The Progressive

Event report: Jack Straw lecture

Yesterday Jack Straw the Justice Minister spoke as the latest speaker in Progresses ongoing lecture series on New Thinking for Britain’s Next Decade. The lecture chaired by Jessica Asato, Acting Director of Progress, focused on Labour’s achievements since 1997, the main differences between Labour and the Tories, and constitutional reform. Read full speech here.

Jack Straw stated that although the political divide at times may seem opaque, the ideological divide is still as clear as ever. The parody of the left by the right is that that the democratic left stood for equality of outcome. The former foreign secretary stated that the democratic left did not stand for equality of outcome, but equality of opportunity and equality of capability, and this must be done by further investment in education. However the pursuit of equality of opportunity must be paired with reduction of crime. The former home secretary stated that crime reduction was a necessary element to creating higher standards of education and therefore increasing the equality of opportunity. He stated that where the previous Conservative administrations had failed, anti social behaviour, violent crime, education etc, the Labour government had succeeded.

The justice secretary then moved on to the much talked about area of constitutional reform. Laying his cards on the table Jack Straw immediately dismissed the idea of Proportional Representation (PR) as an electoral system in the Westminster elections. Jack Straw stated that he believed that PR would fundamentally undermine UK democracy, as it would allow walk governments with poor mandates to rule for decades and make it almost impossible for the people to remove them. He argued that the arguments for PR are entirely false, the PR system would not put more power in the hands of the people, it would create a tyranny of the minority. However he stated that although he thought that the First Past The Post electoral system was the best, he was not entirely opposed to the Alternative Vote system as suggested by Gordon Brown. He conceded that there was a need for constitutional reform but PR was not the way. He said that he believed there should be more done to get the people involved in the legislative system and give them a sense of agency about politics. He stated that the government must look at a variety of programmes from the Swiss plebiscite system to New England style town hall meetings.

In the question and answer session Jack Straw was asked what his vision for the next 5 years. The former home secretary stated that he would like to see 100% of school leavers with 5 GCSE’s, better life expectancy, a reduction in antisocial behaviour, and finally that he would like to see a fully elected House of Lords. He also reiterated his call that we must find a way of getting more people involved in politics so that they will have a feeling of power over their lives.

In conclusion Jack Straw stated that we must communicate Labour’s many achievements to the people. Indicating that it was all very well talking about Labour’s achievements in an intellectual manner he said that we must learn to express our achievements and the differences between Labour and the Tories in simple language, using a phrase one of the audience members used, the Tories put money first, Labour put people first.

A few flaws in the arguments against votes at 16

Yesterday, Labour Party Conference voted to include extension of the franchise to 16 and 17 year olds in our next manifesto. This comes following the National Policy Forum’s vote in July  in support of votes at 16. There was a warm welcome for the vote – as you might expect – from a number of national youth organisations. There were also a few critics, including Guardian journalist Michael White and Tom Harris MP.

Three main arguments were put forward against votes at 16. Now that votes at 16 will be in Labour’s manifesto there is likely be a repeat of these criticisms from those opposed to votes as 16. On the face of it, these criticisms may initially seem to be ‘common sense’, but they don’t stand up to scrutiny. 

Argument 1: ‘Introducing votes at 16 would be bad for democracy because it would result in a fall in the percentage turnout of eligible voters at elections’

This argument was put forward by Tom Harris MP, who wrote: “If 16 and 17-year-olds are to be given the vote, I worry that the most significant effect will be a huge increase in the number of “voters” who don’t vote.” This argument is flawed on at least three counts.

First, its premise - that the percentage turnout is what matters in terms of how ‘democratic’ an election is judged to be -  does not make sense. Imagine a society of 100 people. A situation where 60 people are eligible to vote and 40 of them do so (i.e. 66% vote) is not necessarily more democratic than one where 90 people are eligible to vote and 45 of them do so do so (i.e. 50% vote). After all, in the later case more members of the society actually vote.

Second, the argument confuses legitimate and illegitimate means of encouraging higher turnout. Making it easier to register to vote, moving voting to weekends and running campaigns to encourage voting: these are all legitimate ways of encouraging higher turnout. Deciding who is eligible to vote on the basis of how likely they are to do so is not. The rationale of this argument would also justify excluding other groups with low turnout, such as ethnic minorities or those in social classes C2DE.

The third and final nail in the coffin of this argument is that - even if you accept its flawed reasoning - it is far from certain that the percentage turnout will fall. In Germany the voting age was reduced to 16 in some municipal elections, and the result was that a higher proportion of 16 and 17 year olds voted than those aged 18 to 24. Indeed, a lower voting age may even lead to an overall increase in turnout if young people pick up the habit at school and continue to vote throughout their lives – meaning a whole cohort of people more likely to vote than their forebears.

Argument 2: ‘16 year olds aren't allowed to buy alcohol, drive, etc. and therefore they shouldn’t be allowed to vote’

One objection to this argument – raised by a commentator on Michael White’s article attacking votes at 16 - is that it confuses public and private rights. Drinking, smoking and driving are private rights, not public ones. On the other hand, voting is a public right. It is not incompatible for 16 years olds to have one but not the other.

This argument also misunderstands why it is that 16 and 17-year-olds are not allowed to drive, drink, and smoke. It is not because we believe all 16 or 17-year-olds, if they were allowed to do these things, would end up having alcohol-induced car crashes or hooked on smoking for the rest of their lives. Rather, it is because a substantial minority are likely to do so, and in doing so are likely to hurt themselves or others. Where the line is drawn is a matter of judgement and common sense - rather than hard and fast rules. An individual 16-year-old is able to do a lot less damage with a ballot paper and a pen than a ton of mobile steel. There may be a very small minority who abuse their right – but there are 50 year olds who may do the same. 

Argument 3: ‘16 year olds aren’t really interested in politics, and those that are can have a say by joining their local youth council or campaigning against climate change/international poverty’

This is possibly the most ill-thought-out of the arguments. Michael White put it as follows:

‘Engage young people more in politics, I hear you bellow more thoughtfully. Well, fine, though civic engagement is a more subtle development in which party politics, an acquired taste to say the least, would not be my priority. Global poverty work or green issues of the kind which naturally engage their sympathy would be a better start.’

Much as young people care about global poverty and the environment, they also care about crime, education and work opportunities, their health and many other issues. One of the reasons the commentariat can get away with pigeon-holing ‘youth issues’, as Michael White does, is because young people don’t tend to have power to set the agenda for themselves.

Extending the franchise to 16 and 17 years olds will help right that balance. Even Michael White might be pleasantly surprised. Nat King Cole and Jimmy Young were right when they sung ‘They try to tell us we're too young.... We were not too young at all'.

Omar Salem is chair of London Young Labour and a member of the Young Labour Executive. For more information about Young Labour’s campaign for votes at 16 visit http://votesatsixteen.labourspace.com/.

Open up the debate on voting reform

Thanks to the processes set in train by Labour since coming to power in 1997 we now have PR elections to devolved Asseblies in Scotland, Wales, Greater London and Northern Ireland; for local elections in Scotland, and also for the European Parliament.  And yet for all these undoubted advances, eleven years since voters were promised a referendum on reforming the way that MPs elected to the Commons, and no sign that this is being actively taken forward. Readers of the government's Review of new voting systems, which finally emerged from its long gestation with little public fanfare last week, were expecting  both a fair-minded evaluation of how the different kind systems are operating in practice but also, crucially, a sense of how the debate can be taken forward and finally allow voters a meaningful say on the issue. 

So did they deliver?  Well, apart from the limitations of any "desk-bound" review, the content of the Review can be broadly welcomed as far it goes.    The evidence complied by civil servants in the MoJ suggests that the PR systems all give fairer outcomes and have a greater tendency to allow all votes to count (as opposed to the millions of wasted/tactical votes under the First-Past-the-Post system).  Some allow voters significantly greater choice. The new systems are encouraging greater representation of women and voters are "warming" to the experience of coalition. It also explodes some common myths put about by advocates of the status quo.  It finds that there is no evidence to suggest that PR systems lead to weak government and alternative systems are no more inherently confusing to the voters.  Plus, whilst as it correctly observes it cannot be automatically assumed that there is a direct causal relationship between moving to a PR system and increased turnout, nevertheless international comparisons suggest that turnout that it is on average at least 5% higher in countries with fairer methods of electing their representatives.

So far, so good.  Unfortunately, whilst claiming that the Review is part of an "ongoing debate", the government appears to be doing nothing to actively widen the scope of the debate to canvass the views of ordinary voters, still less to bring forward proposals which would empower voters to determine what changes might be necessary.  Despite being covered in the "Governance of Britain" branding, there are clearly no plans to use the review as the basis for engaging with citizens about how we are to achieve the "new type of politics" that Gordon Brown has spoken of.  The failure to give any government time over to the Parliamentary debate to the Reviews findings shows how little they are keen to open the electoral system to any kind of public scrutiny this side of a General Election.

More bizarrely, still, the accompanying press release quoted minister Michael Wills saying that the government was contributing to the debate "in the firm belief" that the current system of electing the Commons is "working well".  Whilst this might seem true someone who owes his job to a government elected on just 35% of the vote, and with the support of only 1 in 5 of those eligible to cast their ballots, to the rest of us it is much less clear.   SInce the elections to Parliament and to local elections in England and Wales fall outside of the remit of the Review (which only looks at recently introduced systems), he cannot sustain this claim on the back of its findings.  Indeed, the recent report of the Councillors Commission itself presumably saw the limitations of FPTP, in recommending a shift to the Single Transferable Vote. 

It is high time that the government recognised that MPs ought not to be the sole arbiter of whether there was a case to put before the electorate.  Clearly, on the basis of the Review findings there is a case for giving electors a meaningful say over the issue.  They should show real leadership by positively opening up the debate and making sure that the voices of voters do not continue to be ignored. 

Fairer votes for a fairer society

At first glance, perhaps, reform of our electoral system was a surprising topic to for Oona King to introduce in the morning session of Progress Conference, entitled “Equality and aspiration – can Labour stand for both?” But as she forcefully argued, for as long as the system obliges political parties to concentrate their appeal to swing voters in the key marginal seats, Labour will be constrained in its capacity to build a broad coalition around a more redistributive programme for tackling inequality in our communities.   Far from being a ‘chattering-class’ issue or an exercise for ‘anoraks’, the question of reforming our present system of representation goes to the heart of why people come to identify and join the Labour party in the first place, and to its ability to advance a socially progressive political agenda to help those most in need of a bold Labour government.  Many of the areas with highest levels of poverty, joblessness and sustained under-investment have regularly returned Labour MPs with substantial majorities, and yet, under a First-Past-the-Post system which has allowed such voters  to be taken for granted, the voices of the poorest in our society are massively under-represented in the fraction of the electorate which gets to determine the outcome. 

This is not to claim that Labour has failed to improve the lives of people living in some of our most deprived communities. Indeed, the landslide victory in 1997 was possible only in the unique circumstances which allowed the party both to reconnect with the aspirations of wider sections of the electorate, whilst at the same time advancing a radical series of measures such as the introduction of a National Minimum Wage, Working-Families Tax Credits and the Sure-Start programme to give all children the best possible start in life, regardless of their background.  Yet since 1997 Labour has lost nearly 5 million voters and seen its membership continue to haemorrhage, a factor which has been largely masked by an electoral system which mitiagates against the development of a viable alternative on a national basis. Hence, disillusioned voters in safe seats have been neglected on the grounds they have ‘nowhere else to go’, whilst policy is extensively fire-proofed in focus-groups to reassure Daily Mail readers. Moreover, there is a risk that this is creating a vacuum which extremist parties of the far right are beginning to exploit. 

Whilst it is entirely understandable (and indeed necessary if it is to win a majority under the present system) that Labour concentrates upon winning over the critical voters in the marginals, this has a distorting effect on the party’s campaigning. It results in a strategy that is de-motivating essential activists in safe seats, undermining the party’s appeal to new members and, crucially, reducing the political scope to put forward a radical and distinctive policy agenda capable of addressing the scandals of inequality and social immobility in our nation.  Of course, Labour cannot tackle inequality from the opposition benches, nor can it afford to simply retreat into a ‘comfort zone’. To succeed, the party needs to advance policies around which a broad coalition of voters can cohere.  But Oona is surely right to suggest that the electoral system distorts priorities and acts as a constraint on our ability to achieve our ambitions for Britain.  She is quite right to insist on the need to rebalance the campaigning incentives given out by the voting system, and we should join her in calling for labour’s progamme of renewal to embrace the need for electoral reform.

Lord Reform Day - 7 March

Unlock Democracy, composed of those familiar democratic reform-seekers, New Politics Network and Charter 88, will be staging a 'Lords Reform Day' on March 7. This is the likely date of the Commons vote on what proportion of the House of Lords should be elected and the campaign seeks to get as much of the Upper House elected as possible.

It's a cause highly worthy of progressive support. The arguments in favour of a fully-elected Lords are well rehearsed. This makes them no less compelling. And there's been a profusion of counter-arguments put about in light of Jack Straw's recent, ham-fisted attempts to forge a fudge of the issue.

These anti-democratic counter-arguments are in the best tradition of the quietist, obstructionist, fusty, 'nay saying' face of the British establishment. Particularly hilarious is Lord Lipsey's notion that '[e]ven electing 50% of the Lords would completely ruin it'. All of a sudden, this well-renowned assembly  of reactionary near-stiffs is really an august Assembly of Experts.

Granted, the partial reform has improved the performance of the Lords. But contrary to some claims, there's no evidence that it performs better than the Commons. The fact is that both chambers are in need of reform, with the intention of making both more accountable, legitimate and stronger in the face of executive power.

Codifying the current settlement would not be enough

In yesterday's Daily Telegraph (9 October), the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, suggested Britain might benefit from a written constitution. 'At present', he said, 'much of what we regard as our unwritten constitution consists of laws that can be changed by a simple Act of Parliament and conventions that may be open to dispute.'

So, he wants to codify the current constitutional settlement. Goldsmith cited as an example the convention of holding a general election every five years (a bad example - only five of the eighteen post-war elections occured after a five year interval), or the clarification of when ministers have exceeded their powers.

This is the most timid imaginable of consitutional reform proposals - simply to write down how our polity currently operates, when it is surely the polity itself that needs reform. Judges can, at present, quite easily declare that Ministers have exceeded their powers, for example when the government breaks a law that it itself (via Parliament) has enacted. But when the government can so easily push laws through Parliament, this is hardly a great check or a balance.

Lord Goldsmith's most promising idea is so by default: the codification of the royal prerogative powers, currently exercised by the Prime Minister, would compel the codifiers to 'consider' whether he would have to consult Parliament, for example on going to war. Parliament, though, needs even more power than that to keep the executive properly in check: a fully-elected second chamber that can significantly and legitimately revise legislation for the better; strengthened select committees; more opporunity to initiate legislation; and a share of the large amount of patronage the Prime Minister currently wields.

We should support the more radical thinkers on the Labour and other benches in pursuing these aims - British democracy could do with some fresh thinking, and Labour should not let the Tories steal a march.

Have your say on Milburn's vision for New Labour

Alan Milburn, honorary president of Progress, yesterday set out a far-reaching ‘empowerment’ agenda for the next 10 years of New Labour.

He argued that the central issue for the Labour party to grapple with is that of the citizen’s relationship with the state. ‘The purpose of politics today,’ he said, ‘should be to help people take greater control of their lives so that they become as empowered as citizens as they have been as consumers … I want to change the distribution of power in society.’ In the speech, Milburn tackled the issues of greater wealth disparity, and called for ‘more to shift the focus beyond the traditional welfare solution of correcting the symptoms of inequality – such as lower wages and family poverty – towards an approach that deals with the roots of disadvantage before they become entrenched.’

Specifically, he argued that:

•    Welfare reform needs to be ‘back on the agenda with a vengeance’ with ‘incentives and sanctions’ to reduce the number of lone parents unable to work, partly by requiring them to actively seek work. He praised President Clinton’s welfare reforms, the subject of a recent Will Hutton Observer piece.

The party must adopt a series of tax breaks to spread asset ownership in shares and housing to tackle inequality.

•    State subsidies should allow parents to move children from a failing school, with the money transferring directly to their new school.

•    Government funded by local communities, who themselves decide the rate of taxes through local referendums.

•    Local health service and police could also be more accountable to the community they serve through elections. Community run mutual organisations could take over the running of children’s centres, estates and parks.

•    Voting reform for the Commons, power for Parliament to be able to vote on wars and a directly elected Lords.

•    The views of public service workers, and not just national inspectorates, should form the core of performance league tables.

Running through his speech and policy suggestions was the fundamental belief in the empowerment of individuals and communities. He sees this as the progressive cause that has been central to the Labour party for over a 100 years: ‘We need to forge a new contract between state and citizen where government provides opportunities and citizens strive to take them. Where the top down paternalistic statism of the last century gives way to a new bottom up agenda of empowerment that is in tune with the needs of this.’

What do you think of Alan’s speech? Do you agree with his view that the citizen/state relationship is key to renewing New Labour and what do you think of the specific policy suggestions he makes? Post your comments at the bottom of Alan's speech and he will respond next week.