Jack Straw’s lack of proportion
Jack Straw’s just been on Five Live and used the term ‘endemic corruption’ in the same sentence as ‘proportional representation’*. I think it’s safe to say that the Justice Secretary is not a fan of electoral reform.
It’s interesting however to cross reference the list of countries who use proportional representation with the Economist Intelligence Unit Index of Democracy. Of the top 21 countries on the Index of Democracy, 18 use proportional representation. The three that don’t are Australia (at 10), United States (at 18) and the UK (at 21).
(Those three countries, by unhappy coincidence, were the only three to commit active troops to the invasion of Iraq.)
* I’ll dig out the exact quote when it’s online.
Posted on May 26th, 2009 at 12:45pm under Affronts to democracy, New Labour
| Related posts... • Constructivism • New Labour gets a sense of proportion • GET CHAVEZ: Olive Branch |
• Permalink • Trackback • Subscribe |
|
|
|
• 18 Comments |
And, in Australia, every state except Queensland and the Northern Territory use PR for their elections.
xD.
Australia also uses STV to elect the upper house of Parliament. (Yes, they elect it!)
Yeah? So what? The US elects its upper house as well, but I see no evidence that it’s served them any better than the unelected Lords, and I’m inclined to think it’s actually worse.
I see no reason why a mix of the two can’t work: an elected lower house and an unelected upper house. Why is it that people think that making the upper house subject to the same kind of electioneering and blatant party hackery that has rendered the lower house untenable should somehow improve the upper house?
Given the events of the past few decades, I tend to think that democracy — certainly as it’s currently praceised — is somewhat overrated.
Voting in Australia is also compulsory, so let’s not imagine they’re fully enlightened.
Am I paranoid for seeing a link between non-these backwards democracies and the beloved Rupert Murdoch? Possibly.
So let’s get this straight… Jack Straw is suggesting that Germany, Japan, New Zealand, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland are all blighted by an endemic corruption of their political system. But the UK — which allows him and his colleagues to claim back tax they’d never even paid — is clean and transparent?
And I assume he’s counselling against people voting in the upcoming and inherently corrupt European elections?
When Jack “dodgy expenses” Straw starts accusing others of “endemic corruption” one is probably justified in wondering whether there’s not some psychological projection going on.
Er, Nomaduk, old bean, the electoral mechanism is one part of the democratic process. With PR, the elected chamber(s) reflects the votes cast, rather than the skewed mess that 1st-past-the-post delivers. As for democracy being overrated, well, under what other system does the public have a say? (and I don’t mean market democracy, which we all know means instead of one person vote, its one pound one vote!)
My point is simply that, given that one has an elected lower house, I don’t see why it’s axiomatic that an elected upper house is a good or even necessary thing.
And I’d probably sit here and write up a nice long argument supporting this, but to me it seems self-evident, and I can’t really be arsed, so to hell with it.
Probably won’t matter. They’ll ‘reform’ the Lords, and we’ll get a chamber full of the same kind of vicious, power-hungry, useless bastards as in the Commons, except they’ll be there for twice as long or some such, and we’ll get yet another set of meaningless elections to grit our teeth through. It’ll be grand.
Oh, and, yes, I think PR is a fine thing.
[...] when he does so, he manages to fluff completely a reference to [...]
[...] at 7:51 pm · Filed under PolSci Justin McKeating at Chicken Yoghurt: It’s interesting however to cross reference the list of countries who use [...]
Um, Justin? The Australian lower house uses AV, the upper house (which is of equal power) uses STV. Others have said it above, but it’s important to stress that the upper house is of equal power constitutionally, unlike here and in a few other countries where it’s a revision chamber.
The Govt comes from the lower house, but that’s not elected using FPTP either, it’s using a preferential system even if it’s not proportional and favours atwo-party system.
Bloody good point though.
The Australian lower house uses AV, the upper house (which is of equal power) uses STV.
Blame Wikipedia. And then blame me for blaming Wikipedia.
To be more precise, we elect the Australian senate by STV and the house by AV. All legislative councils (state upper houses) are elected by STV except in Tasmania. All legislative assemblies (state and territory lower houses) are elected by AV except in Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory where the assemblies are elected by STV. All local government councils are elected by STV. The 1998 constitutional convention was elected by STV. It is therefore somewhat of a misnomer to say that Australia does not use PR.
It’s notable that when the Soviet Bloc collapsed a grand total of none of them chose FPTP.
I heard Margaret Beckett asked about that and why we couldn’t change too. she replied that we have to maintain FPTP ‘because it’s the system the British people understand’.
Ahhhh, it’s just that people in Montenegro and Slovenia are intrinsically *cleverer* than us.
Thanks for that, Margaret.
Just remember when the need for proportionality in european parliament elections became unavoidable, it was Squealer Straw who introduced the party list system which is arguably even less proportional than first past the post. The man does not believe in any form of democracy outwith the dictatorship of the party.
Never trust anybody who dismisses PR without bothering to specify which form of PR they’re talking about.
On the unelected upper house, a truly radical idea occurred to me last night – an upper house appointed by compulsory lottery, kinda like jury duty. Relatively short terms, good compensation, but no getting out of it. It could be you!
Er….Canada? No PR and just voted rejected a PR amendment in British Columbia. Also run by right-wing loon minority from the backwaters of the West (Howard and Bush, anyone?) and with similar leadership in several provinces. Just had the Governor-General prorogue Parliament against all precedent at the request of the PM so he could avoid a vote of non-confidence.
So Canada is not really good value at no. 11, which only reinforces the main point – FPP is no way to run a democracy these days
Jack’s preferred form of democracy is the bulk postal vote.
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2005/05/straws_seat_is.html
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/8_the_strawman/