Should we try to understand the riots?

I wasn’t going to write anything about the recent riots in England as a lot has already been said, most of which probably doesn’t really get it right. There are a huge range of different views, from the BNP’s objectionable attempt to regard these as race riots to Compass’s recent statement that equates the looting of the rioters with “looting” by the banking sector. As much as I have sympathy with Compass’s general ideology, I’m somewhat uncomfortable with their recent statement. There may be a moral equivalence between how the banking sector behaves and the behaviour of the rioters, but there is clearly no legal equivalence. The rioters were clearly breaking the law and deserve to be punished, while the banking sector has (as far as I’m aware) not broken any laws.

A recent comment on twitter did, however, capture exactly how I feel about the riots. To write in my own words (I was going to say summarise, but you can’t really summarise a tweet); nothing can excuse or justify the actions of the rioters but we can, and should, attempt to determine the reasons why such riots have occurred. What I’m finding irritating are those (Theresa May, Boris Johnson, etc.) who keep repeating that the rioting and looting is simply criminal behaviour, pure and simple. Strictly speaking they may be correct, but what precisely are they implying by such a statement. Are they suggesting that a small fraction of the people in any society are simply programmed to behave in this way. They are just waiting for an excuse and there is little we could have done to avoid it. If this is the case, why does it typically occur in socially deprived areas and why are most of those taking part from socially deprived backgrounds. Surely if it’s genetic, those involved would be equally likely to be from any background. Alternatively, they could be suggesting that there will always be people in any society (however equal or unequal) that will feel disadvantaged and every now and again will get sufficiently disgruntled to start looting and rioting. It’s possible, but I’m not sure there’s any evidence to support this.

All that I know is that there is strong evidence showing that after 60 or 70 years of the UK becoming more equal, the last 30 years has seen the UK becoming more and more unequal. The rhetoric of the coalition government has also been extremely negative. They keep talking about the need for austerity measures and the primary way that the deficit will be reduced is through cuts that will largely effect the poorest in society. I can’t claim that the rioting is a direct consequence of this but it does seem quite likely that there will be a sector of society who feel that their lives will be getting worst and that feel increasingly disenfranchised. This does not, in any way, excuse the actions of the rioters but may begin to explain why such rioting has taken place. In a sense, I hope this isn’t the case as it might suggest that more and more of these riots will take place and things will get worse before they get better.

AV and minority parties

It seems like one of the main objections to the Alternative Vote (AV) is that the second (or higher) votes of those who voted for minority parties could be decisive. The main objection seems to be “why should the second, third or fourth, etc., preference votes of people who’s first vote goes to the likes of the BNP or UKIP get to – in some cases – determine who wins the election”. Firstly, I think this attitude is wrong. I object to the BNP and I think UKIP is a silly party that also has some rather objectionable views, but they are currently legitimate parties and those who vote for them are entitled to make that choice without prejudice. Arguing that AV would give these voters some say and that this would therefore be bad is wrong, in my opinion. I know we’re not disenfranchising these voters, as the AV system doesn’t exist yet, but this argument does feel equivalent to an argument for disenfranchising a section of the community. Maybe the views of these voters would change if they felt their votes were having some influence. It could be a positive step.

Secondly, I don’t actually see the logic in this argument against AV. I looked up some numbers and at least 80% of UKIP and BNP candidates lost their deposits. This means that they received less than 5% of the vote in their constituency. Only a total of 2 or 3 candidates in each of these two party received more than 10% of the vote and the average for UKIP was 3.1% and for the BNP was 1.9% (since neither party had a candidate in every seat, the average per candidate is somewhat higher). These are minority parties, which by definition means they receive very few votes. If the second, third or fourth preference votes of voters who’s first votes went to UKIP or the BNP makes a difference, it implies that there must have been two other candidates both of whom had close to 50% of the votes counted and hence were similarly liked (or disliked) by the voters in that constituency. If the UKIP and/or BNP higher preference votes pushes one of these candidates over the 50% threshold, surely this is a reasonable result. You have two candidates who are similar (since not all people vote, a few percent difference may mean that the popularity of these two candidates is statistically the same) and a sensible method had been used to differentiate between them.

There are probably some reasonable arguments against what I’ve said above. There will be some constituencies where the UKIP/BNP share of the vote is above 10% and this could make quite a big difference. Again, why should the views of these voters not be taken into account. Also there are planned to be 600 constituencies and the number in which the UKIP/BNP share exceeds 10% is something like 5 (so 1% or less). Another argument might be that higher preference votes from UKIP/BNP may preferentially support the Conservatives rather than Labour and the Lib Dems. However, there are other minority parties (Greens for example) who’s voters are more likely to support Labour and the Lib Dems, so again this doesn’t seem like a reasonable argument either. As I’ve said in a previous post AV appears to produce results that – compared to FPTP – will more reasonably reflect the views of the electorate. Arguing that it will give undue power to minority party voters is not only wrong as these voters should have the right to express their views (as long as they’re not breaking the law), but these are minority parties and so the only time that they will make a difference is when two candidates are very close anyway, in which case why does it matter.