Last night the UK government lost a vote which, while largely symbolic, was designed to hamper its ability to generate its finances in the event of a no-deal Brexit (and therefore to try to incentivise it to avoid a no-deal).
A handful of Tory MPs voted for the motion, combining with the opposition to defeat the government by 303 to 296. No Scottish Tory MPs rebelled, however – despite having pledged when they were elected that they would vote to defend Scotland’s interests, something pretty much everyone agrees a no-deal Brexit would be a catastrophe for.
A reader contacted one of them, Douglas Ross, and forwarded their exchange to us, because it raises enormous questions about the entire UK political system.
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From: PETER
Sent: Wednesday, January 9, 2019 8:43 am
To: ROSS, Douglas
Subject: Brexit
Good morning Douglas
I’d like to ask who’s interests you’re working in please, following last night’s vote on the Government’s finance bill which you voted in favour of, thereby going against the majority vote of the constituents you are paid to represent?
Kind Regards
Peter
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From: ROSS, Douglas <douglas [dot] ross [dot] mp [at] parliament [dot] uk>
Sent: Wednesday, January 9, 2019 9:20:39 AM
To: PETER
Subject: Re: Brexit
The majority of my constituents voted Conservative which is why I was returned as MP.
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From: PETER
Sent: Wednesday, January 9, 2019 9:32 am
To: ROSS, Douglas
Subject: Re: Brexit
That’s interesting Douglas, and indeed correct.
Is your reasoning that as a majority of your constituents voted Conservative that you then follow party interests and not that of your constituents? That’s a dangerous way of thinking as an MP. You are paid extremely well to represent your constituents, not your party.
Kind Regards
Peter
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From: ROSS, Douglas
Sent: Wednesday, January 9, 2019 9:36:42 AM
To: PETER
Subject: Re: Brexit
My constituents voted for me as a candidate of a party.
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From: PETER
Sent: 09 January 2019 09:38
To: ROSS, Douglas <douglas [dot] ross [dot] mp [at] parliament [dot] uk>
Subject: Re: Brexit
They also voted Remain Douglas, and it’s your job to represent them no matter how much you don’t like it.
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From: ROSS, Douglas <douglas [dot] ross [dot] mp [at] parliament [dot] uk>
Sent: Wednesday, January 9, 2019 9:38:39 AM
To: PETER
Subject: RE: Brexit
I also voted remain, in a referendum where we knew if the UK voted to leave we would leave.
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From: PETER
Sent: 09 January 2019 09:40
To: ROSS, Douglas <douglas [dot] ross [dot] mp [at] parliament [dot] uk>
Subject: Re: Brexit
I’m not interested what you voted for. Do what you’re paid to do and represent your constituents, not your party.
Kind Regards
Peter
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From: ROSS, Douglas <douglas [dot] ross [dot] mp [at] parliament [dot] uk>
Sent: Wednesday, January 9, 2019 9:40:40 AM
To: PETER
Subject: RE: Brexit
If you’re not interested then I think this conversation has come to an end.
Thank you
Douglas
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And that was that. But we print the exchange not as an exercise in Tory-bashing or even Douglas Ross-bashing, however merited either might be. Ross’s replies are terse bordering on rude, but not especially objectionable in terms of the very mildly abrasive tone he was addressed in.
It is, rather, their content that’s the problem, in so much as it’s an illustration of what a fundamentally broken political system the UK has evolved, the consequences of which can be seen in the abysmal current (and seemingly indefinite) political stalemate over just about everything.
And if anything, the only surprising aspect is that it’s taken us so long to reach the foul, sticky swamp that UK politics is currently mired in.
Ross won his seat at Westminster fairly and squarely in 2017, defeating veteran SNP statesman Angus Robertson by a clear 4000+ votes, but the majority of the voters of Moray (52.5%) still voted for someone else. Most people in the constituency DON’T back Tory policy.
And that’s by no means a situation unique to either Ross or his party – it’s the norm in the vast bulk of Scottish seats.
VOTE SHARE OF WINNING CANDIDATES (2017)
Aberdeen North 41.3%
Aberdeen South 42.1%
Airdrie & Shotts 37.6%
Angus 45.2%
Argyll & Bute 36%
Ayr, Carrick & Cumnock 40.1%
Banff & Buchan 48%
Berwickshire, Roxburgh & Selkirk 53.9%
Caithness, Sutherland & Easter Ross 35.8%
Central Ayrshire 37.2%
Coatbridge, Chryston & Bellshill 42.6%
Cumbernauld, Kilsyth & Kirkintilloch East 43.6%
Dumfries & Galloway 43.3%
Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale & Tweeddale 49.4%
Dundee East 42.8%
Dundee West 46.7%
Dunfermline & West Fife 35.5%
East Dunbartonshire 40.6%
East Kilbride, Strathaven & Lesmahagow 38.9%
East Lothian 36.1%
East Renfrewshire 40%
Edinburgh East 42.5%
Edinburgh North & Leith 34%
Edinburgh South 54.9%
Edinburgh South West 35.6%
Edinburgh West 34.3%
Falkirk 38.9%
Glasgow Central 44.7%
Glasgow East 38.8%
Glasgow North 37.6%
Glasgow North East 42.9%
Glasgow North West 42.5%
Glasgow South 41.1%
Glasgow South West 40.7%
Glenrothes 42.8%
Gordon 40.7%
Inverclyde 38.5%
Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch & Strathspey 39.9%
Kilmarnock & Loudoun 42.3%
Kirkcaldy & Cowdenbeath 36.8%
Lanark & Hamilton East 32.6%
Linlithgow & East Falkirk 36.3%
Livingston 40.1%
Midlothian 36.4%
Moray 47.5%
Motherwell & Wishaw 38.5%
Na h-Eileanan an Iar 40.6%
North Ayrshire & Arran 38.9%
North East Fife 32.9%
Ochil & South Perthshire 41.5%
Orkney & Shetland 48.6%
Paisley & Renfrewshire North 37.4%
Paisley & Renfrewshire South 40.7%
Perth & North Perthshire 42.3%
Ross, Skye & Lochaber 40.2%
Rutherglen & Hamilton West 37.5%
Stirling 37.1%
West Aberdeenshire & Kincardine 47.9%
West Dunbartonshire 42.9%
In the whole of Scotland, just TWO out of 59 MPs – John Lamont and Ian Murray – can claim to speak for the majority of voters in their constituency, and even then by fairly narrow margins. At the other end, two – Angela Crawley and Stephen Gethins – were voted for by less than a third of those who turned out, with Christine Jardine also just barely scraping over the 1/3 line.
The average vote share of a Scottish MP is just 40.8%, which obviously conversely means that the typical MP is someone actively opposed by almost 60% of their constituents. And with turnout of 66.4%, that means that the average MP actually has a mandate from just 27% of the people they represent for the subsequent five years.
That makes Douglas Ross’ assertion above that he can basically do whatever he likes because he was elected as a Conservative ring pretty hollow. “Fractionally over a quarter of my adult constituents voted for me, so I have the power to reject what they actually want on a specific subject and vote for the opposite” isn’t a line you’d want to frame and hang in the Museum Of Democracy.
And we must note that it doesn’t just cut that way for Tories on Brexit. Not one SNP MP got more than 50% of the vote in their seat – although it should be acknowledged in passing that many did in 2015 – and almost all of them represent constituencies that voted No in 2014, so one could equally argue that they have no “moral” mandate to vote for independence in the Commons should such a vote ever arise.
In the UK, then, people rejected by most of their electorate go to Parliament to “represent” that electorate and sit in governments also rejected by a substantial majority of voters, but which can nevertheless usually pass laws without the support of any other party – and therefore against the wishes of most of the people of the country.
(The low point came in 2005, when Tony Blair won a comfortable majority of over 30 seats on the backing of just 35.6% of voters, or under 22% of the eligible electorate.)
And when our broken “winner takes all” version of democracy fails to produce a clear victor, the result is not consensus and cooperation but a total logjam in which a system designed intrinsically for the idea of two parties ideologically opposed to one another forever simply can’t cope with anything more nuanced.
Far from being uniquely unpleasant or arrogant, Douglas Ross is simply being blunter about the reality than we’re used to. British politics is a permanent tyranny of two minorities, and the two minorities it was designed for have too much to lose to allow it to be changed to something vaguely capable of reflecting the modern age.
(In fact it’s a lot like the way the Scottish football authorities have run the game overwhelmingly for the benefit of its own two biggest minorities for decades, and always ensure that those two minorities have the ability to block any change that would rebalance power in favour of the rest.)
Scotland has a far better and fairer system, where it’s very hard for a party to win a majority of seats without securing a majority of votes. But on all the most important matters, it can be (and regularly is) overruled by the undemocratic minorities elected so disproportionately elsewhere.
If the ongoing cluster-shambles played out every day at Westminster still hasn’t convinced Scots that they could do better for themselves than this, we’re not sure when it ever will. And while SNP MPs might not have individual mandates to pursue independence, the compelling case that doing so is in the wider democratic interest of all of Scotland is hard to deny.
