There has been much talk of late about the electoral system for the UK Parliament. This will be another round in the ongoing battle to extend and improve the franchise which has been unfolding since before the Great Reform Act of 1832. After that date a series of Representation Of The People Acts gradually allowed more and more men the vote till finally all males aged 21 could. Then after World War 1 women aged 30 were granted the franchise, and when it was realised that the world had not come to an end simply because the fairer sex could vote, women at 21 received it sometime around 1930.
I still remember my grandmother struggling out to vote even though she was an old lady. She did this religiously because she could remember the time when women did not have that right and was determined that she should exercise it whenever possible.
Finally (in the 1970s if my memory serves – I’ve not Wikied any of this so far, it was one of the bits of History I did do at school) the voting age was reduced to 18 for all voters. Gordon Brown has even floated the idea of reducing it to 16!
My younger son likes to take credit for the genesis of this proposal as during the last General Election he was in Kirkcaldy High Street and was accosted by our Labour candidate (you know who) and asked if he was going to be voting for him. He had to reply he was too young and couldn’t vote.
The Chartists were a group who agitated for electoral extension and reform in the mid 1800s with six main demands – all of which were rejected at the time. Yet they prevailed in the end; mostly.
The only one of their demands that has not yet been enacted is Annual Parliaments. This might be one reform now worth considering. By this I (unlike the Chartists) donâ’t mean hold a General Election every single year, but instead have, say, a quarter of the House Of Commons come up for election each year with members sitting for a fixed term of four years. A similar sort of thing used to happen in council elections in my youth when every council ward had three members, each coming up for (re)election every third year. My proposal is not for constituencies to have four members each but for a rolling programme of elections.
Perhaps a new Peoples’ Charter should be set up to agitate for this.
Whether it would alleviate or exacerbate the endemic short-termism that bedevils British government I’m not sure but I think it would lead to a reduction in excess by whoever is in office. Would, for example, we have had the worst extremes of Thatcherism or latterly the Iraq war if a quarter of the House Of Commons had been facing imminent re-election? I suppose there would still need to be the ability to hold a widespread General Election at any time – but only if Parliament voted for one.
Along with a more proportional voting system (STV?) and a smaller upper House – perhaps to be elected on a longer term basis, but not for life and certainly not because your ancestor once happened to be boffed by a king – with a scrutineering role and which would also represent the nations and regions of the UK more evenly this would go a long way to making UK government more accountable. All Members of Parliament, of both Houses, to be subject to some form of dismissal in the event of financial shenanigans or other disqualification (such as being jailed.)
It won’t happen, of course.
