Regular readers of this blog will know that I firmly believe in keeping my friends close and my enemies closer, so I’ve been browsing the No to AV campaign website (I trust you can google). What strikes me every time I attempt to engage with the No campaign are the persistent attempts to have their cake and eat it – which are clearly failing.
This week’s “weekly reason to vote no” is the classic Nick Clegg quote calling AV a “miserable little compromise”. It’s yet another demonstration of how the No campaign is having to do the splits to try to appeal to both supporters of First Past the Post and those of us who would love to see further electoral reform beyond AV and towards proportional representation.
AV, the No campaign’s literature says, is not a proportional system (this is true, by the way, and no one claims otherwise) – implying that it is not sufficient reform. In an attempt to gain credibility with supporters of proportional representation, the campaign claims that some of their supporters – Labour MP Margaret Hodge for instance – would like to see PR, but that AV is not the right kind of reform.
At the same time, the No campaign has a detailed list of what it sees as the benefits of First Past the Post. Strong governments (ahem); one person, one vote (ahem) – you know the deal.
So which is it? Do we like First Past the Post, or do we think AV is insufficient as reform goes? Or are we simply trying to scupper the only chance of electoral reform that this country has? For all of the No campaign’s assurances that it does not take an official position on PR and that that is a separate debate, let’s face the facts here. PR is not on the table. The ballot paper will ask you to choose between two options: First Past the Post, and the Alternative Vote. Personally, I struggle to believe that this government would take a No to AV vote as desire for further or different reform. If that is what we return, it will be spun as a victory for FPTP, we will be told how much the country loves its electoral system which has worked for generations, and we will not see reform in our or our children’s lifetimes. I have talked elsewhere about why I think AV is worth having in its own right, but over and above that, as someone who truly believes that a proportional system is the way forward, voting no to AV is not an option for me.
The other thing I struggle with, of course, is to believe anything from a campaign which claims that “AV ensures that the BNP will gain more votes and more legitimacy, while not giving any help to small parties like the Green Party.” That is one attempt to do the splits too far.
I guess it is similar to the allies in ww2, where the communists fought alongside the capitalists (there may still be a cold war between Fptp and PR) but what the allies agreed on was that fascism was so bad it was worth a temporary truce.
Not saying that AV is in any way fascist, just saying it is an example of two traditional opponents teaming up to try a defeat a bigger evil.
That only works if you genuinely have a common interest. My point is that voting against AV actively damages the PR cause.
What you say. There are a lot of smoke and mirrors being wafted about by the No campaign, but a No vote is likely to result in No Change, full stop.
Milena,
in the Australian Rebulic referendum .. I voted YES becuase and overlooked the fact that the option I was voting for was actually an option I would argue strongly against if it were put up against my prefered republic model.
I feared voting No would scupper the movement for reform.
It didnt..
I am here to say that even though the NO campign won all it did was mean that the Yes campigners needed to come together and refouc peoples minds..
The republic is still on the cards, the debate is still going the only thing is we are having a much more civilised and adult debate as it is not being set in a campign mode.
This AV model is not actually wanted by quite a number of the Yes campaign it is just that they see it as any change is good change.
I put forward a suggestion that a bad AV model will actually damage the reform as we have seen in Canada where two provinces went to AV only to come back and in Fiji were they are looking at dropping it.
I would suggest the better focus for people would be a two step referendum as they did in NZ..
Ask the questin on reform and then decide the reform you want..
This option is not off the table.
I am voting NO becuase the battle for reform is to important for the main public engagement to be jaudiced by a campiagn.. as with elections ideas shouldnt be fought out in media but in public forums properly and not as a circus..
real reform is worth campaigning for not simply settling for..
This AV model doesn’t give proportionality, and doesnt actually mean the winner needs 50%+ of the total vote… the two biggest arguments against FPTP.. why would we waste all this time and effort to bring in a system just as flawed as the current one?
Why not actually have the model the we want not one given to us in a political agreement between the Lib Dems and the Tories…
The people should have more say in the Question as they did in NZ…
Andy,
Of *course* we should have a two-step referendum. If anyone with real power was truly interested in electoral reform, that’s how they would do it. The trouble is that that’s not the case, which is why we’ve ended up with the compromise that is the AV referendum. I am rapidly learning that in politics, at least 80% of the time it’s not about how things *should* be, but about what is on the table right now.
And given that we’ve established that no one with real power is interested in electoral reform, we have to do the best with what we’ve got. For me, it is absolutely clear that a No to AV will be taken as a No to reform, full stop. That’s not something we can afford. I have yet to see an argument that will convince me otherwise, but I’m happy to listen if you have one.
M