Politics: March 2020 Archives

Chris Medlock used to make the point that in America, coalitions are formed before the election, while in countries with proportional representation, they happen after the voters have had their say. Giles Fraser considers the UK's decisive December election alongside Israel's third election in a year and explains why this is an advantage for the American and British systems:

The two main parties -- Blue and White and Likud -- are virtually equal, and not terribly different ideologically, with a whole host of smaller parties making up the difference. In Israel, and because of Proportional Representation, politics is all about the coalitions, with the smaller parties having a disproportionate influence on the makeup of any future government. The names of these parties may change a lot, but no amount of reincarnation can shift the underlying stalemate. And no one is confident that after another electoral cycle that things can change this time either.

Back in the dark days of Autumn 2019, when Brexit was stuck, neither able to go forward or backwards, I flirted with proportional representation as a way to break the log jam. I should have known better. For it was First Past the Post that finally delivered a much needed verdict.

For all its various faults, FPTP has the virtue of forcing different political temperaments to enter into coalitions with each other before elections rather than after them. And this means two things: 1) that we have a clearer view of the alliances we are voting for and 2) that the winning side is more likely to have the freedom to take politics forward. Stuck politics is a ghost story, unable to achieve anything, neither alive nor dead.

Elizabeth Babade, a Brexit Party candidate, said at the Change Politics for Good conference on Saturday that she no longer supports proportional representation. She believes it produces weak parliamentary institutions that are dominated by the permanent bureaucracy. Instead, she says:

The focus should be replacing the present ineffective opposition with a more focused party that is ready to properly scrutinise the Tory government not spitefully, hatefully or maliciously but dispassionately & competently. @UKLabour is not up to the task at hand.

James Heartfield tweeted in reply:

Under FPTP parties have to convince a large body of voters their plan is good. Under PR they have to convince a minority to back them; and then they have to convince opponents to compromise. PR tends to encourage 1. Posturing in elections 2. Opportunism in coalitions.

There are problems with FPTP. It turns most elections into a binary choice between bad and worse. New voices struggle to gain a foothold. Tiny pluralities turn into massive majorities. Similar parties can split the vote and allow a despised minority to take office. The Alternative Vote (aka instant runoff voting) would preserve most of the advantages of FPTP, but ameliorate some of the problems.