“It’s not fair!”

Right wing whining about First Past the Post
In the long run up to the general election, one piece of speculation I endlessly heard — this was way back when people thought that the government was going to pay a price for Iraq, and the popular vote was going to be very close — was, ‘what will Labour do if they get a big majority on a low poll?’ The idea being, what if Labour ended up only a point or so in front of the Tories, and perhaps on a low overall turnout as well, but still ended up with a thumping parliamentary majority. The fear, in Tory circles mostly, being that, in combination with the shame Labour would feel at this result, and the resultant firestorm of press, and maybe public criticism, the re-elected government would feel obliged to offer some form of PR or STV or ATV for future Westminster elections. Which, obviously, as far as this right wing doom n’ gloom scenario goes, would mean Lib-Labery, on the Scottish model, world without end. Personally I was never fully convinced by this notion of potentially crippling Blairite shame. Indeed, it’s instructive to see how far leading members of this government have come since the days of Roy Jenkins being commissioned to replace the voting system. There’s a very basic reason why this is so, and that’s because written into the DNA of FPTP is that, it’s a system for winners. Since Labour very much are winners at the moment, it would take an intensely ideological act of abnegation very much out of fashion since at least Neil Kinnock’s day, for a government with a working majority to throw away the very basis of their party’s power. What’s amazed me, though, has been the sheer volume of Tory whingeing that has grown apace throughout 2005.

Increasingly Conservatives are complaining about the fact that FPTP gives a seat bonus to the Labour party. More strictly speaking, what FPTP actually does is, first of all, give a seat bonus to the party which wins (this is so circular and self-evident a fact as to be hardly worth mentioning). Its secondary effect — and here the Tories really ought to know better — as a system appears to be to preserve a rough and ready two party duopoly. What basis then is there to the growing Tory complaint that our current electoral system discriminates specifically against them? Well, as this bad losing is going to become much more vocal once they’ve badly lost again, allow me to anticipate it. A narrative will be offered up, from 6th May onwards, that an especially mendacious government benefits from a freakish and flukeish electoral system. Moreover, it does this in large part because of its sinister and unaccountable hold over large sections of the media (which in turn, as pig follows nose-ring) presumably accounts why the electorate can’t or won’t see through it, and get rid of it.

Going a step further, a general renunciation of dogmatic attachment to FPTP will, for some Conservatives, be seen as a very useful tool. It will allow them, as they see it, to distance themselves still further from the discredited Thatcherite nostrums of the 1980s; it, if something other than FPTP is advocated, will offer considerable tactical scope for cooperation with the Liberals, and who knows, possibly even for realignment with them; and not least, for some Conservative politicians, this momentary abandonment of what must surely be seen as a merely contingent piece of party doctrine (since when did FPTP after all acquire the status of Tory truth?), can be justified as hard-headed realism. The ditching of FPTP being a tough but necessary thing to do in pursuit of regaining real political power, and isn’t that what the Tory party is all about? Add to this those true-believing Tory fans of PR such as Chris Patten with the defeatists, combine the too clever by half ‘repositioning’ mob with the sincere sorts who believe in decentralisation and holding back the executive (Andrew Tyrie springs to mind), and adopting some form of PR stands a decent chance of being, at last, the Tory “getting rid of Clause 4” issue several leading Tories have long wanted. It (FPTP) being abolished isn’t going to happen of course, because the opposition can’t effect it on their own, and the moment they can exert serious parliamentary pressure on the government, it’s the last thing the official opposition will want to see. That said, wait and see: a lot of left wing Tories are going to make ‘PR now!’ their dissembling claim in the new parliament. Therefore, yet again, intellectually right wing voters are going to have cause for thanks for Tony Blair’s big majority.

For the duration of the campaign, the Social Affairs Unit will be publishing regular commentaries on the progress of the UK election. These commentaries represent the views of the anonymous commentator, not those of the Social Affairs Unit, its Trustees, Advisors or Director.