There are few people who will not relish the opportunity to join the people of Oldham in giving Nick Clegg a metaphorical bloody nose at the ballot box. And opportunities aplenty will soon be upon us: local government polls, elections to the Scottish parliament and Welsh assembly, and, the biggest prize of them all, the chance to vote down Clegg’s beloved AV referendum in May. It was the prospect of attaining it which lured Clegg into his alliance with David Cameron last year. What sweet justice to hoist the Liberal Democrat leader on his own referendum petard.
There will, though, be many, better opportunities to give Clegg the drubbing he so richly deserves. The referendum on AV is the wrong fight. Wrong for Labour, wrong for British democracy. The only winner from a defeat for AV will be the Tory party.
Many hope that a defeat for AV will so fatally wound Clegg that it destabilises, maybe even destroys, the coalition. But this is a false hope. There is little evidence to suggest that Liberal Democrats would revolt against Clegg – possibly triggering a general election – if the vote is lost. The weakness of the Liberal Democrat rebellion against tuition fees suggests these turkeys are not about to vote for Christmas.
But isn’t AV simply not in Labour’s political interests: would it not reward the Liberal Democrats by ushering in an era of continuous coalitions in which they would inevitably play kingmaker?
This argument presupposes that first past the post protects Britain from hung parliaments. But, as the recent ippr study The Worst of Both Worlds: Why First Past the Post No Longer Works argues, the sharp drop in the combined share of the vote for Labour and the Conservatives since 1970, and the increased support not simply for the third party but for a range of smaller parties (who, together, polled nearly 12 per cent of the vote last May) means that ‘it will be more difficult for a single party to win a majority, making the prospect of a hung parliament greater in the future.’ Retention of first past the post is thus no guard against the Liberal Democrats wielding a disproportionate influence.
From a narrowly partisan perspective academic assessments of each of the elections since 1997, including 2010, suggest that Labour would have secured more seats than it did under first past the post. In 2005, for instance, Labour’s majority would have been over 100 (instead of the actual 66).
The real losers under AV would be the Conservative party: in every election since 1997, again including 2010, they would have secured fewer seats than under first past the post. It is unsurprising, therefore, that the national ‘No to AV’ campaign is being overwhelmingly staffed – and funded – by those with close links to the Conservative party, and its anti-tax and anti-European allies. They know what some in the Labour party have yet to realise: that AV could open the door to Britain’s progressive majority – and let’s not forget that since the 1990s most Liberal Democrat voters’ second preference was Labour – securing the representation to which it is entitled. No wonder, too, that the BNP is so hostile to the introduction of AV; it has correctly assessed that its already-slim chances of winning seats in the House of Commons would be totally snuffed out.
AV also offers other less tangible, but equally important, potential gains not simply for Labour but also for the health of British democracy. As the ippr report indicated, the current playing field on which elections are fought is extremely narrow: last May’s election was determined by fewer than 460,000 voters – 1.6 per cent of the electorate – in just 111 seats. The lack of trust, and feeling of disengagement, that too many Britons feel about politics cannot be disentangled from this fact.
By allowing people to cast a second preference vote, AV will make redundant the ultimately frustrating process of tactical voting, thus providing the opportunity for local parties – particularly where Labour is in third place – to engage with voters without having to counter the familiar Liberal Democrat charge that they risk ‘letting the Tories in’ or that ‘Labour can’t win here’. And, by forcing MPs to win the support of 50 per cent of voters, AV will also end what the ippr terms the ‘campaign-free zones’ which characterise many, though by no means all, ‘safe seats’.
The chief characteristic of the No campaign thus far has been confusion: attempting to conflate AV and PR, ascribing to the former many of the worst features of the latter. By creating confusion, they hope fear and inertia will allow them to win the day. Perhaps most pernicious, though, is the charge that AV – the simple ranking of candidates by preference – is somehow too complex a system to introduce. Of all people, progressives should have greater faith in the intelligence of the electorate.
Sorry but a lot of the stuff above is wrong and the simple excuse that it will damage the Tories is the theory why I back and always will back the NO campaign. Not because I am a member of the BNP, have close links to the Conservatives or according to the frankly idiotic assumption of Mr Twigg that I am a member of the Conservative party! I simply believe that Labour lost the last election, the Tories or ConDems as they prefer to be called, didn’t win it and we lost because of policy, badly fought campaigns, arrogance and ignorance of the views of the electorate and lots of other reasons which can be basically summed up with WE DIDN’T GIVE ENOUGH PEOPLE REASON TO VOTE FOR US! Rigging the voting system in any form won’t achieve anything if the reasons why people didn’t vote for us are not eradicated and I do wish the Yes Campaign would get that into their head. The nonsense that AV will end tactical voting, is just that. Hell will freeze over before I vote Tory so my preference, after Labour, will be any of the above, except the morons of the BNP and that includes the Monster Raving Loony Party, if a preference had to be made, I suspect Tories will think the same, in terms of not voting for Labour and the same could possibly be true of their new found buddies within the Limp Dems. The most sickening thing coming from the Yes campaign is this warped opinion that AV will defeat the BNP it won’t. The stupidity of the system is that it allows the morons to get their votes and then have a say and while the Yes campaign may well believe that voting for the BNP is good, as long as they give Labour their preference vote, I am of the opinion that it isn’t. There is no place for the morons of the BNP, they need to be smashed at every opportunity not welcomed with open arms, in exchange for doing Labour a favour. Some may say that the will get defeated at the preference percentage stage so lets accept, I say they should be defeated before the ballot box! Let me be absolutely clear I hate the Tories with a passion. I live in a Tory ward, within a Tory Borough Council, that has a Tory County Council above it and since may have been stuck with a Tory MP, so if anyone should want a system in just to purely get rid of them it should be me. The thing is I don’t want lazy politics based on party economics, which is what the Yes campaign is all about no matter what smoke screens they try to confuse or patronise the electorate with and if people can be bothered to fight in areas classed as so called safe seats. Those reasons are why my constituency is in the state it is in. What I want is my community to get back to wanting Labour because of what it wants to do for them, the thing that politics should be about and not for it to have Labour because the voting system rigged us in to power!
What this article fails to recognize is the “game changing” effect of electoral reform. Only one of them is this… The existence of the Lib Dems is due to FPTP. SDP & Liberals formed a pact because otherwise they would have split each others votes at General Elections. That led to mergers.Yet they are still talked about as wings of the party. Potentially AV gives them the chance to be 2 parties again (I’m not saying they will de-merge, but a new one will form, probably in reaction to Clegg). Allowing “SDP” to form coalition with Labour. Lib Dems could well not have balance of power in hung parliament with AV. It’s a racing certainty with FPTP.
Some key errors here: * AV doesn’t do the things you claim it does – tactical voting still exists, candidates don’t necessarily need 50% support to win. * Lib Dems are telling pollsters that their second preference is Conservative, by something like a 3 to 1 margin. * UKIP are supporting the “Yes” campaign, so I’m not sure what you mean by “anti-European allies”. Unsurprising since they have a million second preferences to offer. Guesses who will be the highest bidder for those?
I sit on the fence. I am in the dark about the relative merits of AV versus ‘first-pass-the-post’. The contents of this article do nothing to shed light on this murky topic. I have long since lost faith in “academic assessments” or claims that experts/studies etc. support a particular opinion. I have traditionally held the view that AV (and, for that matter, PR) would predominantly benefit minority parties (hence the enthusiasm shown for decades by the LibDems, and before them the Liberals, for these voting systems). I will support any system that improves Labour’s chances at the polls. If you, or anybody, can demonstrate that AV would result in more Lab MPs at elections then I would support a change. This article does nothing to question moving from existing system.
Surely its a bit early to write off Labour’s chances of getting an outright majority at the next election, given that they are already ahead in the opinion polls.
Sorry but AV isn’t progressive! As a union negotiator I always have to weigh up if a compromise is worth signing up to – does this take us closer to or further away from our aims. AV loses this test whichever way you look at it. It makes politics less transparent. It doesn’t help Labour in that it increases the temptation to use a protest vote on the far left but such votes only transfer to a possible winner…AV wouldn’t have helped us win a single seat in the South-East or South-West at the last election. It’s not proportional and a referendum won or lost makes proper PR less likely for years to come. AV disadvantages the Tories when you think the Lib Dems are broadly in line with Labour (a mistake many have made but few, especially not progress shoud make again) but if you think there’s a real difference between us and the Lib Dems this is a mistake. Be loud, proud and progressive – VOTE & CAMPAIGN FOR A NO VOTE.
This seems to be all that is wrong with the Yes campaign. What we need in this country is a fair electoral system not one which benefits any particular party and I say this as a Labour party member. The FPTP system already makes many voters feel alienated and unrepresented – why would we want to advocate a system which might distort election results further. The reality is that the Labour Party didn’t deserve a majority of over 100 in the 2005 election after Iraq and the party’s shift to general authoritarianism and such a majority would have failed to represent the growing disquiet amongst potential Labour party voters. There is an argument it would have been better if it had got an even smaller majority as that might have forced it to have looked harder at renewing itself in office started to look again at regaining the voters it lost after 1997.
I’m still on the fence but every time I read a Yes-piece it’s like a muscly pair of arms is trying to push me over onto the No side. I keep hearing this assertion that AV would have produced a bigger majority for Labour even in 1997, and think it’s time for those who make it to start offering evidence rather than treat it as accepted orthodoxy. How do we know what several million people’s second preference would have been 14 years ago? Given how many “natural Tories” voted Labour in 1997, it would seem reasonable to suspect many of Labour’s new voters in 1997 would have given second preference to the Tories. But what’s the evidence either way? Also, there’s a bizarre contradiction between the ideas of AV being fairer/better, and that AV would have given us a bigger majority in 1997. We won 43.2% of the vote and 63.4% of the seats, so any system that would have given us even more of the seats is just broken. I say that through gritted teeth as the idea of the Tories facing oblivion is joyful, but one day it could be the Tories getting 43.2% of the vote. Sadly, at the end, this article descends into the sort of self-righteousness which is marring the Yes-campaign. If “the simple ranking of candidates” is that simple, then I wouldn’t have heard more than one highly intelligent Labour member confused as to whether to put the leadership candidate they most disliked as fifth preference, or just leave him out altogether. Rather than labelling a genuine concern as “pernicious” and declaring we should know better, how about treating us like adults and equals and offering a reasoned argument?