationalist cause seeks not independence, but unification with another sovereign state. And here the divisions between nationalist and unionist parties run on sectarian, religious lines. Those of us for whom the violence of the Troubles are a recent memory rubbed our eyes in disbelief at the spectacle of then First Minister Ian Paisley indulging in friendly banter with his deputy, Sinn Fein politician and former IRA combatant Martin McGuinness. But just as we thought that miracles were the order of the day, the ghosts of the past return putting the cohesion of the cross-party Northern Ireland Executive to the test. Rioting by nationalist youths and killings and bombings carried out by

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dissident republican groups are a particular nightmare for Sinn Fein.

It puts them in the bizarre position of having to condemn acts that they only recently actively supported, using language identical to that used by their Unionist opponents against them.

One of the challenges ahead is whether Sinn Fein, as the largest nationalist, republican party, can

Republican mural in Belfast

reassert its authority over its own communities. The alternative is very bleak indeed.

On the other side of the Irish Sea English nationalism (not to be confused with British nationalism) is still largely dormant as a united, political force. The English show little enthusiasm for having a parliament of their own, in spite of the obvious iniquity of the so-called West Lothian question, i.e. that Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish MPs still have a say in England’s internal affairs while English MPs are excluded from the affairs of the three devolved assemblies. Interestingly, while Scottish, Welsh and Irish nationalism tends to be left-of-centre, if not radical, English nationalism has a distinctly conservative (and Conservative) flavour, with resentment of Scottish “greed” at its core. Attempts by

England's St George's Cross flag

the likes of folk-rocker Billy Bragg to awaken a left-wing English nationalism based on tolerance and inclusiveness is still no more than an interesting sideshow.

So far the Tories have been firmly Unionist in their policies, opposing devolution at every turn and ridiculing the idea of an English parliament. But the temptation to play “the English card” is growing. The arithmetic speaks for itself: at the last election, the Conservatives managed to win only one of the 59 Scottish constituencies at Westminster. Labour, on the other hand, who did so badly in the country as a whole, won 41 Scottish seats, effectively denying the Conservatives an absolute majority in Parliament. In other words, the Tories have everything to gain by excluding Scottish MPs from influence over decisions concerning internal English affairs. This explains why

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Cameron favours a policy often called “English votes for English law”. This policy attempts to answer the West Lothian question without going as far as pushing devolution still further and establishing an English parliament. It suggests instead making constitutional changes that would exclude Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish MPs from voting at Westminster on issues that only concern England. Labour has consistently opposed the policy, saying that it would create two classes of MPs. More importantly, though, they know that such a change would leave 85% of the United Kingdom in the hands of the Conservatives for the foreseeable future.

Labour dusts itself off The man now charged with the task of preventing such an eclipse of power is Labour’s new leader, Ed Miliband. At 41 he is even younger than Cameron and Clegg (who are both the youngest leaders of their parties in modern times). The son of a Jewish holocaust survivor and a Polish-Belgian Marxist intellectual, his newly-coined nickname “Red Ed” actually owes more to the temptations of a good rhyme and the paranoia of a rightwing tabloid press than to any real policy priorities. In his campaign for the leadership, in which he narrowly beat his elder brother David, he repeatedly underlined the wisdom learnt from recent history: that Labour can only win from the centre. Being seen as the mouthpiece of the unions is no recipe for success with the broader electorate. One of the real challenges he will have to deal with is how to oppose a coalition government that itself has occupied the centre of the British political

Labour leader Ed Miliband

spectrum without moving his own party too far to the left. If Labour are to regain power in Westminster, Miliband must emulate the great achievement of Blair: persuading a substantial portion of middle-class, southern England that Labour represents their best interests. It will require great skill where Miliband is concerned – or a spectacular failure by the coalition government.

Three charismatic young politicians now dominate British politics. The Blairs and the Browns, the Straws and the Mandelsons – they are now the stuff of history and rancorous autobiography, not of the political present. There is a fresh feeling to British politics these days. The next five years will show whether this feeling will translate into substantial change, and whether a cliché like “seismic shift” is actually warranted. Are we witnessing the end of two-party, adversarial politics in Britain or is the coalition just a passing “blip” on the seismograph? Are we to see the introduction of

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electoral reform that will change the way decisions are made in Britain? Are we, indeed, witnessing the beginning of the end of the United Kingdom itself, as devolution changes the way the four nations of the union think about themselves and their futures? These are exciting times – for the British electorate and for teachers of British background the world over.

Vocabulary hyperbole

overdrivelse

sectarian

sekterisk

adversarial

basert på motstandere

intermittent

ofte avbrutt

unequivocal

utvetydig

seedbed

grobunn

liability

belastning

espousal

tilslutning

arithmetic

regnestykke

raucous

høylytt

viable

gangbar

fiscal

skattepolitisk

hatchet

stridsøks

clout

makt

deficit

underskudd

secession

løsrivelse

recession

konjunkturnedgang

banter

godmodig erting

austerity

innstramming

cohesion

sammenheng

exempt

unntatt

dissident

utbryter

stumbling block

hindring

reassert

hevde på nytt

referendum

folkeavstemming

dormant

sovende

entail

innebære

iniquity

urettferdighet

retain

beholde

emulate

etterlikne

devolved

selvstyrt

rancorous

hatsk

endorse

godkjenne

warrant

fortjene

Comprehension tasks 1

What arguments are there for saying that the recent election was a “seismic shift” in British politics?

2

How can it be argued that none of the three major parties were truly victorious at the election?

3

Why can it be argued that the Lib Dems are taking more of a risk by joining the coalition than the Conservatives are?

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4

How does the proposed Alternative Vote system fall short of proportional representation?

5

Why do you think the two largest parties oppose proportional representation?

6

What is meant by “wasted votes” in this context?

7

What reasons did Blair have for making devolution one of New Labour’s policies?

8

Why can it be said that the ghosts of the past have returned to Northern Ireland?

9

The policy of “English votes for English law” means excluding MPs from the smaller nations from taking part in votes on English issues. Why is this a threat to Labour’s power in Westminster?