Hackney Liberal Democrats bemoan democratic deficit and ‘tactical voting for Labour’
Hackney Liberal Democrat candidate Dave Raval
Despite increasing their party’s share of the vote, the Liberal Democrat candidates in last Thursday’s General Election claim they fell foul to our current voting system.
In a joint statement following the results that saw huge and increased majorities for Diane Abbott and Meg Hillier, candidates Dave Raval and Joe Richards said: “In Hackney this achieves nothing but to bolster the dominance of Labour and squeeze the smaller parties, which is bad for democratic representation in the borough.”
They also criticised the current first-past-the-post voting system, which they claim changes how people vote: “The fact that we have a voting system that requires tactical voting to make sure people feel their views are being represented just highlights how utterly undemocratic our system is and how much it needs to change.”
However Raval and Richards acknowledged that the Liberal Democrats’ vote share increased, making third place in both constituencies: “It is testament to the Hackney Liberal Democrat campaign and candidates that we were the only main party who increased vote share in the face of the huge Labour surge.”
In Hackney North and Stoke Newington the Liberal Democrats won 3,817 votes this time round – up from 2,492 in 2015.
Meanwhile in Hackney South and Shoreditch they secured 3,168 votes – a rise from their 2,186 votes in the previous General Election.
In their statement the duo continued: “With the nation so deeply divided, now more than ever, we must present an alternative Britain that is open and tolerant and work together to find common ground over the difficult period to come.”
“We have taken a principled stand as a pro-European party and will continue to fight for those open and tolerant values that has seen so many new members and volunteers join us over the last year.”
Proportional representation
The pair also called for what they believe to be a fairer voting system: “Another key issue for the future needs to be our continued campaign for proportional representation.”
Proportional representation is an electoral system in which the distribution of seats corresponds closely with the proportion of the total votes cast for each party. For example, if a party gained 40 per cent of the total votes, a perfectly proportional system would allow them to gain 40 per cent of the seats.
Diane Abbott is opposed to proportional representation as it would involve candidates being appointed from the centre and would break the “constituency link”, in that MPs would not be attached to particular constituency. However she supports the introduction of the Alternative Vote (AV), unlike Meg Hillier who does not.
The Alternative Vote is used to elect the majority of chairs of select committees in the House of Commons. The AV is also used for the election of the Lord Speaker and by-elections for hereditary peers.
Under AV, voters rank candidates in order of preference by marking 1, 2, 3 and so on next to names of candidates on a ballot paper. A voter can rank as many or as few candidates as they like or just vote for one candidate.
Ballot papers are then counted by using the first preference votes (i.e. those with a number 1 marked next to their name). If a candidate receives more than 50 per cent of the first preference votes then they are elected.
First-past-the-post is used to elect MPs to the House of Commons and for local elections in England and Wales. The candidate that has received the most votes is elected to represent the constituency or ward.
I don’t know how the Citizen can say that the Lib Dems “claim” to have fallen foul of the current voting system – of course they fell foul of it! Whether you argue that thats a good or bad thing is another matter. Currently the Lib Dems have got one parliamentary seat for every 195,000 votes they got while Labour got one for every 45,000. That’s pretty obviously bad for democracy but it’s nothing like as bad as it is for the Greens who got one seat for over 500,000 votes and UKIP who got no seats at all (these figures are from memory). At every election the two main parties conspire together to maintain this con trick shouting madly about what a disaster it would be if the other side won. And in every constituency where the Lib Dems are second they do the same thing. It’s the only game in town and it needs changing. We no longer live in a time when people travel 20 miles in their lifetime.
Perhaps they should consider putting up a woman candidate at the next election.
I found your headline for this article to be unduly pejorative.
Messrs. Raval and Richards have the right to express their opinion; indeed, you could argue that this is their job. You chose to report their views, but you also decided to editorialise.
The issue of Proportional Representation has been a consistent part of the Liberal Democrat platform for some time, and I don’t believe that expressing the opinion at this particular time should be tied to their loss.
Why don’t you simply state the facts as they are, and you can leave your readers to form their own conclusions about the candidates’ comments are motivated by bitterness of their loss?
@ Hughie McNoob : Thank you for your comment, we have amended the headline. – Ed.
To add to Hughie McNoob’s comment above, I find it rather odd that you explain the AV system in so much detail without ever mentioning that we had a referendum on its introduction in 2011 and the result was a resounding no. Bottom line is, the country does not want AV. It is hardly surprising that those parties disadvantaged by FPTP will forever be carping at its ‘unfairness’, but if you take a broader perspective, FPTP has many advantages and the voters decided to stick with it. Sorry Dev/Dave and Joe, but such is life.
I’m not quite sure why the Citizen chose to talk about AV either. There are many ways to have a more proportional voting system. First Past The Post, which England and Wales mostly use, is the least proportional, as Tony Harm’s figures demonstrate, but AV is the second worst. This is one of the reasons that it was rejected in the 2011 referendum and why no party advocates it. The Liberal Democrats, for example, advocate the Single Transferable Vote system which is used in Scotland and Ireland.
The Tories have little interest in changing the voting system as they are single minded on studying in power, regardless of the consequences for the country, and they are the major beneficiaries of the inequality of the current system. The real question is where does the Labour party stand on this? Types of PR are popular amongst Labour grass roots membership, amongst young people, have variously been backed by Labour Party leaders and, indeed, been in their manifesto (though they broke their promise to implement a different system). We live in a third rate democracy, where most people’s votes don’t count, and Labour needs to get off the fence on this very important issue.
Hackney did vote strongly in favour of AV in 2011, so this is relevant in the local context.
For those who are interested in exactly what we commented after the election then you can read it here http://www.hackneylibdems.org/liberal_democrats_increase_vote_share_in_both_hackney_seats
Quite clearly focussed on the positve vote increase and share in the face of a massive Labour surge nationally, congratulating the other candidates and praising the hard work of our volunteers AND THEN making a comment that not just our party have made following the election on the changes in vote share to the larger parties, in our case Labour. Quite clearly the two main parties squeezed the smaller parties and our stance on democratic reform is well known.
By the way, your ‘sour grapes’ bit still appears on Facebook.
“Open & tolerant”?? The homophobia of the (then) LibDem leader is one reason why I did not consider voting for his party!
I imagine there are many from the LGBT community living in Hackney, also it has now got quite a young & trendy demographic these days, so I can’t imagine either of those groups supporting a homophobe!
The LibDems made the huge mistake of canvassing my ward (and, I gather, elsewhere in the country), using a flyer which attacked the usual local political opposition (the Tories) in an attempt to beat the long-standing Labour MP. Anyone who dislikes negative campaigning – as I do, whoever uses it – would have been instantly alienated by this foolish approach.
Labour probably won more votes because of the positive and socially-responsible nature of its campaign manifesto than for any other reason. I’d voted LibDem often in the past and Green, when that became feasible, but this time there was no doubt which party deserved the most popular support.
Learn from your mistakes, Dave – and don’t blame other factors if your own choice of tactics blows up in your face.
There are a number of comments to this thread which I feel are inaccurate and which I should come back on. In reverse order:
1. “DianaW”, I genuinely think you’re mistaken and confusing our leaflets with those of the Labour party. There is lots to attack about the Conservative Party but we didn’t do a negative campaign against them in our literature in Hackney: I have copies of each leaflet we printed and can prove it! The nature of a snap election is that the initial leaflets have to be sent to the printers before any party launches its manifesto, so our first sets of leaflets focused on Brexit and how Labour and the Tories were singing exactly the same tune on this issue, and that we were different. Our final leaflet, which the Royal Mail was meant to deliver to every letterbox in Hackney in the final week of the campaign, listed over a dozen good policy reasons to vote for us. Alas, there is quite a bit of evidence that this leaflet wasn’t delivered as widely as it should have been. If you didn’t get it, please privately message me your address and I shall add this to the list of properties not delivered to when I talk to the Royal Mail. In contrast, I do have Labour leaflets and they do attack the Tories, on several issues. I therefore respectfully think you’re confusing the Lib Dems with Labour on this matter. Which, given their majority here, perhaps means we should have been more negative in our campaigning!!
2. “CH” (I’m not sure why people don’t just state their name?) is simply wrong; Tim Farron is not a homophobe. I’ve met him and I know he isn’t. The Lib Dems have a better voting record on LGBT issues than either Labour or the Tories, and were the ones who forced equal marriage into law in the coalition government. As an out gay candidate myself, I’ve been a long standing member of the Lib Dems not least because of our record on equality. Tim is no longer leader of our party so this issue is somewhat taxonomic, but it’s a shame if you didn’t vote Lib Dem based upon a false understanding.
3. “Katy” suggests we should have fielded women candidates. One third of our MPs are female, not enough, but similar to other major parties. We have programmes to support female candidates and to make it easier for them to stand in our top target seats. In neighbouring Tower Hamlets and Haringey we fielded female candidates. One of our female members in Hackney stood for election elsewhere in London. But we reject the notion that we have to put forward a woman in every borough; we prefer to balance out the numbers across the UK, based upon talent and availability (given that it was a snap election, so not everyone was available).