This article appeared in 'The Wall Street Journal' on Thursday 4th February.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704259304575042963927541630.html?KEYWORDS=david+davis

"Gordon Brown's Cynical

Election Ploy"

Sometimes it seems that Gordon Brown has no sense of shame. This week, in the name of re-establishing the trust of the public in democracy, he proposed the most shamelessly cynical and undemocratic ploy that I have seen for some time. That the proposal was about tactics not principle was demonstrated by one of his own cabinet ministers who told a journalist that it was intended to "f*** up the Tories."

The idea—to have a referendum on introducing an alternative voting system for general elections—masquerades as a form of proportional representation. With it he hopes to seduce the Liberal Democratic Party onto his side, either now or perhaps in a hung Parliament after a referendum. His main problem is that his own party hates proportional representation.

The proposal, Alternative Voting (AV), is a system whereby constituents rank the parliamentary candidates and the losers are eliminated, and the votes redistributed until one contender achieves more than 50%. It is not proportional representation. Indeed Roy Jenkins, when asked by Tony Blair to devise a PR system for the U.K., dismissed AV as offering "little prospect of a move toward greater proportionality and in certain circumstances it has even less proportionality than first past the post."

Labour Party members like AV because they see it as an anti-Tory voting system, in which they believe Liberal Democrat voters are more likely to vote Labour than Tory, because both are essentially left-wing parties.

Nevertheless, many Labour MPs are suspicious of this proposal because they think it is likely to be a stepping stone to full-blooded proportional representation. They are right to worry.

PR is, generally speaking, not particularly representative, not particularly democratic, not at all transparent, and neither necessarily stable nor decisive.

It invariably leads to coalition governments, formed by deals in smoke-filled rooms out of sight of the public and beyond the control of the electorate. The result may bear little resemblance to the manifestos that people cast their vote on. The ensuing Government is almost always a compromise, and is therefore rarely decisive (as in most European countries), or it may be unstable (as sometimes happens in Israel). No coalition government, no system of proportional representation, would have delivered a Margaret Thatcher to resolve the problems of a failing country—indeed of a failing political class. Only a first-past-the-post system could have done that.

Even more important, the first-past-the-post system creates a strong link between the MP and their constituency. This is good for democracy, and it is also good for the independence of the MP. In all PR systems, the political party chooses, ranks, and thereby controls the MP. The sorts of mavericks and independent spirits that lead to great political innovations are generally removed from the system by the party machine. In a first past the post system the constituency link gives the MP authority independent of the party to which he belongs.

I am acutely conscious of this. When I forced a by-election 18 months ago to fight against the government's authoritarian policies, I did not need to seek the approval of my party—although it was supportive. I was able to fight the seat with money, workers, and publicity engendered by the cause, not the party. That in turn gave great authority to the battle of ideas over the liberty agenda, and the government has folded on virtually every count as a result. None of this would have been possible under most PR systems.

This level of individualism is also deterred under the AV system. People occasionally say it would stop extremist parties. True, but first past the post does that. But what about the Greens, the Scottish and Welsh nationalists, the individual single-issue candidates? All of these are perfectly legitimate causes, and all, early on, would have been crushed by the coalition of establishment parties under AV.

What about fairness, some may say? Of course the first past the post system is unfair occasionally, as are all systems. Its principal unfairness however is against my party, the Conservatives. It was this unfairness that allowed the Labour Party to form a comfortable majority government with 35.3% of the vote in the last election. I must say that I have not noticed Mr. Brown rushing to correct this weakness in the system.

The sheer scale of this imbalance is breathtaking. It is caused by differences in sizes of constituencies and distribution of votes. To understand it, imagine the major parties having, respectively 40% and 30% of the vote, with the Liberals at 18%. If the Tories have the 40% share, they have a majority of 8. If Labour has the 40% share, they have a majority of 128—an astonishing advantage of 120 seats.

It would be remarkably easy to put right, by recalibrating the size of the constituencies. So my constituency, Haltemprice and Howden, is just over 70,000 votes. Labour's Sheffield Brightside, the constituency of my old Home Office opposite number David Blunkett, is just over 50,000. There is no conceivable justification for this, and I would expect a new Conservative government to correct it when they cut the number of MPs by 10%, as they have pledged to do. While this would not eliminate the disparity, it would reduce it dramatically.

Even with his current 8-10% advantage, Mr. Brown is expecting to lose next time. This is why he is indulging in this grubby ruse, trying to set up the conditions to hang on to power in a hung parliament. It will not work. The reason it will not work is because this latest episode is just one more example of why the British people want rid of him. He is a man who will put tactics before principle, political advantage before national interest, at every turn. And in May 2010 the electorate will decide, enough is enough.