Government of the People

I take full responsibility for the expenses scandal of recent times. I had been aware for a few decades that the way we pay our representatives is flawed but I did not make a big noise about it – mainly because I would find it all too time consuming. I suppose we all share some responsibility in letting this happen.

The problem is, of course, much deeper than the individual expense claims of MPs – or the apparent laxity of the Fees Office in vetting them, – or the rules that govern MPs expenses, or that MPs make their own rules up.

The fundamental mistake is the belief of MPs that sovereignty lies with parliament. It does not. Sovereignty lies with the people – us. MPs work for us and we must design the pay and expenses structure that we want them to have. They should not be put in the position of making decisions about their own pay.

Indeed the principles behind the pay and expenses of all our representatives; be they elected to govern our parishes, towns, cities, counties, provinces or states; should be the same. So if Doncaster councillors are sent to prison for making fraudulent claims then so should MPs. Paying back the money is not good enough.

MPs should neither be in a position to determine how we elect them. Turkeys do not vote for Christmas and MPs will not vote for a decent electoral system because many, if not most, of them will be out on their ear.

I suggest that we all demand a better way of electing our representative at all levels. In the nineteenth century we made a big change in the way we voted by introducing the secret ballot (it is not secret really but that is its strength). This replaced everyone standing around and voting with a show of hands. However, all we could do in this new system was to place an ‘X’ on a piece of paper. This process has produced bizarre results of MPs being elected with only 25% of the vote (and an even smaller proportion of those eligible to vote).

We need to increase our choice and a simple way of doing this is to replace the ‘X’ with ranking the candidates in our preferred order. I think nearly all of us can write 1, 2, 3 … Whenever I place an ‘X’ in the polling booth I feel like an illiterate innumerate (especially now that we have symbols for the parties).

There are many systems that can replace the first past the post system we have in this country. But, in my view, the best system of voting is called the single transferable vote with multimember constituencies (or wards or divisions – whatever) or in short – STV-MMC. This system really puts candidates and parties on their toes. There are no safe seats with STV-MMC – parties have to vigorously contest every seat in the land: unlike today where, in Britain, most seats are safe and so the parties do not bother fighting them. In America the seats are so safe that in the last election not one incumbent MP lost his or her seat – and they call that democracy. No it isn’t – the elections are rigged.

With STV-MMC every elected MP would have to fight hard to get elected. But more importantly we as voters will have a real choice. Multimember constituencies can range in size from just one – for very rural areas like the highlands of Scotland – to up to seven in our bigger cities. Typically, having five members gives a very balanced result. So imagine – if you are disposed towards the Tories you have five types of Tory to choose from and once you have completed those you can give your preference for members of the other parties. In fact there are a whole range of choices you can make which are denied to you now. You can vote for all the women first or racially or ethnically or pro-Europe or anti-Europe or greenest or whatever.

At the moment the national parties are insisting on having female candidates in some areas sometimes against the wishes of the local party but under STV-MMC this does not matter. Indeed this system will demonstrate to the parties the type of character their candidate should have to win in an election.

STV-MMC is such a brilliant electoral system that no country on Earth has adopted it for their main legislature. Because few, if any, MPs will vote for a system that makes them work really hard.

There is one country that has STV-MMC and that is Ireland. Ireland inherited STV-MMC because the British government knew that if an independent Ireland had continued with the system we have in Britain today, then the unionist vote would not translate into seats as they would be squashed out by the republicans. So Ireland – both north and south – had STV-MMC as its voting system. In the north this brilliant system was abolished in the 1920s as part of the sectarian divide which ended up with the ‘troubles’ but in the south STV-MMC was part of their written constitution and could only be removed by referendum. The MPs of Ireland have tried to get rid of STV-MMC by referendum a number of times but with no success. The Irish people know that luck has given them the best electoral system on Earth and they are not going to give it up.

STV-MMC does not get rid of corruption – there has been plenty in Ireland over the years – but it does make government far more responsive to the people.

In just one generation, Ireland has moved from a parliament which basically had two parties representing each side of the 1920s civil war – to the swift growth of the Progressive Party and now the Green Party is not only in parliament but in government.

So it is not just MPs’ expenses that should be of concern but the whole structure of the way we govern ourselves. We should not put up with this elective dictatorship any longer. As Cromwell said “you have been sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!”