Introducing the European Parliamentary Elections Bill which will "reform" the system of voting in the European Elections of June 1999, the Home Secretary, Jack Straw, began his speech by saying:
"The Government were elected in May with firm commitments to improve the democratic process in this country."
Only George Orwell could do justice to the advance in democracy which that Bill has registered. Constituencies will be totally abolished, so that no elected Member will be responsible to any discrete body of electors. The country will be divided into electoral districts which match the government's own economic regions. The smallest region will elect four Members of the European Parliament, and the largest, eleven. Middle sized districts will elect six or seven. It will not be possible to subdivide such districts, apportioning responsibility for a particular area to a particular Member because the voting will be for region-wide lists. Voters will choose either the Labour list, or the Liberal list, or the Conservatives, or whoever else: but they will not have the right to support particular individual candidates, whose names will figure on the ballot paper in the preferred order of the Parties themselves. According to the Party division of the votes, candidates will be declared elected in the order which the Parties have chosen. This means that those drawing up the Party lists will have decided not merely who will be offered for election, but who will actually be declared "elected".
In such circumstances, it is perfectly imaginable that all the successful candidates of three or four Parties might come from one particular district, or indeed might originate outside the electoral region for which they have been chosen, altogether. In this way, the region-wide vote will produce region-wide Members, accountable to no-one in particular among the voters, but rigidly beholden to the Party bosses who appointed them.
If you wish to lobby your MEP, you will either have to write to all the MEPs for your region, in the hope that one might deign to answer, or more probably, you will write to the Political Party of your choice, and ask them to assign the problem you wish to raise to whichever particular Member has a particular interest in it. This gives Political Parties a markedly more active role in the process of representation than they have ever had before, down-grading Parliamentarians in the process. Electors might be forgiven for regarding this as a less than satisfactory way to process their grievances.
Those who have spoken in favour of the abolition of Constituencies argue that this problem does not matter, because so many of the issues dealt with in the European Parliament concern the regions, and that MEPs will be able to liaise with regional institutions.
If we really were about to experience an improvement in the democratic process in this country, we might expect, then, urgent attention to the establishment of democratic regional assemblies throughout Britain. But this reform is on nobody's agenda. What we shall have instead is a series of regional quangos, business-led, with a varying but attenuated participation by officials chosen from Local Government. Members of the European Parliament who relate to such quangos will find them rather imperfect exponents of the people's needs.
But if they wish to relate to elected Local Authorities, then they will meet, once again, the intransigent problem of demarcation. Will all MEPs liaise with all units of Local Government in the new super-regions? Or will they try to divide the responsibility between them? In which case, how can allocation take place across Party boundaries, when Party boundaries have been the sole criterion in the choice of elected Members?
The same problem will apply when voluntary organisations or trade unions seek redress from their elected members. There will only be one clear channel of responsibility, and one clear line of accountability. These will both run directly through the Party machine, and nowhere else . For the first time, British electors will be at the mercy of regional Party organisations, if they seek redress for wrongs, advice on rights, access to institutions, or representation in disputes.
Until now, Party organisations have not been designed to perform such services, and have not been funded accordingly. To render them competent, vast investment will be needed. If this is privately funded, then a very dangerous burgeoning of influence will be likely to result. If it is to be publicly funded, it is difficult to see how single mothers, who have just lost substantial portions of their meagre allowances, will respond to such vast largesse for political Parties, which are understandably unable to fund their own activities.
The arguments leading up to these proposals have always been dubious. Whilst it can be maintained that New Labour made an abstract commitment to some form of proportional representation for the European Elections, it is quite untrue that any specific engagement was made, prescribing a closed list system. And a regional closed list is far less proportional than a national one. Votes for minorities will not be redistributed across regional boundaries, so that the result will, in any case, be skewed in favour of large established organisations.
The imposition of regional lists is one great advantage, however, if you are a Party Leader. It is a powerful inducement to obedience. Westminster Parliaments have continuously encountered problems with the European Parliament. It has always been difficult to keep MEPs "on message". They have had a regrettable tendency to "go native". The great merit of the European Parliament has lain in its attempt to create transnational political families, European "Parties", which have tentatively sought to establish a European view of matters.
British Conservatives have had an uneasy relationship with the European People's Party, the family of Christian Democrats to which they are affiliated. By and large, the British Labour Party has been more comfortable in the Party of European Socialists, to which it is affiliated, and of which it has provided the Leader for the last five years.
But nonetheless there have been recurrent tensions between British national leaders and the MEPs belonging to their Parties. Sometimes, there have been conflicts involving a handful of European Parliamentarians with their national leaderships. But on occasion there have been major rebellions, amounting to mutiny.
In the Labour Party, there was a minor turbulence during the argument about the "Delors Two package", which sought to increase the revenues of the European Union in order to carry through a cohesion programme of economic development in Southern Europe and Ireland. Labour Members were instructed to vote against this, but some declined to do so on the grounds that the cohesion policy was sound socialism, and would in any event also prosper the richer countries of the North, which would all secure hefty contracts when new roads and other infrastructures were built in the poorer countries of the South.
More recently, a more spectacular challenge came from the European Parliamentary Labour Party during the argument about the rescission of Clause IV of the Labour Party's constitution. On this occasion, the newly elected Leader, Tony Blair, invited Members to participate in a debate about the need to change the Clause. A majority of EPLP Members were in favour of a more modern mission statement, which they thought should be appended to the old Clause, which should be preserved, in fidelity to the historical objectives of the Party. But the new Leader had clearly not wanted a debate in which other people expressed an opinion, and he became very cross with the dissenting majority of his European Parliamentarians. Spin-doctors went into action to traduce dissidents. At last there was a meeting in Brussels, when the Leader came out to call his MEPs to order. Arms were twisted, and some of the Clause IV signatories recanted. The confrontation with the EPLP turned out in fact to be a damp squib, with no fireworks, while a somewhat diffident Leader administered self-conscious rebukes to certain members. The spin-doctors went into action at once, and the closed meeting was presented under all the headlines as a ferocious encounter in which Daniel slaughtered all the lions in the den with deftly post-modern knocks and blows.
Having won this mythical victory, the Prime Minister's pride was not assuaged. On the contrary, there were dark murmerings from his office about the condign punishment which should be expected by all those who had called his divinity into question. It was in the process of working out suitable torments for these agnostics that the decision to introduce a system of proportional representation for the European Elections in 1999 came to be seen as a disciplinary innovation.
It was always connected with explicit and specific threats. When Ministers told the press about their legislative proposals, it was always made clear to journalists that there was a connection between reform and the chastising of dissidents. Thus, on the 16th July 1997, the Times reported
"Some Cabinet Ministers are attracted by the greater control they believe a PR system would give Labour over its European MPs, some of whom have been notoriously "off message"."
The Times went on to report
"Although the details have to be worked out there is likely to be a regional list of candidates who would be elected in proportion to the votes cast. PR campaigners in the Cabinet, notably Robin Cook and Jack Cunningham, are delighted at the move, which is expected to be confirmed at tomorrow's Cabinet meeting."
That the spin-doctors had been at work seems evident, because on the same day, the Guardian published an editorial under the headline "Labour must go for PR". This, it said,
"provides an opportunity for Tony Blair to reform and modernise the list of Labour MEPs. The Prime Minister owes many of his Party's representatives at Strasbourg no favours at all. Massively out of touch with opinion within the Labour Party, and thriving on a political system which has virtually no effective accountability at all, some of them have used their privileged position simply to embarrass their Leader. Proportional representation will in any case mean fewer Labour MEPs ... but Mr. Blair would not be human if he did not see the wider advantages."
This spin was confined to the London newspapers. Outside the spinning range, the story in the Yorkshire Post on the 17th April, neatly confined itself to the reported changes that were in prospect, without offering any explanation about why the proposals were being brought forward.
By early October, precise proposals had been distilled, but now the spin was more important than the details of the reform. On October 2nd, the Daily Telegraph reported that a "senior Minister" had said that moves to reform Labour's MEPs marked "the next stage of modernisation". Accordingly, I wrote to the Telegraph to ask about the propriety of reforming the electoral system in order to rectify disadvantages in the Labour Party's own internal procedures. The question was:
"Is your senior Minister really saying that the Prime Minister, acting only out of vindictiveness in the pursuit of internal Party squabbles, is prepared to mutilate the national electoral system in order to settle old Party scores?"
Of course, other MEPs were beginning to show some disquiet about this constant drip feed of tendentious information from the Labour Party's news' managers. But surprisingly the press itself became uneasy about the operation they were being asked to whitewash. On October 17th 1997, the Financial Times wrote an editorial which welcomed the principle of proportional representation for the European Elections, but expressed its reservations about the intention to use
""closed" regional lists - a system that gives the electorate no chance to vote for or against individual candidates.The advantage of that system for party managers is obvious. In New Labour's case it has a specific purpose, making it easier to deselect the "old Labour" incumbent MEPs who won seats in the big leftward swings of 1984 and 1989. If the Conservative Party were foolish enough to use it in the same way - in its case to deselect Europhile incumbents - Tony Blair, Prime Minister, would be only the more pleased.
Labour should think again before stooping to such petty politics ... Democracy means, or should mean, power for the people. Not just for Party machines."
Meantime, the Labour Party machine was entering a paroxysm. Since Labour MEPs were gleaning information about the new proposals, it became necessary to control what they said. The Labour Party Conference, which might have discussed all these proposals, was now safely out of the way, without having been consulted in any particular. But MEPs began to inform their Constituency organisations, and widespread disquiet resulted. Labour's National Executive hastily approved a Code of Practice, designed to prevent Members of the Parliamentary Group in Strasbourg from talking to the press about the new arrangements. It used the magic phrase which had previously been designed by the Westminster Parliamentary Party but rejected by the European Party, rendering an offence conduct which might "bring the Party into disrepute". Telling the press how New Labour intended to fiddle the European elections would, of course, instantly bring the Party into disrepute. The EPLP did not approve the new Code of Practice but "noted" it. This however failed to neuter the code. It was manifestly a breach of Parliamentary privilege for the National Executive to instruct Parliamentarians what they might, and what they might not, tell their constituents through the press. It was also, almost certainly, a breach of the European Parliament's Rule 2, which insists on the "independent mandate". I referred this question to the President of the Parliament, and it was examined by its Rules Committee. After extensive packing by Labour Members, this Committee found no breach of the rule, in spite of all the evidence.
Whilst these enquiries were continuing, four Members of the EPLP were disciplined for refusing to sign the new Code of Practice. No other Members had been asked to sign the code: but three Members had spoken on the BBC about the issue of reform. All were given twenty-four hours to accept the code, or face instant punishment. The punishment was duly administered, in the form of suspension from the EPLP. But it was soon discovered that, contrary to Westminster practice, the European Parliamentary Labour Party did not vest such disciplinary powers in its officials, so that the suspensions were all unconstitutional. After an inelegant process of review, the suspended Members were grudgingly readmitted.
Throughout this process, all the powers of condemnation were brought into play, in a sustained campaign of denigration of those who dared to criticise the proposed reform. Hugh Kerr and I therefore sought assurances from the General Secretary about our future status: this question was only to be answered at the beginning of January when we were summarily expelled without a hearing.