The Big Myth

By Councillor John Ward

There is an old saying that “All power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts completely.” It’s almost right.

Just like the usually misquoted saying that “money is the root of all evil” should in fact be “The love of money is the root of many kinds of evil” (check it, if you want), so the first should be that “All power /can/ corrupt…” etc. There is no universal law of the universe that guarantees it must happen if every case.

The truth of this is something I have discovered from being on the inside track within the (local) political establishment myself for a few years now. Believe me: I have been watching very carefully!

Yes, there is some obvious self-serving going on (thankfully not within my political group!) as for example the instance Alan has recently highlighted on this website, and a fair amount of what goes on within the council meetings and the scrutiny committees turnms out to have been politically motivated — usually to cling onto support (i.e. votes).

Here we see the paradox of electoral politics: the idea is to truly represent the public and do their bidding (as far as one is able) or be voted out next time. But pursuing the votes as the be-all and end-all — or at least the bottom line — of one’s agenda is not the same thing at all. We in this country have become ever more acutely aware of political ‘spin’, and the more elaborate (and expensive) campaigns at election times. It all tends to give an impression of pursuing power for power’s sake, and trying to make it look as though it’s really all being done “for the people”.

Fortunately, there is a lot of overlap between the two; but it still isn’t the right way to approach the subject, even if the results are perhaps as good a fit as can realistically be achieved in a human society.

So, are there any alternatives? Well, to give them their due, the LibDems have at least looked into alternative voting arrangements that they claim will be “more representative”, though it has been obvious for a long time that this is because they stand to benefit from the changes they propose. Actually, they aren’t more representative at all; and the LibDems have done their usual trick of latching onto one idea and won’t budge from that. They are fixated on one system and one only — one that effectively re-uses some votes (in a sense double-counts them, though this doesn’t show in the published figures).

In reality, this merely shifts the votes in odd directions, and fails to tackle the underlying causes of the issues I mentioned above. Quite the reverse: it has been shown that all the alternative methodologies that have been bandied around have fundamental weaknesses that make them less democratic and less likely to represent the voters.

This applies to transferable-vote systems, party lists and the rest. Such matters as enormous wards where the elected members cannot know their ‘patch’ and are unknown in most of it, and seeking favouritism to be high on a party list, are but two of the severe demerits to these schemes.

Another wheeze is voting “by thirds”, whereby all wards have three (or six, or nine, or…) members, and a third of these are elected in turn, per year, in a rolling programme.

Why? What is the point of this? It threatens to break up ward teams (who have to work on the basis that they could lose a member each year), drags everyone who bothers to vote out to the polls three times as often, and of course costs almost as much per year in election expenses as it currently costs every three or four years. All Polling Stations will still need to be opened and staffed every year, the Count will cost almost as much, and so will the other legally-required expenditure. It all comes out of your tax money, and mine.

The lesson from all this is not to fall into the trap of jumping at such fads as the Next Best Thing, however plausible the idea sounds when argued for by someone with a vested interest. This doesn’t mean that there can never be a better way; and I started a discussion on this subject on one of the uk political newsgroups a year or so ago.

No usable conclusion was reached, but at least we had looked at the subject in the twenty-first century, with postal votes and other new ingredients possibly affecting our deliberations nowadays. This would not have been the case when it was previously looked into, so it was worth giving it another airing.

My own conclusion is that tinkering at the edges is not the way. It gives the appearance of change, but achieves nothing of any real value. It is a bit disappointing to me as the prime mover of that discussion I mentioned just now (and which can be found in Google News’ archives, if you’re interested) but I have learned to live with what is, rather than what I might wish.

The only even near-certainty of getting the right person as a representative is to watch very carefully what is actually going on with them. The media cannot be entirely trusted, though they generally do a good job. You have to be really quite sharp! In my own ward this was not a problem, as we have a number of professionals of high standing living here. They are no pushovers, even with my reputation going before me, but they are very ‘with it’ and nobody’s fools.

If the rest of Medway had what we have in my ward, there is little doubt that the elected Medway Council would be an even better and more representative body — though, to be fair, it is (since last May) now very good indeed on my side of the Council Chamber, and a little better than pre-May on the opposite side.

What changed in May, though? More of Medway’s residents by far cast their votes this time, and they sent a message to those of us who were elected (and to those who weren’t, for that matter!) — they want and expect a better quality of representation. They’ve seen how things once were, changes since May 2000 have shown a flavour of change for the better, and they want more of that.

And, frankly, who can blame them?

Councillor Ward is one of the 3 Councillors for Rochester South & Horsted Ward on Medway Council – you can view his website here.