Brit electorate awaits international seal of approval

Britain’s general election is over and the fractious process of forming a new government has started. The British electorate remains on tenterhooks however, since the African Union Electoral Monitoring Mission has yet to declare the process “free and fair”.

The major sticking point is the patent unfairness of a system in which a party with a quarter of the votes — the Liberal Democrats — wins only 8% of the seats. Conversely, that a party winning barely a third of the votes — the Conservatives — might yet form the next government. Or how about the Lib Dems getting only 1,8-million votes fewer than Labour’s 8,6-million but Labour winning four-and-a-half times as many seats, with Labour garnering 258 to the Lib Dem’s 57?

The head of the South Africa’s electoral monitoring group has suggested that the British masses excluded from meaningful democratic participation should gather to compile a Freedom Charter around the concept “the people shall govern”. SA would give “serious consideration” to allowing British political exiles to base themselves in SA to organise resistance, he said.

Jokes aside, what a mess the “mother of all Parliaments” finds herself in. The old dear must be dithering on the wrong side of senility to cause one of Her Majesty’s top diplomats to note scornfully that “British democracy is no better than Uzbekistan’s.”

Former ambassador Craig Murray, writing in the Guardian, lists among his gripes: “Royal Mail censorship of candidates’ electoral addresses, little real political choice for voters, widespread postal ballot-rigging and elections administered by partisan council officials in a corrupt political climate.” Murray concludes, “Are British elections free and fair? If this were a foreign election I was observing, I have no doubt that my answer would be no.”

After Thursday’s shambolic vote in some constituencies, Murray would no doubt add to the list the fact that thousands of voters were refused the right to vote because of poor electoral organisation. At some polling stations the police had to intervene to calm and disperse angry would-be voters.

While Britain has yet to suffer the indignity of having international electoral monitors deciding whether, given these manifest failures, it has met the requirements for genuine democracy, the past election is nevertheless likely to transform the long established two-party nature of its political system.

Electoral reform in the shape of some degree of proportional representation will follow, irrespective of whether the next government is a hasty coalition of the Liberal Democrats with either the Tories or Labour. And even if the Conservatives manage for a while to govern on their own despite being a parliamentary minority, the tide is running against unrepresentative government.

Consider the statistics. Before this election, the UK government has changed only once since 1979, when in 1997 Labour displaced the Conservatives. Tony Blair was elected with a comfortable majority, although Labour received only 36% of the vote, representing 22% of those registered. Such gross distortions of a nation’s democratic intentions inevitably must create arteriosclerosis in the body politic.

The result is voter alienation and apathy. 2001’s turnout of 59% was the lowest since 1918; in 2005, despite the controversial and divisive Iraqi invasion, it was barely 61%. This time the turnout was higher at 65% because the supposedly resurgent Liberal Democrats offered the prospect of an end to the revolving-door arrangement between Labour and Conservatives.

Although the Lib Dems failed to convert enthusiasm into votes, they hold the balance of power. As importantly, there is a groundswell for electoral reform among the centre-left, despite Britain being a country where the venerated but dead hand of tradition more often than not stifles change.

As the Financial Times‘ Philip Stephens put it, “the inherent unfairness of the handicap placed on the third party has been exposed. Single-party government resting on less than 40% of voters will struggle to reclaim political legitimacy … Britain will have to learn how to manage coalition politics.”

The flaws inherent to both SA’s pure proportional vote and Britain’s pure majoritarian system make obvious the need for reform in both countries. The Brits must, of course, do as they will, but what bliss it would be wake up in SA after a general election to find that 10 African National Congress ministers had bitten the dust, as has just happened to Labour.

The Guardian article

Financial Times article