Who Wants Strong Government Anyway?

James’s column in this week’s edition of the magazine (subscribe!) is characteristically excellent but it has produced one odd response already. Tim Montgomerie worries that it might be harder to pass “unpopular legislation” if the British electoral system is changed from First Past the Post to the Alternative Vote. Like other opponents of AV, Tim fears it will help produce “weak, lowest common denominator government”. He quotes James:

“If AV passed, Cameron would find managing his parliamentary party almost impossible. Suddenly, the priority for Tory MPs would be to make themselves acceptable as a second choice to those who didn’t vote for them last time rather than supporting the government’s agenda… Tory MPs get agitated as soon as negative emails from constituents appear in their inboxes. When, for instance, the recent campaign against privatising the Forestry Commission got going, MPs started privately pushing for a U-turn… Some would say that anything which makes MPs more prepared to defy the whips is a good thing. But the problem is that AV would encourage MPs to be simply blown along by public opinion. For a Prime Minister who wants his government to lead, this would be a disaster.”

Well I know what he means. There are always trade-offs. But the example he cites here – forestry privatisation (and really, who foresaw that being a Year One problem for the coalition?) – shows FPTP is perfectly capable of producing a cadre of MPs wholly susceptible to scaremongering and bandwagon politics. Electoral systems don’t come into it.

In general I suspect campaigners on both sides of the AV divide greatly overstate the impact* moving from FPTP to AV would have on our politics. By the standards of these things it is about as small a shift as there can be. Nevertheless, I admire the ingenuity of the anti-AV campaign. They keep finding ever more inventive reasons for fearing the Alternative Vote.

Perhaps AV would make MPs even more vulnerab;e to the shifting tides of public opinion but, in general, just about anything that strengthens the legislature at the expense of the executive has more upside than downside given the lop-sided nature of our present arrangements.

What AV does do – and this is a point the anti-reform campaign cannot counter, I think – is permit voters to deliver a true and honest account of their preferences. This is frequently not the case using FPTP and since one of the purposes of elections is to let the people express their views this might be thought a considerable weakness of the present system.

More generally, it would be a good thing in many ways if our parties were weaker (one argument in favour of primaries too). In general and certainly in marginal constituencies it would be best if voters picked the best candidate, regardless of party. You should vote as though your ballot will be decisive in your own constituency, not as if it will be the vote that makes the difference on a national level. And that MP should be the candidate who comes closest to meeting this wise standard:

Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.

And pigs wil fly. But if we elect – by whatever system – MPs who possess neither any judgement nor the willingness to make a case for their judgement then we might as well be done with the whole damn thing and fill parliament with tabloid columnists and the presenters of popular television programmes. People matter more than systems and there’s no guarantee switching to AV will improve the quality of MP but nor, I think, can anyone suggest this is a strength of FPTP either.

Anyway, there’s not much to be said for “strong” government if it’s also stupid government. Weaker government may not be any more intelligent but it might also do less harm. In theory, anyway.

*For instance: AV won’t make any difference in the many, many seats in which one party routinely gains more than 50% of the vote. Sure, there will be fewer of these seats using AV but there will still be hundreds of them.