1. In the Latin, it is said “opportunity has hair in front, behind she is bald; if you seize her by the forelock you may hold her, but, if suffered to escape, not Jupiter himself can catch her again.” The 2019 general election was a sobering moment. It confirmed the above saying in a scandalously brutal way by exposing the poverty of British democracy for not having proportional representation as its electoral system. The scandal was made all the more excruciating when one remembers that the Liberal Democrat Party had for a very long time advocated for proportional representation as its central pillar.
2. However, when an opportunity of a lifetime fell into the lap of the Liberal Democrats following the 2010 election, they played an astonishingly poor hand; for in rolling the dice to win a seat at the top table of British politics, they nailed their colours to the mast of a Tory led coalition government – only to find that they had also unwittingly nailed their trousers along with them, leaving them politically stark naked. They never really recovered. Oh, if only, the Liberal Democrats had had the courage to stand firm on their convictions respecting proportional representation; it is quite possible, nay, highly probable, the narrative to the future our country would have taken a wholly different direction; British democracy would have been the better for it, more free to be strong, and more strong to be free. Thus was an extraordinary opportunity lost to British democracy, and as a consequence, the United Kingdom formally left the European Union on 31st January 2020, after 47 years of active membership.
The First-Past-The-Post electoral system is no longer credible
3. Since it is now accepted that the 2019 UK general election was a referendum on Brexit in all but name, it is curious to note that the candidates for Remain supporting parties received 16.5 million votes, while candidates for Leave supporting parties got 14.8 million votes. The 14.8 million voters gave Leave supporters (mainly the Conservative Party) a stonking majority of 80 seats in the House Commons – giving Boris Johnson an unassailable mandate to take the United Kingdom of Great Britain out of the European Union. And going by the number of votes alone, it is now clear as the day that there was no majority in the country to leave the European Union. This unhappy reality speaks powerfully about British electoral system of ‘First-Past-The-Post’ – that it is fundamentally undemocratic. The 2019 general election has instead bestowed upon the British people a toxic political environment in which pervasive inequality, racism, cynicism and intolerance are in the ascendance, by each passing day.
4. This new political order also renders commerce, the very life blood of the British economy looking as timid as a dove; and is desperately flustered by the pervading atmosphere of gloom, that our new prime minister might not be up to the job of uniting a divided country following a bitterly fought election. Wage stagnation and hopelessness now seem certain to continue as meat and drink for the majority of ordinary British men and women. It is now very clear for all to see that the shameless opportunism exhibited by Boris Johnson and friends, has left a widespread feeling abroad in the country that the current electoral system is chillingly unfair, leaving a genuine sense of injustice and bitterness in the collective soul of our three Kingdoms. Thus, when Boris Johnson, the British Prime Minister gave a television broadcast on 31st January, and muttered a few incomprehensible platitudes, “Brexit is now done… How he was the man to bring the country together” – alas, his pronouncements sounded as hollow as a drum. But, we are where we are. And the question is: Would proportional representation have made a difference? What is it anyway?
Proportional Representation
5. My Oxford Dictionary defines proportional representation (PR) as, “a system that gives each party in an election a number of seats in proportion to the number of votes cast for them.” It is, in other words, an electoral system in which divisions in an electorate are reflected proportionately in the elected body, that is, the House of Commons. This blogpost is not the appropriate medium to go into sundry details about the merits of PR; that work must be left to others who are better qualified to speak on the subject than I will ever be. Now I know that in Britain today, many take issue with experts. And, although as Dr. Peter Verovsek argues, that public intellectuals and experts cannot tell citizens what to do; they can, at the very least, educate us. We have a legitimate expectation to be educated by those who are more learned than us. In other words, experts have a significant role to play in a healthy democracy; for truth cannot be bought by wealth, neither can it be controlled with power. We, the citizens of the UK need to be secure in the knowledge spread at our feet; for democracy cannot function when its electorate is imbued with cloud heads. Sufficient to say, however, that fairness lies at the heart of proportional representation.
6. John Stuart Mill, one of the greatest advocates for proportional representation, wrote in his 1861 essay, ‘Considerations on Representative Government’ the following: “In a representative body actually deliberating, the minority must of course be overruled; and in an equal democracy, the majority of the people, through their representatives, will outvote and prevail over the minority and their representatives. But does it follow that the minority should have no representatives at all? … Is it necessary that the minority should not even be heard? Nothing but habit and old association can reconcile any reasonable being to the needless injustice. In a really equal democracy, every or any section would be represented, not disproportionately, but proportionately. A majority of the electors would always have a majority of the representatives, but a minority of the electors would always have a minority of the representatives. Man for man, they would be as fully represented as the majority. Unless they are, there is not equal government … There is a part whose fair and equal share of influence in the representation is withheld from them, contrary to all just government, but, above all, contrary to the principle of democracy, which professes equality as its very root and foundation.”
Brexit is a national crisis affecting all Britons alike; but it’s also a great opportunity
7. Seeing that the new Conservative Government is being led by a distrusted brigade of notoriously dubious judgment, we may confidently predict that Brexit will not turn out to be what its most vocal advocates imagined. The evidence on the ground suggests that the Brexit saga is going to run and run. Because on the one hand: Those who championed Brexit are, in the politest possible sense, like the dog in the fable, that had the meat in his mouth, but did not eat it because he saw the shadow of it in the water, and was so anxious to get that shadow as well as the substance that he already had that he lost the piece that he might have eaten. They have, to our collective shame, made the British people come across as if we are always trying to grasp at shadows in the name of better global trade and what-have-you; instead, the rather, of enjoying the benefits wrought about by our 47-year membership to the European Union. Surely, a bird in hand is better by far, than two which are in the bush!
8. Now no one in their right mind would pretend that the European Union project was ever perfect. It never was, and it never will. You only have to treat yourself to an episode of ‘Yes Prime Minister – Why Britain joined Europe.., ’to see that the project was fraught with many difficulties from the very outset. But despite its many imperfections, and believe me, there are many things to be angry about, the European Union has served member countries rather well since she was first conceived following the Treaties of Rome in 1957. The British peoples in particular, have been instrumental in building the current EU philosophy, her laws and inter-government infrastructure; and to be honest, we have done pretty well out of it as well. I therefore speak with Ian McEwan when he wrote that ‘the magic dust of populism has blinded reason, and damage and diminishment lie ahead.’ Our precipitous departure, to put it very mildly, is an act of unspeakable self-harm; condemning us to make bricks with precious little straw, and to petulantly toss our bread upon thankless waters. Moreover, if anything is the matter with the European project, we must accept our share of responsibility.
9. But on the other hand, for those of us who campaigned for the cause of Remain, the Conservative landslide victory at the last general election is, without a shadow of doubt, a truly deflating experience. We did not just lose – the cause to Remain was unequivocally crushed at the poll. And, as imperfect the British electoral system is, it is critical for us to swallow our pride and accept the result, however bitter. We must not only drink the cup of bitterness, but we must also drink down to the very dregs. Our cause is as lifeless as a dead horse – at least for the foreseeable future. There is no point of us continuing to flog a dead horse, as it has no life for it to stir: we need to first put life back into it, for else all our flogging will lead to even more humiliating frustration and disappointment. We are all of us, as British citizens, running an unspeakable hazard owning the consequences of Brexit; and the question we must all ask ourselves is this: How may we mitigate the disaster which is upon us?
Build a coalition of Social Democratic consensus
10. The answer shall be such as to answer another critical question – what steps may we take in order for us to put life back into our dead horse? Accepting that we, as a country, are in a national emergency; I would answer the question by speaking with Yvette Lundy, a heroine of the French resistance, who recently died in 2019 aged 103, when she said: “Always ask: where are we going; with whom; what will we do? Everyone has a duty of responsibility, no matter how young.” Unless Boris Johnson makes a complete hash of things during his tenure as our Prime Minister, it is highly probable he will remain in No. 10 Downing Street for a minimum of ten years. And since democracy is a work of time, that is, it cannot be done in a hurry; we should take a more sanguine outlook on life and consider his land-slide victory as something of a blessing in disguise, and therefore, a great opportunity for us. For one thing we can all be sure about is that his victory will make certain that, no Leaver in England will ever be heard crying, ‘We wuz stabbed in the back!’ It means that ‘Leavers’ can do their uttermost worst in complete knowledge that the buck now stops with them; and we can take our time to regroup and strategize. And we can best strategize by accepting that it is the duty of every person in the Remain camp to render himself beneficial to the cause of building consensus in social democracy and to those around him; to a great number if possible; but if this is denied him, to a few; to his acquaintances; or at least to himself. A task of first importance is for us to build a coalition of Social Democrats, with a view of offering the British people a credible alternative to Boris Johnson and company. But how may we go about this task?
Opportunity favours the prepared – we must be prepared.
11. Years ago, I was privileged to be the arms and legs of an elderly gentleman friend in Buckingham. I helped him run his allotment. I know from experience that fertile ground, when well-tilled will necessarily bring forth more than the best tilled estate, the soil of which is hard and sterile. Thus, speaking with Louis Pasteur when he said, ‘Fortune favours the prepared mind,’ our first task is therefore to get into the right frame of mind. We must to get to work and start tilling the British political soil which is presently ripe for significant change, especially in light of the just concluded election. This fertile soil will in part see its fertility enhanced immeasurably, when the Brexit dream begins to wither on the vine, following the vehement East wind of reality. Even if, as the Guardian columnist, Rafael Behr, so eloquently put it alluding to his personal experience of a heart attack, the withering takes the form of “ a gradual tightening, a slow burn; the kind of problem that is easier to deny than to own;” the withering will happen – one way or another.
12. Since we know from bitter experience that combustible material cannot be expected to lie about the floor without attracting sparks, it behoves every one of us to apply our best endeavours to challenge individuals in our midst, who may be tempted to apply the match through persuasive advocacy. For if we, peradventure succeed in changing the form of our political discourse, the odds of changing the substance of British politics will improve considerably.
13. One specific instance in which change is most urgent is the way we talk about a burning injustice relating to race, immigration and integration. The Greater Manchester sexual abuse scandal, in which up to 52 white working class children may have been victims of a sexual abuse ring is a terrible indictment on a strange culture now existing in the UK. This culture is especially startling after it became clear that Operation Augusta was deliberately shut down because senior officers prioritized solving burglaries and car crime. But a more devastating allegation making the rounds is that the real reason the operation was downgraded was to protect the sensibilities of a highly conservative section of Muslim communities. Apparently, authorities were more anxious not to come across as racist; they did not wish to be seen as investigating crimes only committed by men of Asian descent. If true, it speaks poorly about the culture of fear of hurting people and the desire for cheap applause; for it stands in the way of searching out serious social problems blighting our communities regardless of race or social class, which are crying out for decisive leadership. We, as a society, have a great deal to answer – for we are playing idle spectators of gross injustice, especially in light of troubles and afflictions visited upon the children of our neighbours, when we are capable of being their helpers. Our inability to speak openly about these issues was, I believe, one of the key drivers which led to the decision to ‘Leave’ in the 2016 Brexit Referendum. But how may we address all these burning injustices, for the challenge is considerable?
The challenge is huge, but we must do what we can
14. The challenge is indeed considerable – almost insurmountable. But we should not be intimidated by the seemingly overwhelming nature of the political crisis we are now facing. Rather, we should instead be excited by the opportunity which is before us, with a view of making a real and practical difference. I, for one, am confident that with God’s help, determination, and with careful application and hard work, the challenge before us though considerable, is surmountable. However, it is necessary to sound a note of caution. Because as Machiavelli argued in The Prince, “The innovator makes enemies of all those who prospered under the old and only lukewarm support is forthcoming from those who would prosper under the new. Their support is lukewarm partly from fear of their adversaries, who have the existing laws on their side, and partly because men are generally incredulous, never really trusting new things unless they have tested them by experience. In consequence, whenever those who oppose the changes can do so, they attack vigorously, and the defence made by others is only lukewarm. So both the innovator and his friends come to grief.”
15. It is my sincere hope that our endeavours do not come to grief, as they clearly did at the last general election. Indeed, it is well said that the nettle feels as soft as silk when it is boldly grasped, and so must we boldly grapple with the challenge before us. We must have the moral conviction that we can and will respond to the challenge accordingly. Much will be done if we do but try. But we must act selectively and judiciously, and we should not be drawn into acting like a magpie in a desperate search of quick and easy solution(s) in the face of harsh realities. But we will need a measure of luck to succeed. Most importantly however, we should endeavour to formulate specific action plans to address specific problems based on sound research, and where appropriate, to learn from past mistakes. That is the only way we can take advantage of the above opportunity, our ‘blessing in disguise’ – by doing what we can to make a real difference to the lives of millions of British people who now feel disenfranchised and did not agree to leave the European Union.
16. In conclusion: Contrary to a popular belief that British democracy may be dead, it is not; indeed, it is alive and kicking. All that is required is for right thinking people to step up their game, and learn how to kick properly. The work of learning how to kick must begin today. This is the only time we can legitimately call our own. For tomorrow is the only thing written in the almanac of fools; indeed, tomorrow is like a hind-wheel of a chariot, it is always near to the “I will do thus and thus, I will be sure to do it; tomorrow comes, and tomorrow goes…” Next time an opportunity falls in our collective lap, let us make sure that we are not only ready to do the kicking, but also suitably equipped to play a clever hand – and roll the dice wisely.