danieldwilliam | On the Geographical Role of Elected Peers (Reply)

This is a bit of thinking out loud and I might change my mind entirely on this.

I think I can see a role for an elected House of Lords that is similar to the role of the US and Australian Senate. Their role, in part, is to represent the whole of a geographic (and Federal political) area.

One could argue that MP’s in the Commons already represent a geographical area. I’m not so sure they do. Whilst my local MP in theory represents the electors of Edinburgh South I think it could be argued that he actually represents the liberal, urban middle classes who happen to live in Edinburgh. To some extent people physically segregate themselves according to income and social attitudes. This in effect groups them into voting groups that are class based rather than geographic. Edinburgh South has as much or more in common with Bristol West,( which includes Clifton) as it does with Edinburgh East.

Spin this another way, who represents working-class Tories in Edinburgh? Middle-class Tories might just get a representative in Edinburgh South on a good day, with a following wind and a great candidate. Agricultural socialists in the Cotswolds are similarly out of luck and have to borrow the influence of urban socialists.

In this, ostensibly geographic constituencies are more like the Romans voting by Centuries than the Romans voting by Tribes. It’s class rather than anything else that determines which constituency you live in.

Even taking Commons constituencies on face value as geographic entities, Edinburgh South isn’t a meaningful area. It is socially and economically embedded in Edinburgh, the Lothians and Scotland. I think most issues that affect Edinburgh South affect the whole of Edinburgh. I rarely talk about living in South Edinburgh except when talking about politics or giving directions. How many people live in one constituency but work in another? How many organisations are in one constituency but depend on an organisation in another? If you are ill in Edinburgh you travel to Edinburgh East, unless you are child, in which case you go to Edinburgh South.

This de facto class-based constituency is re-enforced by an electoral system that has the effect of polarising rather harmonising political debate. Politics in the UK is orientated around class division rather than geographical co-operation.

Who is looking out for Edinburgh as a whole. Who, other than Alex Salmond and the pandas, is looking out for Scotland as a whole? This is a serious question. Between them are Michael Moore and Margaret Curran really representing the whole of Scotland?

So what role for an elected Lords? Under the current proposals Peers will be elected using STV based on large “Electoral Districts” roughly equivalent to an European Parliament constituency. So there will be Peers from Scotland, Peers from the South West, Peers from London.

Some of these areas have some form of devolved or regional assembly. Others do not.

It may be that a Peer elected from a large district that functions as social and economic community is able to (or required to) pull off representing both a meaningful geographic community and an ideology. There is a bit on One Nationism here. The idea that regardless of class the citizens of various parts of the UK have common interests that they don’t share with citizens from other parts of the UK. Tin mining is an issue in Cornwall. Oil is an issue in Scotland. The role of elected Peers is to advocate things that are in the regional interest rather than just a class interest. This wider geographic role operates both within and without parties. Scottish elected Peers would have a role engaging at a national level with, for example, whomever is off to talk fisheries policies at the EU in order to support the whole of Scotland’s fishing industry. But they also have a role in making each party less focused on its core, geographically concentrated support. Again, what effective voice do left-wing agricultural workers have in the Labour Party? Or Tories in Scotland?

So, despite the fact that the UK doesn’t have a Federal structure I think there is a case to be made for elected representatives who serve a wider geographical community rather than MP’s who serve the interests of a particular class gathered together in the part of a city or county where people of that sort live.