TRIGGERnometry - The Case for Electoral Reform - Andrew Doyle

Starting point is 00:00:00 Pollsters are imperfect profits. We saw them humiliated in the 2016 US general election. One survey by the Princeton Election Consortium declared that the chance of Hillary Clinton defeating Donald Trump was over 99%. Here in the UK, in the same year, very few believe that the majority would vote to leave the European Union, even among those who most desired that outcome. The electorate is a fickle beast. So what are we to make of the latest of many ominous polls for the Conservatives? A recent UGov analysis seemingly obliterates Rishi Sunak's chances of victory,

Starting point is 00:00:33 with Labour projected to win over 400 seats. If this prophecy plays out, it would see numerous cabinet ministers dispatched, including Jeremy Hunt, Penny Mordant and Grant Shaps. The results are even worse for the Tories than those revealed by a poll commissioned by Conservative Britain Alliance in January, which drew information from a sample seven times larger than the norm. We've seen pollsters get it disastrously wrong in the past, but surely the return of labour is now in inevitability.

Starting point is 00:01:00 And although I'm unlikely to vote for either Sunak or Stama, I would never be comfortable with any one party holding such an overwhelming majority. Effective government requires effective opposition. The dominance of the SMP in Scotland should by now have taught us all a lesson about the calamities of a one-party state. So now might be an opportune moment to revisit the prospect of electoral reform, a new system that might usher into Parliament a wider range of, perspectives and keep the excesses of the government in check seems long overdue.

Starting point is 00:01:31 The first-past-the-post system guarantees that the two major parties are forever vying for ultimate control, but is this necessarily best for the country? It certainly isn't democratic. Take the general election of 2015. Having garnered 3.9 million votes, UKIP were rewarded with just one seat in Parliament. By contrast, the 1.5 million votes for the SMP resulted in 56 seats. Under proportional representation, UKIP would have ended up with 83 members of Parliament. Now, I was never a supporter of UKIP, but I was surprised by those who couldn't resist the temptation to revel in the sheer injustice of this result. At the time, we heard many commentators resorting to a combination of casuistry and self-deception to claim that it was somehow in the interests of the demos to

Starting point is 00:02:19 prevent its wishes from being realised. Nothing much has changed over the years, with smaller parties often routinely belittled as irrelevant or populist. In the case of UKIP, David Cameron famously referred to them as fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists. The latter designation sounds very much like the kind of amateur telepathy one hears from those who habitually accuse their political opponents of dog whistling. Even if it were the case that the electorate was merely some kind of basket of deplorables to borrow Hillary Clinton's self-destructive utterance, this would not warrant the high-handed dismissal of their wishes. Democracy is by no means flawless, but it's surely better than the alternative. One thinks of that phrase often attributed to Churchill,

Starting point is 00:03:02 democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others. The novelist E.M. Forster came to a similar conclusion when he wrote that democracy is less hateful than other contemporary forms of government, and to that extent, it deserves our support. A benevolent tyrant can do wonders for society until his ego becomes inflated with overfeeding. One thing is certain, the current system is not working. A trust in government survey by the Office of National Statistics last year revealed that Parliament and the political parties were the least trusted of all public institutions, trusted by 24% and 12% of the population respectively.

Starting point is 00:03:40 This is the natural consequence of a rise of a technocratic approach to governance, a preponderance of careerists rather than truly vocational members of Parliament, and a paternalistic attitude from our representatives towards those who have put them in power. These are combustible times, with many of us now joining that growing tribe of the politically homeless. The failings of both our major parties are not going to be remedied by the electorate lurching from one to the other, a kind of seesaw that swings according to desperation and fatigue. Events of recent years have disclosed an unappealing truth. Many of the political class no longer believe in democracy.

Starting point is 00:04:17 Consider what happened in the post-Brexit years when MPs on both sides of the House were brazenly attempting to subvert the result of the largest mandate in political history. The demos had voted the wrong way and had to be stopped. Rather than reflect on why the public vote the way they do, many politicians have instead sought to game the system and work around the wishes of the people. Former Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg wrote a book called How to Stop Brexit. it may as well have been called How to Stop Democracy. Political philosopher Jason Brennan was more explicit in his aims. His book Against Democracy argued that voters were too fickle, ill-informed and

Starting point is 00:04:57 easily manipulated to be entrusted with major decisions. He favoured an epistocracy, rule of the knowledgeable, a notion reminiscent of Plato's ideal of the philosopher king. Opponents of this view, by contrast, remind us that it is natural and healthy for politicians to fear. the might of the electorate. The British socialist Tony Ben was fond of asking five key questions regarding democracy. What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you use it? To whom are you accountable? How do we get rid of you? This final question strikes at the heart of what it means to live in a society free from tyranny. In a democracy, those in political authority are servants of the people and may be dispensed with at their collective whim.

Starting point is 00:05:46 Perhaps the future of British politics lies with the smaller parties who might effectively elevate the voices of the demos rather than strategised to see them stifled. This will require a system of proportional representation, and it is not in the interests of either major party to countenance such an eventuality. A referendum on PR might have been a condition of a future coalition between Labour and the Liberal Democrats,

Starting point is 00:06:10 but these latest polls make this outcome highly unlikely. The last serious attempt at electoral reform was the referendum on the alternative vote, AV, which came about due to the Conservative and Lib Dem coalition government that formed after the 2010 general election. It seemed like a fudge, a system of ranking candidates in order of preference that occupied a kind of middle ground between first past the post and proportional representation. Nick Clegg called it a miserable little compromise. Explanatory leaflets from the electoral commission made the AV system appear needlessly complicated. Those who were keen for reform were being asked to settle for second best.

Starting point is 00:06:51 Little wonder that the voters weren't persuaded. It has been said that our first-past-the-post system protects us from the ineffectual and volatile nature of coalition governments, and one might point to Italy as a cautionary tale. But Germany, Finland and the Netherlands seem to make it work, and there is no reason to think it wouldn't be preferable to the instability we've experienced under our two-party system. I mean, could it really get any worse?

Starting point is 00:07:15 The Tories will rightly be drubbed in the next election, most significantly by those who are fully aware that a Labour government will ensure that the decline in trust continues. Such is the strength of feeling against the Conservative Party's betrayal of its principles that its traditional supporters would rather see it punished than prevent a Labour victory. But all of this back and forth gets us nowhere. We surely require a former democracy that is workable for our times. The dominance of these two parties is why electoral reform is so needed,

Starting point is 00:07:46 but it is also why it is unlikely to materialise. In other words, the nature of the problem works against its own solution. These circumstances are far from ideal, but it looks as though we're going to be stuck in this maddening cycle for the foreseeable future. Like Sisyphus, we'll just have to keep on rolling that rock up the hill until someone finds a way to break it apart. If you enjoyed this video, please do check out my substack, where all of these articles appear weeks in advance.

Starting point is 00:08:14 There's plenty of other material there too, so do check it out. Hey, honey, it's mom. Did you know if we switch to Verizon, we can get four phones for $0, plus four lines for $25 a line? Call me back. Me again, that's just $100 a month for four lines on Unlimited Welcome, plus four phones, no trade in needed. Call me.

Starting point is 00:08:33 It's Mom. America's Best Network, Verizon. That's the one we're talking about. I'll send you text. America's Best Network based on Root Metrics, Best Overaw. mobile network performance U.S. second half 2025. Four new lines and a limit and welcome and auto pay. See Verizon.com for details.

TRIGGERnometry - The Case for Electoral Reform - Andrew Doyle

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.