Events | 2009.05.23
Seize this moment to bring in real constitutional change | Polly Toynbee
Proportional representation for the Commons, a fully elected Lords and clean party funding: the impetus is growing
The parliament of ostriches still doesn\'t get it. Anyone watching today would been flummoxed by the Byzantine procedural folderol that prevented a debate on the speaker\'s future, as they gazed at the weird black rosette on his back. How many realised that the Tory grandee\'s coded reference to " The Norway debate " meant "In the name of God go!". And how many cared?
Off with their heads, that\'s what even squeaky clean tribunes of the people hear. Out canvassing, polite punters don\'t look them in the eye, and ruder ones give them what for, threatening to vote for anyone but an established party. "God help us!" one MP moaned. David Cameron launches a petition for a general election, as oppositions do.
The game\'s up and heads must roll – not just the Speaker, but the prime minister and a fat clutch of MPs who protest they were "only obeying the rules". Enough good MPs didn\'t claim for food, flat-screens and furniture, making the others look piggish. Go they must because if their parties don\'t deselect them pronto, the voters will – whatever Labour\'s NEC decided yesterday.
They must go because what matters is public wrath turning against the very idea of political parties, as if belonging to a party were itself a corruption. Listen to the call of the wild as people say they want a parliament of independents, hoping that good plain folk, truth-speakers and honest citizens will get elected as a great assembly of the people. Clean-hands candidates are already surfacing. Who\'s first up? Yes, it\'s Esther Rantzen saying she\'ll topple Margaret Moran in Luton. Joanna Lumley\'s name is afloat with Martin Bell. A best-selling author may challenge Alan Duncan. I hear of all kinds of individuals and ad hoc groups preparing to stand as Cleans. Local councillors call for mass deselections, some sincerely wanting to save their party, but others with an eye on snatching their local seat. Parliament may end up like I\'m a Celebrity, Get Me a Seat, famous names replacing political parties as identifiers on the ballot paper.
They may be splendid men and women, celebs and citizens no worse than those on the backbenches they seek to oust. But we have no idea. How can you vote for individuals on a one-issue spasm, without knowing what they stand for on everything else? Most voters don\'t read manifestos and have only a hazy idea of party policies – but at least they know the political difference between left and right. MPs – as their whips remind them – are not primarily elected by voters on their personal qualities but on what their parties stand for. Most stand and fall along with their parties: only a few buck electoral trends. Parties matter. Manifestos matter.
Most voters can\'t name their MPs or their councillors: they vote the national ticket. Dr Richard Taylor stood to defend Kidderminster A&E: that he has voted well since then is happenstance. A host of honest citizens thinking for themselves may sound OK – but if you vote for them, you don\'t know their deep true views until far too late. True, parties let you down too: few Labour voters elected Tony Blair to go to war in Iraq. But a gaggle of independents can\'t produce the coherent economic policy that expresses core political belief. After Blair blurred all borders, people need reminding what party politics are for.
Those of us who warned for years that parliament was dangerously moribund and out of touch feel no more pleased with this calamity than Cassandra did when Troy fell. The problem is not the existence of parties, but the dead hand the two old monoliths hold on the windpipe of politics. Want to start a new movement? You can\'t. Green, pro-EU Tory, left of Labour, libertarian – or, yes, even BNP? No chance of electing MPs under our first-past-the-post system. No chance of getting seats according to the support you win. The stitch-up between Labour and Tories, with a small escape valve for a few Lib Dems, is one reason for disengagement and now disgust with the closed and secret world of Westminster. No one else can join in.
At meetings about our book on inequality , people ask what they can do to press for fairer distribution? Join a party and push from within, I say weakly. Speaking at Labour meetings where members – mostly middle aged now – are far more radical than their government, it\'s obvious the footsoldiers are not heard. I spent years devoted to "breaking the mould" of British politics in the 80s to no avail, but suddenly it\'s collapsing through its mouldiness.
Seize this moment to make real constitutional change, bring in proportional representation for the Commons, a fully elected Lords and clean party funding. It\'s too late now for a fag-end government to command the power to do it. Hubris and the arrogance of a huge majority caused Blair to abandon reform in the early days. Now it would smack of last-gasp gerrymandering to save parliament\'s sorry necks. But a formidable array of reformers is gathering to demand a referendum on the principle of PR and Lords reform to be added to the ballot paper at the next election. Let the people decide if they want to blow fresh air into parliament. It means coalition governments instead of de facto coalitions inside the shells of the old parties, whose sham unity disguises differences as wide as Alan Milburn on the right to Jeremy Corbyn on the left. Your vote should determine the colour of the coalition.
Make Votes Count, the Electoral Reform Society, Compass, Unlock Democracy and an array of reformers of many kinds are now determined add a referendum to the next election. If not now, the Conservatives will certainly never offer one. Alan Johnson came out again yesterday for PR – reviving Roy Jenkins\'s electoral plan that Blair shelved. Other Labour voices are breaking out. This will be the real test of each MP\'s sincerity: will they clean up politics, or just brush the surface mud off the present system with a lick and a promise?
Here\'s interesting evidence: research by a political blogger about the correlation between greed in MPs and the safety of their seats. Of the 94 implicated so far, there were nearly three times more in the top quarter of safest seats than in the bottom quarter of most marginal constituencies. Seats where parties can run a donkey in a red or blue rosette breed complacency and tempt corruption. Nefarious practices thrive in any dark corners of politics unchecked by scrutiny or competition. Time for a constitutional revolution.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/[...]-constitution-electoral-reform
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