Fair government – is it possible?

In the UK, the adversarial two-party system is mainly responsible for this. The origins of the Conservative Party lie in the distant past, to protect the interests of landowners, the aristocracy and the wealthy. The origins of the Labour Party lie in the more recent past, to protect and enhance the welfare of working people. These origins largely explain the policies and programmes of the modern versions of those parties. The problem this causes is that despite what their leaders say in Downing Street, they each, alternately, every five, ten, or fifteen years or so, take possession of the Government, and govern according to their own agendas, generally to the exclusion of the interests of large sections of the population. Brexit is a prime example of this, where the interests of the 48% Remain voters were comprehensively ignored.

In consequence, moderation, centrism and fairness don’t get prioritised, and competence and honesty get abandoned in the fight to win and stay in power. These fights sometimes become vicious and dirty, because the winner-takes-all two-party system encourages that.

In recent times, the Conservative Party has resorted to passing gerrymandering legislation, pretending their own headquarters was an independent fact-checking service, printing their publicity leaflets in disguise, and winding up manufactured wars on woke and culture. The Republican Party and its supporters and media friends in the USA have gone much further into the trough. They have resorted to highly dubious legal and constitutional disputes, personal abuse, outrageous deceits and using their power in Congress to delay and distort vital government business. The Republican Party are implicitly saying, vote us in or we will destroy everything. This is not democracy as we know it.

The fight for power is not confined to the fight between the parties. It occurs within the parties too. This has been most evident recently in the Conservative Party, where so-called One Nation Tories battle, ineffectively, with the more individualist, nationalistic, sovereignty-minded, de-regulatory right-wing. In the Labour Party, there is always tension between the more moderate Social Democrats and the more left-wing Corbyn supporters.

PR is fairer

A voting system based on Proportional Representation would lessen the grip of the two-party system, and the party system itself. The two most striking features of PR are that it is fairer and that it is much more likely to require parties to collaborate and compromise to form coalition governments.

PR is fairer for several reasons. It avoids the so-called wasted votes which occur in the two-party system, when people vote for parties which have no realistic hope of winning. It avoids the need for tactical voting to keep a party out rather than trying to get a party in. It gives wider opportunities for voters to vote for a minority party with a realistic chance of gaining a Parliamentary seat. Finally, where the system operates groups of constituencies, it offers the chance for a minority or losing party voter to be represented in Parliament by an MP who represents their views much better than either of the two main parties are ever likely to do.

The need for parties to collaborate and compromise together when trying to form a coalition government after a PR election provides an opportunity to create a more centrist and moderate government. Such a government is likely to have the general backing and consent of a wider base of support than for example either of the two current major parties. A more moderate and more centrist government has a better chance of lasting a full term, of implementing its vision and policies over the long term, and thereby avoiding the left-right pendulum of policies we see with the current two-party system.

Most people would want a government which was competent, honest and fair. Perhaps not everyone would necessarily want a government to be moderate and centrist. Some people might desire a more radical government, which would implement major reforms to policies or institutions. For example, environmentalists might want much stronger policies on climate change and the fossil fuel industries, socialists might want more wealth taxes to fund public services and welfare needs, right-wingers might want much stronger policies on immigration control.

Better policies

The argument for a more moderate and centrist government is not that it is in opposition to radical policies. Such a government can adopt radical policies if it chooses to, and it is likely to choose to if that policy has sufficiently wide support. For example:

• The Environment. There is very wide acceptance that this is an urgent matter, requiring strong, radical policies. Most people are neither eco-warriors nor climate change deniers. Consensus on some radical policies is possible around a legal framework, known technological developments, international commitments, and national budgetary restraints.
• Immigration. There is widespread agreement that current net migration is too high, that some net migration is needed to support certain activities like health, agriculture and hospitality, that pushing boats out to sea or seeing people drown is unacceptable, that keeping asylum seekers hanging around for months or years awaiting processing is also unacceptable, and that the rule of law including international law and the rights of asylum seekers should be respected. Within that framework, a moderate consensus set of policies is realisable without all the current anger and disharmony currently being whipped up by some right-wing politicians.
• Taxation. A wide degree of consensus is vital in this area, which has implications for government spending on public services and welfare. There is already wide agreement that public services and welfare budgets have suffered badly and need extensive improvements. There are relatively uncontroversial international norms and guidance on national budgets, loans and deficits. Inequality in the UK is excessively high by European standards (see James Tapper, ‘A deeply unfair and unequal country’, Observer, 30 June 2024). Some additional taxes on wealthier and higher income individuals would probably be widely supported.

Parliamentary and democratic reforms are desperately needed. A majority could readily be persuaded that many of the policy errors and scandals of recent years only happened because of the many democratic deficits which it has been in the interests of a minority to exploit. Proportional Representation should form part of those reforms.

Conclusion

The UK has not been well-governed for years, possibly for centuries. In recent decades we have had the ideologically-driven and disastrous Thatcher government’s reforms around de-regulation and the sale of publicly-owned assets, and the disgraceful mis-management of the coal industry, the Major government’s ideologically-driven and disastrous privatisation of the rail service, the Blair government’s invasion of Iraq based on winning consent through deceit, the Cameron/May/Johnson government’s hugely self-harming Brexit and austerity programme, and the Truss fiasco.

Many people today are experiencing severe difficulties and hardships as a result of a cost-of-living crisis, a near collapse of many vital public services, and a distrust of politicians to properly understand any of this and to fix it. The Conservative governments from 2010 on are currently held responsible for much of this, see Tim Adam’s piece in the Observer, ‘The 14 long and wasted years of Tory Britain’. However the two-party system based on a First Past the Post voting system, which gives full, almost dictatorial, powers to one party representing less than one half of the electorate, is a very fundamental cause too, preventing a much broader-based and more moderate government with a much wider base of consent.

There is much to do. It is possible to govern much more effectively, fairly and cohesively than has been the case hitherto, with much less antagonism and a strong overall sense of public service and community. It is not possible to please all the people all the time, and choices have to be made. However it is important to try. The new Labour government will have an opportunity to do much better than recent Conservative governments, and hopes are high.

Good government should prioritise consensus, collaboration and compromise, across as wide a section of the population as possible. It employs radical policies where necessary and where there is wide consent. A more moderate, centrist, fair, competent, honest government, of, by and for the people would be the beneficial result.

Editor’s note: There are several organisations promoting a fairer voting system. Look up Unlock Democracy, Make Votes Matter and Compass.

We want to hear your views. Please send any comments to editor@westenglandbylines.co.uk

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