This weekend past, Miliband ruled out doing any sort of a deal with the SNP, even confidence and supply. This places the Labour Party in a rather precarious position. If Labour are the largest party in a hung parliament and Miliband becomes prime minister with less than 35% of the vote, without a parliamentary majority and lacking even a deal with any other party, just banking on the fact that Ed’s Queen’s Speech won’t be voted down by the others parties required (which, to be fair, they probably would let through in these circumstances), there is a legitimacy problem staring them in the face.
The right-wing press will attack them mercilessly; I realise they’ll do this to a Labour led government no matter what, but in this instance the stuff might stick. All while the SNP reviews everything on a case-by-case basis, happily voting down legislation whenever suits, content in the knowledge that Labour can’t call an election anytime it chooses and is sort of stuck with them. Meanwhile, Miliband and his party tank in the polls rather harshly.
There is a way around this, but it’s ballsy and not without risk. It starts with Miliband admitting that his legitimacy is pretty thin up front; that no one won the election, including Labour, but that given the Tories are unable to lead a government, that task falls to him. But he understands explicitly that he didn’t win and that he wants to be a prime minister that won’t simply limp on. He gets that things need to change and that this is the only clear message from the electorate this time round. The days of two-party politics are over and the Labour Party accepts that. They will therefore legislate to change the voting system. At the same time, Labour will still seek to be the largest party of the centre-left; but it will do so by convincing those who have gone to the SNP, the Greens, the Lib Dems, to give them another chance – not tell them that they need to vote tactically for something they don’t really want.
The House of Lords gets a revamp. Local government will be radically altered to accommodate German style federalism. Further devolution to cities will be part of the package.
Some of the things I’ve imagined Ed Miliband saying above I’d like to hear personally; some of it I’m less keen on. But I don’t see how he governs otherwise without some form of what I‘ve just proscribed being said. Unless he forms a coalition, which it seems like he’s not so keen on. Because if he tries to pretend that a majority is just around the corner, and all he has to do is try and screw over everyone who he’s trying to work with for half a decade, all I can say is that David Cameron tried that one and look where it’s got him.
Miliband’s premiership would need something big and different at the very start of it to give it some momentum. Otherwise, Labour could be arranging for its own decimation in relatively short order.
How can a government which has just admitted it doesn’t even have real a mandate to govern for five years, then immediately start making sweeping changes to the constitution?!
P:
The point is that Labour do not have a mandate at all and would simply be putting forward the relevant legislation in the hopes that the smaller parties vote it through. They would have no ability to whip any of it as there would be no formal alliance between parties. That’s where the risk comes in. So they aren’t changing the constitution themselves – essentially, parliament, like in the 19th century, would be doing so.
But in the case described none of the parties could claim that any kind of legitimate mandate for changing the constitution; especially as most of them don’t have constitutional changes in their manifestos. No one could claim that the public had expressed any kind of wish for constitutional change of any kind.
There would be a public outcry if this was tried. The public don’t want the voting system to change: that was made clear in 2011. For a minority government to claim, nonsensically, that its very lack of legitimacy was what gave it carte blanche to start scribbling over the constitution (and with the support of smaller parties with even less claim to have a mandate for such sweeping changes!)… the people would not wear it.
I haven’t yet thought through all the ramifications of everything you’re suggesting, but it sounds like a good place to start to me. As Nick has said, it would have to get voted through by a majority anyway. What about a cross-party supported referendum on voting & house of Lords reform? That would be interesting… And show some will from government to work together, not just sling mud…
If nothing else, it would be interesting to see which Labourites rebelled and voted with the opposition, which would be close to 100% opposed.
As I recall, also, Farrago endorsed a Yes vote in the AV referendum, but I’m pretty sure most kippers didn’t follow his lead. Carswell, I suspect, would support electoral rform but who even knows what kipper MPs, if there were more than a few, would do? Their voters fear change even when it undeniably beneefits them beecause such is the way most kippers think. And individual MPs would be out of control. One thinks of the short-lived Bob Spink.
Depressingly, I now suspect the Tories will win a very narrow majority now or come within 5-10 seats of it, therefore all this speculation will be rendered pointless in very short order…
The British, it seems to me, will only contemplate a change once a crisis has been reached. I think that the scenario above would count as that, and it may be our only chance to get such radical change through. I say radical. The idea of a federal state with proportional voting and a written constitution is normal for basically every other damn country in our contemporary nations, it’s us who are the oddity.
If it comes in one go, then fine, though I doubt the courage of the Labour party to try it if I’m depressingly honest. And the reaction of the Tories/media would be daming, as previous commenters have said – ‘Who does this loser think he is/ Red Ed Marxiband RIGS our precious Consitution’. However, if it comes to Miliband’s mooted constitutional convention, I am sure the more radical ideas you have outlined would crop up anyway (the public at large are far from stupid, and know how unsustainable the current system is), and then it would be very hard of those with a vested interest in the status quo to resist.
Without looking like a bunch of crooks, that is.