PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION

Press, Volume LX, Issue 18267, 29 December 1924, Page 10

PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION

SOME ARGUMENTS AGAINST IT.

LFrcm the ''Nfw Statesman'."] It is not surprising; that the Liberal Party, after the blow it received at the polls last week, should be seeking desperately for some means of saving its life. Whether it will succeed seems doubtful. Liberalism, of course, will not be extinguished; its virtues will be kept alive in the Labour Party, and to some extent, even, among the Conservatives; its vices will, we hope', disappear into limbo. But our purpose here is not to embark on a discussion of Liberal principles or the prospects of the Liberal Party. It is to call attention to one particular remedy which some Liberal doctors are prescribing. Thev diagnose the malady as injustice; the patient is the victim of a scandalously unfair electoral system. And the proper cure is Proportional Representation. We believe, on the contrary, that Proportional Representation is a quack remedy. Whatever alleviation it may seem to offer to the Liberal Party in its agony, it is fraught with mischief to the interests of the nation.

Let us look at the case as it has been thrust before us in the newspapers during the past week. Here are the total votes registered by the various parties, and the total number of contested seats secured by each up to November Ist (Inverness and certain University seats are not included nor unopposed returns; but they do not affect-the argument):

This means, as a simple calculation will show, that the' Tories get a seat for every 19,504 votes ease for them. Labour one for every 38,980, the Liberals one for every 89,518. Does not that prove, we are asked, how inaccurately the House of Commons reflects the opinion held in the country? Under the system of P.R. we should have 261 Conservatives, 192 Labour, and 103 Liberal members; Now there are two fallacies concealed in this argument. The first lies in the suggestion that the House of Commons ought to correspond with mathematical exactitude to the number of votes cast. ' The second is the assumption that P.R. would have given us some such exactitude. Let us deal -with tliia assumption first. We cannot see that there is any warrant, for it. It might perhaps be more plausible if the system of P.R. meant that the whole of Great Britain was to be one constituency, in which the electors marked . their ballot papers "Con.," "Lab." or "Lib.," and then, after the necessary grand addition sum, the appropriate number of representatives of each party were allotted (by the Party managers?) to the House of Commons. But it does not mean that. Tho advocates of ~P.R. want large constituencies each returning, say, five or six, or ten members. And how are they, or we, or anybody, to know how the electors would vote under that system? It would be an entirely novel system, in *Tvhich personal and local factors would be different, in which party loyalties might be either intensified or weakened, in which the relative values of minor aiid major issues would be unforetellable. In short, the result of an election under P.R. can only be guessed at,. and the figures of last week's poll seem to us a quite uncertain basis fo'r the guess. Of course,' the Proportional Representationalists may admit that; they may urge that their object in stressing these figures is to prove to us, by an awful example, how unsatisfactory the present electoral system is. Let us meet them on that point—only reminding them that the onus is not on Us to show that the present system is satisfactory, but on them to showthat P.R. would be' a better.

We come back now to the first and more important fallacy. The House of Commons, we are told, ought to be a mirror reflecting as accurately as possible, the opinions and feelings of the electorate, which means that each party or group should have a number of representatives in the closest arithmetical correspondence to the votes cast for it. This mirror metaphor sounds well, but, like many metaphors, it is liable to lead the unwary astray. What, in fact, is the function of the House of Commons? It is to carry on the business of the country, by discussion, by legislation, by support or criticism of the Government. That is to say, it must be a living, active thing. A mirror, however useful and attractive an object it may be, is a passive thing. The advocates of P.R. may sniff at our stressing of these obvious facts, and accuse us of teaching our grandmothers to suck eggs. But we arc' not doing anything of the sort. We are pointing out what is. the fundamental vice of their proposal. P.R. might make the House of Commons a mirror, but it would keep it a mirror—and a bad mirror at that, as we shall show in a moment. P.R., with its mathematical obsession, would make Parliament static instead of dynamic. It is imperative that a popular Chamber should be sensitive to popular feeling, and that it should continue so. Under P.R. that sensitiveness would be enormously diminished. The' member, by the enlargement of constituencies, would inevitablv become more remote, in less close personal touch with his constituents. A large number of members, too—probably the majority, certainly all the prominent men in each party—would find themselves in the highly gratifying position of holding their seats for life; the party managers, we may be snre, would see to that. This, we understand, is claimed as a merit in the system by the advocates of P.R. But agreeable as it would be for the professional politicians, it would go a long way to make a farce of democratic government. The "lifer" is relieved of his constant, and wholesome, anxiety about the effect of his speeches' and votes and actions on his constituents. He may have an interest or an inclination to stick' close to, and work hard for, his party—or he' may not. But he cer tainly loses a valuable stimulus to "keep in with" the people outside. And it is this "sensitiveness," we repeat, which is far more important to the working of democracy than any mechanical or mathematical devices.

Last but by no means least, there is the awkward question of by-elections. Here the "mirror," which we have just seen becoming dimmer in its reflections, disappears altogether. The by-election, as soon as a Parliament has settled down and begun to grow old, is immensely important. A series of by-elections—or even one—can indicate, as nothing else can, any changes in popular feeling. Government and Opposition alike must attach importance to the result, taking warning, or taking heart, from it, and shaping their policies accordingly. There is no need to quote inatancesj the part played by

by-elections at- critical periods is writ large all through our modern Parliamentary history. But under P.ft. there can be no by-elections—or, at least, no effective by-elections. A member dies or resigns. His constituency, let us suppose, returned .it the General Election three Tories, two Labour men. and one Liberal. How is his place to be filled? If ire whole constituency is to be polled there can presumably be only one result. Whether the late member was Tory, Labour, or Liberal, his successor will be a Tory. If the. whole constituency is not to be polled, what possible basis is "there for an election?

These arguments are surely conclusive against P.R. as an electoral system in a live Parliamentary democracy. P.R., in fact, as we have observed before in these columns, is not democracy at all; it grasps at the shadow, but it loses the substance. There are other objections to it. as experience has shown in foreign countries, where it has been applied. We have no space to go into all these: but it" is necessary to say a word about one of them, which is of peculiar interest to this country at this moment. We have just closed our first experiment in Government by a party without a majority. Mntt of us, and not least the party which had to conduct the experiment, have prayed that it may be the last. We want the "Two-Party'' system, not because it is hoary and sacred, but because for England it has worked, and will continue to work, we believe, better than any other. But P.R. would make it impossible. P.R. would not only perpetuate the group system, it would almost certainly multiply the groups. It requires no great flight of imagination to see the emergence under it in a few years, of a Prohibition Party, a Constitutional Liberal Party, a Socialist Party, a Communist Party, and a dozen others, with handfuls of representatives. This may be no serious matter; and it may even be argued that it would stimulate the interest of the electorate, though, for out part, we believe it would confuse and bore the electorate. But it certainly is a serious thing to crystallise the three main party divisions, to de'clare for an indefinite regime of coalition Government, with all its accompanying shifts and bargains, and of divided Oppositions, ineffectively fighting a still more ineffective adversary. This remedy of the Liberal doctors, if it comforted their party, would do so, as we have said, to the grave detriment of the State. But still, it may be urged, something must surely be done about the "grossly exaggerated representation" revealed by the' figures of this election! Something perhaps might be done, and ought to be done, by means of the Alternative Vote in the case of three-cornered contests, though it seems that the Alternative Vote would not have made much difference last week. But the main thing to be done about exaggerated majorities is to recognise that they are normal, unavoidable, and to a considerable extent justifiable, if our system is to have dynamic and not merely static efficiency. There are two further points which discontented Liberals might bear in mind. One is that it was their own tactics than went far to swell the Tory majority at this election. The other, which is more important, is that it is very easy to exaggerate the evil done by an "exaggerated majority." Majorities in our Parliamentary system, as we know perfectly well, do not trample ruthlessly on the minorities. The influence of a minority has many ways of making itself felt, and even the strongest Government will, from reason or fear, take some count of its opponents' criticism and presence. That reflection will, no doubt, be but small comfort to Liberals who think that by the laws of arithmetic they ought to have something over 100 seats in the present House of Commons. But to those who are not under that delusion, it may suggest other and better ways than P.R. of strengthening the power of Liberalism—and possibly even the power of the Liberal Party.

, Party. Votes. Seats. Conservatives .. 7,470,154 383 Labour .. 5,496,252 141 Liberal .. 2,954,125 33 Independent 123,629 4