There’s been a unseemly spat between two Labour bloggers, Neil Harding and Bob Piper, apparently over what hours Bob works as a councillor and for how much, but as far as I can see it’s rooted in Neil’s desire to see PR introduced soon, Bob not agreeing, Neil then deciding Bob’s a ‘prat’ and calling hin one, and Bob not taking that kindly to being insulted or told he’s lying about his councillor allowance. I am guessing the Christmas card exchange between Sandwell and Brighton will be down this year.
It’s a shame really, as I like the output of both of them when they focus on what they’re good at – Tory bashing – Bob with his pithy few liners and Neil, not least, with some of the good detail he did a while ago on the manipulation of unemployment figures (which I then picked up here), and debt data by the Tories.
I’m not going to get into who started it and who’s in the wrong, except to say that it looks like Neil started it and he’s in the wrong. All a bit pointless really.
As for the debate itself on electoral reform, I do keep thinking I ought to be a bit more interested in it, not least in the light of Dave’s knowledgeable post on the matter. I kept meaning to comment on specifics, but something was getting in the way, so in the end I left it.
Now I realise what was getting in the way – I simply don’t care that much.
As Dave says in his post, politics is not and should not just be about elections; the never-ending PR debate, but much more so the development of Labour as a ‘campaigning party’ gets in the way of real politics (the development of Labour as a party all consumed by electoral strategy and tehcnique will be a key aspect of my coming magnum opus).
Put simply, if socialism is as good as I think it should be, and is brought to bear properly, a socialist party will be able to win any election, whatever the niceties of the voting system. That’s because it will suit and please the majority of people in the majority of places.
The fact that socialist governments do not stay in or come into power is not because we don’t have PR; it’s because they are not doing or promoting socialism properly (of course I acknowledge international capital constraints on domestic policy, but even so….)
The rest, ultimately, is froth.
‘Fraid I simply don’t agree. PR is about engagement. People don’t make a decision on voting day. They express themselves in public on voting day – which is not quite the same thing. The decision which leads up to their expression takes place over the preceding months or even years. It can be a considered decision or it can be a decision of the pissed-off. (Or, as of late, it may end up being a considered decision of the pissed-off.)
If you want to engage people in politics, if you want those months or years to count and weigh and form a productive part of people’s lives, you have to show them that you care for all of them – not just those who live in the marginals that currently swing our elections. Only PR can do that.
The system we use to express our decision *is* important because form defines content – and we’re all interested in policy, we’re all interested in creating tools that do instead of allowing ourselves to be seduced by narratives that hide. Whilst FPTP continues to flip the switch between one regime and another, eternally undoing what the previous set out to prove, providing majorities which generate hubris and disenfranchising more than half the electorate … well, we will not have the conditions that will allow us to weave any useful kind of socialism. Narrative *will* continue to rule, charisma *will* continue to blind us and real politics for ordinary communities *will* continue to be well outside our reach.
Your defence of PR is also, I contend a defence of what I say. If PR is good because it’s supposed to be a, or the, principal form of engagement in politics, then politics is in a pretty sorry state.
I’m not denying it may be a better system than FTFP, and better at engaging people, but it still only happens once in a while, and I aspire to a politics which engages people the whole time.
The PR debate has been brought forward now specfically in order to avoid the issue of how we develop a politics which engages people in the policy/agenda process, not just voting on the elite’s agenda. As such, it’s just another use of elite power, though a subtle one.