Evening Post. THURSDAY,JUNE4,1931. THE ELECTORAL THREE-CARD TRICK

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 130, 4 June 1931, Page 10

Evening Post. THURSDAY,JUNE4,I93I. THE ELECTORAL THREE-CARD TRICK

A few days after the nisi. General Election in Great Britain had considerably over-represented the Labour Party and grossly under-represented die Liberals, Mr. Ramsay Mao Donald disclaimed any interest in electoral reform. This singular attitude was adopted inj,jui interview which appeared in the "Arbeiter Zeitung," an Austrian Socialist paper, on the 4th June, 1929—tw0 years ago to a clay— and must have surprised both the Continental Socialists to whom it was particularly addressed ' and many others. When he was questioned about the unfairness of tlio present British franchise law, Mr. MacDohald deelarod that lie. considered Proportional Representation impracticable. Proportional Representation was the reason why no Social Democratic Party in Europe-' has come into definite power already. In any case, an alteration of the franchise in England had no interest for the Labour Party, declared Mr. MaeDonald. As a democrat Mr. MaeDonald might have been expected to lake some interest in having the democracy accurately represented, but as a Social Democrat he had enjoyed the benefits of an inaccurate system. For the second time it was fluking him into power at the head of a minority Government, and the candour of his suggestion to the Social Democrats of Europe that they also might have "come into definite power" if their electoral system had been equally undemocratic was almost as astonishing as its want of principle. But though, speaking broadly, Mr. MaeDonald is a model of consistency and loyalty to principle in comparison with Mr. Lloyd George, here was a case where, as the leader of the party which had suffered most from the chances of the present system, Mr. Lloyd George was not embarrassed by any conflict between principle and interest in pressing for the reform to which Mr. MaeDonald objected. In his address at the National Liberal Club a fortnight after the General Election Mr. Lloyd George staled the position as follows:— At the last election the Labour Party had one member for every 29j000 votos cast for- their party. The Conservatives had ono member for every 34,000. votes, and the Liberals one member for every 91,000 votes. Had the seats been allocated in proportion to the votes cast, the Conservatives would now have 231 seats, the.Labour Party-234, and tho Liberals 141. As the actual figures, taking the parties in the same order, were 260, 289, and 58 respectively, this means that the Conservatives had 29 more seats than a fair deal would have given them, the Labourites 65 more, and the Liberals 83 less. For the Liberals the result was far more disastrous than a mere comparison of these discrepancies shows. Not only was their strength nearly 60 per cent, short of their fair quota, but in a House of 615 members the superiority of a party of 141 to one of 58 cannot be measured by the mere numerical difference. This system as it works to-day, Mr. Lloyd George continued, is a pare stultification of democracy. We mean to use all our power in the new Parliament to the utmost to insist upon a speedy redress of this glaring wrong. You cannot trust the destinies of a great nation to a three-card .trick.-

The capital object thus announced by the Liberal Leader immediately after the. General Election has been faithfully pursued ever since, and if there was ever any chance of his wavering, the monotonous series of reverses at the by-elections of thp last twelve months which has changed the prospect of disaster for his party at the next General Election under the existing system-from probability to certainty would have kept him up to the mark. The baffling contradictions of Mr. Lloyd George's leadership, the scathing denunciations of the Government followed by voting in their favour, the sacrifice of the consistency and the dignity of his party to "tactics" till that word has acquired quite a sinister meaning—all these things are referable to the fact that the Liberals could not afford to turn out the Government till the intolerable handicap imposed upon them by the "first past the post" system had been removed or reduced. Whatever hopes they may have had of a removal were dashed in July last, when the report of the Ullswater Conference showed that the eight Labour members had voted unanimously against the adoption of proportional representation with the single transferable vote. The Liberals at the Conference then declared for the alternative vote as at any rate a small step in the right direction, and in this they had the support of the Labour members. In a memorandum submitted to the Conference on the Liberals' behalf by Lord Craigmyle— a title under which the well-known identity of Lord Shaw of Dunfermline is effectively concealed—the need for some change was stated in a fashion even more impressive than the aggregates above quoted from Mr. Lloyd George's speech and repealed with remarkable variations by Mr. Churchill in the speech reported to-day. In 1929, says Lord Cmigmyle, there were more than two candidates iji 41)9 single-member constituencies. Of thrse only 101 were- supported by tho

majority of those voting. On tho other hand, no fewer than 80S woro elected by a minority of those voting. It may bo added that behind the SOS minority members there stood n voting (strength ol' 4,975,847 votes. This gross minority figure is confronted by a majority figure of G,318j075, with no majority representation whatever. .. . That broad fact is, as stated, that in tho presont House of Commons there are 30S single-member cases in ■ which, sifter v contest of throe or more candidates, tho member holds his seat for a minority, and not for a majority, of thoso who went to the poll. By a strange chance these 308 minority members are just enough to constitute a majority in a House of 615. A majority of the British constituencies are misrepresented by their so-called representatives! The pertinacity of Mr. Lloyd George has been rewarded at last. The Electoral Reform, of which the clause providing for the alternative vote was carried in Committee on the 4th March by 279 voles to 253, has now been read a third time by 278 to 228. In Committee Sir Samuel attacked the clause on the grounds that there was no demand for the alternative vote, that it enabled the party at the bottom of tho poll to control tho result, and that it would lead to political "wangling." The last two objections are enlarged by Mr. Churchill when in the only third-reading speech reported he describes the alternative vote as the method which determined elections by the most worthless votes of the most worthless candidate, giving a now value to tho phrase "Tfie devil take the hindmost," and opening- tho way for wire-pullers to secure tho right kiiid of hindmost candidate. The argument' is worthy of Mr. Churchill's cleverness, but the most important part of it had been just as cleverly anticipated by Sir Herbert Samuel in Committee. Suppose you have a balance and have a pound of lumps of sugar in one scale and a pound of lumps of sugar in another scale, and you put an additional lump of sugar into ono scale and it tips the balance, that ono lump of sugar has no more voice, so to speak, in tho decision which way the scale will tip than all the other lumps of sugar already in tho same scale. The only way, in which it receives importance is the fact that it is the last lump. It is not a plural lump. It is only one. lump. There is. no plural voting on the part of that lump of sugar, and it has no more weight in tho scale than any previous lump in tho same scale ov any of tho individual lumps in tho other scale. But though Mr. Lloyd George has scored heavily his anxieties are not yet at an end. The House of Lords has still to be reckoned with, and the alternative vote is not the only thing in the Bill to which it may take objection. If the Lords reject the Bill, it would take at least two years to pass it under the Parliament Act. But the prospect of doubling the period of' Mr. Lloyd George's "lactics" may be so unpleasant to the die-hards of the Gilded Chamber as to restrain them from doing the worst. At the best, however, the Bill seems likely to do little good. The essentials of what Mr. Lloyd George calls the "three-card trick" will remain as long as there are three parties, and that is an incubus with which Britain seems to be as incapable of dealing as New Zealand.