Political
Parties, Democracy and Voter Engagement
By
John
E. Strafford
Political parties play a major role in our
democracy. At a General Election they
issue a manifesto showing their policies and use it to persuade the electorate
to vote for them. They choose the
candidates who will stand for election.
From those candidates Members of Parliament will be decided by the electorate. Members of Parliament from the Party capable
of obtaining a majority in Parliament then form the Government.
The political parties choose their Leaders and one of
them will become the Prime Minister.
This is all very well if our political parties are democratic
organisations open to all, but what if they are undemocratic organisations? Who controls our political parties? Does
it matter if they are oligarchies of the political elite? In such a case a small group of people will
determine who governs our country and hence the policies by which we are
governed.
Political parties are part of the democratic process in
the United Kingdom. Their role is
recognised by Parliament. In the
current financial year nearly £7 million of public money known as “Short” money
will be paid to the opposition political parties. During the period that the Conservative
Party was in opposition, 1997-2010, it received over £40 million of public
funding. In government the gravy train
does not stop. £8.4 million is being
paid this year for 103 political special advisers to the Conservatives and
Liberal Democrats. All this money is
supposed to be given to enhance our democracy – it does no such thing. All it does is perpetuate the power of the
oligarchs who run our parties. Whilst
ever the parties are able to rely on the State and/or big donors like
businessmen or Trade Unions they can ignore their party members.
Both of our main political parties – Labour and
Conservative, are undemocratic organisations run and controlled by oligarchies. Who are these oligarchs? They start with the Party Leaders, who are
elected by the Party memberships but then effectively cease to be accountable
to the members. The Leaders appoint the
Cabinet and the Shadow Cabinet and other Ministers when in Government. They exercise a great deal of patronage by
creating Peers and giving out honours. The
oligarchs include businessmen who advise the Conservatives and Trade Unionists
who advise Labour. All are totally
unaccountable to the Party members. The
net is spread wide. If the Parties had
been successful in retaining the trust of the people, perhaps one could
understand their desire to maintain the status
quo, but the reality is that they are failed organisations, their
membership has suffered catastrophic decline and public confidence is in free
fall. Soon, as membership organisations
they will cease to exist.
William Hague said that the Conservative Party “was like an absolute monarchy moderated by
regicide. The Nation abolished
absolute monarchy and regicide 350 years ago.
It is time for the Conservative Party to follow suit.
Membership
A major factor in the reduction in turnout at
General Elections is the long term decline in the membership of our three main
political parties. Correlated with the
lesser satisfaction which the people have with the political process, we have a
toxic mix. Party activists represent
approximately 10% of members. With the
decline in membership there has been a decline in activists. It is the activists who work to get the
electorate out to vote. Critically it
is feet on the ground that gets that last marginal voter to the polling
station.
At the end of World War II the membership of the
Conservative Party was about 250,000.
As a result of the efforts of Lord Woolton membership had risen by 1952
to 2.8 million. Since then the decline
has been continuous. By 1979 membership
had fallen to 1,350,000 and during the 1980s and 1990s it declined further to
400,000 by 1997. When David Cameron became
Leader of the Conservative Party in 2005 there were 258,239 members of the
Party. By the beginning of 2010
membership had fallen to 177,000 and in the three years to the end of 2012
membership fell a further 43,000 to 134,000.
So we can see from this that in 1950 when turnout at the
General Election was 83.9% there were approximately 280,000 party members
working to get out the Conservative vote.
By the 2010 General Election when turnout was 65%, there were 17,700
members trying to do the same. The
activist members of the Conservative Party are now primarily local Councillors
and their families. After the elections
of 2014 there were 8,296 Conservative Councillors in the United Kingdom
Individual Labour Party membership in 1951 was about 1
million. Today it is less 200,000, so
activists have declined from 100,000 in 1951 to 20,000 today. The Labour Party gets significant help from
Trade Unionists but we have seen a decline in the membership of Trade Unions
also from some 12 million to 6.5 million.
Some 70% of Labour MPs are linked with the Trade Unions.
Liberal Party membership has fallen from some 300,000
after the War to less than 50,000 today.
So from a party activist base for the main parties of
over 400,000 in 1950 it has declined to 38,400 today. In view of these figures it is surprising
that turnout has not collapsed further!
Why has this happened?
What effect will it have and can anything be done to change this
disastrous trend?
The number of people not correctly registered to vote has
risen substantially from 3.9 million in 2000 to 7.5 million in 2012 per the
Electoral Commission. The major factor
that affects voter registration is the decline in membership of the political
parties. The origin of political
parties was as registration societies which were set up in the 1830s after the
passing of the 1832 Reform Act. Their
function was to ensure that all those entitled to vote were registered and did
vote. Today this function has almost
ceased, except in some marginal constituencies, because there are no longer the
activists to do the work.
So what are the costs to society of low voter
registration and turnout? Potentially
the costs will be significant. There
will come a point when the legitimacy of the elected government is questioned
because of the low turnout. Democracy
is a process by which you determine the will of the majority. If the gap between the majority and those
elected becomes too great the people may say what can we do to change
this. The only solutions will be major
electoral reform or revolution. Time is
running out.
Research on party membership,
done in the 1990s, showed two main reasons why people join political
parties. The first reason was for
social purposes. People like to be with
others of a like mind. They feel more
comfortable. There is a tribal
instinct.
Party members like to be led, but they also like to know
that the Leader has listened to them before he or she takes a decision. The second reason is participation. This has to be meaningful participation i.e.
they either vote on decisions or vote for the people taking the decisions. It is this latter reason which has not been
met by the two main political parties.
Effectively large numbers of people join these parties each year wanting
to participate. When they find that
they have no voice they leave, usually after a couple of years. Only by adopting a radical approach will we
break this cycle of decline. I set out
below the measures that need to be taken.
It is a check list to which all parties should comply:
·
Party constitutions should be capable of being
altered by the members of the Party on the basis of one member, one vote, if a clear
majority vote in favour of change.
·
There should be an Annual General Meeting of the
Party to which all members are invited.
·
The Chairman of the Party should be responsible
for the Party Organisation.
·
The Chairman and Treasurer of the Party should
be elected by the members of the Party.
·
The Chairman of the Party should present an
Annual Report on the Party organisation at the Annual General Meeting of the
Party for adoption by the members.
·
The Treasurer of the Party should present the
Annual Accounts of the Party to the Annual General Meeting for adoption by the
members.
·
The Chairman of the Committee on Candidates
should be elected by the members of the Party and should present a report on
candidate selection at the Annual General Meeting of the Party.
·
The Chairman of any policy groups should be
elected by the members of the Party and should present a report on their
workings at the Annual General Meeting of the Party.
·
Motions for debate on policy should be allowed at
the Party’s Conference and voted upon.
The most
important of these provisions is the ability to change the Party’s constitution
on the basis of One Member One Vote.
If we believe in democracy the
fundamental requirement for political parties is:
“No
political Party should be registered with the Electoral Commission unless it
has a democratic constitution which can be changed by a clear majority of its
members on the basis of one member one vote.”
By adopting the above, participation
would be guaranteed for party members.
Some parties already have some of the above provisions in their
constitutions. The Conservative Party
has none of them. The Labour Party is
still dominated by the Trade Unions although moves are afoot to have One Member
One Vote. Both Conservative and Labour
operate electoral colleges which distort democracy by breaching the principle
of One Person, One Vote of equal value.
For years our two main political parties have protested
that the decline in membership is because membership is a redundant
concept. People have other things to
do. They are too busy. They join single issue pressure groups. Rather than give any power to members the
oligarchies would rather retain all power in a diminishing Party. The Scottish National Party has demonstrated
just how wrong they are. In September
2014 at the time of the Scottish Referendum their membership stood at approximately
25,000. In just three months they have
increased it to over 100,000 so how does the Scottish National Party compare
with the Conservative Party?
The Scottish National Party:
·
Has
quarterly newsletters to members.
·
Policy
is determined at their annual Conference.
· Their
Officers are all elected by their members including their Leader and Deputy
Leader who are elected annually.
· They can
change their Constitution on the basis of One Member One Vote with a two thirds
majority.
They are a democratic Party!
What a comparison with the Conservative party where the
Chairman and Treasurer of the Party are appointed by the Leader, so are
unaccountable to the membership. There
is no Annual General Meeting of members, so there is no formal forum for
members to raise questions about the Party’s organisation or policies. The Annual Accounts of the Party are not
tabled for approval at an AGM. The
selection of parliamentary candidates of the Party is controlled
centrally. The Party Board can and does
take control of any Constituency Association, which does not toe the line. The infamous clause 17 of their constitution
states: “The Board shall have power to do
anything which in its opinion relates to the management and administration of
the Party”, and this makes the rest of the constitution meaningless.
What does a member get from membership of the Conservative
Party? Prior to the Party reforms of
1998 there were a number of reasons to be a member. There were meetings at area and national
level where you could raise issues of policy or organisation. Social gatherings emphasised the tribal
feeling and sense of belonging. The
Party Conference was run by the voluntary party and it had motions for
debate. Votes were taken at the end of
the debates and although they were not binding, they reflected the views of the
members. Constituency Associations were
for all intents and purposes autonomous.
The Party had three distinct sections - the parliamentary party, the
voluntary party and the professional organisation. There were checks and balances in the
distribution of power. All of these
were swept away in 1998 with disastrous result.
Policies
Who determines policy?
Of the two main political parties, policy in the Conservative Party is
decided by the Leader and is constructed by a small coterie of people around
him. In the 2014 European Parliament
election the Leader of the Conservative MEPs only discovered what was in the
manifesto on the day it was published.
The Conservative Party no longer goes through the charade of pretending
that the members of the Party have any say.
There are no motions for debate at the Conservative Party Conference. The Conservative Policy Forum has little, if
any influence on policy. The Labour
Party has the National Policy Forum and policy discussion papers. Its conference sets the “framework” of
policy, but the days when it was the conference which decided policy are over.
Policy in the Liberal Democrat Party is determined by
their Party conference and it was their Conference which had the final say on
the Coalition Agreement. Ironically, as
soon as they got into government they changed their rules so that their MPs now
will have the final say on a Coalition Agreement. Power corrupts!
Contrast the approach of the three main parties with the
three political parties whose membership is increasing. In the Scottish National Party, UKIP and the
Green Party, policy is decided at their National Conferences. Perhaps when people have a say in policy
they take ownership of the policy and are better able to propagate it? By allowing members to participate you
increase membership.
Candidates
Why cannot any registered member of the Labour or
Conservative Parties be a candidate, subject only to vetting to ensure that
they have no criminal convictions and comply with electoral law? It should be up to the members of the
Parties to determine who shall be their candidate. This is a fundamental principle. If the members do not decide, who does and
how are they accountable to the members?
The selections of parliamentary candidates of our
political Parties are controlled centrally.
They do this by controlling the Approved List of candidates.
We have heard a lot recently about how the range of
candidates should be widened and the Conservative Party have made much of Open
Primaries. The model for Open Primaries
is the United States so how do Conservative Open Primaries compare?
In the United States anyone can stand. In the Conservative Party the candidates are
sifted and three or four candidates put forward. In many States electors have to register
support for the Party in order to vote.
With the Conservatives anyone on the Electoral Roll can vote in an Open
Postal Primary or an Open Meeting Primary, even if they are members of another
Party.
The candidates in the United States raise their own funds
for campaigning in the Primary. The
Conservative Party pays for a postal primary.
The costs in Totnes amounted to £38,000. There are only half a dozen constituencies
in the country that could afford this, so unless the Party at national level pays
or State Funding is given postal Primaries will be few and far between.
Campaigns in the United States are usually prolonged,
giving plenty of time to investigate the candidates. The campaigns run by the Conservatives are
strictly limited in time.
Caucus meetings of registered voters are held in the
United States at which the merits of the different candidates are debated and
then voted upon. These are banned by
the Conservative Party.
A distinction should be drawn between Open Primaries
where there is a postal ballot as in Totnes and Open meeting Primaries. The most common, because of costs are the
Open Meeting Primaries. The
Conservative Party imposes a number of restrictions on Open Meeting Primaries:
The meetings are advertised in the local paper so there
is no guarantee that every elector is
aware that the selection is taking place.
At the meeting no debate is allowed between the
candidates – they are not even allowed
to be on the platform together.
The elector must be present for the entire meeting and
cannot leave the room for any reason. Contrast this with a postal primary where
the elector doesn’t have to hear any
candidate before voting.
Limits are imposed by Central Office on the amount of
money candidates can spend on
their campaigns.
The vote on the final adoption of the selected candidate
is by Conservative Party members.
It can be seen from the above that there are major
differences between what the Conservatives call Open Primaries and what in
practise most people understand as Open Primaries. The Conservative Open Primaries are a
gimmick. The people and the media have
been hoodwinked into believing that the process is open. It is not.
The process is controlled in detail by the Party hierarchy. There is also the danger that the selection
can be manipulated by the members of other parties, who can vote for the
weakest candidate. The Conservative
Party does not care, because it has decided on who the candidates will be.
Some Constituency Associations now run Open primaries for
local government elections. In these
cases the sift of candidates is done by people accountable to the members of
the particular Association, so the fundamental objections do not apply.
In Hong Kong in 2014 the people took to the streets in
protest at the Chinese Communist Party imposing a short list of four candidates
for the people to choose from. Yet this is the very same process that is used
by the Labour and Conservative Parties in the United Kingdom.
All the other main political Parties operate with
approved lists for parliamentary candidates but because they are more
democratic than the two main Parties there is democratic accountability of
those who decide who can be candidates.
Funding
There is no doubt that the public’s perception of
politics is influenced by the way in which the political parties are
funded. Big donors or Trade Union Leaders
have more access to the Party hierarchies so more opportunity to influence. “Cash for honours” is continuously
levelled at the Conservative party. “Controlled by and funded by the Trade Unions”
is levelled at the Labour Party. People
believe that money buys influence in politics.
There needs to be a complete overhaul of party funding with a cap on
donations of £5,000. There may have to
be a transitional period for this to be brought in.
It is estimated that 50% of the Conservative Party’s income
is from financial institutions i.e. fat cat Bankers and Hedge Fund Managers and
80% of the Labour Party’s income is from the Trade Unions.
Social
Media
The development of social media has been a lifeline to
our main political parties. Twitter,
Facebook, email, have all improved the Parties ability to communicate at little
cost. A daily email requesting a £10
donation to several hundred thousand supporters brings in a substantial amount
of cash particularly when those supporters have been targeted for their views.
The appointment of Jim Messina (former social media guru
to President Obama) as an adviser is an indication that the Conservative Party
believe that the way forward is to organise our campaigns as in the United
States by gathering up supporters rather than relying on members. The Labour Party has made a similar
appointment. What of course is
forgotten is that the Presidential Election in the United States costs
approximately $6 billion. Support is
bought. Canvassers are paid. Because of the financial restrictions on
campaign spending we cannot do this.
Conclusions
With the rise of UKIP, the Green Party, and the Scottish
Nationalist Party, not forgetting the Democratic Unionist party we are now in
an era of multi party politics. Who now
knows which seats are marginal?
By one of those moments of irony the next General
Election will be fought on an Electoral Register drawn up by individual
registration rather than household registration. When this was done by the Northern Ireland
[Electoral Fraud (Northern Ireland) Act 2002] 10% of the Register
disappeared. The origins of political
parties were as Registration Societies.
Their main function was to ensure that their supporters were all
registered to vote. This job will now
be resurrected, except that there will not be the Party activists to carry it
out.
The most important factor in the General Election will be
“feet on the ground” At the margin it is the canvassing and the
knocking up that will count most. For
that you need volunteers and the most committed volunteers are members. The political Parties will ignore this at
their peril and unless our two main Parties reform themselves into democratic
organisations their decline will continue until they cease to exist.
The Scottish National Party with 100,000 members is
fighting in 59 seats. It is the only
Party that can mount a “feet on the ground” campaign in all the
seats it is contesting. The other
parties that are fighting 650 seats would need a million members each to fight
a similar campaign. Makes you
think! It ought to make the Parties
think too! You can virtually guarantee
that turnout in Scotland in the General Election will be higher than in the
rest of the United Kingdom.
