UK Elections – Endangered Tribes?

As the UK’s first true coalition government in almost a century takes office, it opens up possibilities for the official assimilation of radical changes which have already taken place in British society and could, just, lay the basis for the transformation of British politics.

If London did unsurprisingly have a national unity government during WW2, you really have to go back to the beginning of the 20^th century to locate a coalitions-as-normal epoch. Labour was emerging to challenge the Liberals – and there were 100 or so troublesome Irish MPs to contend with.

If every electoral system has its foibles, the British First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) one has more than most. The most obvious one is that it has allowed parties to win handsome majorities in the House of Commons on the basis of minority vote as set out in the table below¹:

A second, but less often discussed, effect is that the system favours large “broad-church” parties such as Conservative or Labour. Both parties are in effect coalitions of different forces and tendencies held together by the most basic of human instincts – survival.

The Conservative Associations of England’s rural counties have little in common with those from the urban middle classes who provide much of the party’s English electorate. This distinction is particularly stark in questions of religious belief, human rights, and views of the world beyond Britain’s shores.

There is a similar chasm between those in the Labour party who cling almost nostalgically to those classic socialist slogans which once played well in areas dominated by mining and heavy industry and a current membership that is de facto middle class. Some Labour Members of Parliament are distinctly uncomfortable with the reality that teachers probably outnumber miners by over 100-to-1 in today’s party.

This list of what distinguishes different elements within both parties could be extended to include regional and other factors.

The figures always favoured a Lib Dem-Conservative deal, but a progressive Lib Dem-Labour deal with support from other parties was possibility, albeit an outside one. A possibility that was sabotaged when MPs from Labour’s more traditional wing made it clear they would not support  electoral reform legislation proposed by a Lib-Lab government.

Even those Liberal Democrats most attracted to cutting a deal with Labour then realised that such a government could neither survive nor deliver. The discussions between the David Cameron and Nick Clegg teams quickly became the only game in town.

Labour traditionalists like David Blunkett, the former Home Secretary, knew exactly what they were doing when they set out to torpedo the coalition talks which he decried as being “scandalous” in theYorkshire Post on May 11. Their core faith is that Labour, following a period of purification on the opposition benches, will sweep back into power in some future election.

The new coalition government is however committed to proposing electoral reform. While the favoured Alternative Vote system falls well short of being fully proportional, it does mean that a candidate has to have over 50% of the vote in their constituency in order to be elected.

Estimates suggest that had the recent election been fought on such a system the Liberal Democrats would have emerged with close to 100 seats. Such a result would certainly further empower the party and lend force to its arguments for an even more representative voting system.

Should the UK ever get there, such a system would dissolve the cement that holds the two mammoth parties together.  Labour traditionalists and modern social democrats would no longer be obliged to combine within a single party in order to survive. They could reasonably hope to win more seats separately than they ever could together.

Their negotiations would then take place between elected MPs in the process of forming a governing coalition rather than within their party structures as they do today.

The 43 year old David Cameron has helped pilot a remarkable coup in offering the Liberal Democrats a full coalition. This provides him with a useful counterbalancing force for use against the more Eurosceptic and deeply reactionary elements within his own party. As Prime Minister of a coalition he has far greater room to manoeuvre in terms of his own party than he would ever have had as a Prime Minister with a massive Tory majority.

Opinion polls suggest that British voters are open to electoral reform. The results of last week’s election where the Conservatives won 306 seats on 36% of the vote, Labour 258 for 29% and the Liberal Democrats 57 for 23% are unlikely to dissuade them.

Should the new government achieve electoral reform, the days of parties-that-are-coalitions will be numbered. Those who nostalgically long for a past where the UK was White and Christian, or one where miners marched solidly behind their union banners will be heartbroken.

But they will be a small minority.