THE ONLY successful resistance to Blair's centralisation at the moment is coming from the arch reactionary hereditary peers in the House of Lords. At the time of writing they have blocked his European Parliament elections bill for the fifth time. This means it will need to be re-introduced into the Queen's speech on November 24.
Blair's "closed list" system brought widespread dissent (but little opposition) in the Labour Party, where the ranking of candidates was according to a Blairite scale of loyalty. Voters would not have the rieht to vote for candidates of their choice, only for a Party list. Even Jenkins proposes an open list as part of his fudged formula. The hypocrisy of the Liberal Democrats is shown by the fact that their peers are loyally voting for Blair's proposal, despite it being against all they have argued for. Socialist Outlook does not defend the House of Lords, least of all the hereditary peers. We are in favour not only of abolishing the friends of Charles I and all royalty since, but the whole second chamber. We do not favour their replacement with friends of Tony Blair.
But in a stand off between the reactionary Lords and the centralisers of the Labour leadership over an undemocratic voting system, we cannot resist taking pleasure at Blair's discomfort.
Why socialists should favour stable government is a mystery. We have just had 18 years of stable Conservative rule, and a lot of good it did us. Stable government under capitalism surely means an unchallenged ability to carry out a programme in the interests of Shouldn't socialists therefore favour unstable government? course, we prefer governments being destabilised by working class action, but if the electoral system helps, who are we to complain?
As for coalitions and the election of fascists, these are political questions which cannot be wished away by rigging the electoral system to make them less likely. The growth of fascism has to be prevented by posing a socialist alternative and by mass mobilisations. Fascists have anyway been elected under FPTP FPTP did not prevent the Lib-Lab pact of the 1970s, and it is not stopping Blair and Ashdown's