Is the UK political system truly representative of its people?

            The UK political system has evolved over the last few decades to achieve milestones in increasing its representation. The rapid restructuring of the system can be evidenced by the tenures of Tiny Blair and David Cameron who were responsible for introducing major changes in the UK Constitution. Yet there is an argument that the UK political system is no longer truly representative. This firstly implies that the political system had a higher degree of representation preceding this era of radical changes, and that the system had deteriorated since or as a result of these changes. Secondly, if the system is not truly representative, it would mean that the aspects where representation has been improved have been a result of misdirection as it would not reach the desired impact of accurate representation.

 

            Therefore, it is important that this essay look at the state of representation throughout preceding the major changes that the system experienced. Moreover, there needs to be a clear definition of what representation should achieved. More often than not, the point of better representation as a feature of democracy is to ensure that all voices within a democracy are heard and responded to. There should not be an overwhelming ignorance of a sect or group within society, instead there should be more of an effort to accommodate all opinions even if they tend to conflict with each other. This would mean that politicians should be aiming for a middle ground more than conflicting with opposing opinions as well, which would hint at the adversarial nature of the Parliament. Nevertheless, this essay will look into the main branches of government and evaluate them based on this criteria.

 

            The first branch to look at would be the legislative. The Parliament is arguably the most consequential branch of government, as it also acts as the source of government and creates the law that becomes a constitutional basis for the judiciary. Therefore, ensuring that the Parliament is responsive to all groups within the society is important to enable harmonious political life. An aspect to look at would be the composition of the Parliament. Over time, the UK has shown to continuously increase the diversity of the Parliament. In the 2019 general election, the UK elected a record 220 women MPs which is an increase from the 208 women in the past general election. Now, 1 in 10 of the 650 MPs are non-white, which is also a 13 MP increase from the 2017 election. Members of the LGBT community also saw an increase in their parliamentary representation as at least 45 MPs are openly gay. This increase is especially more impressive given that 2 decades ago many of these numbers were only half of what they are now. The increase in the numbers these groups within Parliament is important as individuals with a certain identity (no matter if it’s a racial, gender or sexual identity) would have experiences that are personal to people with that certain identity. The empathy, understanding or even just the acknowledgement of these personal struggles would influence how decisions are made in Parliament as votes are now more likely to take these groups into consideration when contemplating the consequences. Therefore, the Parliament has grown to become more representative over the last few years.

 

            Nevertheless, this level of representation is not enough. While 34% of the Parliament consist of women, this is not reflective of the 50.89% of women in society. Women still are a minority within Parliament and this may mean that many causes that are important to women risk being overlooked. Furthermore, the recent general election has shown a lack of diversity in an important aspect, that is ideology. The Conservative Party has grown in terms of its majority as it claimed 365 seats, nearly half of the seats up for election. This is a big change if we refer to the past few elections where the Parliament was more evenly divided between political parties and there was no clear majority. While this may still retain the idea of representation as the votes reflect the voter swing towards Boris Johnson and a rejection of Corbyn’s leadership, this also means that the Conservative ideology and mandate would be harder to oppose and discuss in Parliament and those who did not vote for the Conservative Party are likely to be ignored.

 

            This is a weak argument given that the majority is simply justified by the fact that more people prefer a strong Conservative leadership over a divided government. Yet, this argument hints at a deeper structural flaw of the UK legislative. This structural flaw is seen in 2 aspects. The first is the voting system. The UK employs the first-past-the-post system for its general elections. This is problematic as FPTP has a tendency of overrepresenting larger parties as the margins of victory in each constituency is not taken into account. That means that on a constitutional level, votes and opinions are ignored and are not being represented in the legislative, and hence in the executive. Moreover, the FPTP system has a tendency of creating a two-party democracy. According to Duverger’s law, plurality-rule elections structured within single-member districts tend to favour a two-party system. This is evidenced by the fact that most of the UK’s political history was influenced by 2 major parties at the time. Even now, the 2 largest parties form 75.7% of the Parliament. Therefore, the voting system hinders the level of representation of the Parliament as it fails to accommodate a larger range of views and ideas in favour of having stronger governments. There have been efforts to improve this flaw, as alternative forms of voting have been introduced to mayoral elections and other devolved assemblies. This was done during the devolution of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland during Blair’s premiership, as well as David Cameron’s efforts to increase devolved powers which would increase the importance and value of these more representative elections. While the consequences of the general election are much greater than devolved elections, it is difficult to argue that there has not been progress in the representation of elections

 

            The second aspect would be the structure of the legislative itself. It is a bicameral legislature, with only the lower house being elected. The upper house, the House of Lords, used to be composed of life peers who were unelected but had the power to amend or reject legislation. In the past years, the House of Lords had gone through many major reforms. It no longer serves as the country’s highest court as the Supreme Court took over that role in 2005. After the Parliament Act 1911, it no longer had the power to reject legislation or to amend it in a way unacceptable to the House of Commons. They grew to serve a advisory role as their influence of legislation lessened over time. This is good for a few reasons. Firstly, they are not an elected house so their opinions and criticisms of prospective legislation would not be representative of the views of the people. They do not have a mandate and are not qualified by the consent of the people to make decisions on law that would govern them. Secondly, these individuals usually are part of a societal minority. The average age of a life peer is 70 years old, and there is a glaring underrepresentation of the youth in the upper house. The youngest member of the House of Lords was born in 1985. Many of them come from privately educated backgrounds and have had a professional career for most of their lives, which slightly undermines the fact that the law also affects individuals from less-privileged backgrounds. To conclude this aspect, while the House of Lords has modernised democratically, its evolution is not yet complete in order for us to consider it to be representative of society.

 

            Given that the executive branch of government comes from the legislative branch, the representative flaws of the government are exaggerated. If the Parliament is not truly representative, the government too would not be truly be representative. This is worsened by the fact that the structure of the government is composed by the victor party of a general election. That means that executive power would be placed in the hands of a single party ideology and its members, left to scrutiny by the parliamentary minority. Furthermore, the composition of the current ruling party does not exactly promise proper representation. For example, only a quarter of the Conservative Party’s MPs are female, and those of an ethnic background only form 6% of the party’s MPs. Therefore, the executive is not truly representative in recent times.

 

            Nonetheless, this does show improvement from past elections as in 2017, only 19 BAME Conservative MPs were elected, and the percentage of female MPs has also steadily increased over time. This means that the scale of representation has definitely improved for UK’s executive branch, even if it is far from perfect.

 

            The next branch of government to evaluate is the judiciary. The first aspect to look at is the demographics of the judiciary. The most important court in the UK is the Supreme Court, and here we see that the representation of gender and ethnic minority in the highest court has barely improved over the years, even if we take into account the years from before the official establishment of the separate Supreme Court. Currently, the court consists of only 2 women, and has no representation of ethnic minorities. This lack of representation is alarming in a nation with 13% of the population being non-white.  This makes it more likely for the judiciary to be ignorant of the unique struggles of ethnic minorities. However, in the lower courts we see better representation in terms of the composition of the courts. 32% of judges in the courts and 46% of tribunal judges are women, while BAME judges formed about 10% of the judiciary. Nevertheless, if the highest court of the land had no ethnic minorities involved in their decisions regarding the interpretation of the Constitution, the representation of these minorities in the lower courts would not be with proper effect.

 

            The second aspect of the judiciary to look at is the appointment process of the courts. The Supreme Court does not have an elected bench, and the justices are appointed independent of the other government branches based on merit and experience. While this would guarantee the integrity and quality of the decisions made by the court, this also explains the under-representation of ethnic and gender minorities who are historically predisposed to lack the proper formal education or privilege to reach a position of candidacy for the Supreme Court bench. Also, the unelected feature of the courts would mean that the justices who judge cases in the UK would not necessarily reflect the morals and attitudes of society. That would mean the decisions of the court may not be representative of society’s views.

 

            In conclusion, the UK political system is not truly representative. Its demographics are not properly reflective of society’s composition, and its structural weaknesses hinder its ability to improve on these flaws. Nevertheless, it is unfair to say that it’s no longer truly representative as its current state is much improved compared to what it had been a decade ago. It may not be perfect now but the political system has definitely grown to accommodate a wider range of beliefs, identities and opinions.