1. The issue of English votes for English laws,
commonly known as the West Lothian Question, refers to whether MPs from Scotland, Wales and Northern
Ireland, sitting in the House of Commons of the United
Kingdom, should be able to vote on matters that
affect England only. The Devolution in Scotland highlighted this problem
and put the question in focus owing to the significant number of MPs involved.
The Scottish electoral system, AMS, devised specifically for Scotland was
decided without due consideration to its consequences. It was an example of how
a political party, Labour here, decided on measures which looked like
benefitting that party at the time overlooking the wider public interest. That
decision came to haunt Labour now.
2. Way back in my book on TR Total Representation published under the auspices
of the ERS in 2009, I analysed in Chapter
7 the faults and consequences of AMS as applied to Scotland comparing it with
TR (Total Representation Electoral System) My analysis was based on the actual
results of the Scottish elections of 1999, 2003 and 2007. AMS is intended to reflect the voting
preferences of the electorate in a more representative manner than the Westminster model,
retaining the best features of FPTP – direct though limited accountability –
while introducing proportionality between parties through party list regional
voting. So Scottish electors each has two votes: one to elect 73 Constituency
Members of Parliament, using FPTP; and another vote to elect 56 Regional
Members, using Proportional
Representation "PR". Broadly
speaking, the percentage of votes obtained by the parties in the list vote (for
Regional Members) determines their overall number of representatives; these
party lists are used to top up the FPTP seats to the required number. So if a
party has won two seats in the Constituencies but its results in the Regional vote
give it a proportion equivalent to five seats, the first three candidates on
its list are elected in addition, and it ends up with five MSPs (Members of the
Scottish Parliament). Therefore in
practice the component of PR in the AMS is the dominant and determining
element.
3. In comparison Total
Representation TR is an electoral system based on the premise that every single
vote cast in an election has to end up with representation in parliament
directly or indirectly. It avoids the most serious defect of the
first-past-the-post system, under which votes cast for the successful candidate
are represented while all the rest of
the votes cast for the unsuccessful candidate are are discarded and left
unrepresented. Under TR these unrepresented votes are totalled and distributed
to the Parties of the Candidates ( in proportion to their contribution to this
Total) to elect Party Members of Parliament (PMP) Therefore TR offers a
solution by fusing the positive elements of both systems FPTP and PR in one
ballot one vote. And back to Scotland,
the following three paragraphs 4, 5, 6 are
quotations from that Chapter 7 based on analysis in the tables provided of
the actual results of Scottish Elections of 1999, 2003, and 2007:
4. Here
is what I wrote in Ch 7 in 2009:
"In my view, giving voters two ballots is potentially dangerous and
destabilising. My reason for saying this is that it tends to make people think
in two different directions – and the system can become a playground for
machination and manipulation by professional politicians and their public
relations advisers." and another quote "A close examination of the results shows why
the system is likely to become unviable. It is important to bear in mind when
reading it that the calculations of the Regional seats are not based on simple
straightforward conversion of percentages into seats to determine the resulting
number of Regional representatives for each party. The calculation simply
determines the topping-up requirements. That is why, for example, you find that
(in 2007) almost equal percentages of votes of 29.1 and 31.0 for Labour and the
Scottish National Party result in them winning 9 and 26 Regional seats
respectively! The idea is to compensate the latter for its lack of success in
the constituencies"
5. "Before the (2007) Scottish General
Election, it was expected by the UK government that Labour, which
was thought to be the most supported party, would win a majority. In fact, the
desire of both the Labour government in London
and the Labour Party in Scotland
was to frustrate the efforts of the Scottish National Party to promote its
platform of independence, and to show through the outcome of the election that
the nationalists were in the minority and that Scotland did not want to break
away. But close scrutiny of the results of 2007 show how AMS, the Additional
Member System, subverted the results, and how a determined nationalist party, riding on a strong, emotional platform of
independence, managed to overtake among the electorate the
hitherto-more-supported Labour Party’s objective of staying within the Union.
The results of the Constituency votes compared with those for the Regional List
votes already show the manipulation of the votes between the two ballots. Eventually AMS will break down. It was
obvious that sooner or later the voters will split their votes in order to push
forward the fortunes of sectional interests of minority parties – that is,
unless the Scottish nationalists succeed in seceding from the Union.
But that will be a different ball game."
6. "To examine the results of 1999, 2003 and
2007 meaningfully, one needs to compare the results of each participant party,
and especially the way its voters split their votes in different directions.
This comparison is especially significant when one sees that this split
occurred in a big way among those who cast their Constituency ballots for the
Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives and others – but not among those who
voted for the two big warring blocks: Labour and the SNP. The
final results show the power of emotional, negative protest rather than
rational opposition. A basis like this is bound to cause the system to fail
sooner or later, sending the authorities back to the drawing board. A detailed
examination of the actual results , reveals how – over three general elections
– the Scottish Nationalists inched their way to the top. Their dip in the
middle served to spur the voters of the other parties on to support them
through the Regional votes to attain their objective of independence." End
Quotes.
7. All this occurred also, of course, because the
Scottish National Party was better led and more organised at campaigning in
2007 than in 2003, and the demand for a non-Labour government was greater. In
2003, a large number of smaller parties, notably the Greens and the SSP, were
elected, mostly from the List part of the ballot. It was in that election that
the difference between constituency and list voting was more apparent and most
significant, while in 1999 and 2007 there was a less of a gap between the two.
8. Indeed the faulty Scottish
Electoral System led directly to the recent
Referendum in Scotland
and the chaos in the Westminster Parliament that unless dealt with wisely and
quickly would be certain to lead to the
break up of the United
Kingdom irrespective of the results of the
recent referendum and not withstanding the result of 55% rejecting
independence. And with the recent disintegration of Labour in Scotland its votes in the next general elections
for Westminster
could be overtaken by those of the SNP.
We could then find Westminster
dominated by a reinvigorated SNP as a
powerful minority party side by side with the Lib-Dems and force the
Conservative or Labour to play to its tunes. Therefore unless a proper response
to the West Lothian Question is addressed now Scotland
will become an independent country and the United Kingdom will be broken up.
9. Meanwhile Politics in the UK in all its
aspects and institutions stand today under big question marks. The political
establishment and the political institutions
in the country have become the object of distrust and even derision in the eyes of the public. Westminster Palace has become the symbol of a
historical fossil. Democracy itself is in a state of disarray. The political
leaderships are in confusion. What are the answers? To create new parliaments
for the regions? To abolish the House of Lords and replace it with a
Senate? To leave the EU? These questions
need to be settled by the people, the ultimate Sovereign. But we don't live in
ancient Athens where we can all assemble at the Agra, vote and decide on
our needs and our future. We are not Swiss either who grew up for centuries
exercising their democracy through the practice of referenda in all levels
of their politics, Communal, Cantonal
and Federal. Shaped by our own historical circumstances we elect
representatives to think and decide for us. Unfortunately today there is a
disconnect between us, the people, and our representatives, the MPs and the
Lords. The fault lies in our outdated Electoral System of FPTP and the
mutilations recently of the House of Lords. We need solutions for both based on
our present circumstances and in tune with our traditions of practical
commonsense and not on ideologies. The
last thing we need now is the use of Referenda which is alien to our democratic
traditions and therefore result in low participation and become easy to manipulate by vocal activists. That could certainly
result in the subversion of the will of the British People the Sovereign..
10. So where are the
solutions? And how to reconnect the voters, the people, to our politics? The
answers to all those questions lie in reforming the tools of our Democracy
which have become rusty and malfunctioning.
And the biggest tool is our
outdated electoral system that caused and gave rise to all these problems in
the first place. But instead of understanding the basic faults of the system we
tried to tinker with and patch up the problems derived from its malfunction.
11. My solution has two prongs: to replace our
FPTP System with "TR" a modern electoral system that fuses in one
ballot, one vote both the systems of FPTP and PR. And side by side to reform the House of Lords converting it to an Elected
Chamber while retaining its present revisory functions. I believe that the Smith
Commission Recommendations are reversible. It would be advisable to the Welsh
and Irish not to rush to clamour for
devolution and independence. I would not be surprised that the May
Elections could result in the SNP gaining more seats in the Commons. However I would not
be surprised either that the SNP could end up later on after the Scottish Elections with no overall
majority in Holyrood. The outcome of the implementations of the Smith
Commission will highlight the enormous problems that the SNP has created to the
Scottish people in Scotland,
in England and in Europe. People cannot be fed with speeches, slogans and
emotions.
12. As for England, the
last thing we need is a multiplicity of regional parliaments. We have to
distinguish between political aspirations and economic efficacy. Instead of devolving politics to
the regions from London
we must ensure economic prosperity there.
We must not destroy in haste London as the great
centre of finance serving the whole Union. London's role and function
can only be in the field of finance. The North and the other regions are our
industrial hinterland. Instead of transferring political power to them from the
centre we must engage in injecting economic resources to create jobs and
increase productivity. Instead of devolving political power to the regions we
should revitalise our local governments
and revive their glorious days before both the Conservative and Labour denuded
them of financial muscle and authority. Local taxation served good purposes in the
past. We should revitalise the town halls that stood for local pride. It is then that a Councillor becomes a
coveted office as important in the eyes of the public as an MP.
Aharon Nathan, Wimbledon, October 2014