Denis MacShane: Don't blame PR for the stalemate in Germany

It is not PR that makes the difference, but the policies adopted

What friends of mine in Germany made clear to me over the past week was that they genuinely did not know how to cast their votes. In Berlin I was puzzled at the sight of a right-wing party campaigning to raise taxes on consumption - Ms Merkel's proposed 15 per cent hike in VAT - at a time when German internal demand is at an all-time low. The flat-tax bonanza for the über-rich proposed by an economics professor in the Merkel team was viewed simply as an idea whose time has gone.

Mr Schröder, by contrast, seemed almost demob happy. His carefree, vigorous and scornful speeches demonstrated that political campaigning and the power of the word still matter in democratic politics.

The saddest loser was Europe's most innovative Foreign Minister, Joschka Fisher. He had led the Greens to help Schröder rewrite the German constitution so that German soldiers can serve overseas.

But no one, neither Merkel, Schröder nor Fischer, still less the economically ultra-liberal FDP nor the communist-Trotskyist-old SDP left party, emerged as clear winners.

Suppose, however, that is what the German voters want? They can now have a centre-based government that repudiates the anti-reform corporatists and vested interests of both left and right. Germany has failed, ever since the Berlin wall came down, to find a government that can implement necessary reforms. The Germans have shown they want reform but not at the price of the wilder right-wing ideas such as flat taxes, and nor to be held back by trade unions who have lost a thousand members for every working day in the past four years.

Where does all this leave our debate about proportional representation? Has the German result shown up its failures, as one friend argues when he e-mailed me as soon as the result was known yesterday? He lamented the absence of a simple first-past-the-post system that he thought would give Germany clear leadership. Actually, under a British-style majority system, it is Mr Schröder who would now be forming a government all by himself, just as Harold Wilson and Jim Callaghan were able to govern for five wasted years in the 1970s with a majority to begin with of just three seats.

PR systems can deliver stable, calm government as in the Nordic countries. But they can lead to anti-semitic or racist parties getting a strong foothold. They can also produce confused multi-party governments in which socialists, conservatives and/or liberals try to hold power as in Belgium. And, most notoriously, PR can allow tiny fundamentalist or religious parties to hold a government to ransom, as in Israel.

As far as decisive outcomes are concerned, the truth is that FPTP has delivered both strong government under Clement Attlee, Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, and weak government under Jim Callaghan and John Major. It is not PR itself that makes the difference - the policies adopted, the people who become MPs and ministers, and party structures determine the success or failure of an electoral system.

In Britain, political parties have all but vanished as mechanisms for serious policy debate, political education and town hall or community leadership. Democratic politics has been handed over to the press, to elitist think-tanks and to a handful of rich individuals or unions who choose to spend money on politics. If we want democratic politics, whether under PR or FPTP, we should pay for it.

One of the biggest disagreements I had with Robin Cook was his refusal to support state funding for politics which he felt would be seen by voters as politicians just lining their own pockets. He was wrong and a debate on how we pay for democracy is long overdue.

The German election result neither proves nor disproves the case for PR. We will see how German politicians react to the message which German voters have sent. It is up to the politicians to make a success of what they want to achieve, not to blame an electoral system.

The writer is a Labour MP and former minister for Europe