#Yes2AV
Well, Brits? Did you vote to improve the voting system, albeit shallowly and a hell of a lot less proportionately than the Lib Dems said they would stand for before the last election?
I know a lot of you didn’t and the polls are showing a near certain landslide vote against leaving First Past the Post, which has delivered a succession of unrepresentative governments since the year dot. But why would this be the case? I have a few suspicions:
- Contamination by Nick Clegg. The man (and his party) have become so fundamentally discredited in government, propping up the cuts-happy Tories (and particularly shattering higher education in Britain forever) that anything he wants will be hated by the public;
- The lies that the #No2AV campaign have spread have been believed by a gullible public, much of whom rely exclusively on the far right tabloids which dominate the British media. £250 million to implement AV? Bullshit – even New Labour throwback David Blunkett admitted the ‘No’ campaign has relied on a pack of lies;
- The electorate is scared of a system they’re told they don’t understand. Check this out though (via Anthony Smith’s blog):
How bloody difficult was that, eh? So we get back to the age old question: is an ingrained apathy leading to a broken politics, or are broken politics leading to apathy? Off of this I just can’t judge – why would a country which didn’t vote for David Cameron (or according to polls even want to tolerate) side with him in this? For that matter why is Cameron against it at all when he defeated David Davis for the Tory leadership through a form of AV?! Why should London not vote for it when they’ve benefited from it since 2000 in its Mayoral elections? It’s almost as if there are too many competing attitudes and narratives in play to motivate people with, and an accelerating disillusionment in any politics in the era of savage cuts.
I can’t deny should the vote be lost that I’ll be pretty fed up. After all the referendum is about creating a fairer voting system (and for those who bleat on endlessly about Vince Cable’s desire to use it to create a semi-permanent left-leaning electoral bloc in power, most people have never voted Tory ever) to reflect more closely the genuine wishes of the British people. We didn’t vote this appalling coalition in, and although AV would more likely end up with further coalitions (which under FPTP is going to keep happening anyway), they would less likely be overwhelmingly dominated and controlled by senior partners.
Finally I agree that the issue of how to get rid of incompetent/corrupt MPs should be high up the agenda, but that’s a separate issue. Fail to improve the voting system and watch an entire generation of young people walk away from parliamentary politics entirely, to the delight of the many MPs in safe (what a appalling idea) seats and, no doubt, the Metropolitan Police.
Can We Have Real Voting Reform Please?
Green Party leader Caroline Lucas MP attacks the mess all three main parties have got us into over the prospect:
The Conservatives don’t want to change the current system, and are allowing the referendum to shore up the coalition in the hope that the country will vote No. To them, AV is more acceptable than a genuinely proportional system because it minimises the risk of Ukip winning any seats at their expense. The Liberal Democrats have dropped STV, comforted by the fact that AV will benefit them more than anyone else. And Labour can drop its commitment to reform while blaming the government.
And it’s a joke. Labour went into the general election promising the alternative vote (AV) system at the very least in a referendum next year, the Lib Dems seemed pretty much fixated on STV as their price for entering any coalition and the Tories…the Tories of course are conservative and don’t like anyone messing with the status quo. Especially if it’s to their advantage. Now we have the Lib Dems abandoning all their core principles, the Tories trying to stab them in the back (with Clegg letting them know they can) and Labour using the debate to try to put them both on the back foot. It’s boring, it’s tedious and it’s robbing people of the enthusiasm which got sparked after the first televised election debate.
My own party, the Greens, supports the Additional Member System – a system which is more proportional but which maintains a constituency link. We’ll be deciding our position on AV at our forthcoming conference. But I believe that the most important priority is to give the public a real choice. Otherwise, people will remain cynical and disengaged. That is why I will be tabling an amendment in Parliament to rewrite the question to allow people to choose between AV, AMS, STV and the party list system, or to stick with first past the post.
And this I think is the issue. A referendum to decide on AV or not is a near-meaningless exercise. The chances of it being won are remote, the arguments behind voting reform are already getting lost once again, and the opportunities which were in our grasp last May could easily slip away, all because each of the main parties can’t see past their own short-term advantage. The broader argument over electoral reform should be available, with at least a major party articulating what the benefits would be to the political process itself. We continue to have the wrong people entering politics, and continuing to short up their professional careers and bank balances as the only regular outcome. That has to stop. AV won’t do it – Caroline Lucas is right, and her amendment should be given unconditional support. Maybe then we can return to political debate in this country rather than be led by the nose ever more by the Murdoch media and a still-supine BBC.
A Cynical Referendum by a Cynical Party
There will be a referendum after all, to replace Britain’s first-past-the-post electoral system, which allows a party to become the government, even though a majority of voters have voted for someone else:
Jack Straw, the justice secretary, will introduce the change in an amendment to the constitutional renewal bill. This will amount to paving legislation for a referendum on whether to introduce AV, to be held no later than October 2011.
Ministers, who agreed the move at a meeting of the cabinet’s democratic renewal committee (DRC) yesterday, believe that the prospect of a referendum will have three key benefits. It will:
• Allow Labour to depict itself at the general election as the party of reform in response to the parliamentary expenses scandal.
• Make David Cameron look like a defender of the status quo. The Tories, who are opposed to abolishing the first-past-the-post system, would have to introduce fresh legislation to block the referendum if they win the election.
• Increase the chances that the Liberal Democrats will support Labour – or at least not support the Tories – if no party wins an overall majority at the election, resulting in a hung parliament. The Lib Dems have traditionally regarded the introduction of PR as their key demand in any coalition negotiations. While AV does not technically count as PR, many Lib Dems regard AV as a step in the right direction.
I’m not happy with the idea of AV, when AV isn’t really any more proportional than first-past-the-post. And it does look like a sickeningly cynical manoever, although if they manage to keep the referendum in place if/when they lose the election, it will indeed be quite an impressive achievement. Someone at least has understood that they have to present themselves as a party prepared to embrace change, but if this is as far as they’re prepared to go down that road then even then it doesn’t even count as a half measure. Britain’s surveillance culture is now completely out of control – we’re well down the road of everyone having to be checked so that they’re not a paedophile, merely in order to get a job. We’re in a time when photographers snapping a sunset are being stopped by police for fear of being terrorists, and when a government with a track record of screwing up databases reserves the right to hold on to your DNA, even if you are innocent of a crime. If they’re unprepared to think about tackling these terrible civil liberties and human rights abuses and are using a referendum promise to distract our attention, and to outflank the Tories for future electoral gain, then they really aren’t interested in change at all. I agree with Stephen Tall, who says:
Labour has had 12 years in which to renew the democratic fabric of this country. They failed to do anything about it because, quite simply, they didn’t care enough about it. If they care now, it is only because it’s expedient to; and expediency is the worst possible motive for reform.
