‘Our politics is broken.’ This was the principal justification offered by the seven former Labour MPs as they announced they were leaving the party to sit as an independent group. It’s difficult to disagree with much of that. Brexit has clarified for many what has been a far longer trend – the fracturing of the two-party system in this country.
Their proposed remedy, however, is at best insufficient, and at worst counterproductive. A new group in parliament will not on its own be any better-placed than the SDP was nearly forty years ago to overcome the challenges of a decayed political system. It may simply pave the way for more years of Conservative government. Instead, what we really need is a change in the way we think about our politics, and a first step towards this might be a change in our voting system.
As has been argued for decades, a proportional system would obviate the need for catch-all, ‘broad church’ parties on the left and right, allowing for a more diverse range of views to be articulated with the possibility of actually achieving meaningful representation. This wouldn’t just apply to so-called ‘centrists’, of course. One of the most popular criticisms of PR is that it gives greater influence to the political extremes. But I would argue that this is the inevitable consequence of what is, on balance, a desirable state of affairs – a truly representative democracy.
The anomaly of 2017 aside, support for smaller parties in general elections has been increasing under the current system, anyway. Following the 2010 election, the two-party vote share was at its lowest since Labour became the Conservatives’ main opponent almost ninety years earlier. So the real difference is simply that under PR, this support would be rewarded by fair representation in parliament. What’s more, the loose coalition of voters which each main party was able to attract in 2017 was always likely to be unsustainable, and the stark divisions within both main parties have been clear to see almost ever since.
More than any of this, though, PR would help to change the way we think about politics in the UK. It would allow us to recalibrate our democracy away from the confrontational, oppositional displays of Westminster in favour of a more consensual, collaborative approach rooted in compromise.
It is unsurprising, and perhaps inevitable, that when a party receiving less than 50% of the vote can expect to command as much as 63% of the seats, Westminster institutionalises an oppositional political culture borne of a ‘winner takes all’ mindset. All the more rotten, indeed, as only once since the end of the first world war has a single ‘winning’ party actually received a majority share of the vote. Cast your minds back to the immediate aftermath of the 2010 and 2017 elections, when people were quick to declare ‘no-one won this election’, simply because a minority of the overall votes cast had not produced a majority of seats for any one party.
For too long we’ve been conditioned to look upon compromise in our politics as a dirty word, a sign of weakness. ‘Strong’, ‘resolute’, ‘single-minded’; how often have these words been used to praise former prime ministers, (David Cameron excepted, obviously)? This legacy has reached its nadir in Theresa May, who, rather than reflecting resolute strength, in fact embodies stubborn inflexibility.
You might argue that even the way the House of Commons chamber is structured deters compromise. Government versus opposition. It is much harder for a government minister to agree with anything substantive from across the floor when all they can see are the baying ranks of the opposition, their ears deaf to anything but the jeering masses behind them. While PMQs is in some ways a laudable attempt at regular scrutiny, in practice it is an advert for adversarial politics, leader versus leader pitted against one another in a gladiatorial contest – and so it is no surprise that the media, often criticised for reporting it in this way, does just that.
The new Independent Group are right that Parliament has shown itself incapable of resolving the Brexit question satisfactorily, but the explanation lies principally in its inability to operate on a genuinely cross-party basis. Even now, in the face of a catastrophic no-deal exit, Theresa May seems unwilling to countenance passing a Brexit deal with the support of the Labour front bench for fear of splitting her equally broken party. Similarly, the Independent Group’s uniting cause is uncompromising opposition to any form of Brexit deal at all. For as long as this is the prevailing tune, a new band of MPs in parliament will change almost nothing.
Instead, we should embrace compromise. It is a sign of maturity and durability in politics, and PR is one effective way to embed these values. Speaking after seven of his former colleagues decided to leave the party, Labour deputy leader Tom Watson said: “I regard them as people who have drawn the wrong conclusion to a serious question.” I couldn’t agree more.
