The Living Vote: Voting Reform Is the Biggest Issue of Our Time. Get That and Everything Changes.

Introduction

This book is about protecting our freedom and democracy. To achieve that we need to bring the democratic process closer to the people by changing the structure of the UK House of Commons, and the electoral mechanism we should adopt to populate it. It is not about House of Lords Reform or other constitutional issues, though these also need to be addressed.

The problem is that governments have too much power which is wielded indiscriminately and sometimes unlawfully.¹ Every aspect of our lives can be changed on the say so of one person, with nothing being sacrosanct, nothing off the table. In 2020 and 2021, we saw innocent people effectively imprisoned in their own homes, businesses closed, the elderly isolated, and all it took was a simple diktat. Around the world, we saw draconian measures against an innocent and healthy population. Once again, with little or no debate, little or no discussion, and in all cases no opposition. We’ve engaged in disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan where false terrors were fabricated in order to convince a supine parliament to agree and to elicit public support.

However, this is just the tip of the iceberg. I will describe how our democracy is actually an elected dictatorship with our only choice being to decide which dictator rules for the next parliamentary period. Sometimes that power is limited by coalitions, but as I will demonstrate, they can lead to even worse outcomes because of egos, ideology, and self-interest. The reality is that coalitions are just a less effective way of achieving the dictatorial power that majority governments, as we understand them now, desire above all else.

Our current system has a very high bar. By that I mean elected representatives need a great deal of support to be elected. Each constituency is an independent election in its own right and the winner takes all. It’s called ‘First Past the Post’ (FPTP). To win a seat under this system a candidate has to get more votes than all other candidates and all the other candidates lose, even if the second placed candidate has only one vote less than the winner. Its downside is that most of the votes cast are ineffective, it is extremely unfair and the resultant government always has minority support.

One solution to the under-representation the FPTP system creates would be to employ one of the many systems under the generic description of Proportional Representation, which has many variations, some of which are in use in other forms of UK election such as the Welsh Assembly and the Scottish Parliament. A major downside of PR systems is that the overall election winner will not likely gain a majority in Parliament and will need to arrange a coalition with another party to be able to govern. As shown with the 2010 coalition between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, they can work well and be better than the dictatorial nature of governments created by the FPTP system. Although coalition government with a proportional voting system would be a good objective, the system I propose here is stronger and gives more control without the drawbacks.

As I will describe later, the British people don’t like the idea of messy coalitions that can provide excuses for politicians to abandon election promises, and as any change of system will probably be subject to a referendum, getting the people on-board is essential.

The mechanisms described in this book are designed to remove the dictatorial power of the government yet allow a ‘majority’ government to be established for the purposes of governance. What the executive will not automatically have, is a majority in Parliament. The system this book describes will enable this new relationship between government and Parliament whilst dramatically increasing representation without the need for coalitions. No other proportional system can achieve this. Far more people will get the MP they voted for, the constituency connection will be stronger, and each person’s vote will live on throughout the entire parliament.

Make no mistake, government wields enormous power, and even when that power cannot be exercised so easily, they have the unlimited resources to create a justification, to paint a false picture for the purposes of achieving popular agreement, to flood one’s every sense with relentless propaganda. We saw this very effective carpet bombing of a false narrative to elicit support to shut down the UK for two years, force people to stay at home, close businesses, and use extreme coercion to effectively mandate vaccines. We were told that 100s of thousands would die from coronavirus – the ONS revealed that around 17,000 died. We were told we should all test regularly – the test was unreliable and even the inventor of the PCR test said it could not be used for this purpose. We were also told vaccines would stop us catching the disease, becoming very ill and passing it on – we now know that after four vaccinations we can still catch it and spread it, die from it and unexplained mortality occurring after vaccination is becoming an issue.

The intention in highlighting the issues that arose in the Coronavirus pandemic is not to cast any judgement on those acts, but simply to make the point that getting agreement, whether that be from Members of Parliament, or the general public, governments have the resources to convince and persuade. Media, academia, scientists, and politicians can all be manipulated, sometimes bought, so we need something in place to protect the rights of ordinary people, a supra governmental constitution, a charter of rights, where any government’s principal responsibility would be to protect that.

However, one step at a time. The establishment of a written constitution and the protections it should embody is the subject of another book, perhaps the next one. The processes described here will improve matters significantly and would remain an essential part of creating governance with limits.

Let me explain one obvious complication about rights and actions.

In general, it should be a fundamental right to be able to go about one’s business, without intimidation, harassment or in extreme cases being prevented from doing so unlawfully.

By these means, irritating protestors, like Extinction Rebellion, could be sued for preventing people from undertaking their lawful activities. Costs could be high and would be a deterrent to such unreasonable protests. There would not be a need for the criminal law to be engaged as the civil processes would adequately punish and recompense. The right to protest would be part of the statute of rights, but with the proviso that such actions could not impinge upon the rights of others.

So far so good.

Then we view the Canadian Truckers protests of 2022. Oddly, and probably like most people, I do not support the Extinction Rebellion protestors yet supported the Canadian Truckers. It doesn’t matter that I think this way, because many will, and many will have the opposite view, that’s not the point. The point is that there is a difference between the two protesting groups. Defining what it is, is the problem. It is the case that some mass action, probably more than a protest, is justifiable. What if the government do not uphold the constitution or the charter of rights, would mass action then become lawful under the charter? What if the government broke the law? Is there ever a justification for revolution? In essence when a government acts unlawfully can others’ rights then be suspended?

Within any constitution that protects rights and freedoms there would need to be a mechanism to allow necessary mass protest, or another mechanism that would negate any need to blockade roads, and with the power to overturn unreasonable government diktat.

No mechanism is perfect because when the government has weaponry and an army, revolution is the last resort. Let’s never forget the massacre in Tiananmen Square, 4th June 1989. As I write this, Canada is moving perilously close to injuring Canadian citizens, so the actions there have parallels in the past.

Another constitutionally granted right must be access to justice, but for that to happen we would need a revolutionised legal structure with far greater accessibility. Currently, courts are congested, and litigation is too expensive for most people. This needs to improve anyway.

The rights and benefits of people must always trump the self-interest of politicians. Democracy, embodying regular elections, changes the motivations of politicians as their prime objective is to get elected, not to make our lives better. If they can do both, then great, but if one has to suffer it will not be the electoral effort. To balance these swings, to encourage a longer-term view, beyond the next election, the absolute power of the executive, and in particular, the Prime Minister, should be restrained a little. The systems and processes described later will do this, but reform shouldn’t end there.

Democracy works. The better we can apply the principles of people power, the better our governance will be. If that weren’t true, then what else? The electoral system described in this book will extend representation, reduce the dictatorial power of government, whilst enabling a single party government to function, pretty much as it does now.

After the 2015 general election, I completed work on an idea for voting reform that would better address the need for greater representation of the people in the House of Commons, allowing for more people to get the representative for whom they voted and ensuring that votes