On May 5, the country will be asked to decide whether we should change the way we elect our MPs, from a method used by 2.5 billion people in the world, to a system used by just three countries; Papua New Guinea, Fiji and Australia. Fiji is about to drop AV and to change to a system of proportional representation. And after a bitter and divisive election in Australia, a recent poll suggests that six out of 10 people want a change from AV. The weak coalition in Australia is currently being held together with the support of two rural farmers who stood as independents.
In Britain, the campaign against AV has received substantial support from within the Labour Party. Margaret Beckett is the president of NO2AV and patrons include John Prescott, John Reid and Lord Falconer. Over 100 Labour MPs are supporting the “No” campaign and a significant number of NEC members are onside along with a number of trade unions. Of the many debates that have now taken place at Labour Party constituency meetings, NO2AV has won most of them.
The legislation that heralds the way for AV was rushed through Parliament (despite the valiant attempts of Labour peers) for one reason and one reason alone. It is a political fix. In the week, following the general election, David Cameron, Nick Clegg and others went into a room, shut the door and struck a deal. A deal that was in neither party’s manifestos.
A deal where the Liberal Democrats agreed to throw their support behind massive Tory cuts, went back on their promises on tuition fees and dropped their commitment to low VAT, all in order to obtain AV: a system which Clegg had earlier described as a “miserable little compromise”.
The referendum is due to take place in less than 90 days. There is now very limited time available for a proper debate in the country and until recently there has been hardly any media interest. Despite this, No2AV has arranged a series of discussions in town halls across the country, to let people know the reality of AV. Those for AV have been invited and independent chairs have been arranged but the “Yes” camp has been slow to engage. Surprisingly, in Sheffield last week, instead of joining the panel, the “Yes” campaign decided to protest outside the meeting.
There are strong arguments for the reform of our electoral system but let us not be fooled that AV will produce proportional representation. In 1998, Roy Jenkins chaired a wide ranging royal commission into electoral reform which concluded that AV is even less proportional than first past the post and argued that AV is disturbingly unpredictable and that elections fought under AV would either wildly increase the majority of the winning party (for example, Labour in 1997, the Tories in the 1980s) or create hung parliaments by giving the balance of power to the third party. It is important to dispel the myth that AV will lessen the chance of coalition governments. It will not. Indeed, it is more likely to result in them.
Neither will it make our MPs more accountable. Those who support AV often quote the figure that at the last election two-thirds of MPs were elected without 50 per cent of the vote. But they fail to mention that many of those MPs had just fewer than 50 per cent, so AV would have made absolutely no difference to the result.
Equally, AV, it has been said (by those who support it) is as simple as “one, two, three”. This is disingenuous. The system is complex. If it was so simple why did Scotland spend over £2 million on literature educating the millions of Scottish voters on how to use the new voting system?
The biggest myth of all is that AV will ensure MPs will have 50 per cent of the vote and will therefore be more accountable.
This is simply not true, it is more likely to disenfranchise some voters. Take the following example under AV, if you have four candidates say, A, B, C, D, and 100 voters, and each vote the following way: A 40, B 30, C 20 and D 10.
A therefore does not have 50 per cent of the vote, so D’s second preferences will be divided between the remaining candidates. However if D’s voters have no second preferences and they have “plumped” for one candidate, the total electoral pool is reduced from 100 down to 90. A will then have 45 per cent. If the pool is reduced proportionately to the amount of second, third,
fourth preferences then A will win without achieving 50 per cent of the vote. But now think of it not as 100 voters but as 70,000. It will be necessary not just to count the preferences but also to calculate the effect of “plumping” on the overall amount of voters. This will likely require counting machines (the cost of which will likely fall on already hard-pressed local authorities).
There are some that argue, that this is just the start, once we get AV we can then campaign for real proportional representation. But this argument is deluded. It is highly unlikely that any government will spend millions on another referendum for some time. Equally once people realise they have a poor cousin to FTTP they are unlikely to want further so-called reform.
There are concerns that under AV smaller parties like the BNP may gain a stronger foothold. I am concerned that we should not use the BNP argument to scare people. But it is a simple fact that FPTP has prevented the BNP from being elected to Parliament.
Indeed, the only time it has won an important victory has been when we have used a more proportional electoral system during the European elections.
The simple fact is that AV is not the right system and this is not the right time to be running this referendum. As the people look ahead to an unstable future and as thousands may soon lose their jobs, this is not the time to be spending millions on a referendum which was not in either of the coalition party’s manifestos and which it is plain, and for which the people are not crying out.
I am Labour to the core. I will never vote for another party and I will never put down a second preference. Is it right or fair that those who support a smaller party will be allowed two or more votes? It is my view that it is not fair, it is my view that it is not reform.
Mark McDonald is a barrister specialising in Human Rights and was Labour candidate for Wantage at the 2005 general election
