2nd May 2010

In yesterday’s leader, The Guardian came out clearly for Clegg, pronouncing “The liberal moment has come.”   General election 2010: The liberal moment has come | Comment is free | The Guardian.

I found it thoroughly depressing.  But I guess it’s nothing new.  The Guardian has been pro-Clegg at least since the June 09 elections.

It’s not so much that The Guardian doesn’t like Brown (which it doesn’t).   It’s that what The Guardian really, really wants is proportional representation.  It wants “”the  necessary revolution against the political system that the expenses scandal had triggered.”

And what Clegg is really, really selling is PR.   He’s been very clear that if he holds the balance of power after May 6th, he’ll do business with “the man in the moon,” but the precondition for his support would be electoral reform.  (Not policy content, you’ll notice, but a change to the electoral system – despite the crisis we’re in.)

So is this PR what we want?  Sure, we like the idea of a ‘fairer’ system.  Sure, the LibDems get more votes than seats and that can’t be right.   Call PR ‘electoral reform’ and it sounds like part and parcel of a brave new era.   But does The Great British Public really want PR?  I doubt it.

Because:

1)  What is PR?  I don’t think many voters know.  There are so many different kinds of PR.   Here’s how clear it is: “People should now be given a say. A choice between the bankrupt system we have now; the timid option of Alternative Vote, a baby step in the right direction; and serious proposals for reform like Roy Jenkins’ AV+ or better still the Single Transferable Vote… ”  (Nick Clegg, June 2009)

2) Is PR ‘proportional”?  Even if we understood and agreed upon one of the PR systems, is it really ‘proportional’?  Or does it, by denying large parties majorities, deliver disproportionate power to smaller parties?  Is it right that a small party can hold the ‘balance of power’, as they call it? 

Of course you don’t necessarily need PR to deliver disproportionate power to smaller parties.  We might get it anyway, on Thursday.  If today’s polls in the Observer are correct, the LibDems might have 85 seats.  They could form a majority with Labour (predicted 249 seats) and outflank the Tories.  Or they could team up with Cameron.  Who knows?  Elsewhere in The Observer it is suggested that a wise Labour Party would usher Nick Clegg into No 10.  Wow.  That would be a big result for a party with 85 seats.  It would not, however, be very ‘proportional’.

3) We like to know who our MP is.  We like to write to our MP.  That is our link to Westminster.  PR requires lists.  It requires larger constituencies returning a number of representatives.  It wouldn’t be the end of the world as we know it.  But it would break a good solid understanding of constituency (on the part of both voter and MP) and the responsibility and accountability that that relationship provides.  I just don’t think there’s an appetite for it.  “I’m going to write to one of my MPs” doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.

The truth is that at some point decision-making has to boil down to decision-taking – that is, generally speaking, discarding some choices and plumping for a single route.  My satnav always offers me 3 routes.  But I understand that I have to pick one of them and commit.  I don’t want a coalition of routes. 

I make the case against PR because the Guardian and Clegg think its time has come.  They might be right, but not, I fear, because people understand it, or because it is fairer, or because the electorate has had enough of first-past-the-post.

Clegg and The Guardian may be right, but not because the intellectual argument has been won, but because progressive thinkers have conflated deep voter disaffection (undeniable) with a desire for PR as the solution; PR as the only, logical, “necessary” revolution against the political system.

And finally, if PR’s time has come, it is because its supporters might, after May 6th, find themselves finally able to hold a larger party to ransom.   They will disappear into Westminster’s smoke-filled rooms and bargain behind the scenes for their big prize – a prize which will, they hope, allow them to wield disproportionate power long into the future.  If anybody thinks the electorate will see this as cleaning up politics, they are mistaken.

Never mind the urgent need for bold, decisive, mandated leadership – at a time when voters want fresh, honest, principled politics, PR is the very last thing we need.