The Day After
I wasn’t planning to stay up last night watching the General Election results come in, but in the end I stuck with it until about 3am, basically hoping to understand what was going on. Even by that hour there didn’t seem to be a particularly clear pattern emerging, so off I went. I had a revision lecture this morning as well as a lot of other things so I didn’t fancy an all night sitting.
Whenever there’s a General Election I always pay attention to constituencies I used to live in to see how things are changing. Broxtowe (the constituency that contains Beeston, where I used to live when I worked at Nottingham University) changed hands from Labour to the Conservatives. It had been a Conservative marginal in 1997 when it was won during the New Labour landslide. It seemed fairly typical for seats like that to revert to what they were pre-Blair. Brighton – remarkably – returned Britains first ever Green Party MP. Bethnal Green returned to the Labour fold after a flirtation with George Galloway’s Respect party.
Meanwhile here in Cardiff the results were as mixed as elsewhere. My own constituency, Cardiff West, stayed Labour, as did Cardiff South (and Penarth). The Vale of Glamorgan reverted to its pre-1997 Tory hue, unsurprisingly. The Labour candidate in Cardiff North was the wife of former Welsh Assembly leader Rhodri Morgan and it was a definite surprise to see that seat turn blue too. Cardiff Central remained Liberal Democrat.
As it has turned out the exit polls got it just about right, with the Conservative Party leading the popular vote (36%) and number of seats (306), but not enough to make an overall majority. Labour (28%, 258 seats) and Liberal Democrats (23%, 57 seats) between them have a majority of the votes cast but don’t have enough seats to form a coalition. It’s a well and truly hung Parliament and we look set for days of discussions to see what kind of agreement can be reached between which parties. Gordon Brown remains Prime Minister until some kind of resolution is reached. We live in interesting times.
Although the election results were extremely interesting by virtue of their puzzlingly inhomogeneous variation across the country, they really amount to little more than a sideshow compared with the spreading panic on international markets. The markets fell sharply, not because of the hung parliament but as part of a worldwide panic over the knock-on effect of the Greece and Portugal sovereign debt problems. The contagion could be very dangerous if Greece can’t convince traders that it’s not going to default and in an attempt to do so its government has put together a severe austerity package. Cue violent unrest. The Greeks live in even more interesting times than us.
I’m not going to pretend that I have the slightest clue how either of these things will pan out, but I’m not very optimistic about the forthcoming months. I hope I’m wrong. We’ll see.
The other thing that struck me was the story of people being unable to vote because of long queues at the polling stations near 10pm when they closed. At first I wasn’t at all sympathetic. Polls are open from 7am until 10pm, so there’s no need to turn up with only 5 minutes remaining. However, it then emerged that some polling stations couldn’t cope with the large turnout and people had been queuing for hours by the time the doors closed. The turnout was 65% nationally, higher than last time but by no means ridiculously high. In fact I think it’s a shame the usual turnout isn’t very much higher than this. However, turnout seems to have been much higher in certain wards and the staff unprepared for the demand, sometimes with insufficient ballot papers and sometimes with out-of-date copies of the electoral register. I don’t mind saying that I found this level of incompetence deeply shaming. We can’t afford to be so careless with our democratic system. It doesn’t matter if only a few hundred people were affected. It’s the principle that matters.
Over the next few days there’ll be a lot of discussion about electoral reform. Perhaps the fact that our current electoral system seems to be showing signs of neglect might generate some impetus for change, quite apart from the scandals of MPs fiddling their expenses. I’ve always been on the fence over proportional representation. Our system is absurd in some respects, delivering huge majorities in the Commons to parties with only a modest share of the popular vote. On the other hand our country is so divided that it’s not obvious what the short-term consequences of changing to PR would be. It seems likely, for one thing, that fringe parties such as the neo-fascist BNP would actually be represented in Westminster. I find that a repulsive prospect, but putting up with people you can’t abide is one of the consequences of democracy.
I have an open mind on electoral reform and I’d like to hear the arguments for and against different systems of PR aired properly. Presumably the Liberal Democrats will want a referendum on this as part of the price of their support in a coalition, so no doubt there’ll be a lot of chat about this.
In the Dark 
May 7, 2010 at 10:48 pm
It’s a bit of a joke when Blair and Brown talk about ‘exporting’ democracy to places like Afghanistan and Iraq when we can’t even get it right here.
May 7, 2010 at 11:35 pm
It does strike me as odd, that Liberal democrats are wanting to work with the Tories. Its likes Stalin getting into bed with Gandi just very odd. If LIB DEM join with labour then that would be 50% of the popular vote within the coalition, with people of similar views. Llooking at facebook and tweets around, the LIB DEM voters do not want to have a Tory government, and most infact voted for LIB DEM because they believed it would make sure that a Tory government would not happen because of their vote. Staying with Labour with a very LARGE LIB DEM input must be a greater thing for this country than a Tory government with a SMALL LIB DEM input.
Who knows, what’s going to happen, though things are definitely going to be changing. either way.
May 8, 2010 at 9:40 am
Our current electoral system is showing signs not of neglect but of abuse – postal voting corruption, boundary changes in favour of a long-standing government, Scots and Welsh MPs able to vote on purely English issues. All of these favour the Labour Party. And, empirically, immigrant communities tend to vote Labour, which might explain an immigration rate that most people find disturbing. All of this is an argument against Labour, not for the Tories.
I spent election night watching The Ghost, a film which anybody who hates the sleaze associated with Tony Blair will appreciate. It is a first-rate thriller too.
Unless there is another general election with a more decisive result, what will happen now is not very much. Although I would like to see some of the changes of the last 13 years reversed, a parliament in which not very much happens is not a bad thing. Who believes the ccountry is in a better state now than before the last 13 years of hyperactivity? MPs used to be part-time and that was no bad thing; today’s fulltimers – of every party – feel the need to justify their existence by interfering with everything, when most people simply want to be left alone to get on with their lives.
Arrow’s theorem shows that some of the desiderata for a fair voting system are mutually exclusive, so debate about democratic electoral systems can go on endlessly, which can be fun… personally I would like to weaken the party system at Westminster and give more room to conscience votes, as used to be the case many decades ago. It should not be beyond the mind of man to work out how to enforce such a change.
Anton
May 8, 2010 at 10:51 am
Nice to hear the voice of reason again. It’s reassuring to know that immigrants are responsible. Makes it all much simpler.
May 8, 2010 at 11:38 am
If I’m not wanted on your blog then please email me. I hope we can sort this out.
Anton
May 8, 2010 at 11:50 am
Anton
You’re entitled to express your opinions here as much as anyone is. I’ve no intention of stopping anyone commenting as long as the comments aren’t abusive. But I’m entitled also to say when I think you’re wrong, as is anyone else.
I’ve heard too much immigrant-bashing during the General Election campaign to let your comment pass. We all know where that leads. Today, by the way, is VE day, in case you’ve forgotten that we once had to go to war against Nazism.
Peter
May 8, 2010 at 12:01 pm
Peter,
I don’t go where I’m not welcome. If you don’t want me here, please tell me straight (privately or publicly) rather than misrepresent what I say.
Anton
May 8, 2010 at 12:20 pm
I have no intention of misrepresenting anyone, and will remove my comment if I did so. It did however seem to me that your comment was suggesting that letting immigrants vote was an abuse of the voting system as it was contained in paragraph giving examples of alleged abuses. If I’m wrong I’ll withdraw my comment and delete it from the blog.
So what were you saying about immigration?
May 8, 2010 at 12:41 pm
Matthew, I don’t agree that Labour, in its current form, is obviously the most natural fit to the LibDems. Many people voted LibDem rather than Labour because they are social-democrats not socialists, and they run a mile from the statist bureaucratic, centralising approach of the last government. Politics isn’t just a left-right spectrum, there is also an authoritarian-libertarian axis, and in that regard the current localist policies of the Tories match the LibDem approach much better than Labour’s targets culture. The big caveat is that the Tories must keep their more extreme right wing in check. But the fact that Europe as an issue has been kicked well into the long grass by the current crisis has made that much easier.
On PR and voting reform, I do think we need change, but we need to preserve the local links of candidates in some way. Perhaps local lists plus a regional top-up? PR systems work perfectly well to promote functional government for the Netherlands and Germany, and I don’t think we are like Belgium (no big split-identity) or Italy. The Conservatives perhaps fear a perpetual LabLib coalition, but I think the current situation shows that fear is unfounded. And people will tire of coalitions just as much as political parties, so the pendulum will always swing far enough to allow a change of government, even under PR.
May 8, 2010 at 12:57 pm
Peter: On another thread recently I misrepresented your words, and was sorry and apologised for it.
I wrote, above: “immigrant communities tend to vote Labour, which might explain an immigration rate [under a Labour government] that most people find disturbing”. My complaint was about the rate of immigration, the motivation for permitting it, and the neglect by government in a democracy of a issue that most people express concern about.
That will probably not allay your suspicions over my view of immigrants, so: I believe that all (and only) British citizens should be allowed to vote in British elections. Legal immigrants who are not citizens should be treated impartially under the laws of the land. Illegal ones should be deported. Non-UK citizens who commit crimes of intermediate seriousness should be deported (obviously not for minor crimes, and not for major ones such as murder – they must serve their sentence).
I don’t care what colour people are but I do care what they believe, because that influences their behaviour. I think that too many people who have no commitment to Western culture are being let into it.
Anton
May 8, 2010 at 1:20 pm
Anton,
I was alarmed by the fact that your original comment didn’t distinguish between UK citizens and immigrants. A great many British citizens came here through immigration and the country is all the better for having them. I think we agree that they should not only be allowed to vote, but should be treated as British citizens on the same footing as every other.
Illegal immigrants of course are illegal, and aren’t allowed to vote anyway. How would they get onto the electoral register?
I agree with you on both those points and I apologize for misrepresenting your comment, which I interpreted wrongly as saying that only been born here should be allowed to vote. But since it has led to a clarification perhaps it’s better if I don’t delete my response. Please let me know.
A remaining issue concerns legal immigrants who don’t have full citizenship. As far as I’m concerned if they live here legally, have permanent residence, and pay taxes they should be allowed to vote, whatever they believe in. I therefore disagree with you on this. And while we’re on this matter, I wonder what your view is of British nationals living abroad to avoid paying tax being allowed a postal vote? I certainly think they shouldn’t be allowed to, and probably the majority of them vote Tory.
Peter
May 8, 2010 at 1:42 pm
Peter: no deletion requested – the dialogue is fine by me. Re your last point, I should have said: “I believe that all (and only) British citizens resident in the UK, plus those serving overseas in the armed forces, should be allowed to vote in British elections.” We appear to differ only on whether non-UK citizens resident here should be able to vote. I’d consider it for local elections, but not for Westminster where national policy is decided – Anton
May 8, 2010 at 2:09 pm
Phil and Matthew
I think the most likely outcome of the current dialogue is a Tory-LibDem coalition. The only question is how effective Clegg is as a negotiator. If he sticks to his party’s line then he’ll want PR brought in. Perhaps they’ll agree to have an election under PR if and only if the economy recovers under the coalition.
If this does happen and Brown has to step down as PM then he should and probably will resign as Labour leader. Who will take over, I don’t know, but they could be a force to be reckoned with pretty soon.
PR is an interesting question for many reasons. One of them is the extent to which the votes under first-past-the-post are influenced by the system. News commenters are assuming that the current vital statistics of 36-28-23 will be replicated under PR. Perhaps, but I suspect we’ll get many votes for alternative parties, including the Greens and, regrettably, the BNP. It would be an interesting test of the morality of centrist politicians to see how they go about coalition-building if this comes about.
Peter
May 9, 2010 at 4:10 pm
The Tories should definitely seriously consider some form of PR, because at the moment with only 1 MP in Scotland and 6 in Wales they have no mandate to assume governance over these areas, any more than Brown has a mandate to continue as PM.
I believe some sort of regional top-up list could be the best option, keeping a representative linked to an area as well as allowing for some proportional representation, much in the same way the Welsh Assembly elections are held. It’s not perfect, but sure is fairer than the current general election set-up.
May 10, 2010 at 3:16 pm
Phillip,
You didn’t misinterpret me. I believe that Labour was up to exactly that.
There is a superb essay, “The migration of ideas” by the 20th century classicist Gilbert Highet (a Scot who emigrated via England to America, which rather makes the point), which argues that different cultures can teach and learn from each other, often by immigration.
Multiculturalism does require, however, a commitment from all the cultures involved to live together without attempting overthrow. Are we really certain we have that in Europe’s immigrant communities today?
Anton
May 10, 2010 at 3:20 pm
One of the paradoxes of the way things are today is that unemployment is high but hand-harvesting of asparagus and other such crops is done by immigrants. Two generations ago, farm labourers’ unions would have been incensed. I don’t know enough about how things got this way, but I know it’s a mad mad world.
May 10, 2010 at 3:36 pm
Phillip,
Where I prefer the German system is not PR but stronger local government. Here, about 70% of local government is paid for centrally, and he who pays the piper calls the turn.
Anton
May 10, 2010 at 3:36 pm
Or even the tune, oops.
May 10, 2010 at 3:38 pm
Doing a degree in Media Studies doesn’t leave enough time to work in the fields, hence the shortage of home-grown agricultural labour. And plumbers, and builders…