The British Labour Party is basking in a richly undeserved landslide. At time of writing yesterday evening, Labour had 413 of the 634 seats decided. There are 659 seats in the House of Commons so it the results from 634 seats can be extrapolated with some accuracy.
Labour obtained 65.2 per cent of the seats in Thursday’s election. It did so on just 42.3 per cent of the vote. And given that there was a voter turnout of less than 65 per cent, Labor got just 28 per cent of the vote at of the national electorate. Yet it was declared by Prime Minister Tony Blair as a triumph and a landslide for Labour. It is amazing what an electoral system can do to translate votes into either a landslide or a cliff-hanger. Margaret Thatcher got similar small votes and large seat counts for the Conservatives in the 1980s
Meanwhile this time, the Conservatives got just 164 seats of the 628 declared by yesterday evening Australian time. That was 26.1 per cent of the total decided, and yet the Conservatives got 32.5 per cent of the vote. In short, Labor got nearly 40 percentage points more seats that the Conservatives yet got just 10 percentage points at more vote than them. (Contrast that to the conservative Liberal party getting 10 percentage points more than Labor in Ginninderra last ACT election, yet getting the same number fo seats.
The Liberal Democrat Party did worse than the Tories. They got 18.6 per cent of the vote and only 7.3 per cent of the seats.
And trailing the field were the various nationalist parties and independents who got 6.4 per cent of the vote and only scored 1.6 per cent of the seats.
The British have what is called the first past the post system of voting. Voters just mark a single X against the candidate they want to vote for. All the votes are counted and the candidate with the most votes wins at the seat, even if that candidate has, for example, only 40 per cent of the vote. In Britain, they do not have a preferential system whereby the winning candidate has to get 50 percent plus one vote to win at the seat.
However, the aberrations outlined above are not a result of Britain’s failure to have a preferential system as we have in Australia. Indeed, the same aberrations occur in Australia with preferential voting. Typically, in Australia the two major parties together get less than 80 per cent of the first-preference vote, yet they get 99 percent of the seats. The aberration occurs because of both Britain and Australia have a single member constituencies. In Australia, this has meant that every seat goes to either Labor or the Coalition, with rare exception. In the present Parliament for example only one member out of 147 stood and was elected as an independent.
And so in Britain today Prime Minister Tony Blair can go in triumph through the streets claiming a large mandate and huge popular support on just 42.3 per cent of the vote and just 28 per cent support among the national electorate. Give or take a percentage point or two, this is the same result as occurred in the last election in 1997. And it is not far off what has happened in past Australian elections.
The Democratic aberration has a potentially more profound effect in Britain than in Australia. In Britain, the House of Commons rules supreme. The holder of a majority in the House of Commons can pass whatever laws he likes, subject to only a slight delay by the House of Lords. In Australia, on the other hand, a government it with a majority such as Blair’s in the lower house of the national parliament would have its will subjected to the views of the Senate – – which these days invariably does not contain a government majority – – and also the exercise of power by the states and the limitation of the Constitution as interpreted by the High Court.
At least that is the theory. During the election campaign the Conservative leader William Hague warned about the danger of electing a Labour dictatorship. Even with Labour’s huge majority obtained in this week’s election, however, it will by no means be an elected dictatorship. For a start, Blair has to obtain a majority in his own party before he can act. He is also constrained by the exercise of public opinion which at the next election would determine his fate as Prime Minister. And interestingly, as the so-called dictatorship of the majority of the House of Commons has got stronger and the checks provided by the House of Lords have got weaker another tempering force has emerged – – the European Court of Human Rights, which has played the role of a Bill of Rights to which individuals who feel they have been trampled upon by the dictatorship of the majority can appeal.
In the context of a just 75 per cent of the British voters supporting the two major parties, the appeal to an impartial outside force has become more attractive. One way or t’other democratic societies like Britain and Australia will not allow simple majorities to have it all their own way.
Indeed, Blair is well aware of this. He has not abused his huge majority, recognising that this is a sure way to lose it.