Our friends at Make Votes Matter have organised a demo for proportional representation – Demo for Democracy – just after the May elections, while the fiasco of inconsistent, variable and non-proportional voting systems will still be fresh in our minds.
Party President Sal Brinton will be leading the Lib Dem contingent and you can join her at 11.30am on Saturday 7th May outside Lib Dem HQ at 8-10 Great George Street, London, SW1P 3AE. You can sign up on Facebook or on the Lib Dem website.
We are the party that has spoken loudly for electoral reform for many years, so let’s have a good turnout on the day.
* Mary Reid is a contributing editor on Lib Dem Voice. She was a councillor in Kingston upon Thames, where she is still very active with the local party, and is the Hon President of Kingston Lib Dems.
Follow @LibDemVoice on Twitter
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
Back to Butterley Tunnel on the Cromford Canal
Are we programmed to die?
Fraser's weekly ward surgeries tonight! #dundeewestend
An online conspiracy?
Alex Hosking
graham
Daniel Stylianou
Craig Levene
Paul Barker
19 Comments
I think with the exception of English council elections these elections are fought under PR or in the case of the London mayor under the system you guys wanted, AV.
What is the big deal? the party got its chance to change the voting system but the public overwhelmingly rejected the change that the liberal democrats proposed.
I support PR, but we should appreciate many find it complicated. It’s not just like choosing one candidate then chucking all the votes in a box and seeing who has the most! 🙂
Rightsaidfredfan 25th Apr ’16 – 9:19am No. Blairite peers have argued that they preferred and chose the Supplementary Vote. Liberal Democrat policy is for the Single Transferable Vote. You might remember or research Tony Blair’s changing attitudes to Ken Livingstone, Labour MP, Independent Mayor, Labour Mayor, republican who was pleased that the Queen wanted to open the London barrage, which, he thought, might “p… off Mrs Thatcher”.
@Richard Underhill “Blairite peers have argued that they preferred and chose the Supplementary Vote. Liberal Democrat policy is for the Single Transferable Vote.”
Yet Lib Dems threw away the chance of electoral reform (and negotiated away goodness only knows what in the Coalition Agreement) for a referendum on a “miserable little compromise” that nobody wanted.
It beggars belief that some parts of the party still seem to revere the leadership that brought it to its current state.
So many people voted against changing the system to punish Clegg and the party. The damage your former leader has done has not been fully accepted by many members. The real extent will only come to light in maybe four or five years. Awful.
Silvio is perfectly correct. The No to AV campaign shamelessly used the picture of Clegg on the doorstep of No 10. In addition, the Yes campaign was lacklustre, relying too much on the electronic media. Had the Labour Party been more on board, which Miliband indicated they might have been at the start, there might have been a closer, or even different result.
No, Eddie Sammon, voting under PR is not complicated, only if you have trouble counting up to five, as John Cleese famously said back in the 1980s. It’s only complicated for those poor souls whose job it is to sort out the votes afterwards. However, it’s unlikely that we shall be offered another bite of the cherry in the near future.
Lib dem policy might be for STV but that is not the reform that they offered to the country, they offered the country AV and the country said no. If the country had said yes parliament would be even less representative of the way people voted and the Tories would have an even bigger majority than they do now. This is what the lib dems offered the country and the country said no.
I think those who want a proportional system should be glad that a less proportionate system than FPTP was soundly rejected, this doesn’t necessarily mean that the public want STV or anything else, it just means that they didn’t want AV.
If the voting system ever is changed it should only happen through referendum, for a party to get into power and change the voting rules without the consent of the public would be a disgraceful thing to do.
@SILVIO
“So many people voted against changing the system to punish Clegg and the party.”
And if (as I believe) a lot of Labour-inclined voters did that for that reason then it turned out to be a classic case of people cutting off their nose to spite their face.
If Remain wins by, let’s say, 57% to 43% in June, I wonder how many LibDems will be assuring us that the public really does want out of the EU but chose to stay in just to punish Nigel Farage, or Michael Gove, or Boris Johnson.
Rightsaidfredfan 25th Apr ’16 – 1:23pm Please go back to what Prime Minister Gordon Brown said at PMQ. He “personally” supported AV, which appears to mean that AV was not Labour party policy or that the Labour leader knew that he could not deliver the Labour MPs. He did not, at that time, know the result of the 2010 general election.
The Tories were opposed to the policy but allowed a referendum on the electoral system.
In 2010 memories of the MPs’ expenses issue were fresh, and many MPs did not stand again or lost their seats, except in central London, where they could not claim for some of the housing allowances.
MPs in “safe” seats might vote for AV, and be elected anyway, although the point is that safe seats are anti-democratic.
Ten political party leaders including Ed Milliband supported the campaign by signing a full page advertisement in national newspapers, but Labour’s dislike of the coalition became the dominant issue.
As for the future, who knows? I believe in the Uncertainty Principle.
@ Simon Shaw. The real result for many who voted NO was preventing Clegg from entering Government again and it worked. ‘Cutting off your nose to spite your face’ is a term used a lot by Lib Dems now we have a Tory Government and no Lib Dem influence but so many ex voters witnessed Danny Alexander passionately defend the dreaded Bedroom Tax that they could never support a Clegg led Lib Dems. The party needs to address the Bedroom Tax and its dire consequences for the Lib Dems.
Theres so much myth- making going on about The AV vote. Lets remember the basics :
The 2 largest Parties were both opposed to any Reform & campaigned hard for a No vote.
The 3rd Party was split over AV & where we campaigned for Yes we did so with less than wholehearted enthusiasm.
Big Busuness & The Unions campaigned largely for No & threw money at the campaign.
The Papers were overwhelmingly for No.
The Yes campaign was crap.
Taking all that into account Yes did astonishingly well to get a third of the vote.
The facts are the facts. You can speculate all day as to why people voted the way they did but that’s just opinion, not fact.
The fact is that when the people got presented with the choice they overwhelmingly rejected what was offered to them. You have to assume the public meant what they said when they rejected what the lib dems offered them. The result cannot be nullified or not respected on the grounds that when people put a cross in the no box what they actually meant was something else, that would be very arrogant and treating the people’s democratic decision with utter contempt.
For example, I’m against staying in the EU. But if the remain side win I will have to accept that as a democratic decision to remain in the EU and not claim that we need another referendum because when people voted remain what they actually meant was something else.
@Rightsaidfredfan the London Mayor is elected under SV not AV. The only proportional element is a London wide list but you have in London a system of huge 1st past the post constituencies designed to elect either Labour or Tory AMs who few people will ever know.
Peter Watson 25th Apr ’16 – 12:07pm My personal view was that electoral reform should have been a red line for the coalition negotiations.
I regret that it was not possible to go to the special conference.
The early leaflets for yes were brilliant, but the money must have run out.
Meanwhile former Tory leader Michael Howard was on TV saying that Paddy Ashdown had been against AV as leader in negotiations with Tony Blair. This was true.
I did believe in PR but… the majority of the electorate don’t. That’s democracy; you lose an argument, the people speak, move on. PR as a red line only persuades people not to vote for us, or they’ll be forced to accept a system they’ve rejected already. Drop it. If a protest could override a referendum result it would be unbelievably undemocratic. If it shouldn’t then this protest is a complete waste of time and effort. Why are these elections a fiasco anyway? They’re not
These elections are not a fiasco, they are free and fair by international standards. Not being under the system you would prefer does not equal rigged or a fiasco.
But if the party really can’t accept these are free and fair elections the best form of protest would be not to stand. If it’s totally unfair and rigged, if you really believe that, then do not give them legitimacy by participating in them.
The AV campaign was dire. I first got to meet people doing it at the count.
It was further hampered by the monstering of Nick Clegg, which is why I am concerned that the EU referendum is not turned into too much of a David Cameron show.
AV is not PR, but it is an option that any thoughtful voters should see as being in their own interest, as it maximises the value of their vote.
Interesting to observe where AV won, such as Oxford, Cambridge and certain parts of London.
THE NEED FOR A RADICAL STANCE
I’m afraid the European vote – like the AV referendum – doesn’t set the pulses running. In a way – like the Scottish referendum – I guess most folk will just about edge it and ‘hang on to nurse for fear of something worse’.
Like the lion in Hilaire Belloc’s cautionary tale about the boy Jim who ran away from his nurse……. the Boris and Nigels of this world and their chums are not too choosy who they eat…so beware…. and the tears in Duncan Smith’s eyes have a somewhat crocodile quality.
Hilaire Beloc, incidentally, was the Liberal MP for Salford between 1906-10.. ………..
“Just so you know”….. as those awful pre-programmed bank phone call warnings tediously drone. Not quite as bad as Virgin Rail s ‘don’t put your goldfish or ex’s jumper down the loo’ warnings,….. but all symptomatic of the modern corporate world’s chummy naffness when they’re going to gobble you up before they tell you to ‘bet responsibly’.
As to Philip Green’s more than golden exit from BHS – now there’s a real issue to get the pulses running. It’s high time the Lib Dems (please note, Tim) asserted a few radical principles and got stuck in to the excesses of the modern corporate world. At the moment we just seem to be hesitating before putting the goldfish down the loo.
End of radical rant..