WeeklyWorker

14.04.2010

Accountable to their party

All three mainstream parties promise voters the power to recall their MPs. Jim Moody looks at the details

No-one imagines that the Conservative and Unionist Party of David Cameron has had a sudden collective rush of democratic blood to the head. It is more likely that the disgust of most electors at the MPs’ expenses scandal has produced the latest Tory think-tank brainwave: the right to recall MPs, which has now been taken up by Labour and the Liberal Democrats too. However, their proposals would hardly empower voters.

Under the Tories, the House of Commons Committee on Standards and Privileges[1] (CSP) would have the authority to recommend an MP’s recall in the event of “proven serious wrongdoing”. A by-election would follow if at least 10% of voters in the constituency backed it. But what is so special about the CSP? In November 2009 Tory MP David Curry was forced to resign as its chairman after he was found to have claimed £30,000 for a second home he never used. Another committee member, Labour’s Andrew Dismore, was exposed as a ‘flipper’ who had claimed over £65,000 in second home allowance, despite representing a London constituency (Hendon). He refused to step down from the CSP.

The Tories would allow the recall process to be triggered only if a committee of MPs determined that one of their colleagues had been in engaged in “serious wrongdoing” - concerning, say, their expenses. It could not happen because electors were outraged by the MP’s political behaviour - voting for an assault on living standards or to support a brutal war. Under such circumstances, to quote the Tories, there is no way that “local constituents can remove an MP … until there is a general election”.

In reality the Conservatives’ “power of recall” would give the state another instrument of control. Envisage, for example, a working class MP who has been elected by the largest number of votes, if not a majority, who then has a case brought successfully against them at the CSP on who knows what spurious charges. The fact that the MP had been ‘found guilty’ by this committee would surely influence the outcome of the subsequent election, no doubt aided by the prostituted mass media to make doubly sure.

Gordon Brown has laid down the Labour version of the power of recall, which again could not be implemented for political reasons. The Labour Party election manifesto states merely: “MPs who are found responsible for financial misconduct will be subject to a right of recall if parliament itself has failed to act against them.”[2]

Not for Labour the partially discredited CSP, however. Recall would apparently be triggered by a recommendation of the new Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority.[3] The IPSA was created by the Parliamentary Standards Act 2009 in response to the scandal over expenses and MPs’ corruption. Its first chair is Sir Ian McColl Kennedy (£700 per day plus expenses), a prominent academic lawyer with a track record on quasi-government committees and whose own expenses claims have been called into question. Board members (£400 per day plus expenses) are court of appeal judge Lord Justice Scott Baker, banker Ken Olisa, ex-Lib Dem MP and charity chief Jackie Ballard, and Deloitte partner professor Isobel Sharp. The IPSA interim chief executive is Andrew McDonald (£105,000-£115,000 pa), who has been slid across from the Sector Skills Council for Central Government and the Armed Forces, where he was CEO.

So, just like the Tory proposal, the recall process could only be initiated after representatives of the state - in this case government-appointed bureaucrats par excellence - had given the go-ahead. In Labour’s case, the trigger for voter approval for a fresh election would be a vaguer “10-25%” of the electorate. The Liberal Democrats, like Labour, support recall of MPs who are recommended for it by the IPSA. But the Lib Dems’ proposal would only require 5% of constituents to back the move for a new poll. Once again, though, we are faced with a proposal that ensures that only state-appointed and approved committees of whatever stripe can instigate recall.

As we have all too sadly come to expect, when it comes to working class groups and ‘parties’, there is blank incomprehension all round. For these organisations it is as if the historical record of working class on these democratic questions has been expunged.

The closest that the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition platform comes to tackling the issue is: “Defend our liberties and make police and security democratically accountable” (the latter a most dubious demand for Marxists).[4] Nowhere among Tusc’s policies is there anything about making MPs accountable. Since Tusc has 42 candidates, one might have thought there would be some mention of accountability. But no, regrettably not.

On the Respect website, too, there is no sign that the organisation understands the importance of democratic accountability for elected representatives. As I write, its 2010 manifesto for its 10 general election candidates is not yet available and visitors to Respect’s website are directed to the 2005 document. Here, in the ‘Democracy and representation’ section, there is a commitment to a “fully proportional voting system” (including for an “elected upper chamber” to replace the House of Lords!).[5] No mention at all of keeping representatives accountable nor of any means of recall. As for a worker’s wage ... well, up to now that has been total anathema to Respect. Will it get a mention in the 2010 manifesto? Don’t hold your breath.

PR and recall

As Moshé Machover illustrated in his Weekly Worker article,[6] the first-past-the-post electoral system used for Westminster elections is one of the most undemocratic that could be devised. Most MPs are elected on around 40% of the votes cast. Since very many MPs are actually opposed by most of their electorate, it is quite possible that a majority of voters would always vote to recall someone, even if he or she had just been elected. That is why genuinely democratic recall cannot be contemplated by the big three parties: it would expose an electoral system whereby the majority of voters are effective disenfranchised, since most MPs as well as the government do not have majority support in the first place.

Were a single transferable vote (STV) reform to be put in place, and Labour is proposing a referendum on that issue, recall by the electorate would be just as problematic. Under STV, votes of candidates at the bottom of the poll are redistributed according to their secondary preferences until someone achieves a majority; but a good number of these lower-preference votes will have been given grudgingly and you would expect many voters to be happy to get another chance to vote for their first choice. STV would, however, still be compatible with the three main parties’ recall proposals, which all entrust the decision to initiate the process with a state-appointed body.

A democratic electoral system would be genuinely proportional - whereby each party’s support was reflected as near as possible in its overall representation. In other words, a party that received 30% (or 3%) of the overall vote would end up with 30% (or 3%) of MPs. Only a party list system could match up to that - and one without any minimum threshold. For example, if Tusc managed to win 1% of the overall vote on May 6, that would entitle it to around six MPs under the party list system.

Obviously, though, to allow supporters of other parties to ‘recall’ those for whom they had not voted would defeat the whole object of proportional representation. Accordingly, the power of recall should reside in the party upon whose list an elected member appeared. It goes without saying that communist MPs should be answerable to the party, when it comes to how they vote in parliament.

The demand for parties to be able to recall their MPs goes hand in hand with another central republican principle: annual parliaments. We should not have to wait for five years before we can ditch an unpopular government. Unfortunately most of the left appears to have forgotten this old Chartist demand. Let us be clear. What Marxists call for is democratic reforms that empower the working class so that it can challenge the capitalist system.

So the right of recall that the left should champion should be without any mediation by state committees that will have an inbuilt establishment bias. In addition, the left should demand a skilled worker’s wage for a worker’s representative and the abolition of the monarchy and the House of Lords and opposition to any second chamber.

jim.moody(at)weeklyworker.org.uk

Notes

  1. www.parliament.uk/parliamentary_committees/standards_and_privileges.cfm
  2. The Labour Party manifesto 2010: www2.labour.org.uk/uploads/TheLabourPartyManifesto-2010.pdf
  3. www.theipsa.co.uk
  4. Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition policies, ‘Democracy, diversity and justice’: www.tusc.org.uk/policy.php
  5. www.therespectparty.net/manifesto.php?category=Democracy
  6. ‘Proportional representation and Brown’s opportunist ploy’ Weekly Worker April 1.