Smith kicks Plant into the long grass
The Plant Commission endorses a more proportional voting system (just about), but Labour Leader John Smith remains unconvinced.
On the last Monday before the 1992 general election, Neil Kinnock took a question from 20-year-old Alec Dunn on national television asking where the Labour leader stood on electoral reform.
“I'd be delighted to tell you ... but not at this juncture."
When Dunn pressed him for a yes or no on whether he was in favour of proportional representation (PR), Kinnock fumbled, “Well fine, ah no, it isn’t quite as simple as that, not where I’m sitting.”
It was a botched answer, but technically an honest one. It wasn’t simple from where he was sitting. Kinnock had a position. Privately he had been convinced of the need for electoral reform. The party, however, remained divided over the issue and was awaiting the Plant Commission’s final report—established to evaluate the benefits of electoral reform.
Kinnock had tied himself in knots trying to wriggle out of giving a definitive answer to avoid getting out ahead of Plant and rankling elements of the party. The results were difficult to watch.
Over a year later, the Plant Commission published its third report and made a recommendation. But the party was no less divided over the issue and rather than take a concrete stance, Smith, like his predecessor, equivocated—albeit with more grace and confidence—and kicked electoral reform into the long grass.
A stable but uneven field
The rules that had underpinned UK electoral politics for decades were becoming antiquated and unfit for use in the increasingly multipolar party system of 1993. The Westminster electoral model, which had been a stabilising force, was perpetuating ethnic and gender inequalities in government and generating election outcomes that were increasingly unrepresentative national voting patterns.
The winner-takes-all model of first-past-the-post (FPTP), where the candidate with the most votes in each constituency is sent to Westminster, rewards the leading party by converting small leads in votes to a larger lead in parliamentary seats.
This seat bonus helped manufacture majority governments and allowed the incoming party to implement their agenda with minimal cross-party negotiation. The FPTP electoral system was also sensitive to voter frustrations, it was argued. Even small shifts in voting behaviour could result in the incumbent losing power, thereby keeping governments responsive to voter interests.
The fact it kept smaller parties out of government was a feature of the system, not a bug. It served as a bulwark against fringe groups like the National Front or the British National Party securing legitimacy through parliamentary representation.
Shifts in voting patterns, however, began to highlight inequalities in the system. Between 1970 and 1974, the combined share of Labour and Conservative votes fell from 90 percent to 75 percent. This abrupt and sizeable shift in support was not captured by seat tallies under the FPTP voting system; Labour and Conservative MPs still took 94 percent of seats.
It wasn’t just minority parties that suffered under the Westminster election model. Denying millions of Britons the representation of their choosing through a winner-takes-all model was contributing to the underrepresentation of women and ethnic minorities in Parliament.
Shoots of reform?
Support for electoral reform within the Labour party had been steadily increasing through the 1970s and early 80s. The Labour Campaign for Electoral Reform (LCER) drew support from figures like Robin Cook that recognised the unequal outcomes produced by the FPTP system.
The party leadership was, however, largely reticent about the issue. As the second major party that had proven capable of winning a majority under FPTP, many believed Labour was a beneficiary of the skewed system. Deputy Leader Roy Hattersley, for instance, had pushed to have it excluded from the Policy Review of 1987-89.
This view may have been short-sighted and overestimated Labour’s rewards under the Westminster electoral model. Writing in Labour List earlier this month, Rob Ford explained how FPTP systems have traditionally disproportionately benefitted right-wing parties, a consequence of left-of-centre voter tendencies to live in geographical clusters and the winner-takes-all model discouraging risk-averse, middle-income voters from backing vehicles for change.
New Zealand’s politics, for example, witnessed a dramatic shift after it abandoned FPTP in 1996. In the 47 years before reform, the centre-right National Party governed for 74 percent of the time. In the 26 years since, the centre-left has held office more than half the time.
Although the Labour leadership continued to drag its feet on electoral reform under Neil Kinnock, attitudes were changing. The success of the Charter 88 movement was bringing electoral reform into mainstream public debate and in September 1990, the Labour Coordinating Committee and the LCER carried a motion at the party conference to extend the remit of a working party considering electoral systems for the devolved assemblies of Scotland, Wales, and Greater London, the House of Lords, and the European Parliament to also include the House of Commons. Raymond Plant would head the inquiry and the Plant Commission was born.
I got new rules, Plant counts ‘em
The commission published three reports between 1991 and 1993. The first outlined the pros and cons of a number of alternative electoral systems and the second argued that any new system should keep existing electoral boundaries and the geographical link between representatives and constituents (ruling out systems that treat voters as a single national constituency). The third report, sent to the party leadership in April 1993, proved the most decisive because of the decision to recommend an alternative electoral system.
Several external factors had buffered the soil for a reassessment of electoral reform the commission’s formation in 1990. The National Executive Committee (NEC) had accepted a proposal to back an Additional Member System (AMS) in Labour’s devolution plan for a new Scottish Parliament. The proposal from the Scottish Constitutional Convention had successfully argued the system would preserve the geographical link between elected representatives and their constituents but deliver more equal representation for women and more accurately reflect support outside the two major parties.
In March 1993, there had been a resolution to adopt a uniform electoral system for European parliamentary elections, with proportionality listed among the system requirements and strict limits on the share of member state MEPs that could be elected through FPTP.
Plant Commission members received the first draft of the report at the end of March and there was a debate over how to proceed. Aware that John Smith was unenthusiastic about electoral reform, Margaret Beckett wanted the commission to avoid making any hard recommendations in the report and only present Smith and the party with a menu of electoral reform options. This, she reasoned, would give Smith a freer hand when he acknowledged the report’s findings and gave his views on reform.
Plant saw no reason to show restraint and the matter was put to a vote. The working group voted 9-7 in favour of recommending the supplementary vote (SV) system, where voters list a first and second choice and if no candidate receives an absolute majority from the first-choice votes, all but the two leading candidates are eliminated and the eliminated candidates supporters’ second-choice votes are counted.
In the report approved on April 20, 1992, the committee also added recommendations on overhauling the voting process to allow voters to cast their ballots up to eight days before the election, install four-year fixed term parliaments, and hold elections on weekends.
“That which we call electoral reform”
The SV system, slightly more proportional than FPTP, cannot strictly be called proportional representation. It would have given minor parties only a slight boost, while retaining the majority slant of FPTP and, by giving weight to second-choice candidates, rewarding those with the broadest appeal, offering little to further minority and female representation.
If applied to the results of the 1992 general election, SV voting would have given the Liberal Democrats 10 or 11 seats, but left Labour’s seat tally unchanged.
Ultimately, this protection of Labour’s seat total while paying lip service to proportionality was what made SV appealing. The SV system, essentially FPTP-lite, might be palatable for the 86 MPs that still backed FPTP, while public support for electoral reform may create more fertile ground for negotiations with the Liberal Democrats in the event of a hung parliament.
Smith won’t endorse the findings
“Labour has for too long dodged the question. It must now say whether or not it will be part of the process of modernising Britain or part of the force that prevents that from happening.”—Liberal Democrat Leader Paddy Ashdown.
John Smith responded to the report’s findings at a National Executive Committee meeting a few weeks later on May 18. As a FPTP supporter, he refused to endorse the commission’s recommendations, but indicated he was willing to put the matter to the British public in a referendum should Labour win the next general election.
This was a shrewd move from the leader of a party where around half of party MPs had no declared voting system preference. Supporting a public referendum kept the door open to reform, but would delay any major debate on the issue until after the next election and, if Labour won an outright majority and the party didn’t splinter further on the issue, could postpone the debate indefinitely. The referendum became official party policy at the conference later that year.
“Any talk of changing the electoral system is at best premature, and at worst a waste of time. PR will not be an issue at the next election. We know it will be jobs, housing, education, health and social services"—Anonymous Labour delegate quoted in the Guardian, 1 October 1993.
It should be noted, David Ward, John Smith’s head of policy believes the Labour Leader was sincere in his commitment for a referendum.
He happily conceded the point of principle that all votes should matter equally and the flaws in first past the post. His concerns were primarily practical. He would say to me, “how do I persuade my fellow 50 Scottish members of the Parliamentary Labour Party that we should have a voting system that would cost Labour seats. His commitment to a referendum was sincere… He was also fully aware that, as the Plant Commission recommended, devolution would introduce PR elections, and also for the European Parliament. He would have been interested to learn from that practical application of electoral reform.
Although a blow to modernisers, the commitment to a referendum represented incremental progress. The deep roots of FPTP had been unearthed for examination, and while the soil underneath wasn’t yet fertile, a Plant had shed some seeds on its way through.
Having worked as John Smith’s Head of Policy I have a more nuanced view about his attitude to electoral reform. I have long been in favour of proportional representation, particularly the Additional Member system. I discussed these issues with John extensively. I freely confess to not having persuaded him. But his views were revealing. He happily conceded the point of principle that all votes should matter equally and the flaws in first past the post. His concerns were primarily practical. He would say to me how do I persuade my fellow 50 Scottish members of the PLP that we should have a voting system that would cost Labour seats. His commitment to a referendum was sincere & not in my view an attempt to kick the subject into the long grass. He was also fully aware that, as the Plant Commission recommended, devolution would introduce PR elections, and also for the European Parliament. He would have been interested to learn from that practical application of electoral reform. Together with the late Robin Cook I had hopes that the progressive introduction of PR would in this way become unstoppable, and that John Smith would not eventually have not opposed scrapping FPTP. We will never know. I often wonder how he would react now to Labour having just one MP in Scotland whist gaining about 20% of the vote. I like to think that his views of the efficacy of FPTP for Labour would be radically changed. I also believe the Blair government’s failure to hold a referendum and its distinctly luke warm attitude to electoral reform was a major mistake and a great modernisation opportunity missed.