On improving British democracy after the next election

The Electoral Commission concluded recently that the requirement to pay a monetary deposit to stand in any election in the UK above council level (Parliament, European Parliament, Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly, London Assembly) should be scrapped altogether, and rightly so.

We are anomalous among European nations in not only not having any form of proportional representation in our national parliament, but also in requiring candidates to pay just to stand for election. (the Republic of Ireland scrapped the election deposit requirement for Dail elections in 2007 on the grounds of it being essentially unconstitutional)

The deposit requirement is an outdated relic (it was first introduced in 1918) and it is clear that democracy is not about money-it is about popular support. Ten signatures on a nomination form is not an indication of real support when constituencies contain >60,000 electors each (at present). More so, multi-member proportional constituencies (preferably by single transferable vote so that both independent and party-affiliated candidates have a fair chance) should be introduced in British elections.

I do not believe Additional Member System/Mixed-Member Proportional electoral systems are good enough for three good reasons. Firstly, MMP is still just as likely as FPTP to produce a two-party system even if smaller parties do get fair representation and even if the number of single member constituencies is less than the number of multi-member constituencies (e.g. in Germany). Secondly, most MMP systems allow a candidate defeated in a single member constituency ballot to be elected anyway via a list, especially if closed lists are used. (Single Transferable Vote and pure list-PR systems, like those used in the Netherlands, do not have this problem) Thirdly, STV does not have a percentage threshold (the lack of one is very useful for localised parties) and AMS/MMP will almost always have such a threshold (e.g. 5%)

Also, signature requirements are much better for deterring frivolous candidates-although they should also not be too high otherwise serious candidates could be deterred as well.
Overall, I seriously hope that electoral and democratic reform will be strongly on the agenda of the next Parliament, as these problems should have been fixed years ago.

Alan.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My analysis of local by-elections from 22/11/18

Readers, the results of this week's British local by-elections were as follows: Enfield LBC, Bush Hill Park: Conservative 1540 (52.4%, +12.7%), Labour 828 (28.2%, -8.3%), Liberal Democrats 313 (10.7%, -0.8%), Green 127 (4.3%, -6.6%), WEP 79 (2.7%), Independent (Oyaloyu) 50 (1.7%). [UKIP did not stand] Westminster LBC, Lancaster Gate: Conservative 913 (47.2%, -1.5%), Labour 684 (35.4%, -1.0%), Liberal Democrats 275 (14.2%, -0.7%), Green 62 (3.2%). Windsor & Maidenhead UA, Datchet: Conservative 525 (56.0%, -3.1%), National Flood Prevention Party 223 (23.8%), Labour 121 (12.9%, -9.1%), Liberal Democrats 48 (5.1%,-13.8%), Green 21 (2.2%). Wirral MBC, Upton: Labour 1490 (61.3%, +3.1%), Conservative 705 (29.0%, +0.4%), Green 151 (6.2%, -0.5%), Liberal Democrats 83 (3.4%, -0.8%). [TUSC did not stand] All changes are since May. The open divisions in the Conservatives, which resulted in a failed attempt to call for a vote of no confidence in Theresa May by the European Researc...
Read more

On the 2020 Serbian election: Why a boycott will only worsen things there

First of all, I apologise for the recent hiatus; however elections are still postponed or on hold in many countries, including the UK. Serbia, however, was able to proceed with its 2020 general election amidst this crisis. Its overall result proved reminiscent of Hungarian elections under Viktor Orban's tenure (2010-present), since the leading national-conservative coalition, the SNS (Progressive Party of Serbia) coalition led by Serbian President Aleksander Vucic (Ana Brnabic is the Serbian Prime Minister, and the first woman and openly homosexual person to hold that position), polled 61.6% of the vote, giving them as many as 191 seats out of 250 and a majority of as high as 132, almost unheard of in any country with proportional representation. Press freedom has endured significant curbs since President Vucic first came into power as Serbian PM in 2012 (he became President of Serbia in 2017), as have civil liberties of Serbs in general. Nepotism and corruption in the Serbian ...
Read more

On the French local elections of 2020: Vive le surge de vert!

The French local elections finally concluded yesterday, having been originally scheduled to take place on 15 March; they were postponed due to the effects of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.  The most sensational story of these elections was the many triumphs by the main French Green Party, Europe Ecologie-Les Verts (EELV). In major French cities (those with more than 100,000 people), EELV captured the mayoralties of Annecy, Besancon, Bordeaux, Lyon, Marseille, Strasbourg, and Tours. They also performed impressively in the munciipal elections for those cities as well. However, in the midst of all this triumph there was one notable setback for them: Eric Pollie, the first Green Mayor of a major French city, decided to contest the mayoral election there as an "Independent Left" (divers gauche) candidate instead. Furthermore they narrowly missed out on unseating former PS leader Martine Aubry from her post as Mayor of Lille; in the second round she held on by 227 votes, a sig...
Read more