Malcolm raises two questions in his article today. But for Australians, the more interesting one is who’ll be our next Prime Minister?
The long predicted is now the fact. Andy Burnham is the British Prime Minister. So, I begin by giving a brief summary of the four holders of that office under King Charles III. The first was Liz Truss (Conservative), whose period in office ran for a mere 50 days, the shortest serving PM ever. She resigned on Tuesday 25 October 2022 and Rishi Sunak (Conservative) became Prime Minister. Sunak was then PM until the general election that was held on Thursday 4 July 2024, which was a landslide defeat for him. Therefore, Sir Keir Starmer was Prime Minister from Monday 8 July 2024 to Monday 20 July 2026, so two years and 12 days in office.
The only thing memorable about Truss was the nature of her defeat, discussed below. Sunak was a much better Prime Minister than Truss and was notable for being the first non-white and Hindu PM. He was also the youngest since 1812. There is, however, one other thing I note about him. He is still a member of the House of Commons representing the constituency of Richmond and Northallerton, a very rural seat in the northern Yorkshire Dales. I mention this because if he were Australian he would have resigned his seat long ago. In that way the British do things better than Australian politicians do.
As I remarked in my article “Makerfield brings good news” Starmer “was one of those very distinguished men who was very successful in his first career but proved a failure as a politician.” He lacked charisma and appeared indecisive, wooden with voters and stilted in his speech. He failed to excite voters and, therefore, was ready-made to look bad when he made his first mistake. It came when the winter fuel payment for pensioners was cut, branding his government as cruel. That was followed by the appointment of Peter Mandelson, a former Labour minister, as ambassador to the US. Mandelson’s friendship with child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was beyond the pale and he was recalled from Washington. Starmer had shown poor political judgment.
At this point I ask myself two questions: “Who will be the next British Prime Minister?” and “Who will be the next Australian Prime Minister?” The very tentative answers I give are Kemi Badenoch and Jim Chalmers. The one prediction I make that is not tentative is this: I confidently predict that neither Nigel Farage nor Pauline Hanson will be Prime Minister of their countries.
The next Australian election is due in May 2028, the next British one in July 2029. In one respect the electoral system is the same, single member constituencies electing 650 members of the British House of Commons and 150 members of the Australian House of Representatives. The system has meant that each of Starmer and Albanese enjoyed landslide wins in seats with barely more than a third of the vote. Both men enjoyed wide but shallow victories at their most recent elections.
There are three differences which I state in order of lack of importance. Least important is that each British MP has 75,000 electors on his/her electoral roll, each Australian 125,000 electors. Second, the British have voluntary voting. In Australia voting is compulsory.
The big difference, therefore, is between first-past-the-post voting and counting of votes in the United Kingdom where the Australian method is the system of compulsory voting and exhaustive preferential voting which has operated since 1925.
At first blush one might say that the electoral system punishes the British Conservative Party more than the Australian Liberal Party. Let me illustrate by giving the case of Southwest Norfolk, the constituency where Liz Truss was beaten in July 2024. The Labour candidate Terry Jermy won 11,847 votes, Truss 11,217 and the Reform candidate 9,958. Other candidates were an independent with 6,282 votes, a Liberal Democrat with 2,618 and a vote of 2,413 combined for four others. So, a total of 44,335 votes with Labour winning the seat on barely more than a quarter of the vote.
It is clear from the figures that if either Australian preferential voting model had operated Truss would have held her seat. (By “either model” I mean the federal exhaustive preferential vote or the New South Wales optional preferential vote.) The point is that in Australia the system recognises the right of the elector to transfer her vote from a losing candidate to one who is still in the count.
However, there is another side to this story. In the UK the Conservative Party does not need to answer questions about preferencing recommendations in “how-to-vote” leaflets given to voters. There are no preferences, therefore no embarrassing questions about deals. By contrast the Liberal Party in Australia is greatly embarrassed by these questions.
It means in practice that there will be a huge amount of tactical voting and this will help the Conservative Party against Reform at the next election. I say that because there are 120 Conservative sitting members of the House of Commons compared with only nine for Reform. Also, I am impressed with Kemi Badenoch’s performance, both in parliament as Leader of the Opposition and in actual election results. It should never be forgotten that on the same day as Andy Burnham retained Makerfield for Labour at that famous by-election the Conservative Party gained Aberdeen South from the Scottish National Party. That gain did not get the news coverage it should have won.
Much will depend upon Burnham’s performance as Prime Minister. I am not optimistic. Being a successful mayor of a big city does not guarantee success as Prime Minister, as Boris Johnson demonstrated. That is not to say Burnham will be as bad as Johnson. It merely indicates why I am not optimistic for him.
Opinion polls reflect the kinds of answers people are prepared to give on the spot to questions uninvited and about which they have not had time to think. They should be treated with much scepticism, especially in the British case for the reasons described above.
In Australia’s case I think Albanese has a better chance to have a third win than Burnham has to enjoy his first general election win. If I am right then Chalmers is very likely to be our next Prime Minister. But even if I am wrong there is another chance for Chalmers. Just as New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern resigned after winning two elections (the more recent of which was a landslide), so the same might happen with Albanese. In that circumstance too Chalmers would become Prime Minister.
