However, the prospect of achieving a written constitution looks more remote than ever, given the way that the major parties together block crucial constitutional issues and prevent them reaching the political agenda. It seems we will continue to be one of only two countries in the world without one.

This is where our pamphlet comes in. We thought it was time to write down or ‘codify’ not what should happen to make our system democratic, but what happens in practice; and to do so from the standpoint of the governing elite that exercises power on our behalf but would prefer that its operation be mystified as much as possible. They recognise how important it is that such a document should never see the light of day.

The constitution begins by extolling the virtues of being unwritten:

It is a collection of laws, fictions, powers left over from the old monarchy and powers that we make up as we go along. It allows us to decide what governments can do; and best of all, only we have the power to change it … The great advantage of this flexibility is that once we have hit on a new way of behaving, it becomes part of the constitution. And we can modernise easily. So we have moved on from old-fashioned cabinet government to sofa government by the prime minister with trusted allies and special advisors. Presidential, yes, but faster and more efficient. This excellent state of affairs allows us to exercise executive power more or less as we please while the whole world admires us as a democracy.

There then follows a list of the ‘unspoken articles’ of what Jack Straw has termed our ‘executive democracy’. We understand that Sir Humphrey and his colleagues have chuckled particularly loudly at the following articles:

Government, like every subject, shall be free to do whatever is not unlawful. The government shall decide what is unlawful.

The government shall have the power to enact ministerial edicts, known as statutory instruments or Orders in Council, this secondary legislation being in effect law-making that can almost wholly escape parliamentary scrutiny and debate.

In the event of controversy over government actions, the government may have recourse to carefully chosen judges or former civil servants to hold an inquiry that has due respect for government’s need for support and discretion. The government shall set the terms of reference for any inquiry, have powers to suspend it or restrict public access to it, and may censor an inquiry report to prevent any information emerging which we say may harm state economic and security interests.

Civil servants … shall be allowed to enhance generous pensions by taking advantage of their departmental experience and contacts through lucrative appointments in relevant private companies.

We hope you will read the whole document with similar amusement. But we expect that it will also make you angry that this is the way we are governed in the 21st century.

We like to think that it makes an irresistible case for a written constitution, rooted in sound democratic principles and in popular sovereignty; but we would urge proponents of the status quo to come forward and make their case for its defence, on democratic, or indeed any other, grounds.

Of course, debate is not enough in itself, and particularly not if it is limited to converts to the cause. Some matters are simply too urgent to be left until the glorious day when our written constitution is unveiled. At the same time, voters need to be offered more than a Hobson’s choice at the 2010 election between political parties making rival claims about which areas of government spending they will cut.

The issues of how power is exercised, by whom and in whose interests, must be forced to the fore of the election debate. Over the next six months, the Power 2010 initiative will seek to bring these issues back onto the political agenda. It is a good job somebody is – the party conference season confirmed that it would be foolhardy to leave it to our political masters.

Download a copy of the pamphlet here

The authors are certainly correct about the public disengagement from political parties, which is a Europe-wide phenomenon. In almost all established democracies, political parties come at the bottom of the list of institutions in which people express confidence, lower even than banks and bankers, not to mention second-hand car dealers. Over time political parties have lost what popular implantation they once had, and are seen merely as vehicles for professional politicians to win and exercise power, integrated into the state rather than society.

A number of factors have coincided to produce this detachment between parties and the electorate. One is the fragmentation of their traditional social bases and associated organisations. Another is the electoral ‘arms race’, which puts parties in hock to wealthy funders and business interests. A third has been the neoliberal economic hegemony driving globalisation, which has robbed political parties, especially on the left, of any ideological distinctiveness that might make them worth joining or voting for.

Then there has been the decline of inner-party democracy, as leaderships have excluded divergent voices for fear of media exposure of ‘splits’ and ‘loss of authority’. And finally we could add the professionalisation of politics and the construction of a special class that seems to bear little relation to how people live their daily lives. Together these factors have produced a self-reinforcing cycle of alienation between political parties and the public, reflected in declining memberships and voter turnout.

If this situation is general across much of Europe, it is particularly acute in the UK. The hollowing out of local government and its powers has deprived local parties of much of their rationale, and prevented the development of alternative leaderships that might challenge the centralised hierarchies. And the first-past-the-post electoral system ossifies the existing party structure by creating an enormous hurdle for new party entrants. In this context the idea proposed by the Jury Team of a loose framework of self-selected independents, bereft of ideology or programme except the need to ‘clean up politics’, looks more like another symptom of the problem rather than a solution to it.

Nor does the idea of reinvigorating the roots of existing parties by copying the successful electronic mobilisations of the US Democrats look at all plausible, in the absence of any credible renewal of leadership, programme or way of conducting politics such as Obama has represented. All the main UK parties are now ideologically bankrupt, having all embraced the neoliberal economic project with enthusiasm, and are now flailing around for some alternative other than a future return to ‘business as usual’.

The dilemma of the left in Britain is that our critique of neoliberalism and elaboration of alternatives to its orthodoxies now has a potentially receptive audience for the first time for a generation, yet we lack a political party to articulate it and campaign widely for it. Many progressive activists have abandoned parties altogether to take part in single-issue campaigns, self-help organisations and broader social movements, which offer a better chance of achieving meaningful change than by passing ineffectual resolutions up the party line, only to be shunted into a siding. Yet these modes of activism lack any broader political organisation to provide continuity and programmatic coherence, and to campaign for the influence that comes with elected public office.

In sum, if political parties didn’t exist, we would be forced to reinvent them. Even the arch individualist, Edmund Burke, acknowledged the need for groupings of the likeminded in parliament. ‘When the bad combine, the good must associate,’ he wrote. In the absence of any credible party of the left in Britain, at least there are organisations to support that combine members of the left within and outside the Labour Party to develop a programmatic alternative to neoliberalism, such as Compass and the Convention of the Left. I welcome the fact that Red Pepper is associated with both.

The historic opportunity to reinvent the public sphere after the collapse of market fundamentalism finds a UK polity that excludes popular voice and participation, and where the leadership of all parties remains still wedded to free market dogma. Brown and Darling both see the partial public ownership of banks as merely an interim and regrettable necessity, fattening them up with public money for a return to business as usual. In the meantime, government pleas for an end to the bonus culture, and for banks to lend to households and businesses at non-exorbitant rates, fall on deaf ears.

As for the promise of tighter regulation of speculative activities some time in the future, the epitaph on that was written long ago by J K Galbraith in his masterly book on the Great Crash of 1929. ‘Regulatory bodies,’ he wrote, ‘like the people who comprise them, have a marked life cycle.

‘In youth they are vigorous, aggressive, evangelistic, and even intolerant. Later they mellow, and in old age – after a matter of ten or 15 years – they become … either an arm of the industry they are regulating or senile.’

William Buiter, a former member of the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee, has argued instead that, if the banks and their depositors are to depend on taxpayers as guarantor of last resort, then the only logical course is to nationalise them outright. Then their activities could be overseen by boards that are publicly accountable to all the different stakeholders involved in their business. Such a move would complement the reinvention of mutuals and other investment agencies advocated elsewhere in this edition of Red Pepper.

In the USA the financial crisis has coincided with a reinvigoration of the democratic process from below, which bears marked similarities to that under Franklin D Roosevelt during the Depression of the 1930s. Whatever disappointed expectations may await in the presidency of Barack Obama, his election was only possible because of a huge mobilisation of black and Latino citizens, young people, new voters and those who had never voted before, such as we in this country can only envy.

Howard Dean began the reinvigoration of the grassroots of the Democratic Party in 2004, and Obama was able to build on that mass base of activists with remarkable effect. ‘Above all,’ he told his supporters at his victory rally in Chicago, ‘I will never forget who this victory truly belongs to – it belongs to you.’ And among his first acts as president-elect was to send an email to all his supporters inviting their views on his policy priorities.

Of course, as Gary Younge pointed out in the last edition of Red Pepper, the realisation of a progressive policy agenda under President Obama will depend on his supporters ‘not standing still after election day’. Yet the contrast already with the condition of party and electoral democracy in this country is palpable. With a supposedly progressive party in power for more than a decade, and having presided over an economic model that has proved disastrous, the only realistic governmental alternative is a Tory Party that is even more wedded to free market solutions, and to dependence on finance and business to fill their electoral coffers. Dinner with Russian oligarchs on board a yacht offers a paradigmatic contrast to the millions of small donations that provided the resources for Obama’s electoral victory.

It may be that some time in the future we shall achieve a reform of the electoral system that will require political parties to go for every vote in each constituency, and a parallel reform to individual donation limits that will encourage the parties to seek a mass base of supporters to finance their election campaigns. In the meantime, perhaps the best that democrats here can hope for is that a wind of change blowing across the Atlantic from Obama’s victory may shift the parameters of public debate and government policy in a more progressive direction than our leaders, left to their own devices, have shown themselves inclined towards. Moreover, whatever the parallels that may have been drawn, Tony Blair 1997 stands no comparison with Barack Obama 2008.

The measure was only pushed through the Commons by massive arm-twisting of Labour MPs, playing on their fear that defeat would destroy Brown’s remaining authority, and by the shabbiest of deals with the Democratic Unionists. And it has demonstrated the bankruptcy of the Blairite tactic of making up policy to wrong-foot the Tories, which has sunk Brown’s credibility since the autumn.

David Davis’s decision to resign his seat and fight a by-election on the issue was variously described as maverick, wrong-headed, self-indulgent and a waste of public money. It won support across the political spectrum, however, for two main reasons. The first is that it chimes in with a widespread feeling that our distinctive liberties are being eroded across the board, with Labour’s restrictions on freedom of expression and assembly, the extension of mechanisms of surveillance, invasions of privacy, development of databases of all kinds, the plan for biometric ID cards and so on.

No doubt there are arguments to be made to support aspects of these developments. Jill Saward decided to stand against Davis on the platform ‘The liberty to live without fear’, especially women in fear of rape, and argued that the national DNA database and CCTV surveillance have provided essential tools in the fight against serious crime. Yet we should resist the extension of the DNA database to the whole population, as she has proposed, and demand much more effective safeguards to ensure that surveillance is not used for trivial or improper purposes.

Again, no threat to liberty may be entailed in the idea of identity cards as such, carrying basic personal information. I still have the identity card issued to me in the second world war, number LFZF 324/3, later transferred to my national health card. I carry such cards for identification in all kinds of situations – passport, driving licence, bus pass, European medical card and so on. What is wrong is trying to roll all these into one for administrative and personal convenience, and adding a whole lot of personal information, which no one can trust the government to gather correctly, to keep safe when gathered or not use for improper purposes.

So we need to get the balance right, and David Davis has tapped a widespread concern that the government has got the balance wrong, even though we may not agree with him on every detail.

A second concern that Davis has tapped into is the widespread distrust of parliamentarians and the political class as a whole. They are seen as unprincipled, more concerned with holding onto power and its personal benefits than doing what they believe to be right. The methods by which a Commons majority was achieved for the 42-days law epitomised these failings – and won support for Davis as someone prepared to sacrifice future cabinet office for a principle he believed in.

However, what Davis has not said, because as a Tory he is unable to do so, is that for the past 25 years parliament as an institution has proved a broken reed in defending the liberties of the subject in the face of executive encroachment. It was for this reason that the Labour government in 1997 found it necessary to introduce the Human Rights Act and give UK courts the power to enforce it against the executive and to caution parliament itself against potential legislative breaches.

The Tories have not been backward in accusing judges who do so of acting undemocratically, and have proposed to amend if not abolish the Human Rights Act. Yet the independence of the judiciary is an essential component of a democratic system, especially when it is defending the basic rights and freedoms necessary for citizens in a democratic society.

If Davis’s action serves to strengthen the liberal tendency in a future Conservative administration, then it may have served a useful purpose. But don’t hold your breath.

So, for example, we read: ‘The government believes that a clearer definition of citizenship would give people a better sense of their British identity in a globalised world.’ (sec. 185). ‘A clearer understanding of the common core of rights and responsibilities that go with British citizenship will help build our sense of shared identity and social cohesion.’ (193). ‘It is important to be clearer about what it means to be British, what it means to be part of British society and, crucially, to be resolute in making the point that what comes with that is a set of values which have not just to be shared but also accepted.’ (195).

To this end the green paper promised a series of discussion documents – on citizenship, on British values, on a British bill of rights – as part of a wide-ranging national debate on the country’s future. The first of these was Lord Goldsmith’s Citizenship Review, Citizenship: Our Common Bond, complete with a host of accompanying research documents; others are promised shortly.

The first reaction of anyone reading this mass of material has to be astonishment that so much effort is felt to be necessary chasing a will of the wisp called Britishness, or even to defining a distinctive set of rights and responsibilities which are specific to British citizens as opposed, say, to long-term residents settled here from other EU countries, from Commonwealth countries or the Republic of Ireland. A second reaction is how prescriptive, even hortatory, so much of the language is in which this whole enterprise is couched, as the above quotations from the green paper demonstrate. What exactly is going on here, and why is it felt to be so urgent at this historical juncture?

It may be that Gordon Brown’s longstanding preoccupation with Britishness has something to do with a certain vulnerability he has felt as a Scottish premier-in-waiting and now prime minister of a predominantly English country, with other Scots holding leading positions in his cabinet. There are, however, more general concerns which have coincided to drive this agenda:

· Following devolution of government to Scotland and Wales, increasing numbers of residents there declare that they think of themselves as more Scottish or Welsh than British, and the English are now following suit. A British identity seems to be losing its attraction, and the Union to be correspondingly at risk.

· The growing number of black and Asian Britons in our cities, many of them with their own distinct languages and cultures, and maybe identifying with their country of family origin, is felt to require the assertion of some overarching or unifying identity as a necessary counterweight to the centrifugal tendencies of ‘multiculturalism’. The discovery that the suicide bombers of 7/7 and 21/7 were British born and bred has been particularly shocking.

· There is widespread concern in government about the public’s alienation from the formal political process, and especially that of young people, whose participation in the elections of 2001 and 2005 showed a massive decline from 1997. Among the measures outlined to combat this in last July’s green paper was the idea of a Youth Citizenship Commission, which would ‘examine ways to invigorate young people’s understanding of the historical narrative of our country and what it means to be a British citizen, and to increase their participation in the political sphere.’ (190)

A historical narrative of Britain

A good place to start if we want to understand what is problematic about the government’s attempt to revive Britishness as a response to the concerns listed above is precisely with ‘the historical narrative of our country’. Of course there is no single narrative but many diverse, even competing, ones. However, one historical account which any discussion of this issue has to come to terms with is that by Linda Colley in her widely regarded book, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707 to 1837 (Yale UP, 1992). Great Britain (as distinct form the United Kingdom), she argues, came into being with the Act of Union of 1707, and the British nation was subsequently ‘forged’ out of a number of components: through the project of Empire and the trading opportunities that went with it; from a common commitment to Protestantism; and by a monarchy at the apex of an increasingly interconnected landed ruling class. All these elements were reinforced by wars against Continental Europe and especially Catholic France, which served as the ‘other’ against which British distinctiveness came to be most clearly defined.

A number of points are worth noting from Colley’s account:

1. British nationhood came to be ‘added on’ to other identities, Scots, Welsh, English, or more purely local ones, rather than replacing them, or merging with them. Great Britain was ‘an invented nation superimposed, if only for a while, onto much older alignments and loyalties.’ In this respect being British has always allowed for multiple identities, though the English as the numerically and politically dominant element have always more readily regarded ‘English’ and British’ as interchangeable, rather than distinguishing between the two.

2. British nationhood was always more civic than ethnic, to use a common distinction from nationality studies. That is, it was a matter of commitment to, and identification with, certain common institutions, including of course the Westminster Parliament, rather than depending on ‘blood and soil’. There were certain exclusions of an ethnic kind, it should be said, such as Catholics and Jews, and the English language provided a significant unifying base. But it was the common institutions of political and civic life that defined what was distinctively ‘British’. And commitment to them, Colley insists, was always as much a matter of self-interest as of emotionally based allegiance or ideology.

3. The British nation was essentially an elite project, though identification with it spread downwards in the latter half of Colley’s period through a combination of military service in successful wars and popular mobilisations at royal events and anniversaries.

Not everyone agrees with Colley that the story of Britain began only in 1707, but nearly everyone who has commented on her work, including Colley herself, accepts that the defining elements of Britishness which she identifies all came to an end or were substantially eroded during the second half of the twentieth century, and can no longer form the basis of a distinctively British identity or nationhood. Here is how Colley herself puts it:

‘As an invented nation heavily dependent for its ‘raison d’etre’ on a broadly Protestant culture, on the threat and tonic of recurrent war, particularly war with France, and on the triumphs, profits and Otherness represented by a massive overseas empire, Britain is bound now to be under immense pressure…..We can understand the nature of present debates and controversies only if we recognise that the factors that provided for the forging of a British nation in the past have largely ceased to operate.’

To be sure, Colley’s own narrative ends with 1837, and there have been attempts by others to identify nation-wide institutions developed during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries which have provided alternative bases for a distinctively British identity, and served as integrating elements. These include the Royal Mail and the Post Office, the BBC, the political parties, the trade union movement, and the various institutions of the welfare state created by the 1945 Labour government, from the NHS to a range of nationalised utilities and other bodies with ‘British’ in their name, serving the whole of the country. Whether these institutions could ever have provided the same resonance as the ones identified by Linda Colley is now irrelevant, since most of them have been decimated, if not eliminated, by the privatisations initiated by Mrs. Thatcher and continued under New Labour. Even the ‘Unionist’ Conservative Party ended Mrs. Thatcher’s period of rule as almost exclusively English, having lost virtually all Parliamentary representation in Scotland and Wales. And there is no doubt that her period of rule exacerbated if not started a trend towards the individualisation of economic and social life, which provides infertile ground for any wider social or political loyalty or commitment.

Two simple conclusions can be drawn from this history. The first is that to look to ‘the historical narrative of our country’ to find any basis for a contemporary restatement of what it means to be British, is to build on very shifting sand. The second is that a sense of nationhood cannot be forged from flags, from ceremonials, from statements of values or even from definitions of citizenship, but only from shared institutions of civic and public life which command wide respect.

But does it really matter if the constitutive elements of a distinctively British identity have worn thin? Is it any longer relevant in a globalising age, when many of the public values we subscribe to are ones we share with other western democracies, when our justiciable rights as citizens are drawn from the European Convention on Human Rights, and when the causes many of our young people are attracted to are international rather than national ones – the environment, fair trade, global poverty, and so on? Is a concentration on trying to define what it means to be British anything other than a rather parochial sideshow?

It is tempting simply to answer ‘no’ to all these questions, and to end this paper here. To do so, however, would be to miss the opportunity provided by the government’s initiatives, and the publicity surrounding them, to articulate a more progressive alternative to those contained in the recent documents. Sketching out what this alternative might look like, and what the obstacles are to realising it, will form the second part of the paper.

A progressive alternative

I shall begin again with Linda Colley, this time with a millennium lecture she gave to Tony Blair and other dignitaries in Downing Street in December 1999, speaking as she herself says more as a citizen than as a historian. The lecture was entitled Britishness in the Twenty-first Century. Here she exhorts her listeners to stop ‘persistently asking agonised questions about the viability of Britishness’, since it would be difficult to identify core national values ‘in a way that commands broad assent, unless you descend to uttering platitudes … Instead of being so mesmerised by debates over British identity,’ she goes on, ‘it would be far more productive to concentrate on renovating British citizenship, and in convincing all of the inhabitants of these islands that they are equal and valued citizens irrespective of whatever identity they may individually select to prioritise.’ She then sketches out a conception of a revivified ‘Citizen Nation’ based on equality of rights and sovereignty of the people, shorn of rank and ‘antiquated elements’, dedicated to tackling racial and sexual discrimination, and involving a wider diffusion and decentralisation of power.

The contrast between this conception of citizenship and that offered by Lord Goldsmith in his Citizenship Review could not be starker. Where Colley seeks a more genuinely inclusive and democratic citizenship, Goldsmith is preoccupied with finding what distinguishes those who possess British citizenship from those who don’t; with using this citizenship to define a British identity; with rituals, ceremonies and other antiquated remnants; and with an extremely narrow definition of ‘active citizenship’ which is limited to voting and ‘volunteering’, rather than the range of activities in which citizens can and do engage to defend and promote their interests, improve their lives, influence public policy or challenge injustice. In sum, it is just what one might expect from a patriarchal Lord rather than a democratically minded commoner.

Linda Colley’s millennium lecture provides a good starting point for a more progressive conception of citizenship, and I would recommend people to read it. What it does not address, however, are what the obstacles might be to realising the more progressive conception that she outlines. It is surely no accident that many of these obstacles are to be found in precisely those foundational components of British nationhood which everyone assumes have now disappeared or lost their significance. Far from having disappeared, however, their inheritance remains deeply ingrained and persistently reproduced in the British state and public life, where they work to frustrate the realisation of a more democratic Citizen Nation based upon equality. Let me consider each of these components in turn.

Empire

The most obvious legacy of Empire is of course the multi-racial and multi-ethnic composition of Britain’s population itself. But the integration of these peoples as equal citizens continues to be hampered, not only by linguistic and educational disadvantage, but also by the attitudinal legacy of white superiority that was inherent in the British imperial project. This legacy is powerfully reinforced by latter-day versions of liberal imperialism, in which Britain seeks to bring ‘freedom’ or ‘democracy’ to benighted countries of the developing world, albeit now on the coat-tails of US military power. Far from being an aberration of Tony Blair, this mentality is continually reproduced within the British state, as witnessed most recently by David Miliband, who in a recent Oxford lecture outlined a ‘great progressive project’ of spreading democracy around the world, if necessary by ‘hard’ as well as ‘soft’ power.

What has this to do with the different progressive project of creating a more inclusive and equal citizenship at home? Colley’s history shows repeatedly how national identities come to be defined externally, through opposition to a foreign ‘other’, especially in war. In the contemporary world of multi-ethnic societies, however, this process of opposition can turn out to be as internally divisive as unifying. The invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan have caused deep alienation among the Muslim communities of Britain, and the characterisation of these conflicts as part of a ‘global war on terrorism’ has reinforced the conception of a threatening ‘other’ in our midst which echoes the position of British Catholics in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century wars against Catholic Europe.

If the persistence of the imperial mentality within society and state is one legacy of empire that works to hinder a more inclusive and equal citizenship, a second is the institution of the public schools. Although some of these predate the Empire, it was the 19th century that saw their greatest expansion and consolidation as a training ground for imperial rule. They now survive as a highly effective vehicle for reproducing social and economic privilege across generations, through the preferential access of their pupils to the most prestigious universities and into the leading professions. Yet the most fundamental requirement for equal citizenship is a common system of public education, which is shared by all, and through which they learn to recognise all sorts and diversities of future citizens as potential equals. Tinkering at the margin with the charity law for private schools only shows how far we remain from realising such a basic condition for citizenship.

Trade

The trading supremacy which came with the British Empire is of course long since at an end, but its legacy persists in one of the world’s most open economies, in which finance capital through the City of London holds the dominant position, nurtured by successive governments. The enormous and ever-increasing inequalities generated by this ‘Anglo-Saxon’ model of capitalism have been well documented and commented on by others. Two consequences have followed, however, for the ‘rights and duties of citizenship’ that are the direct responsibility of government, one at either end of the economic scale.

At the top end is the enormous system of tax avoidances and evasions which enable wealthy corporations and individuals to escape their citizenship obligations. On the very day the Goldsmith review of citizenship was published we were reminded of the tax rules that have allowed British citizens to spend up to 270 days a year working in Britain, while avoiding paying tax by claiming residence in tax havens such as Monaco. This is only the tip of a very large iceberg. For example, Goldsmith’s account of ‘recent changes in citizenship’ mentions an exotic-sounding list of places, from Anguilla and Bermuda to the Turks and Caico Islands, whose citizens now qualify for British citizenship under the British Overseas Territories Act of 2002. What he does not mention, of course, is that these remnants of Empire include a roll-call of tax havens under British jurisdiction, where international companies and billionaires can escape their citizenship responsibilities, and deprive governments around the world, including our own, of vitally needed revenue. And this list does not include the Isle of Man or Jersey, the latter of whose citizens, we recently learn, have now to be charged a food tax to pay for the reduction of corporation tax to zero.

The other side to this open and deregulated economy is the determination of successive British governments to demand opt-outs from the EU treaties from Maastricht to Lisbon, which would guarantee workers the same rights in employment that are enjoyed by the citizens of other member states. Given this record, it comes as no surprise to find that the one item that the July green paper explicitly excludes from a future British Bill of Rights and Duties is any incorporation of economic and social rights into British law. Labour’s ‘common bond of citizenship’, in short, will continue to allow the evasion of responsibilities by the wealthy, while limiting rights to economic security for other citizens.

The monarchy

Of all the components contributing to the forging of Britain since 1707, the monarchy is the one that has remained relatively unchanged, despite various vicissitudes. In doing so it has not only consolidated the remnants of an aristocratic social order, complete with titles, ermine and ceremonial, but perpetuated the self-definition of the people as subjects rather than citizens. The first action of those acquiring British citizenship through naturalisation is to swear an oath that they ‘will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, her Heirs and Successors’. Lord Goldsmith now proposes that this feudal relic, which has no intelligible meaning in the modern world, should be extended to all young people in public citizenship ceremonies to be attended at the end of their schooling. His reasoning seems to be that, since those holding public office have to swear the oath, it is ‘evidence of the duty of allegiance owed by all British nationals’, and should therefore be publicly acknowledged by all.

Not surprisingly, this proposal aroused the strongest opposition in the consultation process commissioned as part of the Citizenship Review. However, the fact that it could be entertained at all shows how deeply ingrained in the British state is the idea that the monarch, not the people, is sovereign, albeit in practice the government through Parliament now exercises that sovereignty on her behalf. And the attitude of deferential subordination to those representing that sovereignty which the whole idea conveys is deeply corrosive of any democratic conception of a Citizen Nation, confident in itself as the only source of legitimate political authority, and ready to challenge and hold accountable those who temporarily exercise it on their behalf.

Protestantism

Unlike the monarchy, Protestantism has long since ceased to be a defining marker of being British, since the Catholic emancipation of the nineteenth century and the removal of lesser civil disabilities from members of other religious minorities. However, what it has left as its legacy is a wholly disproportionate place for religion in the formal public sphere, given that we have one of the most secularised societies in the world in terms of religious observance. The point where this most impinges on citizenship, again, is in the school system, and in the continuing proliferation of ‘faith’ schools paid for from public funds. I should say here that I myself come from a deeply religious family, and I am no militant secularist. But I believe that religion belongs in the sphere of civil society, where it has an important role and an honourable tradition, but not in the formal public sphere, whether this be through guaranteed places in an upper chamber of Parliament, or in segregated schools paid for from taxation, whose curriculum, ethos and selection of both pupils and staff is subject to religious criteria and influence. The necessary educational basis of a common citizenship does not rule out diversity between different schools and their curricula within a common system, but it is inconsistent with exclusivities of access and membership based either on wealth or parental religious belief or occasional practice.

Wars against continental Europe

The most powerful element in forging the British nation, according to Colley, were the wars against continental Europe, first against France in the 18th and early 19th centuries, and then against Germany and its allies in the 20th. Thankfully, these have now ceased, but they have left perhaps the most persistent legacy of all, in a population that is readily influenced by the caricatures of a Europhobic press and a government that is scared of making an honest case for the European Union and our role within it. This is particularly relevant to the issue of citizenship, since arguably the most progressive feature of the EU lies in the common rights it offers all citizens of its member countries. If we leave aside the rights enjoyed under the European Convention of Human Rights through membership of the Council of Europe, these rights include the right to reside and work in another member country of the EU, to stand for election and vote in European, local and devolved elections in another member country, to enjoy a range of social benefits there linked to work, incapacity or retirement, and so on. In addition is the range of rights in employment guaranteed by the social chapters of EU treaties that the UK has opted out of.

Given the background of Europhobia, it is perhaps not surprising that the Goldsmith documents do nothing to emphasise the positive aspects of European citizenship, but rather try to find the increasingly diminishing content exclusive to British citizenship in distinction to it. In the context of our existing membership of the Union, however, this conveys an extraordinarily parochial impression, and suggests a major lost opportunity to offer an outward- rather than inward-looking account of citizenship, and one that is appropriate to the realities of the contemporary world. The democratic conception of a Citizen Nation outlined by Linda Colley could best be anchored in a wider European citizenship, including its economic and social rights.

Conclusion

The argument of this article, then, is that the key elements that went into the forging of the British nation after 1707, far from disappearing, as is widely assumed, have left a distorting legacy that continually militates against the realisation of a fully democratic conception of citizenship. This is one where we are truly citizens rather than subjects, enjoying a common system of education without privileges or exclusiveness, divested of imperial pretensions and superiorities, fairly sharing rights and responsibilities in economic life, and outward looking towards a common rights-based European citizenship. Any discussion of the citizenship agenda, or of Britishness, which fails to address this distorting legacy will necessarily be incomplete.

There is naturally no mention of these issues in the mass of Goldsmith’s documents on citizenship. Consideration of them might give a more realistic dimension to the citizenship education on which the government sets such store for instructing future citizens in their rights and responsibilities, and encouraging political participation among the young. Goldsmith’s own commissioned research reveals that many pupils lack enthusiasm or respect for the subject, perceive their teachers as disengaged, and consider citizenship classes as a ‘doss lesson’. The government’s preachifying approach is hardly likely to alter this perception. So, for example, the July green paper lays the blame for the massive decline in voting by young people on ‘their lack of appreciation of the democratic process and of the need for active citizenship’. There is no recognition that people will not vote if they cannot see any difference between the main parties, or any chance of representation for those that might more closely reflect their views and interests.

The lack of any self-critical element in these documents is striking. No one would guess from them that Parliament and its membership stands at an all time low in public esteem. This is not just a matter of Parliamentary expenses or cash for honours. As any parent will know, ‘do as I say not as I do’ is quickly seen through by the young. I recall the massive outburst of civic activism by young people, including many Muslims, leading up to the invasion of Iraq, when they participated in protest meetings, marches, demonstrations and school walk-outs. This was the first generation of students that had been exposed to David Blunkett’s new civics curriculum. In the classroom they may have learnt about the importance of the United Nations, the need to resolve disputes by peaceful means, and the values of representative democracy. What they learnt in practice was that Parliament and government can defy the UN and invade another country when they choose, and that they give more weight to the views of a foreign president than they do to the voices of their own people. A frank acknowledgement by government of the failings of our own democratic process would seem to be a precondition for any credibility in encouraging the young to participate more fully in it.

These events also reminded us of the serious flaws at the heart of British democracy. The first-past-the-post electoral system deprives the voters of effective choice and discourages them from turning out to vote. Enforced internal party uniformity discourages active membership and diminishes political diversity in parliament. Single party rule in a highly centralised system of government gives the premier unique personal control over executive, cabinet, parliament and country. And the anachronistic power to call an election at will fuels indefinite election speculation as well as giving the governing party a wholly arbitrary advantage over its opponents.

Is there any realistic prospect that any of this will change? Among the first acts of the Brown administration was the publication of a green paper, The Governance of Britain, which acknowledged the serious decline of public confidence in our democratic institutions, and set out proposals to ‘forge a new relationship between government and citizen’.

Unfortunately, the green paper’s diagnosis of the malaise in British democracy is limited, and its proposals for change correspondingly feeble. Certainly, removing some of the executive’s prerogative powers (to deploy troops abroad, to ratify international treaties, to recall and dissolve parliament and so on) and handing them over to parliament is a step in the right direction. But while the governing party leader enjoys such power of patronage and sanction over MPs, the distinction between executive and parliament is more formal than substantial. Moreover, the section on local communities envisages no serious rebalancing of power between central and local government.

It is when it comes to the role of the citizen – supposedly at the heart of the democratic deficit – that the weakness of the green paper is most apparent. What is offered, on the one hand, is more focus groups, consultations, citizen juries and so on, whose agendas will be carefully controlled from above. On the other hand, we are promised a great national debate on Britishness and British values, involving ‘local regional and national level events and opportunities for deliberation and debate’.

But what actually is Britain? It was constructed by the Act of Union at the start of the 18th century as an essentially imperial project, which is sustained today in surrogate form through subservience to the USA. And any ‘British values’ worth celebrating are mostly ones we share with the rest of Europe, though their European character cannot be openly acknowledged. Flying the Union Jack on all public buildings hardly makes up for this hole at the heart of the concept of ‘Britishness’.

Most problematic of all is the green paper’s analysis of the huge drop in voting by young people (18-24) over the past two general elections. The cause is identified as their ‘lack of appreciation of the importance of the democratic process and of the need for active citizenship’. And the solution? A new Youth Citizenship Commission ‘which will examine ways to invigorate young people’s understanding of the historical narrative of our country and of what it means to be a British citizen, and to increase their participation in the political sphere.’

No mention here of the mass participation of young people, including large numbers of Muslims, in the demonstrations and school walkouts against the Iraq war, or the failure of the government to listen to them. No mention either of the fact that this generation is the one that had already been exposed in school to Blunkett’s civics curriculum.

This curriculum may have introduced them to the importance of the United Nations, to the need to resolve disputes by peaceful means and to the values of representative democracy. What they learnt in practice from their political participation, however, was that parliament and government can defy the UN and invade another country when they choose, and that they give more weight to the views of a foreign president than they do to the voices of their own people.

Since Bush’s reasons for going to war could never be sold to a sceptical British public, a more acceptable justification had to be found. Hence the supposed weapons of mass destruction, the new UN arms inspection process, the dodgy dossiers, etc. It is the gap between the actual reason for going to war and the flimsiness of the public justification for doing so that has subjected the Blair government to both enormous internal pressure and widespread public distrust.

Going to war not only involved deception; it has proved an act of enormous folly. The casualty list of the war is long and growing – not only in terms of human life, property and infrastructure destroyed in Iraq.

Instead of bringing democracy to Iraq, war has created a new “axis” of terror and anarchy. It has intensified, not resolved, the conflict in Palestine. It has given the green light to governments everywhere to suppress opposition in the name of the war on terror. It has weakened the UN, divided the EU and damaged Britain’s standing abroad.

At home it has undermined trust in government, in Parliament and in the credibility of the intelligence services, diverted attention and resources from the government’s domestic agenda and provoked a damaging conflict with the BBC that will only bring comfort to the corporation’s enemies.

Enter Lord Hutton to investigate the death of an arms inspection expert in the Oxfordshire countryside. Given the scale of the damage outlined above, it is not surprising that the narrowness of Hutton’s brief should be seen as a diversion from the real issues.

Yet, despite the government’s attempt to circumscribe His Lordship’s enquiries, the larger issues have kept breaking through. We have been treated to a rare glimpse into the secret heart of government. Much of what has been revealed by the inquiry only confirms what we knew already about Blair’s drive to war. But other revelations – about how our “executive democracy” behaves when under pressure – have surprised even the most hardened government watchers.

We have seen, for example, how highly politicised the intelligence services are. The services were used not to provide information to help decide whether to go to war, but to support the government’s presentation of a decision that had already been taken. Worst-case scenarios were served up as hard fact for public consumption.

John Scarlett’s claim that the September dossier was all his work as head of the Joint Intelligence Committee is belied by the many memos from Number 10 urging a trawl for more evidence and a toughening of the wording. The fact that, in any case, the intelligence provided has been proved wrong seems not to concern Scarlett at all.

Then there is the ruthlessness with which Blair’s image of personal rectitude has been defended when under challenge. The pressure to “out” Dr David Kelly, and make him appear before the Foreign Affairs Select Committee and refute Andrew Gilligan’s story for the Today programme, clearly contributed to his death. We have also been treated to another threat by Blair to resign should his integrity be questioned. Despite being couched in the retrospective mode (“if I had been guilty of exaggerating the danger, I would have had to resign”), the threat is clearly designed to put pressure on Hutton as well as (once again) Labour MPs. Responsible for everything, guilty of nothing, m”lud.

Similarly, we have glimpsed the obsessiveness with which Number 10 controls every government department’s publicity and presentation. Defence secretary Geoff Hoon may have his reasons for avoiding responsibility for and even knowledge of the Ministry of Defence press briefing that led to the “outing” of Kelly, but it is clear that it was scripted under the supervision of Alastair Campbell.

The attempt to manipulate the questioning of Kelly by the Foreign Affairs Committee, so that he did not embarrass the government, has also been a revelation. In contrast, the shock expressed at the discovery that Gilligan primed a member of the committee seems wholly misplaced. Select committees are at an informational disadvantage in scrutinising government, and are surely entitled to get leads from wherever they can.

Finally, there is the extent of the government’s bullying of the BBC. Whatever the errors of Gilligan’s note-taking (which are still not clear), the pressure on the BBC chairman Gavyn Davies by Blair personally to retract the story and apologise was intense, and included blackmail by underlings in relation to the forthcoming review of the corporation’s charter.

What all of this has revealed is a government that, while attempting to control everything, has a complete lack of self-control in the face of a crisis entirely of its own making. Whatever the outcome of Hutton’s inquiry, no political closure of the Iraq affair is in prospect.

Many people have compared the Iraq invasion to Suez. Yet Suez was rapidly wrapped up with the withdrawal of UK troops and the departure of prime minister Anthony Eden on indefinite sick leave. No such resolutions are in prospect today.

Yet the fact remains that we went to war on a false prospectus, and the outcome has proved disastrous (and is continuing to do so). Until the individual responsible leaves office, there can be no political closure, nor any chance of addressing the systemic defects of our representative democracy exposed once more by the Hutton inquiry.

We will carry on with a system in which the electorate has no effective right to information about what the government it pays for is doing in its name, and in which there are no controls on a political leadership enjoying a hugely inflated parliamentary majority.Professor David Beetham is director of the Centre for Democratisation Studies at the University of Leeds

How does the decision to go to war against Iraq look from this perspective, and what does it tell us about the condition of our democracy? Does it represent a deep flaw in the democratic process, or is it simply a one-off fit of recklessness by a political leader misled by his own moral enthusiasm for tidying up the world on the back of US power?

We need to distinguish the questions of why Blair came to dig himself into such a deep hole with no exit strategy in the first place, and how he managed to drag the country kicking and screaming into that hole alongside him. Both have democratic implications, while the first also touches on the international dimension of our democracy. I shall start with that.

Democracy in international policy

Although democratic norms are often not seen as relevant to a country’s foreign and international policy, in its framework of democracy assessment Democratic Audit identified a number of questions to help judge this whole area. One question asks about a country’s respect for international law, on the grounds that a government can hardly claim the democratic accolade for the rule of law at home if it manifestly violates it abroad.

Now it may well be a fact that international law is often vaguer than domestic law, but most international lawyers agree that the invasion of Iraq was a flagrant breach of the UN charter. The charter only allows the use of armed force in self-defence or with the explicit authorisation of the UN Security Council.

Nor was the Iraq war simply a one-off disregard by Blair, since he has consistently argued for a right of unilateral enforcement of UN resolutions. In a speech in 1999 in South Africa he said: ‘When the international community agrees certain objectives and then fails to implement them… countries with a sense of global responsibility must take on the burden.’ In other words, Blair claims the right to act as international policeman in enforcing UN resolutions. Clearly, he has also claimed the right to choose which resolutions to enforce and which to ignore. In our view this does not count as ‘respect for the international rule of law’.

Blair has argued that to wait for UN resolutions explicitly authorising force may mean standing by while humanitarian catastrophes unfold, as in Kosovo, and that the moral imperative for intervention must override considerations of narrow legality. Whatever our view may be about Kosovo, it is clear that the moral argument has now been stretched beyond the prevention of humanitarian catastrophe to justify the forcible removal of any undemocratic regime that violates the human rights of its people – as in Afghanistan and now Iraq.

At this point a second Democratic Audit question becomes relevant, one that asks about the consistency of a country’s support for democracy and human rights abroad. When democracy and human rights are used to morally justify government policy ‘consistency’ is crucial. Such arguments lose all force if they are applied selectively, as they have been. And while we believe that it is indeed a characteristic of democratic countries that they should support democracy and human rights internationally, this cannot be done by bombs and armed invasion; these means violate the very norms in question.

Tony Blair and his supporters justify the costs of war and foreign occupation to the Iraqi people by their liberation from the evils of Saddam’s regime. Yet how can anyone presume to make such a calculus with any conviction, let alone do so without the invitation of those people?

A claim to the moral high ground does not come well from governments that have actively colluded in the deaths of thousands of Iraqi children through economic sanctions and the denial of medical supplies, and which ignore great evils across the world that could be ameliorated at much less economic and social cost than that incurred by warfare.

The argument that Saddam represented a unique threat to world peace was not credible, even before the failure to find any so-called weapons of mass destruction. A much greater threat to world peace has been the undermining of the UN and its principles, and the weakening of the restraints on the use of force as an instrument of international policy.

Democratic Audit also examines the extent to which a country is free from subordination to external powers. The logic is that democratic self-government is compromised when decisions affecting the well-being of a country’s citizens are determined through such subordination.

Although the idea of a ‘special relationship’ between the UK and the US implies a voluntary compact between equals, in practice it conceals a fundamental dependency by the UK on US military technology and intelligence to sustain British nuclear status. It also encourages considerable self-delusion about British influence over US foreign policy.

Both of these aspects have been thrown into sharp relief since the start of the Bush presidency, since when the UK has been bounced into policies that have more to do with the paranoia and imperial ambition than with the UK’s own national interest or security. It is high time that this dependent relationship was subjected to serious public scrutiny and debate, not out of crude anti-Americanism but for its damaging consequences to our international relationships – especially with our European partners.

Selective disregard for the international rule of law, inconsistent and self-defeating intervention to support democracy and human rights abroad, subordination to the agenda of an imperialist US clique and its economic paymasters – these have been consistent features of Blair’s administration over the last few years. The invasion of Iraq is no aberration; it constitutes the model of Blairite international policy.

A lack of accountability at home

What does the decision to invade Iraq reveal about the state of our democracy at home? Some have argued that it shows UK democracy in fine working order. Thus Blair’s decision to back the UN inspectors with British troops shows him doing what political leaders are supposed to do – giving a clear lead to the country. In this he was supported by a large majority in the cabinet.

Protests in the country and in his own party forced Blair to hold a parliamentary vote before troops were actually committed to battle, and not to rely on the Royal Prerogative as he was constitutionally entitled to do. He persuaded a majority of Labour MPs and Parliament to support his decision. Public opinion then rallied behind him once battle was joined. In other words, the system of representative democracy worked exactly as it should.

This purely formalistic account of the decision-making process is wholly disingenuous. The decision to oust Saddam Hussain by force was taken by Bush in early 2002 at the latest; it was rapidly endorsed by Blair. A timetable for military action was set. A phoney UN arms inspection process was inaugurated as cover for the amassing of US and UK troops on the Iraqi border. Once the troops were gathered it was inconceivable that they would not be used, as neither Bush nor Blair could survive the loss of face involved in withdrawing them. But if they were to be used, then it had to be done by mid-March for logistical reasons. All the rest was so much window dressing. In effect Labour MPs on 18 March were presented with a stark choice: vote for war, or allow the Blair government to fall.

It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that our democracy has been substantially degraded by this breathtaking demonstration of bad faith, with its continuously shifting justifications for war and its continuously shifting attitude to UN Security Council resolutions.

Particularly damaging has been the manipulation of public opinion through the doctoring and fabrication of intelligence information about weapons of mass destruction. ‘Trust us because we know something you don’t, but we can’t reveal our sources’ may serve to convince the gullible, but it undermines the democratic processes of public scrutiny and independent verification as the basis for policy. For a government so immersed in ‘spin’ such manipulation may have become second nature, but it raises a fundamental question about the accountability of the intelligence services and their relation to government and Parliament.

Admittedly, foreign policy has traditionally been the area least subject to democratic debate and control of all our politics; and the high level of public debate and reasoned opposition to war against Iraq among all sections of society clearly took the government completely by surprise. Yet the way Blair was able, despite this opposition, to push through a very personalised campaign for war reveals much wider problems of our democratic condition.

Successive Democratic Audits have highlighted the lack of effective democratic checks and balances in the political process. These absences allow political leaders to develop a belief in their own infallibility, and to become so personally identified with their own chosen policies that they have no way of backing down without incurring an unacceptable loss of face. This is the story of Mrs Thatcher and the poll tax, and now, more tragically, of Blair and the invasion of Iraq. At the root of these and similar policy disasters is a combination of systemic defects in the democratic process:

By the time this is published, the Jenkins Commission should have recommended a new electoral system for Westminster, to be put to a referendum in a straight choice with “first past the post”. All the indications are that it will be recommending “AV plus” – a hybrid which dilutes electoral proportionality in an attempt to meet the objections of sceptics in the Labour cabinet who remain wedded to single-member representation in the constituencies, single-party rule in parliament and no outflanking of the Labour Party by red or green. Jenkins’ proposals will open the debate on electoral reform to an audience beyond those who can recite the subtle differences between AV, SV, STV and AMS. One reason why the debate so far has been such a turn off -in spite of opinion polls showing majority support for electoral reform – is because it is rarely about democracy. As growing numbers of people are becoming alienated from the political process, the debate needs to focus on which electoral system can best empower voters by extending the range of political voices, by treating all voters as equal, by offering an effective choice between parties and candidates and by providing an incentive to vote. Which system is most likely to produce a parliament able to hold government to account? Which system best enables voters to hold their representatives to account? Which would produce a parliamentary assembly most representative of the cultural, regional and social diversity of the people?

We are about to enter a period of unprecedented experimentation, with no fewer than six different types of system in use for different elections in the UK. The experience of other systems will influence the debate: the range of political choices opened up in the elections for the Northern Ireland Assembly and in the build-up to the vote for the Scottish Parliament , for example, as well as the options closed down, as in Labour’s centrally controlled lists for the Euro-election.

In a parliamentary system like ours, in which we do not vote separately for the legislature and head of government, elections serve several functions simultaneously. One is to elect a parliament that is representative of and accountable to the voters and can hold the government to account. A second is to help choose a government and provide it with a mandate for its term of office. Electoral systems must be judged in terms of how democratically they perform each of these functions through increased empowerment of voters and equalising the value of their votes.

These democratic criteria derive from the two key principles of popular control and political equality which the Democratic Audit has been using for its audit of political institutions in the UK. Unfortunately, the government did not give the Jenkins Commission specifically democratic criteria to work with: extending voter choice and electoral proportionality certainly are democratic, though they require clearer specification; maintaining the link between MPs and geographical constituencies may be, though it depends how it is interpreted; “stable government” is not particularly democratic. The last two criteria could simply mean: keep single-member constituencies and single-party government regardless.

The first purpose of elections is to choose a parliament that, as well as producing a government and deciding upon its legislation and taxation, has the task, on behalf of the people, of holding it continuously to account. Parliaments are usually referred to as representative assemblies, and the political system that produces them as a “representative democracy”. In this context, “representation” involves two different ideas: the first relates to popular control; the other to political equality.

On the principle of popular control, representation sees political representatives as agents of the electorate: appointed by them; accountable to them; and removable by them. The accountability of political representatives to their electorate is primarily as spokespeople of a party following a distinctive programme and leadership, and only secondarily as individuals exercising a personal responsibility. So there should be clear responsibility and accountability to the electorate of party groupings in parliament; and their parliamentary strength should be sensitive to changes in support in the country as a whole. As a secondary consideration we should also look at how electoral systems enable voters to reward or penalise representatives for their individual conduct of office. Collective and individual accountability depend on effective voter choice between parties and between individuals.

On the principle of political equality, representation embodies the idea of the elected assembly as representative of the entire electorate – as a microcosm of the country. It should broadly reflect the political opinion of the country, as indicated by the distribution of votes for the different parties and their programmes. The original idea of “microcosm” was that the decisions of the legislative assembly should mirror what the people as a whole would decide, if they could assemble to deliberate on their own behalf. For this reason the proportionality of party votes to seats is called simply “proportional representation”.

We also have to consider pluralism or diversity. Society in the UK contains a rich diversity of cultures and identities as well as political opinions. The argument that its representative assembly not be monopolised by metropolitan white males, operating under the banner of two monolithic political parties, is a strong one.

There is also geographical proportionality: a constituency system ensures that parliament reflects the distinctiveness of particular regions. There is also the demand that parliament should reflect the social composition of the electorate. Shared identities and experiences are important as well as the political opinions that may cut across them. No electoral system on its own can guarantee this last form of proportionality, but some (SYV, AMS and list systems) favour it more than others.

If political equality were realised and votes really did count equally, regardless of where people live, which party they vote for and which social group they identified with, then parliament would indeed be representative of the electorate in all these respects. Each would have its proportion according to its distribution among the population.

How are electoral systems to be judged on the accountability of representatives to their electorate; the representativeness of parliament; and effective voter choice, voter equality and incentive to vote?

“First past the post” (FPTP) performs abysmally on all these criteria. The collective accountability of parties to the electorate is limited by the often arbitrary relationship between the popular vote and the number of parliamentary seats obtained; individual accountability is non-existent, since there is no choice between candidates of the same party. Parliament is unrepresentative of the spread of political opinion in the country and its regions; it excludes smaller parties; and it does nothing to encourage a more socially representative assembly. Votes count very unequally depending on which party you vote for and where you live. The incentive to vote is diminished by the existence of so many safe seats, and the parties’ concentration on swing voters in marginal constituencies.

Although similar to FPTP, the alternative vote (AV) can enable minority centre parties to gain more proportional representation through second preference votes. However, it can produce very disproportionate results between the larger parties and does not improve the prospects of gaining parliamentary representation for smaller non-centre parties. It also shares many of the other disadvantages of FPTP from a democratic point of view.

Of the other systems, how proportionate a parliament they produce, and how equally votes count, depends on how many representatives the constituency has (STV and List), or how large the proportion of additional members is (AMS). AV-plus, with such a small additional element, may do little more than AV to produce a more representative parliament, because the “top up”is likely to go to one or other of the three parties already representated through AV itself. STV, AMS and AV-plus all allow voters to split their vote between parties; STV also allows voters to choose between candidates of the same party. Closed list systems (List, AMS and AV-plus) enable party hierarchies to control the order of candidates and may produce a conformist parliamentary following, as the Labour Party has done with selections for the Welsh, Scottish and European elections. The answer is to make selections the responsibility of party members or to open the list to electoral choice. Any of these systems, however, will increase the electorate’s incentive to vote, and can be used to make parliament more socially representative. They also maintain the link between MPs and their constituencies.

In sum, any system will be more democratic than FPTP. Of these, AMS on the Scottish model, but with the order on the top-up list determined by party members or the voters, and STV as in Northern Ireland maximise electoral choice, as well as allowing smaller parties to gain representation. Both are heralding a renewal of the representative process and a more pluralistic politics.

Supporters of FPTP argue that weaknesses of their system are overidden by the fact that it enables the electorate to determine the government and its programme directly. Proportional systems, they argue, produce unstable coalitions in which the composition of the government and its programme depends on negotiation between parties in parliament, and disproportionate power is wielded by smaller parties and their electorates.

There are several answers to this. First, under FPTP it is not the electorate as a whole that determines the government and its programme since governments are usually elected by a minority of voters. It then uses its unrepresentative majority to bypass dissent. In principle there is nothing undemocratic about a party having to compromise on some aspects of its programme to win majority support in parliament, if the process is transparent. For example in Germany the leaderships of both the SPD and the Greens will take their agreement back to party conferences for debate and approval. This need not mean a party watering down its commitments; indeed, it might generate a stronger social or environmental agenda.

A second answer is to look at how coalition governments operate in practice. Research on this by Ian Budge shows that how coalition governments are formed, and how directly elections shape their composition and programme, are determined more by the nature of the party system and its conventions than by the electoral system itself. In the UK, the proportions of the vote obtained by Labour and Conservatives are likely to prove decisive for government formation in most instances. His research also shows that coalition governments have at least as good a record, if not better, at carrying through their initial programmes than countries with a Westminster model which, he says, makes it “hard to justify the highly disproportional results of UK elections”.

Constitutional change is not a panacea for social or economic problems but it can enable a wider range of voices to influence debate. It can support new forms of mobilisation through a renewal of the representative process, as is already happening in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Labour’s constitutional programme is faltering as it prepares to renege on open government and electoral reform for local councils, consigning us to a continuation of rotten boroughs and single party rule throughout local government, in its determination to hold on to FPTP. We should use the opportunity provided by the Jenkins Commission to campaign for an end to this lousy undemocratic system.

David Beetham lectures in Politics at the University of Leeds. A fuller version of this article is published as ‘Democracy and Electoral Reform in the UK’ by Democratic Audit, Exmouth House, 3-11 Pine Street, London EC1R 0JH.

Multiple choices

Almost any system is more democratic, more empowering and more representative than that used in British general elections. We need to grasp the rare opportunity to campaign for change, says David Beetham

First past the post / Plurality

Each constituency has one representative in parliament. Electors cast one vote for the candidate of their choice, and the candidate with the largest number (not proportion) of votes is elected. Least democratic on criteria adopted here.

Alternative vote

Each constituency has one representative in parliament but voters list candidates in order of preference. If no candidate wins an overall majority of first preferences, those with the fewest votes are eliminated, and the next preferences on their ballot sheets distributed between the remaining candidates until one has a majority. More voter choice but weak on parliamentary repesentativeness and accountability.

Supplementary vote

Like AV but voters are allowed only two preferences.

Single transferable vote

Large constituencies with several representatives. Voters list candidates in order of preference. A candidate is elected once they obtain a given quota of votes, if not by first preferences, then with the help of subsequent ones. Most voter choice, more representative and accountable parliament.

Closed list proportional representation

Multi-member constituencies, but voters have one vote only for a party list of candidates. Candidates are elected by a quota system which ensures broad proportionality between seats and votes. Highly representative and accountable parliament but too much power to party bosses.

Additional member system

Electors cast two votes: one for a constituency candidate elected under FPTP; the second for a list of regional party candidates, ranked numerically. These candidates are elected in numbers required to make each party’s representation as close as possible to the proportion of their vote in the region. “Classic” AMS involves a 1:1 ratio between list and constituency representatives; but there can be a smaller proportion of list representatives. Highly representative and accountable parliament, more voter choice.

Mixed system (AV-plus)

One candidate is elected for each constituency by the alternative or supplementary vote; a small proportion of additional members is elected from party lists for the region. Better than FPTP but may still allow single party government without an electoral majority.