No tax without representation

But what representation?

Iran, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Belgium, France: aren’t we all just so democratic?! The elections just keep on a-coming, and, of course, there is the US election still scheduled for November (unless Emperor Biden, as the presidency is now unofficially dubbed, were to decide otherwise—a quick executive order extending his tenure by another four years? That would scotch the doddery old fool accusations…)

Iran’s result has given us a president whose powers are limited, but whose outlook gives a glimmer of hope for that beleaguered nation, so perfidiously exploited by the British and the Americans in the post-war years. Never was there a politician more dedicated to fairness than Mohammad Mosaddegh; never was there a politician felled from power by such treacherous means.

Image: Mohammad Mosaddegh, prime minister of Iran 1952-1953, whose illegal removal from power by the USA paved the path to the creation of British Petroleum (BP).

France’s result has given rise to elation on Places de la République across the nation, although the prime difficulty now is to reconcile the LFI’s stance that they refuse to implement policies in government that are not their own. My response to that arrogance has to be: then you must get an overall majority, mes potes, and not end up with a seat-count that means you’ll have to govern in compromise, if you govern at all. Yes, everyone wants their manifesto implemented. And, no, children, you can’t all have all of your manifestos implemented, now sit still Jean-Luc! Not, that is, unless they become dictators, and it was becoming dictators that France’s whole election was about stopping. Wannit?

The States itself is putatively founded on the principle—the self-evident truth—that all men are created equal, a concept with which it’s wrestled trying to define (huh?!) for nigh-on two and a half centuries and still hasn’t managed. In fact, the US just last month took a giant step backwards in its quest. One step backwards for a supreme court, a giant leap backwards for the ideals of equality. He-ho.

No, the principle on which the US was founded wasn’t anything to do with equality; it had, of course, to do with money: no tax without representation. The newly founded US would proceed to tax vast swathes of its own population without giving them any representation, such as in the District of Columbia, but, no matter, banner headlines are not intended to be true: they’re intended to sell newspapers.

Enough of the United States, what of the United Kingdom? The widely predicted stunning victory by the Labour party came as ... predicted. The government has two-thirds of the seats in parliament, yet was voted for by only one-third of British voters. That hardly sounds fair, yet the British people say it is fair, or did in 2011, at least.

A 2011 referendum in the UK soundly rejected the notion of proportional representation (PR), which is the usual voting system in continental European countries, such as Belgium, where I live. There are a large number of options for PR, and the system used in Belgium involves lists of candidates for parliament, in respect of which the elector has two choices: to vote simply for a given list (put up by a certain party) or to vote for specific individuals on that list. So, for instance, if I want to vote for the “A” party, which has put up 13 candidates for parliament (they may not put up more candidates than there are seats to occupy), I can either choose to endorse the list, in which case the votes are apportioned according to the order established by the party, with my vote being transferred to the next name down if the higher names have already been elected using votes cast by other voters. Or I can select the individuals I like myself and give all my votes to one or a group of candidates. I can also abstain, but I must attend at the polling station to do that.

What we have in Belgium is not all men are created equal but more plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. That may be regarded as boring and uninspiring, but boring, uninspiring politics is actually a good thing. Wild, exciting, dynamic politics come as a reaction to similar extremes in the other direction, and a society that is made up of such wildly differing views is one that must contain its excesses and learn to live in peaceful cohabitation, and that is not always possible.

Belgium on the whole is calm. It has more reasons than some to launch into civil unrest, not least its linguistic division between north and south. This has resulted in shots being fired, but never in a bomb being planted. Belgium never had troubles like Belfast’s.

Back in the 1960s, we were embroiled in a fight for federalism, which was achieved with some difficulty in 1969, when, for the first time, Dutch speakers could validly conduct business with their administrative masters in their own language. Even Texas and New York will extend a courtesy to Spanish, but Flemings had for 130 years to do all their official business in French. I am a linguist, I love languages. But no one should have to deal for his official existence in a language that is not the one that his mother taught him. In 2014, I was summoned to interpret in the highest court of the land: the Court of Cassation. The case was a criminal appeal by a gentleman being held in prison in Liège, but whose native language is German, since he hails from our German-speaking cantons. The court’s plenary bench is French-speaking, as befits the appeal court of Liège in whose jurisdiction the prisoner falls. But Belgium is a German-speaking country and, under the European Convention on Human Rights, must allow its own citizens to address their own courts in all matters in the language of the country that is theirs. Criminal appeals to the Court of Cassation from the German-speaking cantons are extremely rare. Nevertheless, in terms of the Convention, Belgium must institute a division able to hear criminal appeals in German, even if the cantons have only one citizen living there. It is their treaty duty.

Anyhow, if a referendum says first past the post (FPTP) is fair, then who am I to disagree? Well, if you ask the populace whether the electoral system that secured the victory of the majority governing party that has just been put into power by … the populace is fair, there is a fairly high chance that they will conclude that the electoral system is just fine. And, whatever way you look at it, it’s always going to be the same electorate that votes in such a referendum as votes in an election. It is arrantly counterintuitive to expect the populace to vote in any other way.

The somewhat right-wing extremist party in the UK, the Reform party (what an anodyne little name that is for a party that has, shall we call it, a colourful collection of members) has garnered five seats in parliament, and its leader, Mr Nigel Farage, has already provided some entertainment with his uncouth behaviour, calling everyone who doesn’t like him boring; which after all this time, is fairly boring.

However, on one matter, Mr Farage would do well to indeed press for reform, because his party got something under half the votes that Labour received (14.3 per cent against 33.7 per cent) and, yet, Labour got more than 82 times the number of seats that Reform won (five against 411). With turnout at roughly 60 per cent of the electorate, this means that two-thirds of the electorate did not vote for a party that now enjoys an overall majority of 172 parliamentary seats. A bit of a windfall, if you ask me. A case can surely be made that, if there is no taxation without representation, then, with such munificent representation won so comparatively easily with so few votes, in the end of the day, there should be a tax on representation. A political windfall tax, perhaps we could name it.

Mr Farage will no doubt be making capital with the discussions that are starting to arise as to the fairness of the FPTP system. And, on that, I would make the following comments:

a) I find Mr Farage’s politics distasteful, disrespectful, and he would not garner my vote. But, if Mr Farage lacks couth, he certainly doesn’t lack determination, since he has now been elected as an MP after six previous, failed attempts. Fact is: people voted for him and, if the view is held that those who voted for him were misguided in their choice of parliamentary representative, then it is for those who believe that to be the case to persuade the electors of Clacton otherwise, not for Mr Farage’s voice to be smothered.

b) I think that getting 14 per cent of the vote and five seats, against Labour’s 33 per cent and 411 seats, is ludicrous. Commentators are calling this an outlier, but this outlier will be in government for five years. The National Socialist Workers’ party’s victory in Germany in 1933 was also an outlier. After all, they were only in power for 12 years. What are 12 years and a world war between regular, ordinary, unexciting elections? The Nazis achieved their victory by methods other than a simple turn of fate in a flawed electoral system, but, in elections, outliers should simply not exist. Not when their cause is patent and easily remedied.

c) Will Labour use its vast majority to look into electoral reform? It might be tempted to the view that FPTP secured them a juicy majority, so, as far as they are concerned, the system ain’t broke. However, Starmer has come out in his press conference on Saturday saying repeatedly that he will be governing to always put the nation above the party. Instituting a fairer and more proportional system of elections would certainly be putting nation above party (a full two-thirds of the nation in his case), and almost certainly at the cost of the two major parties—Labour and Conservative.

I remember a political discussion among us sixth-formers in school, in which a proponent of proportional representation from the Liberal party advocated a change in our voting system: we cannot go on painting all the lampposts blue for five years, then painting them all red for five years. One boy challenged this view: switching colours every five years would at least be better than having the lampposts a murky brown colour the whole time. He got a laugh, but I’m not sure he won the point.

d) Perhaps Labour will cite the 2011 referendum to deny change. That would be folly. They have been given a huge majority, not all of which they have earned. They could at least use it to take a lead, which is now expected of them, and to ensure that the next majority they win in parliament will truly be earned. If not, then they will have to learn the art of compromise in government, which is no bad thing, as long as politicians remain results-centric and not point-scoring-centric.

e) If Labour believed that refusing electoral reform would stop Reform in its tracks, then that would be disingenuous. You cannot play a game whose rules you recognise are tilted in your favour and simply shrug and say that that is good because it excludes certain undesirables from the play. That does not quash dissent on the political spectrum: it exacerbates it.

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You can make brown paint by mixing blue and red. The schoolboy’s colour spectrum was spot on. But always painting the lampposts with a uninspiring brown colour does nothing to reduce the light that they cast on the street. It is not the colour of the lamp standard that is important. It is the light that it radiates that is crucial to its function.

Government must cast a radiant light. Britain has laboured under an unfair electoral system for far too long. Changing it would be one more reason for this new government to go down in history.