The new Senedd voting system is useless and pernicious

Martin Shipton

It is rapidly becoming clear that the new voting system introduced for May’s Senedd election is not just useless but pernicious.

Unsurprisingly, what is known as the closed-list method of proportional representation was rejected as an option by the Expert Panel on Assembly Electoral Reform, chaired by Professor Laura McAllister, whose recommendations were published in November 2017.

Rather ironically, in view of what has happened since, the report was titled A Parliament That Works for Wales.

The closed list was swiftly rejected by the Panel, which commented: “No choice for voters between individual candidates. No accountability for individual Members directly to voters.”

These aspects were listed in its favour: “Single route to election for all Members. Could secure high proportionality. Could facilitate strong, cohesive political parties.”

Again, the final point is, in retrospect, suffused with irony.

Things have turned out wildly differently from what Mark Drakeford expected when, as leader, he is understood to have agreed to the closed-list system to keep Welsh Labour MPs onside. Presumably the thinking at the time was that voting patterns would stay roughly the same and that Labour and Plaid Cymru would form a coalition, with Labour still the leading party. How wrong can you be!

Much has been written, including by me, about the demerits of the closed-list system in comparison with the single transferable vote. Under the latter, voters can rank candidates in order of preference, while under the former the only choice they have is to vote for a party, regardless of who the candidates are. But this has been portrayed largely in theoretical terms, with little commentary on the way it has turned out in practice.

The fact is that the new system is a disaster. Let no one tell you otherwise.

What it has done is enable candidates with little or no affinity with, or knowledge of, the constituencies in which they stood to get elected.

The main culprits are, inevitably, Reform MSs. Some of them seem to have sprung from nowhere and, to be frank, we do not know who they really are. Unknown in the communities they have been elected to represent, they are taking political alienation to a new level.

The traditional route for climbing the political ladder in Wales, as in the rest of Britain, was to start off as a grassroots community activist.

Many local Labour councillors had been active in their trade unions, while the Conservatives were typically either ambitious businesspeople, deferential working-class Tories or nerdy students. Plaid’s were often idealistic Welsh nationalists, bright but with a romantic streak that regarded pragmatism with the eye of a sceptic. Lib Dems enjoyed delivering multiple Focus leaflets that later became collectible on litter picks, the grassroots initiative they pioneered.

Depending on where our support lay, we might gently mock them, but even if their activities didn’t inspire us, we didn’t see them as outsiders.

Reform is something different. It promotes itself as a disruptive force that wants to shake up what it sees as a rotten system, while in fact supporting the right of rich people to get richer.

Many of those elected to the Senedd in May had not cut their teeth in the same way as activists within the communities where they lived. In fact, they had little, if any, discernible connection to the areas they wanted to represent. The closed-list system has made this possible by allowing candidates to be invisible.

Branch organisers

Although Reform is a young party, it did form local branches, some of which attracted large numbers of members. In the run-up to the Senedd election, as the party’s support grew in the polls, some branch organisers thought they had a good claim to places at or near the top of closed lists.

What they hadn’t taken into account was that, so far as the party hierarchy from Farage down was concerned, many of them were expendable and deserved no credit for the work they had done at a local level.

Reform has no democratic candidate selection process. Farage and his cronies ruthlessly overlooked the branch activists and imposed outsiders who were, in the words of Bob Dylan, complete unknowns, at least in the places where they were standing.

As a result, the main opposition group in the Senedd includes a variety of misfits, some of whom are intellectually challenged and others whose views are thoroughly obnoxious and akin to those of white supremacists. We shouldn’t be surprised, given that more than 30 witnesses have reported that Farage spouted some of the vilest racist and antisemitic guff imaginable when he was an unguarded youth.

Bigotry

An obvious example is Joe Martin, who, before he was elected to the Senedd, was unknown to the voters of Caerdydd Penarth, of whom I am one. His smug arrogance and bigotry have quickly made him notorious. It is particularly nauseating that this shameless exponent of the Great Replacement theory represents the most ethnically diverse constituency in Wales and would happily deport many of its residents to keep the proportion of non-white people down.

This despicable individual is being hailed by his party and by the likes of the odious Rupert Lowe as a free speech martyr because the Senedd’s Presiding Officer has told him he will not be called to speak again until he apologises for repeating a debunked racist conspiracy theory.

Martin is no free speech martyr, as he proved when he abused a journalist who asked his charmless group leader if Reform was a racist party. “How dare you ask that question, how dare you!” he shouted at the reporter, proving conclusively that he isn’t as clever as he thinks he is. Martin says he has no intention of apologising to the Presiding Officer. Personally, I think we deserve a long rest from his bile. Maybe he should be sent on a diversity, equality and inclusion awareness course as a penance, although I would pity anyone attending alongside him.

Turkmenistan

Martin isn’t the only Reform MS who seemingly came from nowhere. There’s the Gŵyr Abertawe MS Steven Rodaway, whom I wrote about the other day because he is registered at Companies House as a resident of Turkmenistan, one of the most repressive countries in the world. What was he doing there? He won’t say.

Then there’s Art Wright, who represents Casnewydd Islwyn and declares membership of the exclusive Karen Country Club in Nairobi.

Most enigmatic is Cristiana Emsley, a Romanian immigrant who represents Fflint Wrecsam and wants to get tough on other immigrants. Her departure from Cleveland Police after a lengthy suspension for alleged misconduct remains a mystery.

If we had used a more open system such as STV in May, perhaps some of those who came from nowhere would not have been elected. For now, however, we’re stuck with closed lists. Any move to change the system will require a two-thirds majority, which couldn’t be achieved if Reform voted no.

What a mess.