The Unintended Consequences of Electoral Reform

Once the nature of the May 6th poll became clear, Labour figures have keenly reiterated their party’s support for a referendum on electoral reform, seeing this as the means of creating a ‘progressive alliance’ with the LibDems. As Steven Fielding noted back in February on this blog, it was precisely in anticipation of a hung Parliament that led Labour came out in support of the Alternative Vote.

A more proportional electoral formula would certainly provide fairer representation and bring Britain into line with other European democracies. But if – a big if - the LibDems are open to talks, then careful attention must be paid to which of the many alternatives to first-past-the-post should be adopted. The unintended consequences of electoral reform need to be confronted now.

I have noted in previous blogs that the public has consistently placed immigration as the most important electoral issue after the economy. During the campaign however the main parties did their best to park the issue. Our current electoral system allowed them to do this, as it exists on the basis of a two (sometimes three) party cartel.

A more proportional formula could change this cosy set up. First-past-the-post has many faults but it has prevented anti-immigration parties from winning Commons seats. As Matt Goodwin has noted here the BNP has won an increasing number of council and European Parliament seats. So far in 2010, UKIP and BNP together have received 5% of the popular vote, compared to 2.9% in 2005, indicating some rise in support—and these figures are probably suppressed by tactical voting.

But the BNP still remains marginal in terms of the national debate on immigration. However the experience of many other European countries—France, Denmark, the Netherlands, for instance—shows that once installed in a national parliament the ability of parties like the BNP to set the terms of the immigration debate is immeasurably increased. This has had the result of intensifying a particularly negative focus on the place of Muslims within their respective national identities

So, while some Labour and LibDem sympathisers might hope that their two parties can come to some ‘progressive’ agreement based around electoral reform they need to be aware that the consequences may be far from progressive because they might create longer term grounds for the further rise and growing influence of the anti-immigrant right.

Dr Lauren McLaren

Still not talking about immigration?

"...this may backfire by pushing at least some voters to the BNP and other small parties, as well as contributing to large-scale public resentment..."

In last night’s debate, the first question put to the three main party leaders was about immigration. Based on the responses, the differences between the parties on this issue are likely to be perceived as relatively marginal.

All three argued for controls on migration. Gordon Brown emphasised the recent controls that his government put in place based on a points system and pointed out that net migration had already been declining in the past couple of years. David Cameron claimed that immigration was still too high and needed to be reduced further and that his party would introduce an immigration cap, as well as reforming the border policing system. Thus, while his approach is more restrictive than Brown’s (Brown is opposed to an arbitrary cap), there is also no (or little) attempt to appeal to potential far-right voters in any of what he said.

Perhaps ironically, Nick Clegg’s policy – to allow migrants only to go to regions that need them economically – is an approach with the potential to be the most restrictive. Spain’s 1985 Foreigners’ Law, which introduced similar additional regional/provincial bureaucratic processes for legal entry into Spain to work, has been claimed to encourage illegal migration because the legal procedures were so onerous. It also potentially resembles old guest-worker policies in places like Germany, where labour migrants were tied to a particular job and were not allowed to work for other employers once they had been granted entry into Germany.

Despite this early discussion of immigration in the debate last night, it is clear that, as predicted, none of the three wished to make immigration a key issue. It was not mentioned in any of their opening or closing statements. Rather than ‘playing the immigration card’, Cameron in particular (but the other two leaders as well) focused on the technical details of immigration policy, with none arguing for an immediate halt to migration.

Yet immigration was the second most important issue after the economy mentioned by British citizens in the March Ipsos Mori poll. As argued previously, ignoring the issue like this may backfire by pushing at least some voters to the BNP and other small parties, as well as contributing to large-scale public resentment at a political class that seems unwilling to address one of the issues that has been of major concern to the British public in the past decade.

Dr Lauren McLaren

Not talking about immigration...

"Faced with parties that will be raising it, the major parties must decide whether to ignore or engage with them, and, if the latter, on what terms..."

One of Labour’s five election pledges – unveiled when the Prime Minister visited Nottingham University last weekend – was to ‘strengthen fairness in communities through controlled immigration’. And yet, despite persistently high levels of opposition to further immigration and evidence that it had a significant impact on voting in the 2005 election, immigration is unlikely to be one of the main issues on which the election is fought. Why?

First, because although people are overwhelmingly opposed to immigration, and opposition actually increased during the last decade, in recent years, it has become of less importance to voters as the economy has risen up the agenda. And whilst you might think that an economic downturn could coincide with increased concerns about immigration, for most people the predominant worry regarding immigration is less about economics and more about culture and security. Thus, trying to rally opposition to immigration to win enough votes to matter requires adopting more cultural/identity-based or security-related arguments, which none of the main parties seems likely to do.

Second, neither of the two largest parties wants to make immigration a key campaign issue. Labour has presided over the largest post-war rise in immigration ever witnessed – encouraging large-scale migration to help improve Britain’s economic performance and to run social services. It is unlikely to want to draw attention to this. And whilst evidence indicates that Conservatives—on balance—probably benefited from introducing the issue into the 2005 campaign it did not help them win that election; and as Smell the Coffee (a seminal document amongst Conservative modernisers) argued it dominated what people heard about the party and alienated liberal-minded voters amongst the upper and middle classes.

Matt Goodwin is ultimately doubtful about the prospects for the BNP in the election but argues that UKIP might perform better because it lacks the extremist baggage (or to be more specific, the racist baggage) of the BNP. Yet although support for these parties has risen in recent years, this support has come in elections which are ‘second order’—that is, elections which people tend to view as less important than national-level general elections. Although rising support for small parties like these via local and European Parliament elections cannot be completely discounted—this is, in fact, how the Front National began to mobilise large-scale support in France — the more interesting question is whether parties like the BNP and UKIP will force the more established parties to engage with the issue.

Faced with parties that will be raising it, the major parties must decide whether to ignore or engage with them, and, if the latter, on what terms. In countries like Sweden, the main parties have taken a consensus-building approach to this issue, developing cross-party agreements to address a growing concern about immigration, and the result has been that it has become almost an electoral non-issue. Hence Gordon Brown’s call yesterday for a united front’ amongst the major parties to address the immigration issue. Ignoring the issue entirely, though, is likely to backfire by pushing at least some voters to the BNP and other small parties, and perhaps worse, contributing to large-scale public resentment at a political class that is unwilling to address one of the issues that has been of major concern to the British public in the past decade.

Dr Lauren McLaren