Guy Aitchison has an analysis of the ‘No to AV’ campaign on Open Democracy. He goes for the man rather than the ball but that emphasises a critical point: the ‘no’ campaign means business (in more ways than one.) According to the piece, the organisers of the ‘yes’ campaign are about to be announced. I don’t know who they are beyond a hunch or two but I sincerely hope they are ruthless campaigners. The ‘yes’ campaign can’t afford to rest on idealism and organisation alone. It is going to have to throw the odd punch- and hard.
I would even go as far as to say that the ‘yes’ campaign should actually be the ‘no’ campaign. It should be a no to our broken system of politics that allows MPs to be elected on just 29% of the vote. This means that they can afford to ignore up to two-thirds of their constituents should they choose. And it should be ‘no’ to a system that collapsed in scandal a year ago.
In fact, there are only two arguments for First Past the Post that I can see. Firstly, that it produces clear outcomes. But it doesn’t. We have a hung parliament and the breakdown of class blocks of voting means that hung parliaments will become more common without a major class-voting realignment. And as Patrick Dunleavy of the LSE reported yesterday, the ‘Westminster model’ or majoritarian political systems are no longer producing clear outcomes. Again, this would appear to be something structural- we are becoming more pluralistic societies and majoritarian political systems sit uncomfortably with pluralism hence the breakdown of the ‘clear outcome’ argument.
The second argument that has ostensible merit is the ‘maverick politician’ argument. This asserts that AV will make elections anodyne as the system awards the most popular candidate who offends the fewest voters. This is a stronger argument than the ‘clear outcome’ argument but is by no means decisive. It has acquired added force by the ‘safety first’ approach of the Labour leadership contest. However, there are very few ‘maverick politicians’ in the current system. Where there is a successful one- Boris Johnson as Mayor of London- he was elected under AV. The force of personality can out in any electoral system- are there no maverick politicians in Australia? Of course there are.
So the ‘yes’ campaign should actually be- in major part- the ‘no to the First Past the Post’ campaign. It should get stuck into a system that allows incumbents to be reelected election after election with no real reason to engage with anyone other than their political base. It disenfranchises the majority. It is a recipe for static politics and resistance to change. All these elements together mean that many politicians had become so disconnected from voters that there were able to become serial expenses fiddlers. Its claimed advantages don’t stand. Without stability and decisiveness it’s a dud system.
Under no circumstances should the campaign be about the Coalition. There will be pro and anti Coalition forces on each side and that needs to be clearly articulated then the conversation should be about the damaging nature of First Past the Post.
The message is simple: be nice and lose. Fight fire with fire and be the anti establishment campaign and you may win. If you let the status quo become the anti-establishment force then that is negligent. It is a critical battle. The ‘yes’ campaign will need to be as ruthless as the ‘no’ campaign if not more so. This referendum is there to be won but it will need an incredibly robust campaign. Who will step up to the plate?
August 24th, 2010 at 11:31
Someone get Clegg to give Joanna Lumley a call to see if she’ll appear in the TV ads for the Yes campaign.
Would be a lot harder for the Daily Mail et al to hammer AV as the greatest threat to mankind if a national treasure is in favour.
Also, has there ever been an issue on which the TPA and the unions have been united in opposition?
August 24th, 2010 at 11:48
Can I enter a third and a fourth objection to proportionality? Plans for electoral reform seem more likely to strengthen elite interests and to slow down political change.
The present system has only produced one coalition. Couldn’t it be we are overestimating the likelihood that it will do it again because of our present circumstances? The next election, if FPTP were still in place, might produce a more clear cut result in the favour of a single party or ideological objective as it has done at most elections and we would need to revise our beliefs.. Maybe we cannot escape coalitions but moving to a more proportional system would seem certain condemn us to permanent coalition.
If we have the choice we should avoid permanent coalition. It could sacrifice British democracy’s existing virtues in the hopeful (and to its credit scientifically informed) predictions about the next election. The virtues I am thinking about are the simplicity of manifesto commitments that can be compared to a government’s actions. In coalitions manifesto commitments become mere chips in elite bargaining. Politics becomes more opaque to an electorate that is interested in politics but has limited attention because of competing demands on their time. The cost of holding the electorate responsible under more proportional systems will rise and make it more difficult to hold politicians to account. Elite bargaining between different coalition members will be much harder to monitor.
I also fear coalitions will entrench centrism. If current political trends continue we are in danger of granting the Liberals or other centrist parties veto power over political change. I knowbrakes on political change have virtues but we dont want to end up with deadlocked system like the American one where, for example, minor changes to an inefficient health system face so many hurdles.
In sum we should at least be wary of electoral reforms and acknowledge there are lots of reasons why left wingers should be reluctant about supporting AV or other moves toward greater proportionality.
August 24th, 2010 at 11:48
“Under no circumstances should the campaign be about the Coalition.”
Could you expand on this a bit? I don’t think I agree. Here’s an alternative argument, would be v interested in your views:
Assuming the vote will be on the same day as the Scottish and Welsh elections, there is going to be a higher turnout in Scotland and Wales than in England. If you look at the polls, the fall in support for the Yes campaign so far has come from Labour supporters switching from Yes to No.
This would suggest that the swing voters in this election are going to be Labour supporters in places like Glasgow who have essentially no interest in the damaging nature of First Past the Post, but a deep and abiding hatred of the Coalition in general and the Tories in particular.
So if the Yes campaign can get across one message to low info voters, it should be that if you hate the Tories or want to show your discontent with the government about their cuts, tax hikes or whatever, then you should vote Yes in the referendum.
Being ruthless about winning the referendum is not about rebutting arguments about maverick politicians, it is about exposing the fact that the No campaign is run by rich Tory businessmen who plan to run a campaign based on lies and fear, and it is about mobilising the anti-Tory majority to give them a kicking. This would also help to bring Labour and the Lib Dems closer together and divide the Coalition.
Thoughts?
August 24th, 2010 at 14:01
Dan- thanks for your comment. Interesting. The problem with that approach is that it’s not the reality- a defeat won’t split apart the Coalition and nor will a victory. They’ll just get on with it (with some minimal post-match Lib Dem ot Tory Right grumbling) and will make that clear during the referendum campaign. Labour voters are split but they won’t be united on a false premise is my sense- like the Treaty of Rome referendum this won’t split along party lines.
Far more important to make the actual case for change: those who support FPTP do so because they benefit from politics as it is- personally, politically or financially- and FPTP is a dud system that allows too many MPs to ignore voters with the expenses scandal being the most obvious manifestation of this contempt.
August 24th, 2010 at 22:30
Who are your hunches?
Good to have the blog back!
August 25th, 2010 at 11:01
I agree with all the criticisms you make of FPTP. But surely the problem for the ‘yes’ campaign is that AV won’t really change any of these things?
Reading about the Australian election, the striking thing is how similar their election campaigns are to ours: the relentless focus on undecided voters in a small number of marginal seats, the systematic under-representation of smaller parties.
No-one really believes that AV is going to revolutionise British politics. It’s a slightly better way of deciding the outcome in an individual constituency, but over the whole country it is likely to produce very similar results to FPTP. There will still be hundreds of safe seats, the two main parties will still dominate Parliament. The best argument you can make for it is that it might, perhaps, make it more likely that we will get further reform at some unspecified point in the future.
There’s the problem for reformers. If the ‘yes’ campaign is honest about the merits of AV (OK, it’s not much better than what we have now, but it’s all we can hope to get in the current circumstances) then the referendum is likely to be lost, because the other side will be so much more committed and ruthless. But if you mount the kind of anti-establishment campaign you’re advocating, you might win the referendum – but when AV doesn’t deliver these changes, a lot of people will be disappointed and perhaps become cynical about the whole idea of electoral reform. And if at some point we get a referendum on PR, it will be that much harder to win it.
August 25th, 2010 at 18:11
There is a third argument for the status quo – it is easy to understand.
The Alternative Vote is actually quite simple to explain, certainly the mechanics of casting one’s vote. What can be complicated is explaining how the counting works (it is even more complicated for truly proportional systems).
When I have debated this issue (I am a reformer and a member of the LCER) I like to point out the three of the four constituent nations within the UK already use proportional systems without too many problems.
What I hope for is that an AV system will change campaigning away from concentration on swing voters in key marginals.
Mind you, Clegg is trying a nasty trick in his Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill, tagging the reduction in MP numbers as well as the re-drawing of constituency boundaries in with the referendum. There is a substantial hint of gerrymandering going on here, especially in the indecent haste that the boundaries will be re-drawn.