Elizabeth May is right - the real possibility of seeing their ideals represented can bring back disaffected voters

Elizabeth May, leader of the Green Party of Canada, at the StopC51 'Day of Action' at Nathan Phillips Square in Toronto. Photograph: Elizabeth May at #StopC51 'Day of Action' by Alex Guibord (License) (Cropped)

During Thursday night's Canada leaders debate, Elizabeth May, leader of the Green Party of Canada, stressed that her party did not need to take votes away from the three major parties (Wells, 2015). May said, as she has said before (May, 2015), that her party could instead focus on bringing disaffected voters back into the political fold.

With Jeremy Corbyn's leadership bid, there are few subjects more sensitive for the UK Labour Party than the matter of who they should be looking to for support. May's comments touch on a sore point for the Labour establishment, who seem to have set out, with determination, to put Corbyn down and discredit his supporters (Watt, 2015).

What the mainstream of the Labour Party demands, instead, is a focus on wooing just enough of the two-thirds of Britain who regularly turnout to vote. To gain their support, the party wants policy pitches to be based on opinion poll data of the most popular, currently held, views on a range of issues (Wintour, 2015) - from the economy to immigration.

Between May and Corbyn on one side, and the Labour establishment on the other, there are two very different mindsets at work.

At the leaders debate, Elizabeth May's statement was made in response to accusations that her party would split the, already fractured, anti-Harper vote. Stephen Harper and his Conservatives have led Canada since 2006, first as a minority and then as a majority, through one controversy after another, against an opposition split between the historically dominant Liberals and the New Democrats.

What the leader of Canada's Green Party makes clear is that people will turn out to vote if they believe that their ideals will be represented (May, 2015). Yet, where voters can be split into two distinct groups, progressives and conservatives, by a one-member one-constituency system, there remain obstacles to representation. Despite May's optimism, even if you can bring back the voters who have turned away, you would still risk dividing up the support of progressives between several parties in a manner that allows conservatives to triumph (Lucas, 2015).

In most countries with a one-member one-constituency system, a solution of some sort tends to develop that addresses vote splitting. The solutions vary, ranging from a two party system to the acknowledgement of formal electoral alliances.

For Caroline Lucas, the sole Green Party MP at Westminster, the solution is a one time electoral pact amongst the UK's Left parties, with the aim of reforming the electoral system into a more proportionally representative form (Lucas, 2015). With one more pragmatic vote, cast for an alliance of progressives, pragmatic votes could be a thing of the past.

However, Labour, the biggest party of the UK Left - at least historically - has remained determined to pursue its approach of forcing everyone on the Left to align within one big tent. For the Left, this is a huge disadvantage. The Left is vibrant and diverse. From Liberals to Socialists, to Environmentalists and Feminists, they all have their own priorities - which can be mangled or suppressed by a big tent party with its focus solely upon achieving victory by collecting the 51% of votes.

Labour, in pursuit of that goal, remains focussed on, and talks a lot about, 'the Centre': home to the broadest group of voters. For them, the Centre describes a particular consensus. It is an approach that has led the party steadily to the Right, as they try to suppress the fractiousness of the Left and, under the first past the post voting system, force voters to check their ideals at the polling station door - all in the name of anti-conservative unity.

Yet the Centre can also describe a place of compromise, where you seek to create a balance between the ideals and priorities of the different ideologies. If the aim of Centrism is to be broadly inclusive, then its cause would, surely, be better served, in finding both consensus and balance, by voters being able to choose representatives that actually fit with their priorities.

In Canada and the UK, the Green Party is making the case that people will turn out to vote if they can vote for their ideals - with some legitimate hope that their vote could actually turn a significant, and proportional, percentage of those nominated into representatives. In that task, one-member/one constituency, first-past-the-post type, voting systems are inadequate.

If people are to see their vote count, and have the chance of seeing their ideals turned into policy and put into action, proportional representation and coalition government present the best means. But first come the pragmatic choices.

The parties of the Left have to be willing to stand up for the ideals that make them distinct, while showing solidarity with other progressive parties in the general cause of opposing conservatism and reforming the establishment. If they can respect and nurture their supporters idealism and are willing to support reform that lets it flourish, the voters will return.

References

Paul Wells' 'REPLAY: Maclean's National Leaders Debate'; from Maclean's Magazine; on YouTube; 6 August 2015.

Nicky Woolf's 'Canada party leaders debate: May and Mulcair outshine Harper – as it happened'; in The Guardian; 6 August 2015.
'Canada election 2015: Harper defends record on economy, security'; on CBC;

Elizabeth May's 'May: "Green Party Does Not Split the Vote"'; in The Tyee; 27 June 2015.

Nicholas Watt's 'Labour must 'end the madness' over Jeremy Corbyn, says Alan Johnson'; in The Guardian; 4 August 2015.

Patrick Wintour's 'Anti-austerity unpopular with voters, finds inquiry into Labour's election loss'; in The Guardian; 4 August 2015.

Caroline Lucas' 'My challenge to Labour: embrace a progressive, multiparty politics'; in The Guardian; 17 June 2015.