French Elections..A Postscript

In amongst all the commentary and discussions on the result of the French election, one fact that has been commented in a small way on was the turnout - around 85% - the figure for the turnout up to 5 p.m was 75%, obviously everybody wanted to rush home to watch Antique tournee de promotion. One explanation was that the French electorate had a choice between two parties, the right and the left with no middle ground to confuse the voting system.

In this country over the past thirty years the Liberal Democrats, or whatever they want to call themselves (possibly the 3rd Place party would be a better choice), have been the political equivalent of Sisyphus, always rolling that rock up the political hill only to see it roll back down again.

My question is this, does the 'third' party have any role to play at national level in 21st Century politics? Is the existence of a 'third party' simply presenting dissenting voters with the chance to register their distrust of the two main parties whilst not committing themselves to either or should the 'third party' exist as a sort of conscience or counter-balance to the 'big two'? Well, here are three examples of how democracy has worked in Europe over the past two years.

Here are the results from the German federal elections that took place in September 2005:

Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union Of Bavaria 36.8%
Social Democratic Party of Germany 36.2%
Free Democratic Party 9.9%
The Left Party 8.8%
Alliance/Green 8.3%

Turnout 77.7%

Now this led to a coalition government that has agreed to disagree on a number of issues, they are even pursuing some ideas that directly go against the CDU's Angela Merkel's political beliefs. My point here is that depending on how you view coalition governments the existence of more than two parties has produced a government of compromise that suits all those involved and has something to offer the followers of both the main parties and those other parties whose co-operation is needed to maintain government.

If you look at Italy where the votes in the 2006 General Election were cast for Lower ("Camera dei Deputati") and Upper ("Senato della Repubblica") houses you see democracy taken to its logical and, some would say, farcical conclusion. The Union of left wing parties (actually 24 of the buggers) took 49.18% of the vote in the Upper House whilst the 32 parties on the right of the Italian political spectrum took 49.87%. In the lower house the split was 49.80% against 49.60%.

So the Italians managed to contrive a result where voters could vote for 56 different parties and alliances and draw! The turnout was 83.6%

So back to good old Blighty and the 2005 General Election (England, Wales, Scotland, Ulster):

There were 57 parties who received votes in the 2005 General Election from the 9,562,122 who voted for the 356 Labour MP's (35.3% of the vote) down to the 502 received by the UK Community Issues Party. The turnout was 61.3%. So in England, due to the vagaries of our system that allows members of parliament for non-English constituencies to form part of the national Government, a Prime Minister was elected despite having 64.7% of the electorate vote for other parties. In England alone the Conservatives polled 65,000 more votes than Labour, but only won 194 seats compared to the 286 Labour won. The split of the vote was 35.7% Conservative, 35.7% Labour, 35.5% Liberal Democrats 22.9% source is here

Well unlike Germany and Italy, I think in England (standing alone that is, not with the other three countries represented at Westminster) democracy has failed the voters who choose the third party big time. If the formation of a Government depended on the votes cast overall then the 2005 Election result for England would have looked like this:

Conservative 35.7% of the vote = 188 seats
Labour 35.5 % of the vote = 188 seats
Lib.Dems 22.9 % of the vote = 121 seats

The rest would have 32 seats leaving the Lib Dems to form a coalition with one of the main parties. So to answer my initial point, voting for the Lib.Dems under the current system isn't working except to register your displeasure with the two main parties, but under a system similar to that in other countries voting for them would make a big difference.

You could argue that with Wales, Scotland and Ulster having devolved parliaments there could be a demand for regional assemblies but there is evidence, step forward the North East, to suggest this isn't the case. My experience of talking to people about their voting habits suggests two things. Firstly people are reluctant to change parties/voting habits, all that happens is that turnouts increase or decrease depending on local activists or whether or not people feel there's a chance that 'the other lot' will get in. Secondly, and this has become more obvious in the post Thatcher 1979 win years, people vote for the national leader not their constituency M.P - there are exceptions but they are few and far between.

All I've done in this post is create more problems. The current system is either working/not working depending on your views (sorry that's so bleeding obvious) but how do you introduce a system that is fairer. Proportional representation, transferable votes etc is complicated to grasp and yet the statement that a large electorate in France was due to only two parties misses the nuances and subtleties of politics. This isn't news but a system where 22.9% of the votes produces less than four football teams worth of MP's, whilst the winning party with only half again as many votes gets an additional 249 seats, must be wrong.

Well, after spending an hour and a half putting all that together today's trip to Old Trafford will be like light relief!