Take Back Parliament

Why we should all campaign for Recall

Steve Shaw advocates campaigning for Recall, what do you think?

Our democratic system desperately needs reform. People increasingly feel disconnected from political processes and from decisions which are taken that affect their lives. Introducing recall: the power for citizens to remove their MP, would be very effective at reversing this in a way unlike any other proposed reform.

 In 1843, John Trelawney MP for Tavistock stated ‘his willingness to resign his seat if called upon to do so by a majority of his constituents’ (the Trelawney Diaries). We need more MPs like him. Too often in recent years have MPs abused their position, been involved in scandal or broken their word and yet remained in office.

Furthermore, Parliament (i.e. our MPs) is meant to hold the government to account. Yet currently the reverse happens: party leaders and whips control how MPs vote and the Parliamentary legislative timetable.

Citizens have no way to hold their MPs to account. General elections are almost never about voting for your MP, but rather about voting for the next government and based on the government’s record.

Giving citizens the right to recall their MPs will mean they truly can hold them to account and will also mean they have more power over them than the government and political party leaders and whips.

The government have proposed a recall mechanism but theirs is dependent on a Parliamentary Committee finding an MP guilty of ‘serious wrongdoing’. True recall empowers people, not Parliamentary Committees.

Unlock Democracy are campaigning for people to have the power to recall their MP if they have lost confidence or trust in them for any reason. Whilst there should be safeguards to ensure this power is used rarely and appropriately, our clear intention is to make MPs less accountable to whips and party leaders and more accountable to voters.

Make no mistake, this will likely be a long and hard campaign to win. However, a small and growing cross-party group of thirty MPs already support full recall. Please help ensure this group grows by asking your MP to sign Early Day Motion 1253 in support of introducing full recall powers.

Party Funding Reform - the Price of our Politics

Continuing our series of pieces about where we should go next community organiser and one of the founders of Take Back Parliament George Gabriel advocates party funding reform.

It's rare that you can identify a hinge on which our politics turns - but party funding is one of them.

Parties play an important role in our politics - presenting competing understandings of the past, competing visions for the future for people to choose from. These are the dreams that animate our politics and quite frankly they must not be for sale.

Over the past few years it seems you can literally hear our current system of party funding falling apart. Creak - dodgy donors. Creak - cash for honors. Creak - billionaires from Belize.

We all feel it, the strains put on our democracy through the malign influence of big money upon it. The one place where we're all meant to be able to come together as equals to work out how on earth all the diverse peoples of this country are going to live together and we see influence transparently bought and sold.

Party funding is a key dynamic through which big money subverts democracy, pushing politics closer and closer into line with its interests and values. Whatever your ideology, or view on where we should as a country be going, any democrat will agree that those decisions must be made in free and fair debate by the people - a debate currently distorted by a system of party funding which both allows donors to teach individual parties what to say and then ensures they have different sized megaphones to say it with!

If you want to pick the song then speak to the organ grinder.

Our political parties are too important to our politics for us to allow them to be subjected to such pressures. Without sustained and real pressure from civil society parties will not be able to reform their own funding systems - it is understandably difficult for them to work out what a fair system would be and then pass it through the mire of their conflicting interests.

Take Back Parliament and the wider democratic reform sector should mobilise to set limits on the power of money on politics. We should strive to establish fair principles for party funding, negotiate the divergent interests of political parties, win the argument for our settlement and then force it through against the interests that will oppose us.

Local Groups

Throughout the country over the past few weeks people have been organising local groups to campaign for fair votes.

These people have come from a variety of backgrounds, political allegiences, ages and experiences.

Some were Take Back Parliament groups,  some Unlock Democracy,  some the Electoral Reform Society and some were set up specifically for the referendum.

Whatever their background the grassroots support base is crucial to the health and chances of success of the democratic reform organisations.

If you want to get involved in campaining in one or another group please contact the relevant person below.  Apologies for the formatting,  an updated and tidyed up list will be published soon!

Group details:

Camden .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) Sarah Allen and Lee Baker

South Essex .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) Jon Fuller

Oxfordshire .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)   Chris Carrigan and Elizabeth Baldwin

Canterbury .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) Stephen Bax

Edinburgh .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) Helen Parker and Danny Zinkus

Aberyswtyh .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) Jo Jones

Fareham and Gosport .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) John Vivian

Northamptonshire .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) Ken Ritchie

Portsmouth .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) Gareth Cowell and Suzy Horton

Exeter .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) Elizabeth Lyons

Sunderland .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) Geoffrey Walker

Devon for Democracy) .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) Clea Curtis

Felixtowe .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) Seamus Bennett

Reading .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) Georgina Hughes

Haringay .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) Joe St Clair Ford

Wiltshire .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) Neil Pocock

Bristol .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) Tim Kent

Swansea .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) Maria Pretzler

Guildford .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  George Potter

Leeds and Wakefield .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) Arnie Craven

Sheffield .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  Vicky Seddon

Liverpool John Vollemere

Dorset .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) Richard Denton White

Hastings .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) Clive Bishop

Glasgow .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) Mark Lowery

Birmingham .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) Chris Burgess

Brighton .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Leicester .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  Daniel Henry

Let’s Reform Local Elections

The second in our series of supporter pieces on wider democratic reforms they want to see is written by Anthony Butcher.  

Anthony is one of the Bristol group founders and ran his own excellent referendum blog. He now writes at at http://www.regionaltopup.co.uk

 "While reform of the House of Commons is often regarded as the Holy Grail for reformers, this only affects 650 seats once every four or five years. Yet there are 22,736 district level seats contested, mostly using First Past The Post, with local elections being held every year somewhere in the country.

Proportional representation is generally only discussed for higher levels of Government, but the same principles should apply at a local level too. The problems caused by FPTP are actually worse at local level than they are nationally because of the common use of multi-member wards.

To illustrate this point, let's look at my local patch; North Somerset. All 61 of the seats were up for grabs this month. The Conservatives received 44.4% of the vote, a strong minority, but won 69% of the seats (42). In contrast, the Labour party received 20% of the vote but just 8% of the seats (5).

This now means that the Tories can enact anything they like without opposition, despite only having minority support.

At the heart of this problem is the combination of multi-member wards using FPTP.  In theory this would work if people were voting for the candidates as 'individuals', but the reality is that the majority of people vote by party and thus cast two or three votes for their party of choice. Some voters will support an independent candidate as well as party candidates, but it is rare for people to share their votes between parties. The result is blocks of councillors from one party.

In North Somerset we have 15 wards with either two or three councillors. Of those, 12 wards elected all of their councillors from a single party.

Take the Weston-super-Mare South Worle ward as an example. The Conservatives received 39.3% of the vote, but all three of the councillors. The Lib Dems had 32% support (just a few percent less) but no seats. Labour didn’t win any seats either, despite having 28.7% of the vote. Clearly the majority wanted  'left wing' councillors, but instead have three 'right wing' councillors.

This has to change.

Given that we already use multi-member wards, the most obvious solution is to introduce the Single Transferable Vote (STV) system.  

STV tries to proportionally distribute the seats amongst the most popular candidates. For single-member wards, it would effectively work like the Alternative Vote system (that we just rejected in the referendum!).

While STV would be a poor reform choice for General Elections or for the House of Lords, in my opinion, it is clearly a strong choice for local elections. Firstly, we know it works; it is already used in Scotland and Northern Ireland for local elections.  Secondly, it would break up the block votes and distribute the seats more evenly. Finally, it would encourage people to look at their candidates more as individuals than simply party representatives."

The case for Lords reform

This is the first in a series of guest posts from supporters advocating for wider democratic reforms.  House of Commons electoral reform is off the table for some time - so should we campaign for an elected Lords?

Danny Zinkus the Edinburgh group co-convenor makes the case for replacing the House of Lords with an elected Upper Chamber.

Sometimes the people who make the decisions are as important as what is decided.  Constitutions are the rules that determine who makes important decisions, how they are appointed and how they may  make their decisions.  Who has the power can be more important than what they actually do with it.  The theme that lies behind all Constitutional and Electoral Reform is to move power from the few to the many. So it is with Lords Reform.

Lords are currently appointed by the Prime Minister. An already powerful man (and they have all, but for one, been white men) can decide who is allowed to scrutinise and pass laws on your behalf. Public participation in the appointments process is limited to “vetting for propriety” by the Lords Appointment Commission. There are many excellent Lords. There are also a few who are only Lords because they donated money to a political party.

An elected second chamber would move the power to decide who became a Lord from the Prime Minister to the People. The Prime Minister represents about one third of electors. The People are all of us.

Lords Reform brings about a second important change in the way our constitution allocates power. The Commons is the only elected chamber. Therefore the view of the Commons prevails.  An elected upper chamber will have as much legitimacy as the Commons. 15 year single terms give a Reformed Lords a longer term view. Using PR to elect the Lords give our second chamber a more pluralistic outlook. The Reformed Lords will have a different perspective to the shorter-term, more careerist, partisan Commons. This view will have to be taken seriously as it will be backed up by votes. 

Lords Reform,  an elected second chamber transfers power from the many to the few. From them to us.

There is legislation on Lords reform passing through parliament right now so this is a critical time for its supporters.

You can sign a petition to calling for a fully elected Lords today: