A better way to elect the UK parliament
Filed under: Cons, Denmark, England, Germany, Lab, Lib, ROI, SNP, Scotland, election, psephology
When people in the UK discuss alternatives to the current electoral system used for Westminster (first-past-the-post), they tend to look towards Ireland, Australia or possibly Germany, but never Scandinavia.
However, the system used there has many advantages, and indeed people there just take it for granted, so it must have got something right!
To make the Danish electoral system tangible, I have therefore made a simulation of the UK General Election 2005 according to the Danish system. (It’s quite long, so feel free to skip down to the results instead of reading all the details.)
Here are some of the advantages of the Danish system:
- Every vote counts. Even if your vote doesn’t get anybody elected where you live, it will count towards your party elsewhere in the country. This combats the way parties under FPTP tend to concentrate all their efforts on swing voters in marginal seats.
- The politicians need to get themselves elected, not just their party. A politician will typically be up against at least ten other candidates from their own party, and it is therefore important to have a personal agenda, not just to toe the party line.
- Need to be positive. When all votes count, if party A claims party B are evil, it might benefit party C or D just as easily as party A. So instead, party A needs to give the voters reasons to vote for them.
- It preserves some sort of constituency link. Given that it’s still the constituencies that put up candidates, and given that MPs are elected in small groups of constituencies, there is still a very strong local link, and it’s easy to understand how to get rid of a bad MP.
- Results are available quickly. Like FPTP, but unlike STV, results come in quickly, thus providing for a good election night experience.
- Opinion polls are right. Under FPTP, there is no simple correlation between share of the vote and number of seats won, so a party can lose votes but gain seats and vice versa. Under the Danish system, more votes leads to more seats, and opinion polls will therefore accurately predict how many MPs each party will get.
- Parties become truly national. Under FPTP, most parties tend to get most of their MPs elected in specific geographical areas (LibDems in the South West, Labour in the cities, the Tories in rural England). The Danish system spreads out the MPs more evenly, so that the LibDems will get fewer seats in the South West but more in the cities and rural England, Labour will get fewer seats in the cities but more elsewhere, etc. (This is not taken to extremes. The SNP only gets seats in Scotland – it’s not artificially extended to England.)
Should the UK be like Switzerland?
Eurosceptics often claim that Norway and Switzerland provide a model for what the UK could do if the country left the EU.
I therefore found it interesting to read in this week’s The Economist that the Swiss are starting to talk about joining again:
In Berne the still gloomier argument can also be heard that the EU is becoming a much tougher bilateral partner. Even before the recession, Swiss bank secrecy and low cantonal tax rates were under fire. The EU increasingly bundles agreements together, so that if Swiss voters were to drag their feet on one area of co-operation, they would lose out on many others.
Since the crisis hit, Switzerland has faced a baroque array of humiliations. Germany’s then finance minister, Peer Steinbrück, threatened to “take a whip” to the Swiss unless they relaxed bank secrecy. Italy’s government sent police to film alleged tax dodgers as they crossed the border. [...]
The crisis has left the EU determined to seek tougher financial regulation and impose restrictions on access to the single market by foreign firms, notes Micheline Calmy-Rey, the Swiss foreign minister. “As non-members of the club, we are the ideal target for discrimination. It is a growing risk.” The bilateral path is becoming “more and more difficult,” Ms Calmy-Rey adds, both as the EU’s legal code expands and as it pushes Switzerland to sign up to near-automatic adoption of future rules
Although the UK is a larger country than Switzerland, I don’t think there’s any reason to assume the EU would treat it in a vastly different way.
Also, just like Switzerland, the UK is depending on European trade – the days are long gone when Commonwealth trade was more important.
Furthermore, a lot of British people travel to France, Spain and Italy to see the sun, and many of them buy houses there, so the UK would be in a very vulnerable position if the EU decided to put on the thumbscrews.
I still hope most of the talk about leaving the EU is just typically British grumpiness, and I am encouraged that David Cameron has stated clearly that he wants Britain to continue to be a member of the EU.
However, I think the people who dream about leaving should try to work out how that actually would work out.
The new European Commission
José Manuel Barroso unveiled his new team today.
Of course, the European Parliament will need to approve the new commission before they can take office, but I doubt there is anything or anybody so scandalously bad that they won’t.
That said, I’m not too impressed in general. Here are the ones I have some issues with:
- Joaquín ALMUNIA: Competition. Will he really be able to stand up to big business as past competition commissioners have done? I hope so, but he doesn’t seem to have much experience of industry.
- Michel BARNIER: Internal Market and Services. British newspapers are worried he’ll be bad for the City of London. I’m more worried whether he’s too close to the French government to stand up to them where they are distorting the internal market. I would have preferred the post to be filled by a candidate from a smallish country.
- Dacian CIOLOS: Agriculture and Rural Development. A Romanian to head agriculture, when Romania in general is against CAP reform, being a large country with lots of poor peasants? Perhaps not the best idea if Barroso intends to make progress on CAP reform.
- Neelie KROES: Digital Agenda. She did a great job as competition commissioner. This hardly looks like a promotion!
- Günter OETTINGER: Energy. Germany is very Russia-friendly when it comes to energy, so I find it doubtful that a German will be able to please the former communist member states. I think Barroso should have gone for somebody more neutral, that is, neither a German nor a Baltic commissioner.
Many of the other appointments are unproblematic, but I can’t help thinking that Barroso hasn’t set up his team for maximum impact.
Sometimes I really miss Delors!
No respect for engineering
There’s a post on John Redwood’s blog, which has comments that largely are more interesting than the article itself.
Do read through the comments if you’ve got the time.
Here follow a few excepts.
“Bill” wrote: “There are some exceptions of course, in the aerospace industry in particular, but manufacturing does not attract the brightest and the best, they go into the law, medicine, the city. Not so in Germany [...]“
“Mick Anderson” wrote: “As for “careers in engineering” – if your primary choice of employers are all small companies, you are limited in how you can grow your skills. Small companies need people who can adapt to fill many roles – this is a useful skill in this environment, but not a route to a seat on the board of a multi-national! Let’s face it, the entire board of directors for the average engineering firm is often the two blokes who initially started the company in a garage.”
“Simon D” wrote: “However, there are huge cultural problems. The last thing that the home counties and metropolitan middle class want is for Julian and Samantha to end up in manufacturing after all that sweat over their education. Far better to be a City lawyer or banker or some kind of media hot shot. Working for Government quangos is also OK. Better paid and better prospects. The last thing anybody needs is to be stuck in some failing manufacturing town in the Midlands or the North of England.”
“OurSally” wrote: “So, now we’re long gone you suddenly decide you need us after all. We engineers left the country in the 80s and 90s, leaving the rest of you to handle low wages, stupid managers and people who think engineers repair cars. Here in Germany we get a constant stream of disaffected Brits looking for (and finding) a better world. We get paid as much as doctors, and a Dipl.Ing. commands the same respect as a professor. [...] You want us back? Pay decent wages, copyright the word Engineer, give us 6 weeks holiday and Christmas boni and a decent canteen.”
“Brian E” wrote: “When I had contacts with the Germans, I was always addressed as “Herr Ing” and treated with the same respect as Doctors and Lawyers. The French had a similar attitude and there engineering is treated as probably the top profession; in both countries the pay reflects the status of the work, unlike the UK where it is probably the worst paid of all those occupations requiring formal qualifications. [...] Yes I enjoyed my work, but in retirement I am probably the worst off of all the various professionals that I know and would certainly not recommend anyone intending to work in he UK to go into engineering.”
“Daedalus” wrote: “And then you have the engineers reporting at a lower level to production all to drive down the costs of employing you. The thought of getting a job that pays £65K is a dream for most engineers.”
It’s interesting how not a single commenter tried to defend the current situation.
SPD, Labour etc.
Filed under: Cons, Denmark, Europe, Germany, Lab, Lib, election
They story being reported everywhere at the moment is that the CDU/CSU have won the elections together with the FDP and will now be able to govern Germany in a so-called black-yellow coalition.
Slightly more sophisticated reports might point out that the CDU results were mostly static, and that the gains were almost entirely made by the liberal FDP.
However, in my view the big story is the collapse of the SPD. They have lost a third of their support, going from 222 seats to 146 (the results are not final yet).
All other parties have gained: CDU/CSU (13 more seats), the Greens (17), the Left party (22) and FDP (32).
This seems to be very similar to what’s going to happen in the UK soon.
Labour’s support is plummeting, and the Tories seem to be gaining mainly by default, simply by not being Labour, with the LibDems staying where they are.
Something similar could be seen at the recent European elections, which just demonstrates that the collapse of the social-democratic parties is a Europe-wide phenomenon.
The way I see it, these parties in most countries tried to move to the right because they could see their voters were becoming wealthier and thus more right-wing, and this worked like a treat for a while.
Gradually, however, voters became disenchanted with these parties that seem to believe in one thing but to do the opposite, with parties both to the left and the right making gains.
The first-past-the-post system in the UK means that there is no party to the left of Labour to hoover up unhappy Labour voters, so instead turnout is falling, with all other parties profiting because their voters now make up a larger share of a smaller pot of votes.
In most other countries, parties on the left are gaining, such as die Linke in Germany and SF in Denmark.
It will be interesting to see over the next decade whether Labour, SPD and their sister parties throughout Europe will find a new raison d’être, or whether they will be reduced to smaller, less significant parties, like the liberal parties (the LibDems, FDP etc.) during the second half of the 20th century.
Is the Scandinavian model restricted to Scandinavia?
Charlemagne is quoting Johan Norberg for wondering whether the Swedish model is restricted to Sweden: “If countries don’t already have a tradition of an efficient, non-corrupt bureaucracy with an impressive work ethic a larger government only means more abuse of power and more waste of money. I often try to convince Americans, no, more government in the US would not get you a big version of Sweden, it would get you a big version of the US Postal Service.“
It’s an interesting point, and I think it’s at least partly true.
I do think Sweden in this context can be replaced by a much larger area, at the very least Scandinavia and parts of Germany, but living in Scotland, I can see that many things are just not working because of different attitudes.
For instance, buses are regularly late, but people just shrug their shoulders and use their car the next time. In Denmark, people would be very upset and it would eventually become a priority for the government to sort out.
The Tories’ new friends in Europe
As I wrote yesterday, the Tories are planning to leave the EPP-ED after the elections to the European Parliament.
The Guardian today have an excellent article about their new friends in Europe.
A few quotes from the article:
[...] at the weekend in Warsaw, Cameron sealed his new alliance in Europe with Krupa’s rightwing party in Poland, the opposition Law and Justice party (PiS) run by twin brothers Jaroslaw and Lech Kaczyński. [...] Paranoia towards the outside world, ingrained prejudice and discrimination towards homosexuals, fundamentalist Roman Catholicism, climate change denial and hostility towards Germany are some of the views espoused by the Kaczyńskis’ party.[...]
Cameron is ditching two decades of Conservative co-operation with the mainstream centre-right Christian democrats in the parliament, the European People’s party (EPP) – to the fury of centre-right grandees in Europe – on the grounds that it is dominated by European federalists and supporters of the Lisbon treaty which the Tories oppose.
If anybody reading this is considering voting for the Tories, do remember that a vote for the Conservatives is no longer a vote for the EPP, it’s a vote for a xenophobic and paranoid group of parties.
Proportional representation coming soon?
So some Labour grandees are now proposing to introduce proportional representation (AV+ to be precise – not my preferred variant, by the way, but it wouldn’t be too bad).
But the Tories are against. In David Cameron’s words: “Proportional representation takes power away from the man and woman in the street and hands it to the political elites. Instead of voters choosing their government on the basis of the manifestos put before them in an election, party managers would choose a government on the basis of secret backroom deals. How is that going to deliver the transparency and trust we need?“
I think he’s very much mistaken.
He seems to imply that first-past-the-post gives power to the “man and woman in the street”, but how many constituencies in the UK are actually competitive? Very few, if we except the landslide elections (that only see seats changing in one direction).
On the other hand, in a proportional system, even fairly small voter movements will be translated into seat changes, thereby empowering the man and woman in the street.
Yes, in a proportional system there is a much greater possibility of coalition government, but that is not necessarily a bad thing handled mostly in “secret backroom deals”.
If parties are open about what’s absolute demands and what’s merely optional extras in their manifestos, and if they declare before the election under what circumstances they would enter into a coalition, the whole process can be transparent and open.
I think many people here think Italy or Israel when proportional representation is mentioned, but many other countries (such as Germany and the Scandinavian countries) combine proportional representation with stable government and small parties without unreasonable influence.
It’s just a question of copying the right system.
The consequences of crazy car taxation
The Danish car taxation that trebles car prices has some bizarre consequences.
See for instance this article (in Danish, Google translation here – “dollars” seems to be a mistranslation of “kroner”).
The problem is that lots of people would like to buy their cars in Sweden or Germany to save the tax. However, this would completely undermine the Danish system, so the Danish tax authorities will clamp down heavily on this, showering you in fines and potentially imprisonment, too.
To me, this just demonstrates that the system is broken. If Danish car taxes were adjusted to normal levels, nobody would want to circumvent the rules, and nobody would have to go to jail.
The Russian war against Georgia
Fortunately, the war between Russia and Georgia over South Ossetia has been featuring prominently in western media.
However, I sense that many people have a tendency to let Russia off lightly.
It is worth remembering that South Ossetia (and Abkhazia) legally are parts of Georgia.
Russia are defending their actions by saying they’re defending their citizens, but they’re forgetting to tell the world that they have for many years now been handing out Russian citizenship to anybody from South Ossetia and Abkhazia who applied.
In other words, the situation would be similar to the Netherlands handing out citizenships to all Belgians that would like one and then sending in the military to protect their citizens as soon as the Belgian state tried to assert its authority.
Of course, Russia could only do this because many of the Abkhazians and South Ossetians wanted to be part of Russia, but it still is a worrying way to interfere in other countries. I wonder what Russia would do if Germany, Poland or Lithuania started to hand out citizenships to the inhabitants of Kaliningrad, for instance…
One can also argue that the Abkhazians and South Ossetians should be allowed to decide on their own where their future lies, but Russia hasn’t been very keen on that idea when it came to Chechnia and Kosova.
To sum up, I think the Russians should pull out and revoke the citizenships it has granted to citizens of other states. The UN should then be called upon to arrange referenda on the future of any area that so desires, whether Kosova, South Ossetia or Kurdistan.
Please do also read Edward Lucas’s take on this. Also, this makes it more important than ever to let Georgia join NATO, as The Times argue.
Update: The Georgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs have a blog.