Question for British Dopers: Have we a duty to vote Tory?

Great Debates
41

I tend to agree with you Tom but for the sake of clarification perhaps it’s worth noting that ‘parachuting in’ preferred (by the leadership) candidates can only happen if the majority of the local party Committee itself votes for that particular candidate to be their electoral representative – ultimately, the decision remains at local level.

I’d also hazard that it is the grass roots Tory Party (in recent times) that has demonstrated a greater sense of independence in these matters than have the Labour activists

woolly – I’m sure you’re right in that this kind of thing long predates Queensland - I identified it in the terms currently employed by the Labour hiarachy as expressed by the imported Aussie campaign strategist.

Incidentally, I was browsing the papers this morning in the newsagent and saw the Sun was trailing on its front page an article by Richard Littlejohn in which he compares the physical appearance of the Tory leadership (Hague, Widdicombe, Portillo and one or two others) with that of the bridge crew on a Klingon Battle Cruiser. There really is a striking similarity – and their policies seem to be not dissimilarly out of this world.

Only 48 hours to go. Thank God !

Wonder what the odds are on a third term ?

42

There is no party that properly represents my views either. It would be precious of me to assume that there is always going to be such a party. But I vote for the party nearest my views, and thereby in effect against the party furthest from my views, and if others do so also, the agenda shifts in the direction I want, and gives me the best chance of a party moving to an agenda that does represent my views.

In the same situation, you don’t vote. You are off the radar. You do not influence the agenda at all. For all that the political parties know, you (and others like you) may be abstaining because there is no party right wing enough.

You say you won’t vote for the LibDems because they may then think you support them. Well, to some extent they will think that, but they are not so naive as to believe that if they get someone’s vote, that person believes the LibDem’s policies are perfect. But if enough people vote for them, they (and Labour) will get the message that move-to-left-equals-votes.
I doubt that some of the normally Conservative voters who have shifted to Labour agree with all Labour’s policies either. But they are sending a clear message to Labour: “if you stay further right than Old Labour we may vote for you”. Labour is influenced by their message, much to your chagrin, I assume. They win. You are not in the game.

Regarding the Queensland effect, I’m sure others are right when they say the effect had been seen before, but the effect seemed particularly dramatic in the 1996 Queensland election, or maybe that’s just because I live here!

43

I live in Frank Dobson’s constituency, and my biggest hope is to push the Conservatives into third place behind the Lib-Dems. If I vote Labour I simply add to Dobson’s majority, and register support for a government that seems to alter policies at the drop of an opinion pollster’s hat. If I vote Conservative, I support Hague’s kneejerk soundbite politics and (in my mind) unacceptable policies on Europe and immigration. If I support the Lib-Dems I am not registering support for Labour or for the Conservatives, and I may help push the latter into third place (and help influence a policy rethink).

If I spoil my ballot or vote for any other minor party (there are no less than three socialist parties standing in my constituency) my vote appears to be meaningless.

44

You have a point. But it seems to me that your one vote isn’t going to register all that much (same as mine). You would seem to be poking at a very large elephant with a very small stick, trying to urge it in the direction you want.

I might as easily suggest that the number of spoiled papers in the election ballot represent, to all the political parties, votes going begging… and that the parties are, in fact, more interested in finding out what uncommitted voters want than they are in attracting those with a declared party preference.

I have to say that I don’t regard voting as “sending a message”. If I want to send a message, I’ll pick a publically accessible forum in which to articulate it; write to my MP, write to the papers, post stuff on Internet message boards… this is the sort of stuff which will actually get my opinions over to other people. All I can do in a polling station is register a preference. My preference, at the moment, is “d] None of the above”, so that’s how I’ll vote. (I’ve thought about the smaller parties and the independent candidates, but, so far, none of them have bothered even to put a leaflet through my letterbox, so I can’t assume any of them would be effective in representing my interests…)

Off the radar? Certainly, nothing will change because I scribble rude remarks on my ballot paper tomorrow. But I don’t expect it to; the vote of a single individual is always off the radar.

45

Steve…

I’m in the exact same position. Do you think any party has the balls to actually instigate a ‘none-of-the-above’ option and therefore separate out in a quantifiable way the % of people who really feel disenfranchised/whatever from those who spoil their vote unintentionally?

I for one would be interested in the breakdown.

46

I doubt that “none of the above” is going to become any sort of official option… I suspect that, if it did, many people who now place protest votes for minority parties would choose that option instead.

As far as I know, the LibDems are the only party with any serious interest in electoral reform, and I can’t help feeling they’re only into it because they’d get more seats under a PR system. With my jaundiced view of the official parties, I really don’t like the PR idea; single transferrable vote, though, is another matter… If I were in charge of electoral reform, I’d go for an STV system, certainly including “none of the above” as an option, and possibly going so far as to introduce some sort of compulsion - if you don’t like any of the options on offer, fine, but at least get your lazy backside down to the polling station and bloomin’ well say so!

I’d also, by the way, get rid of the deposit system. It’s supposed to deter non-serious candidates, but, in practice, it doesn’t work. (Besides long-standing jokes like the Monster Raving Loony Party, the last General Election included things like the “Renaissance Party” and the “Beautiful People’s Party”, getting something like 7 votes nationwide). As things stand, well-heeled idiots can throw away the money running a joke campaign, while the poor (who may very well have agendas to pursue which none of the main parties are interested in… a particular worry at the moment) can’t afford to stand. This can’t be right.

47

I’m not sure of the details, but I believe that if the constituency’s adopted candidate announces his or her resignation after the election is called (as Gerry Bermingham, Lyn Golding, David Clarke and a few others did), then the NEC is allowed to impose a shortlist on the constituency. In most cases, this consists of the preferred candidate plus a couple of no-hopers.

In the case of St Helens South, they did not include the council leader on the shortlist, despite the fact that most party activists saw her as Bermingham’s natural successor.

I’m in a very similar position, but in Glenda Jackson’s constituency. I haven’t made up my mind finally yet, but I’m sorely tempted to vote Socialist Alliance on the ground that it sends the message that the Labour Party is losing support on the left. Otherwise, I’ll vote Lib Dem, on the ground that they are somewhere to the left of Labour; but I can’t see them pushing the Tories into third place here (they only got 12% of the vote in 1997 and the Tories got 27%).

Any thoughts?

48

This may have been a grave mistake by Labour. St. Helens is my home town (though I was born a scouser). St. Helens is full of ex-miners whose lives and livelihoods where destroyed by the Tories in the 1980’s. They have no love for rich, well placed ex-Tories pretending to be members of the Labour party. This is a town that still pays some allegiance to Arthur Scargill.

I may be totaly wrong but I can see Labour loosing this seat in a traditionally Labour voting area.

49

Steve:

That’s my point (I think). No longer could the main parties claim that everyone who doesn’t vote is apathetic. Maybe they just can’t in conscience vote for any mainstream party.

Bugger. In the interests of fighting ignorance (in this case, mine), I have to ask; how does STV work? I’d always considered PR (much) better than FPTP, but I’m very interested in a system which at least one person considers better…

A no-brainer. Quite how they think a deposit system furthers democracy is quite, quite beyond me.

50

Single Transferrable Vote is the system where you can rate the candidates in order of appeal; you give a first-place vote to the one you actually want, and a second-place vote to the one you can most easily live with if your first choice doesn’t get in, and a third-place vote to your third-favourite… and so on, until you run out of candidates or patience.

When the count is done, it’s done on first-place votes at first, and then the candidate with the lowest number of first-place votes is eliminated, and those ballots redistributed according to the second-place choices on them… continue until all but one candidate has been eliminated. I’m sure you get the idea.

Cons: it makes the counting process much more complicated. Pros: you wind up, in theory, with an MP who may not be everybody’s first choice, but is more likely to be one that most people can live with to some extent.

(Very simple thought experiment: Constituency X has Conservatives 40%, Labour 30%, LibDem 25%, others 5%. Under FPTP, the Conservatives get in. Under STV, if the LibDem voters put Labour as their second preference, then after the LibDems are eliminated, Labour wins. But the new Labour MP knows s/he has to keep the LibDems happy…)

STV was used in a lot of student union elections, in the times when I’ve been a student. I think the original purpose of the Electoral Reform Society (which often acts as a neutral watchdog of institutional elections) included the promotion of STV, but don’t know if they still do it.

AFAIK, the deposit system has no stated purpose other than to deter freak candidates from standing. And it doesn’t do that, so it ought to be scrapped. (Though I believe the money from lost deposits goes towards defraying the costs involved in running the election.)

51

Radar images are a good analogy. Someone who votes is not off the radar like you, they are just a small dot. The visible picture on a radar (literally and metaphorically) is made up of small dots.

Just how much power do you think any individual is ever going to have in a country of 60 or 70 million? Following your thinking to it’s logical conclusion there is no point in you or anyone else ever voting at all.

If hardly anyone agrees with one’s views, one is never going to have anything more than trivial influence in a populous democracy. Tough luck. If one believes (as many people do) that there are significant numbers of other people who agree with their views, but who are not represented, then if they all get out and vote, maybe they will become represented.

I do take your point about politicians seeing non-voters as a potential constituency, whom they may change their agenda to capture. And you are also obviously correct in saying that there are ways to send a message other than voting. But politicians are interested above all things in winning elections, and that means they are interested in what is demonstrated to result in actual, cold, hard votes.

All the means of expressing a point of view that you mention are all worth something, and a politician would take some notice of them. But sadly in these days of extensive computer analysis of polling and past election results, what matters most of all is who actually voted (or will vote) for whom.

Finally, in Australia what you term STF (we call it the preferential system) is used almost exclusively. I think it is much better than FPTP, but ironically, many voters dislike the system. Why? Because they hate to give even a second choice vote to someone they say does not represent their views, even if tactically it might further their position. And so they refuse to vote, or despoil their ballot paper. Reminds me of someone else I could mention…

52

Hmmm. I’m tempted to pursue that analogy a little further.

We have a big screen, made up of millions of dots, each representing a voter. Some glow red for Labour, some blue for the Tories, some yellow for the LibDems, a scatering of tasteful pastel shades for the minor parties… and some, like me, fail to glow at all, and appear only as little black spots.

Now, my thinking is that, if enough black spots appear on the screen, the party leaders will start to think about what’s causing them. (Most of them, of course, are caused by abstentions… and so we’ve seen party leaders, on occasions, making caustic comments about voter apathy and exhorting us to vote).

But, if I vote LibDem, I’m just another yellow spot - and there is no way of distinguishing my yellow spot (“LibDem faute de mieux, would prefer a Socialist alternative”) from any other (“LibDem through and through, kisses Charles Kennedy’s portrait every morning”). The LibDems bask in the tiny glow of my support, and go on setting their party agenda in their party conferences, which I have no way of influencing.

Politicians require little urging to become complacent. We all remember Margaret Thatcher, who, in her prime, got something like 46% public support, and acted as if this constituted a personal oath of fealty from everyone in the country. I don’t think it’s a good idea to let politicians think they have my support when, in fact, they don’t.

Of course, under an STV system, I could register a preference - I could, for example, vote Socialist Alliance first, LibDem second, New Improved Diet Labour (98% Principle-Free!) third, etc. - and this would show up in a statistical analysis of votes, and if the LibDems realised they were picking up a lot of votes from old-fashioned Lefties like me, soon enough they will be singing the “Internationale” and calling each other “comrade”. Which is one reason I prefer STV, and why I’d be more likely to cast a vote under an STV system.

But, in the absence of STV, I’ll settle for being a tiny black spot.

53

Well I think we’ve both made our positions pretty clear.

So, T.B.S., I’d wish you good luck with today’s election, but obviously in the circumstances that would be inappropriate.

yours
T.R(ish).S.

54

People choose not to vote for many reasons: frustration, paranoia (the Inland Revenue will track me down), genuine apathy, laziness, forgetfulness. So long as turnout remains over 50% nationwide I don’t think major parties will take any drastic action on policy or electoral reform. If it drops below 50% then they may face even nastier soundbites about lacking a mandate.

I understand that a vote under the present system will be interpreted by those interested in maintaining the status quo as a vote for the present system, but I don’t see that a non-vote will be regarded any differently at the present time, unless turnouts drop dramatically. I don’t think that’s going to happen any time soon; enough people feel just about duty-bound to do it regardless of their true feelings for the electoral system and party politics.

55

Steve, thanks for the explanation of STV; it’s certainly an improvement on what we have now. (And I’m a little less ignorant - result!). I’m not looking forward to tonight (trying to find a TV channel which isn’t running a 12 hour election special) but hopefully we’ll back to normal (?) sometime over the weekend.

56

Ah, happy memories !

“And now over to Enfield Southgate for an important result”

“…Michael Denzil Xavier Portillo…”

David Mellor’s confrontation with Sir James Goldsmith at the Putney count

Won’t be quite the same tonight. Still, I think I’ll stay up and watch the debacle.

57

It doesn’t deter all the freak candidates from standing, but it does deter many of them. The point is, more of them tend to stand in high-profile constituencies so they get a disproportionate amount of coverage on election night.

Looking at a random, alphabetical sample of 30 constituencies from 1997 (Manchester Blackley to New Forest East), the following “freak” candidates stood for election:

Pro Life and Rainbow Dream Ticket in Manchester Withington

Natural Law in Mid-Norfolk, Mid Worcestershire, Milton Keynes North East, Milton Keynes South West, Mole Valley, Morcambe and Lunesdale

Justice and Renewal Independence Party in Mid-Sussex

BNP, Independent and Anti-Corr in Mitcham and Morden

Independent Conservative Referendum in Mole Valley

BNP and Pro Life in Morley and Rothwell

Cannabis in Neath

That is almost exactly one “freak” candidate for every two constituencies. Even then, I’m not sure that the BNP should be counted as “freaks” since they are an established political party with a well-defined agenda which has had at least one candidate elected to political office in the UK (all the more reason to use your vote today). Ditto Natural Law. And Cannabis and Pro-Life could well be candidates who are trying to raise an important political issue; and standing for Parliament is a legitimate way of doing that.

More to the point, think how many freaks there’d be without the deposit system. Every nutter with a greivance would be standing for Parliament and it would make the ballot paper unweildy and could, in some cases, lead to genuine confusion.

The other point is that every candidate gets a free mailshot to every household in the constituency. Without the deposit system, it becomes a worthwhile advertising opportunity even for comparatively small businesses.

58

The need to have some method of discouraging ‘freak’ candidates would become all the more compelling if Britain did use STV. The more candidates on the ballot paper, the more voters would resent the perceived complexity of STV and the more laborious the counting process would become.

One danger with STV is that, for many, the decision about the precise ordering of preferences would not be the result of careful thought based on extensive knowledge of all the parties but a haphazard choice made under pressure in the polling booth.

59

A valid point. Certainly, if a truly obnoxious candidate stood a real chance in my constituency, I would be turning out to vote against him/her. Fortunately, that is not the case, for me, at the moment.

It is indeed, and my point is, why should it be limited only to those who can afford to lose the deposit?

It’s always difficult to say for certain how many people are being deterred from action… the only person I actually know gave up standing for Parliament after a raise in the deposit was the redoubtable Commander Bill Boakes (a fixture at by-elections throughout the Seventies; come to think of it, his “Death Off the Roads - Freight on Rail” campaign makes a certain amount of sense, when you think about what’s subsequently happened to our transport infrastructure). It does seem to me that, prior to the raising of the deposit, there was no particular glut of freak candidates, whereas, afterwards, there was no particular shortage either. It should be easy enough to check (I sense a visit to the library coming on…)

Regulations could be put in place to deal with this sort of abuse… in fact, given the number of Conservative candidates who are small (or not-so-small) businessmen, I’d be surprised if such regulations didn’t already exist.

60

Actually, a quick search on the Net yielded this page of British election results, from which I abstract the following information about “other” candidates (those outside the big three - Conservative, Labour, Liberal/Alliance/LibDem)

(I’ve restricted it to elections in my lifetime. And they don’t have complete stats for 1997.)


Year      No.of Candidates   No. Losing Deposits
====      ================   ===================
1964      134                121
1966      146                253
1970      253                208
1974      372                265
1974      387                276
1979      754                673
1983      580                570
1987      427                307
1992      1040               888

(In case anyone’s confused: yes, that nice Mr. Wilson let us have two General Elections in 1974.)

Even with the increases in the deposit, it seems more and more people are prepared to stand. Of course, the “others” category includes regional parties (such as the SNP, SDLP, UUP, DUP, Plaid Cymru and Sinn Fein) and semi-fringe parties (such as the Greens, the UKIP, and, regrettably, the NF and BNP), both of which categories have gathered support in recent years. Still, there can’t be any shortage of freaks.