One is that there was no chance of Labour forming a coalition with the Lib Dems. Nick Clegg’s personal animus towards Gordon Brown precluded any fruitful future relationship. The second is that, once they had decided to fuse with the Tories, the Lib Dems were prepared to throw virtually anything overboard to strike a deal. PR was tossed aside like so much rubbish.
What we’re left with is a referendum on the Alternative Vote (AV) next year. Overshadowed by the royal wedding and the potential outbreak of civil disorder, the referendum is unlikely to set people’s hearts aflutter. Those wedded to the current system, constitutional conservatives of every hue, are gearing up to campaign for a ‘no’ vote. Today, we learn that a clutch of ex-ministers including Margaret Beckett and John Prescott will join David Cameron and William Hague in the No2AV campaign. Their tactic will be simple. They will piggyback on the Liberal Democrats’ overwhelming and growing unpopularity to paint AV as a system which helps only the Lib Dems. They will caricature the ‘Yes’ campaign as a Trojan horse for perpetual Lib Demmery, with all the associated duplicity and broken pledges that have made so many so incandescent.
The Alternative Vote is an imperfect system. In the masterly Jenkins commission report into electoral reform, AV was considered, and ruled out. The report stated that ‘far from doing much to relieve disproportionality, it is capable of substantially adding to it’ and ‘its effects (on its own, without any corrective mechanism) are disturbingly unpredictable’. On the positive side, the report goes on to state that AV:
‘would fully maintain the link between MPs and a single geographical constituency. It would increase voter choice in the sense that it would enable voters to express their second and sometimes third or fourth preferences, and thus free them from a bifurcating choice between realistic and ideological commitment or, as it sometimes is called, voting tactically. There is not the slightest reason to think that AV would reduce the stability of government; it might indeed lead to larger parliamentary majorities.’
Jenkins plumped for what he called AV plus – the alternative vote in single-member constituencies, with about 15 per cent of the Commons ‘topped-up’ by members elected using from a party list to ensure greater proportionality between parties. It was never implemented, and doesn’t exist as a system anywhere in the world. You’ll struggle to find any mention of the Jenkins report in any Labour manifesto or in Tony Blair’s autobiography.
There are few issues as divisive within Labour as electoral reform.
The party was in favour of AV in the 1920s but, since becoming a party which forms governments, Labour has dodged the issue. It defies the traditional left-right boundaries. Ken Livingstone and Arthur Scargill on the side of reform, Roy Hattersley and John Smith against. Today, ex-Cabinet ministers are ranged against each other, and that split is reflected down the line. Some members of Labour First back proportional representation, some members of Progress back first-past-the-post. CLPs are also divided. Twenty years ago I spoke at the Labour party conference in support of the resolution which established the Plant commission, a report by academic Raymond Plant, into electoral systems. Even establishing a commission was less than universally popular.
You can bet that the referendum will be just as divisive within the Labour party. Both sides are well-funded and will take few prisoners. What matters is that the real arguments are properly ventilated. The unfairness of the current system must be exposed, and the merits of AV, such as they are, properly explained. Ed Miliband should do more than cast his vote in favour. He has more reason than most to laud the AV system – it was the one that delivered him victory in the leadership election. He should be part of the national conversation, and loudly explain his reasons for backing reform. His friend Neil Kinnock will tell him what happens when Labour leaders try to tread the middle path on electoral reform – they look weak, evasive, and haemorrhage popular support.
I’d suggest the reason of it being “the one that delivered Ed Miliband victory in the leadership election” as being the very real reason for it NOT to be used. It can not and never will be right that one voter has more votes than another voter just because they happen to be members of not just the party but affiliates of it as well. The other suggestion that it helps the poor confused little protest voter, who doesn’t know what they are doing and should really only be voting for a ‘proper party’ is patronising. The solution isn’t AV it is found in a weighted system that “relieves disproportionality” and maintains 1 vote per person.
Every election I’ve ever known, including 1992, was won by the party that had the better campaign. So what’s the problem? Let’s get down to basics; this is a dishonest article. To try and argue that the Lib Dems have nothing to do with AV is ridiculous. It’s there for them, as part of the colaition deal. The election coming will be an election of proxy which promises to wreck massive damage to the Lib Dems, but you want to let them off the hook. If you’re going to post articles in the hope of splitting the Labour party, at least be honest about who the Lib Dems are!!!
As most people deride the present AV proposal it is ridiculous for Ed Miliband to support it. Lets defeat it and have a proper debate on all the alternatives.
To say Jenkins “AV plus” doesn’t exist as a system anywhere in the world in misleading. It’s simply the AMS system used for the London Assembly, the Scottish Parliament and the Wales Assembly, but with only 15 to 20% of MPs as “top-up,” rather than 33% (Wales) or higher. “AMS-lite” if you like. And the “top-up” MPs would not be from “a party list” — that’s the Euro election model — but would be a couple of MPs from a small county or regional list, with voters free to vote for the regional candidate they wish to elect, like the Bavarian variation on AMS. Much better than AV, which is a step in the wrong direction, as opponents in Northern Ireland are already pointing out: it would polarize every election into a head-count between the two communities, with little chance for someone like Alliance MP Naomi Long.
It’s difficult to argue against the moral case for making our democracy more democratic. When there’s issue like the aftermath of the financial crisis (notably in Ireland and Portugal), global warming, world poverty …. and sharing household tasks, it’s difficult to care too much about which imperfect democratic system we have.
But the AV vote for the Party Leadership was for candidates within the Labour Party. Am I really expected to give preference votes under AV for candidates that I despise? I think not. It is AV+ and as close to the German system as is possible which was devised after the War by British Socialists or nothing as far as I am concerned. Already the dreaded meejer bandwagons are beginning to roll as if there is no alternative to either the status quo or AV!
The Vote: 18 ministers doing as they are told/Some look like silver,some look like gold/Not the kind you polish,polish till it glows/But the kind that will tarnish,tarnish and it shows!