AV But Are The Wheels Coming Off?

Changing the type of voting procedure in future general elections to determine in each constituency who will be elected is a little like putting a new bottom of the market set of tyres on an old banger.

This vehicle has a transmission with a serious whine, the big end has gone, the steering is unreliable, the brakes are badly worn, the electrics work only when they want to and the exhaust has rotted giving out a lot of noise with toxic emissions.

Meanwhile, Cable thinks that putting more passengers in the back seat will correct the steering and Clegg in the front passenger seat is using a sat nav that he bought from second hand shop but which is set for Brussels directions. The other passengers are fighting in the back over who should have most of the stuff they nicked from the car park.

This is a short description of the state of the British Constitution now. It always has been a creaky and idiosyncratic vehicle in which to go places but whilst just about or barely serviceable in the past is now destined for the scrapyard of history.

Unluckily, it is not just the politicians that are affected. The rest of us bundled into the trailer behind, recently refitted by New Labour with different wheels are having a bad time. This is because the wheels are square and cost more than a new Ferrari.

Today, on BBC News a pundit, whose name I did not catch, talking about Libya was asked what he thought our strategy was. He said the problem was that there was no strategy. More or less wherever you go now in the UK system of government you may find many fine words and incredible management speak but absolutely nobody who understands what “strategy” entails and what means are necessary to fulfil the ways.

We no longer have a “British Constitution” only a collection of theories, devices and departments which bear less and less relation to each other and seem to connect only to other bodies in other places. “Strategy” is now a set of knee jerk reaction to events and the demands of others elsewhere whether politically or economically.

The voting issue applies only to the Second Chamber, the House of Commons, if you can afford to pay the price of entry. The Upper Chamber, the House of Lords, has membership arrangements that would have disgraced the court of Nero and is about as useful as Caligula’s horse in dealing with our current problems.

So back to the voting system, the talk is that somehow the “first past the post” system is enshrined in our history. But the reality of the methods of putting people into the Second Chamber has changed down the ages. The present set up is fairly recent. What has happened is that this is a serious distortion of an already flawed system.

We have a Parliament now which is neither representative nor can discharge the basic functions of government. The changes needed are more radical than most can imagine for both chambers. It entails either a boldness of vision and the ability to carry through the changes on the part of one party or another or a revolution. If we do not get the first there is the inherent risk of the second occurring.

This has happened in the past and if our vehicle does go into the scrapyard and we do not have the money to buy a new one then we will be dependent on the transport that others will determine. So, either we have to find a new model fast or take on a decent second hand one. As I discovered long ago the one pictured above, alas, will no longer take the family or the luggage.

The AV business is a botch job and our car is at the point when we have already had one too many.

The Democracy Of The Damned

The matter of voting has been part of the week’s business. This morning I was dazed by the idea that I might have a vote in the Labour leadership election. When at work it was necessary to join things and one small group has been swept up into the GMB where I now march arm in arm with the Boilermakers and Sex Workers Collective.

I suspect they will be even less happy than I am.

The union asks me to vote. But which of The Flatulent Five should I vote for? The Famous Five of Enid Blyton number four humans and one dog. I never read her books, Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler being preferred.

However, the GMB suggest Ed Miliband as the man of the moment, the one who I make out to be the dog in question. Something of a Schnauzer, little and uncontrollable, yelps all the time, has a nasty bite, but is vulnerable to a flying kick.

There is something more important, however, and that is the local Electoral Register. It was so simple, pick up the document that came through the door, go online and click for the postal vote, all done nice and easy. But far too easy.

If you have a single member constituency based system whatever the voting procedure then there will be marginal constituencies won and lost by only a few votes. I will skip the long analysis of this. But at the beginning of the 1950’s around twenty tight votes could turn the election.

By the end of the 1950’s it had gone out to about 40, then in the 1960’s returned to being a small number. It was then that the critical nature of a small minority of seats was fully realised and we have had the struggle to control those often at the expense, in the literal term, of everybody else.

There are other ways of jiggling the system of course. One long established has been to make decisions on housing allocations and planning. Another has been to vary the size and nature of constituencies. Quite why the Isle of Wight electorate should be five times larger than that of the Western Isles is a real question.

However, in the past, because of tight local control and knowledge by and large the actual business of voting was relatively reliable and honest. Now it is becoming dangerously open to manipulation and fraud. With the constituency system, you do not need to operate in all of them, only the ones where the swing is critical.

There has been disquiet and complaints recently about events, falsification, impersonation, and above all manipulating the postal votes in some areas. If this becomes more extensive as the temptations increase it could mean that the electoral system we have is no longer an asset but a liability.

When the Government looks at issues of voting this is only a subsidiary issue. The main issue is the integrity of the system as a whole and indeed whether the constituency based form can now be trusted to deliver anything remotely like a democratic and representative result.

Ask yourself which groups have the money, the clout, the organisation and the intent to warp the system in their own interests? I can suggest the drug dealers. You might consider the more unscrupulous corporate interests, foreign agencies or other power groups that now infest our political system. They do not need to attack the whole, only a small and vulnerable minority of seats.

Consider, that in an electorate of 40,000,000 only 500,000 may be the ones that matter at the margins. Cheap at the price.