AV can damage your constitutional health

The coalition is interested in electoral gerrymandering, not real voting reform, says Austin Mitchell

by Austin Mitchell
Saturday, February 26th, 2011

Ed Miliband, along with other leading Labour politicians who want to demonstrate their reformist qualifications, and all too many of my friends in the various campaigns for proportional representation with whom I have worked over the years, intend to support the introduction of the alternative vote in May’s referendum. They are being wholly naive. AV is not a step on the way to a fairer electoral system. It is merely the Liberal Democrat part of the two-step gerrymander proposed by the coalition. Labour – and anyone who wants meaningful electoral reform – should oppose it.

The Lib Dems have long supported electoral reform through the introduction of the single transferable vote (STV) rather than the superior additional member system (AMS). Either way, genuine proportional representation is the reform Britain needs, because only PR can make our voting system fair and allow it to adjust to the emerging multi-party politics. The first-past-the-post system only operates effectively with two parties. Under FPTP, multi-party politics produces messy results. So we need PR to articulate and manage multi-party politics.

If nothing else, the outcome of the 2010 general election was an opportunity for the Lib Dems to seek to secure this necessary change. In negotiations with Labour, they proposed four-year parliaments elected on the basis of STV. Yet they never dared to put that to the Tories, or even ask for PR to be on the ballot paper so the electorate could decide. Their longstanding support for PR and the belief that it is essential to the future of both their party and the country has been forgotten. They have stopped talking about “electoral reform” in favour of “voting reform”, dropped PR without another mention and proposed only AV. Which they got from the Tories without difficulty.

That should have been a clear indication of just how unimportant a change it is. Instead AV is proclaimed as a major potential gain. It isn’t. It is just the Lib-Dem part of a dirty deal. The Tories would gain perhaps 20 seats from the redistribution of voters that would follow the reduction of the House of Commons to 600 MPs. The Lib Dems might gain as many 20 seats under AV, as a consequence of being many people’s second preference. That’s the deal. Is it Labour’s job to seal it? The Tory gains are banked. The Lib Dem gains depend on the outcome of the referendum. Labour would only lose out.

The odds are against an endorsement of AV. Referendums tend to support the status quo. The coalition is unlikely to be any more popular in May than it is now. So why should Labour and all who support genuine electoral reform opt for AV? People such as Billy Bragg, the Labour Campaign for Electoral Reform and the Labour Party leader (who assured me during his bid for the leadership that he would vote for AV but not campaign for it) say that is precisely what we should do. They are wrong. They run the risk of backing a loser and accomplishing nothing.

AV is neither fair nor proportional. It produces local frustrations when an apparent winner is demoted in favour of a candidate who lost in the first round, particularly since the electors won’t be consulted again on how their second preference should be allocated– as they are in France’s two-ballot system.

A candidate can be chosen by those who simply list their preferences – “1”, “2”, “3” – from those whose surnames are at the top of the ballot paper. Such electors can constitute as much as 10 per cent of the total voting in Australia and perhaps more in Papua New Guinea, where they also have AV.

Labour support for AV would be a step to nowhere. If it is rejected, it would set back any campaign for real electoral reform and Labour will have been seen to back a loser. If it is endorsed, it would entrench the Tory-Lib Dem coalition.

Some supporters of AV hope it would weaken party dominance. They are misguided. It would require the mass distribution of “how to vote” cards outside polling booths telling party supporters how they could best help their own side. No one should believe that Lib Dems would invariably give their second preferences to Labour. Why would they? Their leadership may want the coalition to carry on in order to avoid Lib Dem oblivion. Casting Lib Dem votes for the Tories (and vice versa) is the best way of ensuring that. As for other parties, do we seriously expect Scottish National Party supporters to give their second preferences to Labour after years of mutual hatred?

Another delusion is that electoral reformers can derive some small satisfaction because the second part of the proposed coalition reform is proportional representation for Parliament’s second chamber. House of Lords reform may or may not come, but a second chamber elected by PR would be more democratic and representative than a first chamber elected using FPTP. In a contest between a genuinely representative chamber and a party-dominated unrepresentative one, who really represents the people?

All this leaves out the basic issue of what the people of this country actually want. The Lib Dems have dropped their demand for PR and the other parties have always been against it. Many politicians tend to think that the system under which they got elected must
be the best one. The public’s view is more difficult to discern. People are well aware of the defects of the present system, but
are far from enthusiastic about possible replacements. Most surveys indicate a majority – around 60 per cent – for PR, although people are also attached, and in roughly the same proportion, to the direct link an MP has with his or her constituency. The additional member system could accommodate that, with both constituency MPs and parliamentary representatives elected using a list system. STV allows for larger constituencies, giving them as many four MPs for the price of one.

Perhaps a powerful campaign could produce a shift in favour of AV. Yet the issue has already been put to the popular vote in New Zealand. PR was supported in two referendums. In the first, electors were asked whether they wanted to change the system. Four out of five said “yes” on a two-thirds turnout. People were then asked to indicate their preferred system. AMS (described in New Zealand as “multi-member proportional”) got 66 per cent. Only 6 per cent voted for AV.

Given a real choice (which the Lib Dems haven’t allowed), British electors might well do much the same thing. Why don’t we ask them?

Austin Mitchell is Labour MP for Great Grimsby

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  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=510646322 Edmund Woodfield

    I agree and disagree with parts this article in equal measure, but the arguments he puts against AV over FPTP are frankly pathetic. Why consult voters again on their second preference when they have already told you what it is? I am sick of people claiming it is unfair that someone who “loses” the first round can go on to win. They can ONLY do this if they are more popular than the person who supposedly should win, according to FPTP. I wonder if he is concerned that his wafer-thin majority would disappear if his constituents voted under AV, because I can’t find any principled arguments against it in this article.

  • http://www.stvAction.org.uk Anthony Tuffin

    Austin Mitchell is right that “genuine proportional representation is the reform Britain needs” and “Under FPTP, multi-party politics produces messy results” but he’s the naïve one if he really thinks that voting in the referendum for FPTP will do anything but reinforce FPTP.

    His comment, “A candidate can be chosen by those who simply list their preferences – “1”, “2”, “3” – from those whose surnames are at the top of the ballot paper.” is disgraceful, arrogant and condescending. It is an insult to suggest that English and Welsh voters can’t number candidates in order of preference as Irish and Scottish ones do already.

    According to him, “an apparent winner [with AV] is demoted in favor of a candidate who lost in the first round” but the clue is in the word “apparent”. It’s FPTP that turns losers into winners. For example, In Norwich South last year, 70.68% voted against Simon Wright (Lib Dem) and 29.32% voted for him and yet he won! That wouldn’t happen with AV; the winner would need over half the votes.

    He also wrote “AV is neither fair nor proportional” but FPTP certainly isn’t; indeed it’s less fair than AV as the example above shows.

    Mr Mitchell’s problem is that he is comparing AV with systems (STV and AMS) that aren’t available in the referendum.

    There are only two choices in the referendum: AV and FPTP and, of these two, AV is undoubtedly superior.

    The bottom line is that:
    1. In the vast majority of constituencies, every voter could vote by AV for his or her own party safe in the knowledge that, if that party was eliminated in an early round, his or her subsequent preference could still influence the result.
    2. No candidate could be elected by as few as one-third of the votes as some are now and very candidate would have to work to attract more than half the votes.

  • Will Podmore

    During the talks that led to the coalition, the LibDems made it quite clear that their top priority was a new voting system, not Britain’s economic recovery. They want voting reform just for their own party advantage, not for the good of the nation.

    The LibDems had fought the election claiming, rightly, that immediate cuts would be devastating and would put economic recovery at risk. But they changed their tune to get into office.

    Only the issue of voting reform distinguished them from the Conservatives, as their joining the coalition proved. In joining the coalition, they joined the Conservatives: as George Osborne said, “It’s our policy that’s being agreed.”
    The LibDems’ sole gain from the coalition is the 5 May referendum on the Alternative Vote. Neither the Conservatives nor the LibDems actually proposed AV in its manifesto, so, like the NHS ‘reform’, this is another policy with no mandate. Clegg himself opposed AV before the election.

    Lord Jenkins’ 1998 report on voting reform said that AV should be ruled out because it would actually make the system less proportional and less fair. So, for example, in 1997, Labour got 419 seats with 43 per cent of the vote. Under AV, it would have got 445 seats, and the Tories (with 30 per cent of the vote) would have got just 70 seats instead of 165. If AV had been in force at the last election, the Tories would have got 25 fewer seats (281 not 306) and Labour would have got four more (258 not 254) – which is why Gordon Brown suddenly backed AV.
    In YouGov’s poll, published on 4 March, 43 per cent said they would say ‘no’ to AV on 5 May, 32 per cent said they would vote ‘yes’. If we vote No, as seems most likely, then the LibDems will have got nothing out of joining the Conservatives.

    AV is an effort to breathe life into the corpse. If it were carried out, it would damage Britain and limit democracy by making it more difficult for us to kick out a despised government.

    We want more referendums, which rightly take power away from discredited politicians; so we must seize this chance to reject their schemes, even on this little matter. But even more, we need a referendum on the life-and-death matter of our EU membership.

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