Those rebellious coalition MPs

Professor Philip Cowley (founder of revolts.co.uk, THE source for data on parliamentary rebellions and co-editor and author of the definitive guide to last year’s general election) published a wonderful little blogpost about government backbench rebellions this morning.

There are some fascinating tit bits of information. Backbench rebellion is at an all-time high, amongst Conservative MPs higher than under John Major. According to Cowley MPs there is now a rebellion in almost half of votes.

Given that we are in the first parliamentary session of a new government this is, in some ways, quite shocking. New governments tend to have stable parliamentary majorities and new MPs have historically preferred to attempt to prove their loyalty. The good news for the Government is that the two government parties tend to rebel on different subjects and not at the same time, so when Conservatives rebel Lib Dems remain loyal, and vice-versa, meaning bills will usually pass on the votes of one of the two parties. Of course coalition means that, unlike in the Labour years, the backbenchers are not united in their issues with the government. Lib Dem backbenchers are generally to the left of the government, Conservative backbenchers are generally to its right.

This explains some of the rebellion, as does the size of the government majority itself (77), which gives licence to decent sized rebellions as MPs know it will take a large-scale rebellion to defeat the government.

At the same time, however, I am told that MPs, rightly, or wrongly, increasingly view rebellion as a ticket to re-election in marginal constituencies. Voters, particularly voters for the MP’s political party, generally like their MP to be a ‘maverick’ figure, and indeed there are obvious advantages to, say, being a Lib Dem MP and being able to put on your election leaflets that you voted against tuition fees.

Politics is localising. Modern elections are increasingly fought on a constituency by constituency basis and MPs in marginal constituencies are increasingly elected on wafer-thin majorities. A hundred votes can decide the MP in some seats and a maverick vote in the right policy area might just be enough to do just that.

Reflections on the House of Lords

Apologies for not doing this sooner, but I am currently spending 12 hours a day either at work, commuting to or from work or getting ready for work, so between that and other general tasks like eating, sleeping, and such I don’t have much time at all!

That said, we would be amiss at Britain-Votes if we did not attempt to cover the government’s proposals on Lords reform last week. So I’ve read through the entire white paper, which can be found here if you’re interested.

The reform is quite clearly attempting to bring democratic accountability to a currently unelected house which is often seen as aloof, filled with party lackeys and sometimes even corrupt. The long-time impact of the 2006 ‘Cash for Honours’ scandal has particularly undermined the Lords.

Yet, in many ways, it is easy to be hypercritical of the Lords, but what does the Lords do well, and what do we want out of an upper house.

In democracies upper houses exist to balance out the tendencies of the lower houses. Lower houses are generally directly elected democratic institutions with more power than upper houses. Upper houses are thus used to create a brake on democracy, which can be short-termist and lead to abuses of power if the public wills it. In many countries upper houses are also used to purposefully over-represent some sort of minority – typically a geographic one, with the most common form of upper house being one where federal states are represented equally to make sure the will of the largest states cannot override the will of the smallest. Such upper houses can be seen in the US, Switzerland, Australia et al.

The House of Lords has basically come to be a ‘house of experts’. It has come to be a house filled with experts in various spheres. Former cabinet ministers, constitutional lawyers, scientists, academics and more can all be found on the benches of the Lords. For example when the subject of IVF comes up the Lords can depend on the knowledge of Lord Winston, an expert in fertility science. The reforms have therefore been designed to retain as much of this as possible while introducing a majority democratic component.

In a sense the Lords goes to the heart of our system. When visiting the Commons in 2010 I was told by one of the men showing me around that Britain was a ‘talking democracy’. A democracy built on a belief in debate and argument. As a ‘house of experts’ the Lords fulfils a role in our system by giving a voice to those with the greatest knowledge.

So what are the basics of the reforms?

Overall the House will be reduced in size from 789 to 300. Being a Lord will become a full time job with a full salary and peerages would become a honour, like a knighthood. The house will not be 100% elected, it will 80% elected with a 20% unelected component (about 60 seats). The unelected component is designed to keep in some of the crossbenchers, independent peers who often have a large degree of knowledge, and will also include 12 CoE bishops (the Lords currently includes 36 ‘Lords Spiritual’).

The plan is to elect 80 peers at every general election (unless an election takes place within 2 years of a previous one). These would be three sets of 80 peers, and peers would not be able to run for re-election. With five year terms that would generally mean that peers would have one 15 year term in the Lords. That would mean that peers would not be able to be easily whipped by their parties, as a party would not be able to threaten their re-election prospects, and the hope is that a 15 year term will give them a long-term view. Additionally peers would not be allowed to run to be MPs for a period five years before until five years after their term in office, that would create a 25 year period where peers could not run to be MPs, the hope being that this will cause the Lords to attract a different sort of politician, one which would not be attracted to the usual life of a MP. So the theory is that this should all create a House that is detached from government and still independent.

The current version of the draft bill specifies that elections will take place under the Single Transferable Vote. This system is similar to AV, but in multi-member seats. It is vaguely proportional, provided the multi-member seats are big enough. Unlike what we usually think of as ‘proportional representation’ however it does not involve lists. In STV a party will run multiple candidates but voters can rank candidates however they like, including across party lines. So therefore the government needs to draw multi-member constituencies across the UK for 80 peers. As it happens we Brits already elect 70 representatives in multi-member seats by proportional representation every 5 years – when we elect MEPs to the European Parliament. However the European Parliament constituencies vary largely in size. The South East England constituency elects 10 MEPs, whereas the North East England constituency elects 3. In STV it is always best not to have constituencies that are too big because the number of candidates can get overwhelming, whereas constituencies that are too small produce disproportional outcomes.

The white paper therefore sets out a system where counties and administrative areas can shift between constituencies until each constituency in England has 5-7 MEPs, which is pretty much the STV sweet spot between too big and too small. An exception will be made for the three nations of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and they will be kept whole. As Northern Ireland and Wales have less population than most UK regions they will be assigned less seats than the norm, though a floor of 3 will be placed in the bill to make sure that Northern Ireland’s allocation does not get not too small.

STV’s advantages in this case is that it allows voters to vote for whatever their preference and every Lord will be able to claim a genuine mandate of their own. It will allow for the election of fringe parties and independents. Ireland, which uses STV for its national elections, consistently has the highest number of independents in its parliament in Europe.

The downside is that many people currently in the Lords are currently there precisely because they are not particularly electable fellows and STV can produce a certain personality politics as with voters having a choice within parties as well as between STV may have an effect of biasing towards the more charismatic candidates. There is evidently a chance a list system could be adopted instead and I suspect the Tories and Labour would prefer one as such a system would allow them to ‘appoint’ less easily electable members every 5 years. The Lib Dems, however, have always seen STV as the best electoral system and I would expect Clegg, who is, after all, over all responsible for the reform, to push for STV.

The Lords will not officially have any change in powers, but it is my feeling that a mostly elected Lords will show a higher willingness to act as a brake on government. The reason for this is that Lords will now have a democratic mandate of their own and can therefore claim more moral authority to the people’s will. A similar effect can already be seen in the form of Labour’s removal of the majority of the hereditary peers. By removing hereditary aristocracy the Lords came to see itself as more legitimate and has become more rebellious, so while the Lords has had no increase in powers it has become more willing to defeat the government. It is my feeling that an elected Lords will only increase this effect. Indeed a directly elected Lords is likely to undermine a couple of the conventions associated with it, such as the convention that the Lords will always back manifesto content as Lords will presumably consider themselves to be elected on a manifesto of their own, of sorts.

The reforms are planned to be phased in with the white paper suggesting different types of ‘transitional period’. As the white paper paper says, this is evolution, not revolution.

What if what you wanted WAS a revolution though? The reality is that you were never going to get it. Constitutional reforms like this – bit by bit changes inevitably must fit in with the pre-established institutions of the UK and the way our system works. A political system is not just a a series of separate parts acting independently from each other, it is a living, breathing organic structure. Inevitably a change to one part must therefore be evolutionary not revolutionary as it must fit broadly in the same vacated by what it replaces. In my view the reform proposals are a pretty good stab at replicating the current House of Lords on elected lines, and I genuinely think this is a very good proposal.

Two big questions remain, they are whether it can pass and the final details. The electoral system, the details of the transitional period, and even the House's name are still not set in stone. The white paper proposes several options. Time is somewhat of the essence, however, because the Lords can probably be expected to block the reform though I expect the Commons to pass the proposals (even if there is a significant Conservative rebellion, though I expect them to be whipped, I would expect a lot of Labour MPs to back the reform). The Lords can, of course, only block for so long before the Parliament Act can be used to force the bill through but this will all take time and the electoral commission will need some sort of head start if the first House of Lords election is to coincide with the next general election, which I’m assuming is the government’s hope. However, the Lib Dems are likely to focus strongly on the reform now that AV has failed. Indeed, while Lords reform is consistently on the agenda my feeling is that only a coalition involving the Lib Dems would give it enough steam to actually pass.

GREAT SCOT! The SNP win a majority at Holyrood

Well, what a result, I’m sure most people have seen it already, but here’s the final result table, all changes from the notional results.

Party	Constituencies		Change		Regions		Change		Total Seats	Change
	Votes	Seats	Votes	Seats	Votes	Seats	Votes	Seats
SNP	45.4%	53	+12.5%	+32	44%	16	+13%	-9	69	+23
Labour	31.7%	15	-0.5%	-20	26.3%	22	-2.9%	+13	37	-7
Conservatives	13.9%	3	-2.7%	-3	12.4%	12	-1.6%	-2	15	-5
Lib Dems	7.9%	2	-8.2%	-9	5.2%	3	-6.1%	-3	5	-12
Scottish Greens	-	-	+0.1%	0	4.4%	2	+0.3%	+1	2	+1
Others	1.1%	0	-0.9%	0	7.7%	1	-2.9%	0	1	0

The SNP have gained an unprecedented absolute majority in the Scottish Parliament, an impressive feat by any standard, but just to underline how impressive it is I should remind readers firstly that the Scottish electoral system was designed by Labour particularly to guarantee that the Scottish National Party would never win a majority. This is not supposed to happen, an absolute majority at Holyrood is not supposed to be possible. The best ever previous result was Labour’s in 1999 when the party achieved 56 of the Parliament’s 129 seats, 9 short of a majority.

The SNP victory can be described in many ways, a tsunami, a wave, I heard one Scot refer to it as ‘a massacre’. Nowhere was untouched. The party swept through every part of Scotland. In Labour’s Glasgow heartland, it took 5 of the 9 constituencies and topped the regional poll. In Lothian it now holds 8 of the 9 constituency MSPs in a region that had previously shown incredible diversity, only Edinburgh Northern and Leith survived and even there Labour’s Malcolm Chisholm beat off the SNP by only 595 votes. In its North East Scotland stronghold it not only swept the 10 constituency seats, the party even managed to gain a MSP on the list.

Lothian will make particularly miserable reading for the Lib Dems, where they once held 3 constituency seats, on the notional boundaries, they were not even compensated with a single regional seat. In Edinburgh Southern Mike Pringle saw the SNP come from fourth to take his seat. The Lib Dem’s Highlands stronghold doled out the pain against them too. In Argyll and Bute there was a 17.8% swing against them. If I was incumbent Westminster MP Alan Reid I would be very worried. The party lost its two Highlands seats, in one of its UK strongholds. At Westminster the Highlands are dominated by Lib Dems, with Danny Alexander and Charles Kennedy making their homes there, and the party even lost North East Fife to the SNP which is Ming Campbell’s seat at Westminster. In Fife too, the SNP took Kirkcaldy, partially covered by the constituency of one G. Brown.

Labour

Labour has claimed that actually their vote held up rather well, and that losses to the SNP are due to Lib Dem voters switching to the SNP. This isn’t totally accurate in my opinion, as Labour has lost votes on both ballots, especially on the regional one. Labour has also lost seats and votes in seats and regions where the Lib Dem vote was already negligible. For example in the West of Scotland the Lib Dems went from 5.2% of the regional vote to 1.4%, but Labour also lost 4.6% of the regional vote itself as the SNP gained 15.5%. This argument also begs the immediate question: why did Lib Dem voters switch seemingly en masse to the SNP. If Labour’s argument is accurate it suggests that the Scottish Labour Party provided no attraction to former Lib Dems. This is bizarre considering that the two parties were in government together only four years ago North of the border and that the Scottish Lib Dems used to earn the nickname ‘rural Labour’. It is also worth remembering that Ed Miliband has made taking left-leaning votes from the Lib Dems a priority. Either, therefore, the SNP has taken votes from both the Lib Dems and Labour and some Lib Dems have gone to Labour, or Labour has no attraction for Scottish Liberal Democrats. Neither of these scenarios particularly commends itself.

The fact that Labour dropped votes is also counter-intuitive given that with the coalition at Westminster Labour is now in opposition. This is a mid-term election and political science tells us that in mid-term elections opposition parties gain seats. This is the presumption Labour fought the election on. They fought the campaign like it was a local election, against the coalition in Westminster. They argued that only a Labour win could protect Scotland from the Westminster government. This is clearly counter-intuitive for the SNP is, itself, a left-of-centre party, a social democratic party. Party members are often fully open with their hope that if Scotland ever becomes independent that it will emulate the social democratic models of Scandinavia. The SNP is at least as left-wing as Labour.

Labour has to ask itself some serious questions. Devolved institutions means devolved elections and devolved elections need devolved parties. Instead of behaving like an independent party-within-a-party with a proper vision for Scotland the Scottish Labour Party has acted like it was fighting a local campaign. It has weak leadership and behaved with a certain arrogancy. In my Scottish election guide I quoted the political scientist Gerry Hassan, it is worth reiterating the quote, the party “has long prided itself on its radical traditions and a romantic view of itself... but it has increasingly become a conservative party, the political establishment.”

If recent elections should tell us anything it is that people today hate the establishment. Labour needs to remake itself into a party that is convincingly anti-establishment. It also needs to work on its talent at a devolved level. The party has many impressive, capable and talented Scottish members; Gordon Brown, Douglas Alexander, John Reid, and Jim Murphy are all big interesting characters with political talent, so why is it that the best person the Scottish party could find to be its candidate was Iain Gray? I do not think I would be saying anything that no one else has said by suggesting that the man is not exactly inspirational. He has a really admirable background working in places like Mozambique, but he is not exactly what you call charismatic and up against Alex Salmond, a man who exudes blokey good humour and likeability from every pore he does not compare well.

In most countries with strong sub-national government, for example Germany, lower levels of government are used as a training house for political talent. Top political talent in states move up to the national level. On the other hand when a party thinks it has a good chance of winning a lower level of government it will sometimes deploy a top dog from national level to lead the local branch. For example there are elections in Berlin this year and the Greens are hopeful of winning the mayoralty. Thus they have deployed their parliamentary leader – Renate Kunast as their mayoral candidate. Labour needs to work out how it can get this kind of flexibility into its own Scottish wing, how it can spread its Scottish talent across both levels of government depending on need. Indeed, the SNP have already demonstrated this in their own organisation – Alex Salmond was not a MSP in 2007, but still lead his party to victory.

Iain Gray has announced he is resigning, considering he almost lost his seat (saving it by only 151 votes) this is the only reasonable choice, but Labour has also lost the most likely successor, Andy Kerr their finance spokesman who lost his East Kilbride seat on an almighty swing. Foolishly Labour also run separate candidates in constituencies from their lists meaning much of their members from the regional lists are inexperienced activists of low standing who never expected to get elected. This contrasts with the SNP who deploy the same set of candidates across both slates meaning most new constituency MSPs are former list MSPs. Labour’s issue with talent in Scotland has only got worse and it is not yet clear where it will find a new Scottish leader.

Conservatives

The SNP has also gone after the Conservatives. The party has definitely established a more pro-business stance of late, and the party also seems to have taken a small but notable number of votes from the Tories, presumably ones who decided they preferred an Alex Salmond government to an Iain Gray one. The SNP has increasingly shown a capability to take seats and votes from the Conservatives. The Conservatives once dominated Scotland, they remain the only party to have won an absolute majority of the vote in Scotland (in 1955). There is an idea that goes around that Scotland is an instrinsically left-wing place, working class and socialist, but there are many affluent, middle class areas who still demonstrate political views that are best described as centre-right. The SNP’s North East Scotland stronghold is one of them. The Scottish Conservative’s problem is they are perceived as anti-Scottish. Their success in a previous life was a function of the ‘Unionist Party’ the affliated Scotland-only party which was Conservative and Unionist but also strongly Scottish in identity. While the party’s Scottish wing and Annabel Goldie seem to understand this, the party’s Southern base and Westminster wing occasionally demonstrate horrendously misjudged viewpoints. When English right-wing newspapers write editorials blaming Scotland for things they don’t like it is noticed up North. The Scots also do not respond well to Conservative policy regarding the Barnett formula or English votes for English laws. I understand why these policies are in place but the Conservatives should think about a different, softer, more inclusive approach towards Scotland, they should also listen more to the Scottish party. That said, it must be difficult for David Cameron to hear the voice of Scottish Conservatives when there is only Scottish Conservative MP.

Nonetheless the Scottish Tories have acquitted themselves well in the campaign. While they did lose votes and seats they maintained remarkable stability when compared to Labour or the Lib Dems. Annabel Goldie has proven to be a popular, effective, leader and she probably remains the party’s best asset North of the border, demonstrating a canny ability to both deal with and attack Salmond and the SNP. Now the party is in a more traditional opposition role she will be well placed, especially if Scottish Labour continue to demonstrate poor leadership. Do not get me wrong here, I do not believe that the Conservatives can pass Labour, at least not anytime soon, but I believe there are centre-right voters to be won in Scotland and Annabel can win them, her first priority, however, needs to be to make the Westminster party listen because the Tories will get nowhere in Scotland if the Westminster party is still seen as ‘anti-Scottish’. It should be noted, as well, that winning Scottish seats remains one of the easiest ways for the Tories to get an absolute majority in 2015.

Scottish Liberal Democrats

The Scottish Lib Dems did badly. There is no hiding it. A devastating result they lost every single one of their mainland constituency seats and were compensated with only 3 regional seats. The first thing to say is that clearly the coalition has not been good for the Lib Dems in Scotland. In fact, clearly it has been devastating, but I think it would be untrue to blame the coalition and would, in many ways, excuse the Lib Dems own mistakes. The party’s Scottish campaign was terrible. One former MSP endorsed Alex Salmond, another publicly split with his party and one candidate failed to file his papers. The Scottish party gave off a continual look of chaos. Added into that they demonstrated several problems in common with Labour: uninspiring leader, a certain dearth of talent, and policy issues. In some ways, in policy terms, the party was a victim of its own success. All the Lib Dems most notable policies were either implemented in the 1999-2007 coalition with Labour, or don’t apply to Scotland. Tavish Scott was left talking interminably about the one policy area where they differed significantly from the SNP, Labour and Tories – opposition to a single Scottish police force. This partially struck me as a core vote strategy, aimed at shoring up the party’s rural decentralist base in the Highlands. If that is the case, it didn’t particularly work.

Tavish Scott, like Iain Gray, has taken his share of the blame and resigned. He was also run uncomfortably close in his Shetland constituency by anti-wind farm independent Billy Fox. Now left with 5 MSPs it will be a hard job looking for a new leader. Of those five Scott is obviously ruled out,the party’s new Orkney MSP, Liam McArthur is untested, and Jim Hume, elected on the South Scotland regional list has only been a MSP since 2007 and strikes me as being rather low-profile. That leaves Alison McInnes on the North East Scotland regional list and Willie Rennie on the Mid Scotland and Fife list. McInnes was the party’s spokesperson on Transport, Local Government and Climate Change she might be a goer, but Willie Rennie strikes me as the superior candidate. Rennie is newly elected to the Scottish Parliament but was a MP from 2006 until 2010 after he won the Dumfermline and West Fife by-election taking the seat Gordon Brown lived in. The seat had a massive Labour majority at the time and Rennie’s victory was considered to be very impressive, especially given internal party troubles at the time. Since the election Rennie has been a special advisor in the Scotland office. He strikes me as having the best mix of name recognition, experience and capability, though I’m sure the Lib Dems will make a good fight of it.

For what it’s worth I don’t think the party is heading towards an electoral wipeout in mainland Scotland for several reasons. Firstly they have some really solid incumbent MPs in some areas – people like Charles Kennedy, and Ming Campbell. These MPs have a high personal vote and can probably hold because of that. Secondly the SNP won’t be such a threat at Westminster. The party is not embraced as enthusiastically in Westminster elections as it cannot be in government, this can be seen by comparing this result and the 2007 result to the SNP’s performance in 2010 – the party gained votes at Westminster but did not gain a single MP. Thirdly I think there may be something of a mid-term ‘screw the Lib Dems’ effect. Finally I think that many disillusioned Lib Dems may have voted SNP because they figured it was Salmond or Gray.

That said, there are many Lib Dem seats in Scotland which must be in serious danger. The Conservatives wouldn’t need much to take Alan Reid’s Argyll and Bute seat. The Tories could also take Scottish Secretary Michael Moore’s Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk seat. Malcolm Bruce’s Gordon seat must be in danger from the SNP, Edinburgh West could fall to Labour, and so on. Danny Alexander has a solid majority in Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey, but I think he could be in danger too because perhaps no Lib Dem besides Nick Clegg has come to symbolise the coalition more. Honestly, however, the 2012 local elections in Scotland will probably give us a better guide to who’s in danger than these results.

The Scottish Greens

In some ways the Greens pulled off a decent result. They actually gained votes, the only party to do so besides the SNP and notionally they gained a seat, but the party must be disappointed not to have received gone above 2. In many ways this was an awesome opportunity for the Greens to make a real breakthrough by taking votes from disillusioned Lib Dems, but they failed to make any massive impact. It may be time for the party to re-consider its strategy of only running on the regional lists. They have avoided running in constituencies for several reasons; a lack of decent candidates, not being able to afford deposits and poor ground infrastructure chief amongst them. It may be worth considering running constituency candidates in seats with high votes for the party on the regional list however. Running constituency candidates in such seats would give it a focal point of popular attention, give it entry into local Hustings and allow it to be more visible. For now, however, the party’s chief concern should be gaining as many councillors as possible in next year’s local elections, this will vastly improve the state of its national infrastructure.

Others

Margo MacDonald was re-elected, George Galloway failed. Overall there was a large reduction in the vote for ‘Others’ as there had been in 2007 too. When given a new electoral system to play with voters often attempt to use it to its full capability, voting for a range of candidates and parties before their votes start to homogenise as a stricter party system begins to establish itself. I do not think there is much hope of seeing a new party breakthrough anytime soon.

The SNP begins majority government

So far the most striking thing about Salmond’s victory is that it does not just seem to represent the victory of Salmond and the SNP over the other parties but also of Salmond and his gradualist wing’s victory over the fundamentalist wing of MSPs like Alex Neil. The latter want an independence referendum as soon as possible and view devolution with distrust, as a way to keep Scottish nationalism bottled up. The former see Scottish devolution as a route towards independence, slowly chipping away more and more powers from Westminster until Scotland is de facto independent, a state within a state. There is remarkably little talk of an independence referendum amongst the SNP for good reason – they know they’d lose. The Scotland Bill is still working its way through parliament. This bill drawn up by the Calman Commission – launched by Labour, the Tories and the Lib Dems, seeks to give the Scottish Parliament more powers but has been rejected by the SNP for being too little and for giving some powers back to Westminster. Salmond is clearly hoping to use as a chance to renegotiate the terms of the bill.

That said, a referendum will have to be held to appease the fundamentalists. The SNP has said it will legislate for one in the second half of the parliament’s term. Clearly they are hoping on holding it as late as possible in order to have time to work on subtlety moving the independence referendum opinion poll numbers more in their direction. My view is that a referendum will probably fail, much in the same way the AV referendum has, but nothing can ever be taken for granted.

The party will have a tough few years in government. Holding a majority will mean they can pass their entire manifesto, but it also means getting all the blame. The SNP will have to participate in massive cuts due to cuts to the Scottish block grant from Westminster. New Scottish tax-raising powers will likely come from the Scotland Bill but it is hard to see tax rises going down well. Labour will also no doubt attempt to argue that the SNP are responsible for the cuts or in cahoots with the Tories for participating in them. Government is never easy, but government during an economic recovery is incredibly difficult. That said Salmond has a keen mind for economics (he is an economist by profession), for political strategy (take another look at that election result if you disagree) and for the pulse of the Scottish people. He is a figure who should not be underestimated.