Next year’s referendum on AV is a great opportunity for Labour to demonstrate the commitment to progressive reform rightly expected of it. AV is to be welcomed as it expands democracy. It gives people an opportunity at the ballot to give full expression to their political positions as they are able to both elect who they want to represent them and, importantly, who they do not want to represent them.

At a ballot people make a range of decisions regarding their vote. They obviously vote for who they feel best represents them, but may also vote for those they believe has the best hope of winning to keep a less desirable candidate out. AV is the simplest method to take this into account by giving voice to people’s full political intention rather than demanding they be shrunk into a single unitary vote that has the very real possibility of actually acting against their intention.

The last election reflected this. It was reported that many voters switched their vote from Labour to Liberal Democrat in Liberal Democrat-Conservative marginals so as to keep Tories out. It surely struck many as somewhat distasteful that people actually had to vote against their own judgement of who best to represent them in order to prevent, in their own minds, the worst outcome. Under AV, people do not have to vote against their own instincts, they could have expressed their preference to be represented by Labour AND their preference that the Tories would be their last choice. This is just common sense and should be supported as such.

Secondly, it is undesirable that anyone is able to represent a constituency without garnering at least 50+1 per cent of the vote. Under AV a politician can be confident that, while possibly not the first choice of a majority of their constituents, they do carry the consensus of the majority to be there. Surely if someone wishes to represent a constituency in parliament, that is the least we can expect of them?

AV is not a panacea to the problems political representatives have engaging their electors, but it strikes me that it should be rightly supported by any MP concerned to have the fullest possible support in their constituencies.

AV is also a vital tactical bulwark against the introduction of PR, which when implemented in lower houses of parliament represents a disgraceful attempt to escape voters and to sever accountability.

PR makes a lot of sense in upper houses where the primary function of those members is to provide oversight and review of legislation (I’ve always suspected the reason the upper house is coloured red is because red means stop) and not to overly contribute to the legislative agenda but to moderate some of the excesses that emerge from the people’s house.

In this context it makes a lot of sense to shield these individuals to an extent from the loss of their seats and to free them from the rigours of the day to day campaigning essential to retaining a seat. Indeed, the nature of their work in parliament probably necessitates PR.

In a lower house it is disgraceful to claim these MPs should have the same arrangement. Granted there are many types of PR including mixed representation houses and PR-constituency hybrids but, at base, even the most watered down PR system removes MPs at some level from electoral accountability to their constituents and therefore elevates party preselection to election itself.

Further, PR can give voice and legitimacy to fringe elements that distorts the level of support they enjoy in the community. Again, in an upper house this has a certain logic. Say for example, nationally speaking, the socialist worker party have enough support to muster perhaps one or two per cent of the vote, then there is a strong case to be made that in a review capacity they should have about one or two members of an upper house where their views and philosophy should be incorporated into the national conversation.

That said, it absolutely does not follow that parties that cannot make a sufficiently strong case to build a majority of supporters in a single geographic location should have any role in initiating legislation, as is the proper role of a people’s house. Indeed, PR is antithetical to a constituency system under which an MP must be accountable to a group of people and represent their interests in parliament.

If politics was only the contest of ideas then PR would be a terrific option for electing lower house MPs. The composition of the house would reflect what the country believes and its philosophical make up. But politics is far more than this; it is also a system by which people’s interests are universally represented. Their local member is responsible for carrying out their duties in such a way as to fight hard for representation of local communities within broader national debates and to face these same communities directly each term.

AV expands voters’ capacity to hold their representatives to account while PR places totally unacceptable limits on political accountability that should be anathema to any true democrat. So let’s campaign hard for a Yes next year both to improve our own democratic rights and to keep our politicians accountable. 

Photo: secretlondon123