Archive for July, 2009

As the British energy minister Ed Miliband sets out the government’s strategy for combating climate change a good question to ask is: where is the leadership that’s really needed over this matter going to come from?

The government’s proposals involve cutting carbon emissions from electricity generation by 40 per cent by 2020. Since electricity only accounts for 35 per cent of our primary energy consumption that leaves most of the remaining 80 per cent of our emissions unaffected. The longer term goal is to reduce our total emissions for all purposes by 80 per cent, but that is only over four decades and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said that this target is far too low and not soon enough to halt climate change.

The government is also allowing itself the safety valve of letting poor developing countries do some of the emissions reduction by carbon trading when implementation in the UK becomes difficult.

Well informed observers know that action at this leisurely pace is drastically inadequate, but where are the political leaders who will start telling voters, not that they must give up the good life, but that some significant changes will be needed? When Miliband cannot bring himself to tell people that they can still have their holidays in the sunny south but that will have to take the train and not fly and when the Prime Minister and Chancellor will not robustly confront the widespread popular delusion amongst voters – shown in a recent opinion poll – that what is needed now is cuts in public investment – the exact opposite of the truth – where does one go to find radical and imaginative political leadership?

The Green Party has the most comprehensive policies for the environmental crisis. It faces major hurdles getting elected precisely because what it offers involves radical change. That change, however, is of the kind that, it is now recognised across the political spectrum, is increasingly consonant with the urgency of climate change.

The Green Party has imaginative policies across all of public affairs and its lead candidates engage with balance and coherence in current debates. For all that, however, they fail to make the striking impact on the political stage that one might expect given the strong current relevance of their political platform.

It is quite possible that what lies behind this is a shortfall in outright political ambition: not the ambition to weald power in itself but the ambition to at least share in a measure of real political power in order to be able to achieve the radical change the Greens believe in. Strong ambition might involve, for instance, abandoning or weakening one strongly held position in order to focus attention upon the strengths of some other even more important policy.

Nuclear disarmament, for instance, could become a major electoral liability for the Greens as their wider electoral attractiveness increases. It is a fundamental conviction for many Greens that the UK’s nuclear weapons must be scrapped unilaterally with no delay. However, the Greens, even with popular policies on all fronts, are likely to deter many potential voters because of this issue.

The fact is, though, that it now looks as if modern civilisation is far more at risk from the rising threat of climate change than from the threat of nuclear war. In fact, it is now a matter of overwhelmingly critical importance. It is also central to the Green Party’s very raison d’etre. Why should not the Green Party, in order to prevent the nuclear issue from stalling its progress towards the centre of the stage, shift to a multi-lateral position? There would be uproar amongst its membership, but many more amongst the voters would be highly impressed.

Defective political ambition shows up, too, in Green Party spokes-persons and amongst their natural supporters in the manner in which they present the arguments to show, quite justifiably, how fundamentally optimistic and attractive their long-term vision is. An environmentally sustainable way of life would be a much better one, but the way to draw attention to this is to focus on concrete and specific and attractive facets of it. By contrast, the Greens will often make broad, abstract observations about their vision which don’t engage people’s imaginations, or even sound off-putting.

A major theme is localism, for instance. Life would be much better if we all worked much closer to home, we are told, and if we similarly enjoyed our leisure closer to home and bought things from nearby sources. The trouble with this approach is that it comes into conflict with so much of the pattern of people’s lives. Many people will be unable to see how they can realistically do the job they do without considerable travel, and many of course find that amusements located far from home and purchases from far away are highly attractive.

Instead, the focus should be upon such things as how greatly enhanced local public transport would make towns and other places more attractive to live in, and how high-speed rail journeys at reasonable prices would make long car journeys less appealing. People can readily grasp such clear advances without being obliged to take on a personal belief in the virtues of localism.

In fact, the focus upon the local is almost a distraction and irrelevance to the wider Green agenda. Climate change and the wider environmental threats are global issues, requiring co-operation between national governments. Voters can readily see that there is only  so much that they locally and personally can do about these things. They will expect those seeking election to focus on the big-scale things that governments alone can grapple with.

In the midst of the climate change crisis, when a strongly Green platform ought to be advancing to the forefront, the Greens can often be found emphasising that they are a party with policies on all the key issues of the day, that they are not a one issue band. This is undoubtedly true, but it should not prevent them from making it very clear that their programme for government would be focused first and foremost upon climate change.

The Greens seem almost to have conjured up this problem for themselves in their own imaginations. This is because they are reluctant to state openly what they are. The Green Party is a social democratic party in practice, its policies falling firmly within the tradition of the Labour party and similar parties of western Europe. It is for strong public services, a mixed economy, active macro-economic interventionism, reducing inequality and high taxation.

Critically, this established social democratic way of doing things is exactly what is needed to deal with the environmental crisis. Why don’t the Greens just start putting across the message that they are social democrats, whose natural supporters would be Labour and other centrist voters, and that they are determined to use government leadership and direction to engage in the battle to deal with the paramount issue of the day, climate change?

The Green Party not long ago achieved a major breakthrough by electing for the first time a single leader, thus responding to the reality that people can only be led to support the right policies if someone is clearly taking responsibility for doing the leading. And they have chosen the highly impressive, direct, clear-headed and experienced Caroline Lucas for the job. But a party is not just its leader, the Green Party’s message still needs to show more of the inspirational and the imagination that the situation calls for.

Labour MPs, though they know  they cannot win the next general election under Gordon Brown, now seem almost resigned to this, lacking the will to take the action that they could take to lessen the likelihood of an outright Tory victory and to ensure that much of the real achievement of this Labour government is preserved in the years ahead.

Their indecision is not warranted. Material for a strategy for a course of action to save Labour’s legacy has, in effect, been set out for them through recent events. Beyond that strategy, a variant on could be used if turns out not to be able to be fully implemented before the election. Here are the main components.

A recent opinion poll indicates that Labour could win with a slim majority if it had Alan Johnson as its leader. Johnson has said that he favours electoral reform for the House of Commons on the model for proportional representation (PR) proposed by the commission led by the late Roy Jenkins.

The Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg has also recently supported this form of PR. Clegg has proposed that PR could be set up before the end of this year as part of wider set of reforms.

Barry Shearman MP has pointed out that it would take simply a secret ballot of Labour MPs to bring about the vote of no-confidence in the Prime Minister that would leave the way clear for a leadership election. Experts on party rules have said that a new leader could be elected within a few weeks.

In any case, a vote by a majority of Labour MPs for a given candidate is on its own sufficient to choose a new Prime Minister, regardless of party rules – for there would be no point in Brown’s followers continuing to support him given that he would then no longer be in reality leader of Labour’s majority bloc in the House and therefore no longer command the support of the House.

By seizing upon the opportunity these circumstances offer, Labour could have a new Prime Minister in office within weeks, with a fair chance of both party and constitutional renewal.

A new leader would have to hold firmly to a determination not to hold a general election in the near future. This involves disarming the argument now being made that Labour could not legitimately change its leader a second time without that leader being endorsed by the voters. The fact is that, in Britain ’s unwritten constitution, there is no such rule. Moreover, the electorate in 2005 voted for a Labour government led by a cabinet with collective responsibility, one thing which is a firm rule of the constitution.

Postponing the general election till nearer the end of the maximum term will provide a new leader and their cabinet with space to unfold a programme which offers the sense of purposeful direction at present lacking, and also the opportunity for the basically well-judged measures already taken against the recession to show signs of yielding positive effects.

A wider constitutional reform agenda is certainly needed, but PR for the House of Commons is something that can done with relatively little delay. The detailed enquiry has already been carried out with the work of the Jenkins commission. Jenkins proposed a coherent, workable system. It employs the additional member system already used widely across continental Europe as well as in devolved authorities within Britain . It is a system that enables voters both to vote for a particular individual for their constituency and to elect minority parties that reflect most closely their policy preferences.

It is said that there would not be time for the Boundaries Commission to make the necessary changes in electoral divisions. This, however, where there’s a will there’s a way.  The government needs to insist upon a especially concerted effort by the Commission to ensure that it can do this quickly, if necessary backed up with additional resources.

All that is required is for Parliament to legislate for PR and then for a referendum to be held for it to get the voters’ endorsement. With Labour’s leadership supporting it and only the Tories of the other significant parties opposing PR it is very likely that this significant constitutional reform would be ratified in the referendum.

There is ample time to carry this out before the end of this year. It is crucial that PR should be in operation for the next general election, as this would prevent the Tories from winning an outright majority, just as it would for each other party. Coalition government would most likely follow. It is not inconceivable that a Labour- Lib Dem coalition could be formed, but a Tory government dependent upon non-Tory parties to remain in power would find it difficult to implement its full programme of cuts in public services and an economic policy focused away from reducing inequality.

However, there is a high potential for obstacles to arise to stymie this strategy. Fortunately,  there is a variant on it that would allow more time for it to surmount the obstacles. It is this:

The Liberal Democrats and Labour could form an electoral pact not to stand against each other in seats they respectively already hold. This would make it much harder for the Tories to win an outright majority.

This would be accompanied by the promise that, following the election, if they held a majority between them in parliament, the Lib Dems and Labour would co-operate to facilitate a full and open programme of constitutional reform, including first and foremost a balanced system of PR for the House of Commons. Referenda would be held on all key elements. Backing this up would be a firm promise that a further general election, using the new system, would be held within two years.

This plan could be legitimately presented to the electorate as a well structured process of reform directed towards building a healthier democracy.

The Liberal Democrats have long campaigned for PR. Labour has traditionally been opposed to it on the grounds that present system allows them their turn in office unhindered by the demands of other parties. Such a period is now coming to an end, however, with the risk that much of its work will be undone by a Tory government, just as it was under Thatcher and Major. Most of our continental partners with the least economic inequality have some form of PR. PR inevitably blunts initiatives from the outer ends of the political spectrum, both right and left. If Labour really wants to create the best conditions for the preservation of the advances in social solidarity that it has brought about then ensuring that the mandates of future governments depend upon PR looks like a major contribution to that end.

Turning the House of Lords into a properly democratic second chamber will be central to reforming the House of Commons and Parliament as a whole.

In a healthy, lively, democracy a perpetual tension exists between the executive and legislative branches of government. In Britain today that tension scarcely exists, because power lies predominantly on the executive side. It is inevitable that the party leaderships will largely control MPs, for the Commons functions as an electoral college to chose the government of the day. The realities of party discipline and the fact that voters quite rightly want a channel by which to choose who shall form the government entail that there are a great many merits in this system. There always has to be a clear-cut way to democratically remove a government and replace it with another, by means of elections for the first chamber, the House of Commons.

Democracy is seriously defective, however, if governments are able to get almost any law they wish passed by Parliament, as they can in Britain now. It is essential for a healthy democracy that it should be possible for a government to fail to have some of its measures passed by the legislature. A government’s democratic mandate ought not to give it carte blanche in law-making. Without this principle in force there is little point in having a legislature at all. Without it, the government might just as well be empowered to rule by decree.

For these reasons, a democratically elected second chamber, firmly outside the control not just of the government but also of the opposition leaderships, is critical for effective democracy.

However, a new second chamber will only be effective if its rules of operation and the method by which is it elected are devised with great care. That involves recognising that the constitutional law covering the second chamber must be built upon a consistent and coherent view of its purpose.

The second chamber must, of course, be elected directly by the voters if it is to have the democratic legitimacy not just to review but to reject, when it decides to, bills passed by the Commons.

Political parties form a key part of a modern democracy and parties must be represented by candidates that broadly share their objectives. However, a key goal in establishing a second chamber must be to ensure that the scope for independent thought and action by its members is maximised.

The flawed electoral system now in place for the Commons, whereby  the outcome does not depend upon the votes cast in many constituencies, illustrates how important it is to have a voting system for the second chamber that maps voters’ intentions as closely as possible while being consistent with effective representative democracy. A form of proportional representation (PR) is the best way to ensure this.

Some forms of PR express voters’ intentions more accurately than others. The form that does it best is the system of the single transferable vote (STV) in multi-member electoral divisions. The objective of this is to ensure that the widest spread of voter opinion is reflected in who is elected as is practically possible. Each constituency should have around 10 seats. This means that a candidate able to gain the support of about 10 per cent of the electorate has a good chance of being elected.

It is important for the purposes of the second chamber to avoid the party-list system of PR that operates for some assemblies, often for good reasons. Under a party list system voters vote for a party, not an individual, and who gets elected from that party is predetermined by the place of the candidates on a list which is in turn determined by the internal selection system of the party.

Under STV, voters cast their votes for individual candidates. This enables people to vote for the candidates who have impressed them as individuals by their policies, their personal qualities and their capacity for independent thought. Candidates would usually be members of a party but they would not necessarily be those most favoured by their own parties. Independent, non-party,  candidates would also have a good chance of election. This is just the kind and calibre of legislators that we need in the second chamber.

The STV system would also ensure that, with the present respective levels of support for the main political parties today, none of them could obtain a majority in the second chamber.

The STV system, additionally and crucially, obviates two major problems that can arise with legislative bodies elected independently of elections for the executive branch. The Congress and many state legislatures in the United States manifest these problems. One of them is gerrymandering. Collusion between parties enables the continuation of electoral divisions with boundaries calculated to make the seats of many legislators almost impregnable. Under STV, since there are no single-member constituencies, this cannot happen.

The second problem is that, to reinforce their chance of re-election, many US legislators do deals to ensure that lucrative government contracts create jobs within their electoral divisions. This sort of economic localism – so contrary as it is to strategic direction of national economic policy – would be hard to engineer  under STV and in the face of national government programmes coming from the House of Commons.

A further constitutional provision to critical to making the second chamber operate as it ought to. Members should be barred from taking any ministerial or other post within the executive branch. This would make it quite clear that they were there to act as legislators and to scrutinize government activity, and that this is an important political role and a worthy political career in itself. Parliament now signally fails to carry out this function effectively. Part of the reason for this is that many members are ambitious to take up a government job or a post on their party’s front bench.

In addition, the considerable size of this government payroll vote weakens even further than it already is the capacity of the Commons to block government measures. Such political ambition by MPs is of course a good thing. It is important to have gifted and motivated people wanting to play a in running the executive side of government. But the place for that is the House of Commons.

Achieving a balance between the legislative and executive branches of the constitution requires also that Parliament should not be able to thwart the government’s legitimate actions in running the country. This can happen, as U.S. experience illustrates, when a parliament blocks the budget.  A viable model for the second chamber would therefore include the provision, already operative for the House of Lords, that the second chamber could not stop money bills, but merely delay them, in the interests of review, for a short period, probably no longer than 30 days.

An elected second chamber should have full powers of scrutiny of government activity and should therefore be empowered to call ministers and public officials to give evidence before its committees.

This could open into a wider role, where members of the second chamber, freed of the need to observe the government’s priorities, could make useful investigations into significant public issues. This would in turn open the pathway to greater degree of initiation of legislation in the second chamber. This would be likely to lead to a wider-ranging and better considered body of legislation than is usually possible within a government legislative agenda. The desire of members to enact such laws would provide them with useful material for bargaining with Commons business managers about objections to measures coming from the Commons.

A second chamber on this model would bring major improvements to the constitution. The House of Commons also needs reforming, but a robust second chamber will be an essential component in the building of a vibrant, effective Parliament.