What a mess we made of the open goal Nick Clegg presented in his referendum on the alternative vote. Ed Miliband backed a loser – not best practice for a new leader. Labour was split, with the majority of MPs opposing AV, while the Tories stayed united in support of keeping first past the post. A surprising number of Labour MPs backed an electoral system that would work against the party.
Most people were bored by the whole business, although the hysterical over-hyping by both sides of the argument must have caused a certain amount of puzzlement – as if minor tinkering would revitalise politics or bring Britain to the verge of disaster.
It was all rather predictable, but now we face the problem of how to rescue something from the wreckage. By acting quickly, Labour can lay claim to the reformist moral high ground. We do that by accepting that the recent crazy campaign was not actually about AV.
It was about proportional representation. Many of those who advocated AV over FPTP campaigned for it as if it had all the virtues
of PR – they system they really want. Opponents of AV condemned it as a surrogate for PR, mainly because there’s so little in AV to attack or praise.
So why not acknowledge the elephant in the room, seize the initiative and wrong-foot the Liberal Democrats by announcing that Labour will offer the people the full consultation they should have had in the form a referendum on genuine proportional representation when we return to government?
The Lib Dems have wasted the nation’s time and money by being too cowardly to ask the Conservatives for what they really wanted and for which they used to stand. After the 2010 general election, in their brief coalition discussions with Labour, the Lib Dems requested a referendum on PR. However, their feeble leader only dared to ask the Tories for a vote on AV.
These ills of the present system are glaringly obvious. First past the post gives governments – usually Conservative ones – a majority by effectively disqualifying those votes which are cast for other parties in the safe seats of one of the main parties. This has the effect of concentrating the campaign in a few key marginal constituencies and does nothing to mobilise voters in seats which are invariably won by a party they do not support. The result is that the dwindling numbers of Labour supporters in seats where the Conservatives have a big majority are forced into voting Lib Dem in an effort to keep out the Tory candidate.
A multi-party system is struggling to be born within the confines of an electoral system which only works properly with two parties. So the results are messy and unpredictable, alternating excessive majorities with the occasional hung parliament. The electorate knows this. Much of the increasing disenchantment with politics is caused by the widespread feeling that their votes don’t give people a stake in Parliament.
The Lib Dems are perceived to have given up on PR, as they have on most of their principles. But PR would be supported by a united and growing body of reformers who were either against AV or driven to peddle untruths about it which should have been banned by the Advertising Standards Authority.
So let’s offer people a meaningful choice in place of the phoney prospect the Lib Dems foisted on them. Let’s mobilise the growing number in the Labour Party and outside it who want the real deal of proportional representation. Let’s give real reform a proper chance.
All the opinion polls up to this year, when the ersatz reform of AV was trundled out, show that PR has had the steady support of around 60 per cent of electors in Britain. AV is, as Nick Clegg once said it was, a miserable little compromise.
The first New Zealand referendum on voting reform should have served as a salutary lesson. There, after the preliminary question on whether people wished to change the electoral system – which 85 per cent did – electors were offered a range of options. Only 7 per cent voted for AV, but 70 per cent voted for proportional representation (using the German system) and 17 per cent for the single transferable vote, as they use in Ireland. Given the free choice which the coalition has denied, who would bet against similar preferences being expressed here?
Moreover, the circumstances which led to people in New Zealand to opt for PR are being replicated in this country. In New Zealand, PR was the voters’ revenge, because the electorate felt betrayed by the major parties and wanted to put politicians on a shorter leash.
In Britain, people now feel betrayed by all three main parties – the Lib Dems most obviously and spectacularly, but also Labour because the last Government is blamed (unfairly) for leaving a mess for the coalition to clear up. Meanwhile, the Tories are blamed for cruel and unnecessary cuts and tax increases, imposed out of political prejudice without warning or mention in their manifesto.
The reaction isn’t as furious as it was in New Zealand – perhaps because we are more placid and have lower expectations – but there is a growing alienation from the party system. Similar circumstances brought PR to New Zealand, where it is now working to cure the country’s problems and deliver what the people want.
In Britain, Labour was the first party to propose a referendum on AV – which is voting reform, but not electoral reform. Perhaps we deserve some small credit for that, although it was a step down from the referendum on PR we proposed in 1997 when an inflexible Gordon Brown could not be persuaded that the consultation should have been widened.
Now we have the opportunity to offer people what they actually want and need. By offering them a quack remedy favoured by no one which does nothing to provide a more representative parliament, give every vote a value, make politics fairer and give every voter an investment in the parliament we elect, Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems shredded their reformist credentials and perpetrated a con on the British people. That opens a door for Labour.
There will be objections that the party is divided on PR. So it is, but support for PR was steadily growing up to 1997 and will grow again while Labour is opposition. In any case, that consideration was of no account when we proposed a referendum on AV. Nor should it have been, because it’s irrelevant. It’s not the party which decides the issue, but the people. Unless they are now offered a prospect of securing the viable political changes that ensure their voices are heard, alienation and scepticism will increase.
So let’s promote Labour as the party of hope and reform and offer voters the opportunity the Con-Dems have denied them – a chance to choose and to say what they really think. We achieve that by proposing a royal commission on the electoral system leading to a referendum on the changes it recommends. Then it’s over to the people to decide, not MPs who tend to think the system which elected them is the best available.
Austin Mitchell is Labour MP for Great Grimsby
