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The Guardian
Nader
is a wrecker, but he's right about public malaise
By Polly Toynbee
February 25, 2004
The Ralph Don't Run campaign did no good. Ralph Nader, the 70-year-old
hero-turned-wrecker, is running. When he announced it, the gnashing of
Democratic teeth echoed across the internet, along with angry wishes that some
"unsafe at any speed" car might run him down before election day.
In 2000 he won 2.9% of the vote in the presidential elections. Even a quarter
of that would have been enough to give the White House to George Bush: Nader was
the crucial spoiler in Florida and New Hampshire. The great array of former
supporters who begged him not to run this time made no impact. The Green party,
which he represented last time, has parted company with him. The Nation, the
influential left-of-centre Washington weekly that backed him last time, implored
him: "For the good of the country, the many causes you've championed and
for your own good name - don't run."
But he is, amid a landslide of ordure - "self-obsessed" and "a
shit". "It's about his vanity and not the movement," said a
Democratic governor. Around the globe, the billions who long for Bush's fall
silently begged him not to stand. But he did.
The dismal spectacle of another US election hoves into view. How do all those
citizens who flock to Washington to gaze in awe upon the stirring sentiments
enshrined in the constitution and the bill of rights tolerate those noble words
reduced to the squalid display of election time?
This week Bush, flush with corporate bribes of $140m to spend on
mind-drilling 10-second soundbites, opened his campaign with a ritual assault on
the lack of patriotism of his opponents. In Iraq the US is decreeing the type of
democracy it thinks fit. Meanwhile the world watches US democracy bought and
sold by corporate cash and fixed by a politically gerrymandered supreme court in
a deeply unjust first-past-the-post system. American elections make the case
against Iranian-style "Islamic democracy" a little harder. Which is
more democratic: rule by moolah or mullah?
Nader, the ascetic voice in the wilderness, seems to relish his martyrdom by
excoriation, content with speaking out for universal healthcare, campaign
finance reform, fighting poverty and saving the environment. He is right that
there should be more choices - but mendaciously cavalier in dismissing the
difference between the main parties as too small to matter.
Last time 100 million Americans did not vote, he says: "We've got to
give them more voices, choices, more exciting involvement ... so they're not
just spectators." But anyone with experience of trying to buck a
first-past-the-post system from within knows that being right is not enough. A
vain wrecker he remains, and an exemplar of the left's self-defeating refusal to
hold its nose and unite against the right.
But neither New nor old Labour has anything to boast about on that score. The
last century has been a Conserva tive century largely because the left preferred
to stay split between Labour and Liberal. A natural anti-Conservative majority
has been denied dominance in government, leaving the people to be governed
without majority consent. In clinging to an unjust voting system, Labour's
backwoodsmen have been scarcely better than the hereditary peers holding on to
their ill-gotten power.
Peter Hain, the leader of the house, has been holding public meetings - this
week in Reading - on how to reconnect the people with politics. Restoring
"trust" has been the aim of Big Conversations all over the country.
With turnout down to 59% last time and fewer expected next time, MPs ask how
Westminster has lost touch with voters. "What is to be done?" they
cry. But this is a lot of phoney hand-wringing. They search high and low for an
answer but ignore the elephant in front of their nose: a fairer voting system.
Nader is wrong to stand - but right in his analysis of voter malaise. One way
to get the vote out is to offer a better choice of parties. All that Blairite
"choice" in public services carefully ducks the more pressing question
of choice in voting.
And yet signs of a new interest are breaking through the Labour permafrost.
Thanks to Billy Bragg's Lords reform proposal, a tiny green shoot of new
thinking on Commons reform is growing. After years of hard arguing, Bragg is
making headway in high places. As Lords reform heads for a bruising outing this
week, with hereditaries refusing to go until something better is put in their
place, the government at last realises it needs something more credible than
unelected cronies in ermine.
Bragg's plan to hand out Lords seats according to the proportion of votes
cast for the Commons may not be perfect (what is?) but it solves the big
problems. The second chamber reflects the complexion of the first, instead of a
US-style built-in deadlock. The second chamber remains the weaker since it is
not directly elected, yet is democratic.
A s Bragg finds favour, a lightbulb comes on with MPs. The new Lords would be
proportional. If people voted Green, BNP or Monster Raving Loony, they might not
get their party into the Commons, but their vote would be reflected in the
Lords. With small parties in the Lords, the pressure for a fairer system in the
Commons would be irresistible.
You hear a lot of disingenuous arguments from MPs against proportional
representation (PR). A multi-member constituency would break the sacred bond
between voter and MP, they protest. (Piffle: few know who their MP is anyway.)
The real reason is PR means boundary changes with too many MPs losing their
seats - and these turkeys won't vote for seasonal festivities.
So Peter Hain is now touting a more modest reform - the alternative vote
(AV). It retains one MP per constituency, but voters can list their choice -
first, second, third etc. So they could vote Green knowing that if the Green
lost, their second choice would win, without letting a Conservative in; more
small parties would be elected.
By now even PR purists see that AV is the only chance of any reform, while
more adamantly anti-PR Labour MPs are looking at AV more warmly; and so they
should. It gives voters a better choice.
Why is change in the air? Labour expects to win the next election (though it
might be too close for comfort). By the following election, "Time for a
change" will be a winning slogan. By then, will Labour MPs prefer to join a
coalition on the centre-left or give power back to the minority Tories?
Historically, Labour has chosen opposition; but if this is to be the
progressive century and not another Conservative century, Peter Hain, Robin Cook
and others must knock sense into them soon. A review was promised in the last
manifesto and must be under way before the next: Labour's national policy forum
meets to discuss this next month.
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