The Independent on Sunday featured an op-ed by business secretary Vince Cable which centred on similar themes to those in the piece Chris Huhne jointly authored in the Observer, namely why those opposed to the reactionary tendencies of the Conservative Party should vote Yes in Thursday AV referendum.
Here’s an excerpt from Vince’s piece:
AV undoubtedly poses a threat to the old tribal politics and to the Conservatives in particular, who have been best able to exploit it to advantage. The forces of reaction have been impressively marshalled on the battlefield. Not a single Conservative parliamentarian has broken ranks in an uncompromising defence of the status quo. The country’s right-wing newspapers – both the Murdoch and non-Murdoch titles – have swallowed their dislike of the coalition’s liberal compromises, and of each other, to line up solidly behind the No campaign.
They understand all too clearly where their political and financial interests lie: in a system which enables them to rule most of the time with minority support.
The legitimacy of the current system was already under threat from the voters. Some 35.5 per cent of voters no longer vote Conservative or Labour – despite being told, in many cases, that their votes are “wasted”. I grew up in a two-party world and the voting system reflected political reality. More than 90 per cent of MPs were elected by a majority of their voters. But that proportion is now down to about a third. Where there are three parties in contention (four or more, in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland), voters adapt to the system by means of tactical voting: supporting the candidate whom they dislike least rather than the one they want. I have personally progressed from being a victim of tactical voting to a beneficiary of it, but, even as I use the system to advantage, I know that it diminishes democracy. The voting system should meet the needs of voters, not the other way round.
You can read the whole of Vince’s piece here.
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26 Comments
In hindsight I think that instead of this referendum the Lib Dems should have pushed for PR-STV in local, European and upper house elections. That would have been concrete progress.
This campaign shows that it is far to easy for opponents to exploit people’s fear and ignorance about a new system. If people get used to using PR then it will be much harder to demonise. In a referendum the voters would be comparing two systems they would already be familiar with.
What we’ll end up with is a failed referendum, and a partially elected Lords, chosen on a closed list system, with huge fifteen year terms. That’s not worth very much if you believe in electoral reform.
@Modicum
From what I hear, the Lords will be elected by STV.
yes, i think that is the plan anyway.
The idea of fifteen years terms phased in over the course of three parliaments is very clever for it will clearly limit the power of the Lords, and box them into their role as a revising chamber.
Only one third would be elected in any given year and with no single election across all constituencies it will be difficult to claim a mandate from the people with which they can challenge the Commons.
The fifteen year terms, large constituencies, and 20% of appointed Peers will likewise damage their legitimacy as representative agents of the people.
The desire to prevent congruent bicameralism, where both Houses are elected to represent the same constituencies as MP’s, and the desire to have a revising chamber work in a less partisan manner may well make the argument for using STV in the Lords.
It is not as if this problem wasn’t anticipated given that Clegg was banking on PR in the Lords all along.
Yeah, I can see the argument that a revising chamber should be deliberately given less legitimacy than the Lords.
But the way I see it is that currently neither house of parliament is fully democratic. It seems that reform of the Commons will always be blocked by the establishment. So the only solution is a democratic upper house: fully elected, chosen by PR and with a reasonably, four or five year term.
It’s not ideal, but having two competing houses works reasonably well in Japan and Australia. These countries have parliamentary systems similar to our own, and they don’t even have any equivalent of the Parliament Acts, to override the upper house.
Modicum
In hindsight I think that instead of this referendum the Lib Dems should have pushed for PR-STV in local, European and upper house elections. That would have been concrete progress.
Yes, and how? See how much the Tories hate AV, which is really a very minor change on FPTP. How much more they would hate PR-STV. There’s plenty of people moaning about what the LibDems ought to be getting out of the Tories, but none of them saying just HOW they are supposed to get these things. Whatever the LibDems ask, Cameron can just turn round and say “No – and if you moan too much, I’ll call an early general election and get rid of you lot altogether”. Essentially, Cameron is giving to the LibDems only what he wants to give because it suits him. The referendum on AV is an exception to this, but see how the LibDems have had to humiiate themselves even to get that. The only way the LibDems are going to be able to get more out of the Tories is if they can point to ebough support in the coubntry to be able to say “OK, call a general election and we’ll fight you there”. Which is why the “I’m never going to vote LibDem again because they jumped into bed with the Tories” crowd are actually the Tories’ best friends.
If Labour think the LibDems aren’t getting enough out of the Tories, there’s a simple solution – why don’t THEY offer to be the junior partners in a Cameron led coalition and see what they can get?
Vince – FPTP currently benefits Labour more than the Tories; hence why all their dinosaurs are queuing up to argue for it. Of course Roy Jenkins wanted AV+ but Blair welched on that.
@Modicum…at last someone prepared to concede that there may have been a better way.
I’ve banged on that I prefer party lists and multi member constituencies to preference voting including STV but I won’t harp on that! The substantive point is that this referendum need not be happening. There could have been a gradualist approach- real PR for the Lords or in Council elections. Don’t Councils rather lend themselves to a party list system…sorry wasn’t going to harp was I! It need not and certainly should not have been an all eggs in one basket go at getting AV for Westminster.
@ Matthew Huntbach…at the time of the post election negotiations the Lib Dem team could have made, for example, PR for Unitary Authorities a “deal breaker”. It would have been a significant change increasing people’s exposure to PR elections – bird in the hand and all that. The AV referendum is becoming seen for what it is a massive mis-calculation.
By the way….it is quite legitimate for political parties to not go into coalition with the Tories. You can, in all principle, go into something called opposition – Lib Dems were rather good at that. You can also support a minority government on a confidence and supply basis. The popular Lib Dem narrative of noble self-sacrifice by going into coalition to save the country from imminent collapse is not the only way of looking at the situation.
Matthew Huntbach,
In case I wasn’t clear, I’m not suggesting that the Lib Dems are in a position to make new demands now. It’s too late for that. I’m talking about the original coalition negotiations.
I’m suggesting that instead of the referendum on AV they might have pushed for another concession instead, like PR for local elections. It’s not obvious that the Tories would have considered that a bigger concession.
Of course it’s easy for me to say this in hindsight, now that the referendum result looks a foregone conclusion. And I take your point that there are no easy options for the junior partner in a coalition.
Kevin Colwill,
I think that a party list system has many advantages. But among electoral reformers we’re in the minority on that.
And I doubt you’re ever going to win the public over to a closed list system for the Commons, no matter how much you expose them to it. I think to be a runner any new system needs to allow the electorate to vote for individual MPs.
Modicum…the circle can be squared to a significant extent. In its simplest form you have a single vote expressed in the old fashioned way with a single X, not a number of preferences, and you vote for a named individual on the ballot paper. Votes are counted for the individuals and for the parties they represent. If a party’s total vote entitles them to, say, 3 MP’s then the 3 individuals from that party who gained the most votes are elected.
Anyway… it’s now becoming uber-academic and academic I ain’t. As a long time supporter of fair votes I’m sad to say it looks set to remain a largely academic debate for years to come.
Tabman writes: “FPTP currently benefits Labour more than the Tories; hence why all their dinosaurs are queuing up to argue for it.”
Labour is, quite honestly, split over the issue but their leader, to his credit, has come out in support of it.
It is your coalition “allies”, their funders and their press allies, who have lined up in unison to trash AV. I hope any LibDem supporters (possibly including yourself) who were taken in by David Cameron’s warm words are now seeing the reality of the present-day Tory machine.
party-list is a terrible system, at the same time both removing the constituency link and increasing the parties hold on the politician.
the quickest way to create a caste of greasy political slime-balls determined to slide up the pole with nary a thought for the needs of the people who allegedly gave them a mandate.
Beefi – what you say is undoubtedly true of closed list systems. But a genuinely open system, such as Kevin Colwill described above (not the pointless Dutch version), with constituencies of say 5-10 members (and a method of national top-up if you want to be PR-purist about it — which of course you don’t!), would work much better. I’m not even convinced that it wouldn’t be better than STV for parliamentary elections.
For about the first time I actually find myself agreeing with jefibeeftrix. Though I’m not sure I’d put that whole second paragraph in as that already happens a lot under FPTP. To be honest, though I hate FPTP the most out of any system that’s actually used to any real extent, party lists are quite a close second. They’re proportional (and can be the fairest system if you use the right quota) but they just seem to work badly and give such ridiculous power to political parties that it’s not worth it. I would probably support electoral reform if I lived in a country with party lists too – to AMS, AV+ or STV, depending on the details of the politics.
The constituency link is over-rated, so many MPs under FPTP just don’t give a toss and there were some YEARS in the 1950s in particular where no MP voted against their party, though this has got a lot better since Blair. In any case, I think MPs on the whole put party over their constituents 90% of the time even now and that the constituency link is almost mythical. Sadly. As it’s a good idea.
I will be voting “yes” to AV tomorrow.
Before Christmas I was determined to vote “no”, and until very recently I was going to spoil my paper by writing “STV in multi-member constituencies” across it.
My motivations were as follows (and in descending order):
(1) To punish Nick Clegg.
(2) AV is a bad system and not what I want.
(3) To express my anger at my party going along with the reduction in the number of MPs and the boundary review with no public enquiries (since amended) as a quid pro quo for AV.
So why did I change my mind?
(1) This is a referendum about the voting system, it is not about Nick Clegg. How we elect our Parliament is far more important than our feelings towards one politician.
(2) AV may be imperfect, but it is a marginal improvement on FPTP.
(3) The behaviour of the “No to AV” campaign has annoyed me almost as much as Nick Clegg. Would I vote the same way as David Cameron and John Reid (Frank Luntz’s preferred candidates for the leadership of their respective parties)?
Vince Cable and Chris Huhne are right. This country has an anti-Tory majority. Cameron, facing an open goal, only managed to get 36%. It should not be beyond the wit of the anti-Tory majority of finding a way to keep the Tories out of power forever. Those on the left who believe what Reid and Prescott are telling them should look at what happend in Canada earlier this week.
thank malcom, and apologies kevin – as ever it appears there is yet more learning to done. but yes, it would appear that what i refer to is what you describe as the dutch system.
John – “Labour is, quite honestly, split over the issue but their leader, to his credit, has come out in support of it.
It is your coalition “allies”, their funders and their press allies, who have lined up in unison to trash AV. I hope any LibDem supporters (possibly including yourself) who were taken in by David Cameron’s warm words are now seeing the reality of the present-day Tory machine.”
Milli-jnr made a Horlicks of explaining himself on Today this morning.
I am under no illusions about the Conservatives and prepared myself accordingly. What’s far worse is Labour’s pretendy friendliness which ends up with a knife between the shoulder-blades (see Today interview above for a good example).
Kevin Colwill
By the way….it is quite legitimate for political parties to not go into coalition with the Tories. You can, in all principle, go into something called opposition – Lib Dems were rather good at that. You can also support a minority government on a confidence and supply basis.
I have been making this point again and again over the past year. Do you know what “supply and confidence” means? It means voting for the Tory budget and all its cuts (“supply”), and it means voting for any Tory policy the Tories or Labour choose to deem a matter of confidence (“confidence”).
The Liberal Democrats were left in a wretched situation after the gneral election last year. A coalition with Labour would have been unstable, as there were not enough Labour and LibDem MPs to give it a majority. It would also be howled down by the right-wing press, whose propaganda skills we have seen exercised so successfully with their support for “No” in the referendum, abusing the Liberal Democrats for allowing the return to government of the party which clearly had “lost” the election. Going into opposition and letting a minority Conservative government be appointed would have led to the Tories cynically blaming anything that went wrong in the economy on the instability of a minority government caused by the presence of Liberal Democrat MPs, and by now would have called another general election on the theme “get rid of the Liberal Democrats, and allow us to govern” – and, of course, they’d have kept the big cuts until after they won a majority in that election. Making a “supply and confidence” agreement with the Tories in order to maintain stability would have meant, as I have pointed out above, the Liberal Democrats voting for all Tory policies and having no voice to influence them.
The main thing that has gone wrong is the leader of the Liberal Democrats not making it clear from the start what the problem was, that the coalition with the Conservatives was only because the people’s votes and the distortional representation electoral system made it the only possibility, and that LibDem influence in it would necessarily be very small. Instead, he went out of his way to say the exact opposite to this. Which, you will see if you look back at Lib Dem Voice, I said back then when the coalition was formed would be a disastrously wrong way for the Liberal Democrats to portray the situation, even though I accepted the logic which led to the formation of the coalition.
Matthew Huntbach,
As I see it the Lib Dems had three options:
(1) Coalition
(2) A confidence and supply arrangement with the Tories
(3) Genuinely go into opposition.
I don’t think “supply and confidence” has many advantages. It’s really just a disguised form of coalition. Had the Lib Dems gone into opposition they might have forced Labour into a tacit confidence-and-supply arrangement with the Tories. But in all likelihood there would have another general election either immediately or very soon. And I don’t see how a second election would have benefited anyone.
The raison d’etre of political parties is to implement their policies. But history shows that small parties tend to get punished by the electorate as soon as they enter government. Being the third party is not an enviable position in politics.
“The raison d’etre of political parties is to implement their policies. But history shows that small parties tend to get punished by the electorate as soon as they enter government. Being the third party is not an enviable position in politics.”
Agreed. But “better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all”.
Kevin Colwill,
You’re talking about a form of open-list system. That would be a good idea and deserves greater attention.
But I wouldn’t make too much of the distinction between what you’re proposing and PR-STV. Lower preferences are important under AV, but under STV they don’t make so much of a difference, especially if constituencies have 5 or more seats. So even if you’re squeamish about preferential voting I think PR-STV deserves your support.
In my view any form of PR would be a big improvement so it’s important for reformers not to become divided among themselves over which would be the best option.
Tabman,
Heheh. Well put.
I think you should tell that to the Irish Green Party.
Modicum – Liberalism is an enduring philosophy and will survive the rise and fall of mere parties.
@Modicum… if we’re in the mood for academic debate I’d say this. Confidence and Supply might not have changed much in practice but it would have allowed the Lib Dems to sell the “self sacrifice in the national interest” narrative rather more effectively.
“How could we vote down the budget given the current economic crisis?”… even I might have some sympathy.
In going into coalition the Lib Dems looked all too eager to throw away principles to grab the trappings of power. The Dave and Nick show sickened many of us on what my old fashioned political lexicon still calls the left. It added to the feeling of betrayal.
I now accept that the Lib Dems threw away a whole lot less than most of us on the left, including many of us who voted Lib Dem, ever imagined. There is a good deal of common cause between an Orange book economic Liberal and a Cameron “modern” Tory. In fact you might be rather hard pressed to tell the difference. That’s great news for the Coalition, rubbish news for the rest of us.
whoops…for the last post read @Matthew Huntbach
To those supportive of open lists I’d say when AV is lost tomorrow (might be eating those words but doubt it) I hope there will be a new look at possible PR systems. I think open lists represent the best form of PR and the one most likely to be accepted by the public. But, of course, it’ll be a very long haul to get PR back on the agenda after tomorrow.
Modicum
I don’t think “supply and confidence” has many advantages. It’s really just a disguised form of coalition. Had the Lib Dems gone into opposition they might have forced Labour into a tacit confidence-and-supply arrangement with the Tories. But in all likelihood there would have another general election either immediately or very soon. And I don’t see how a second election would have benefited anyone
Yes, the unspoken problem is that the Liberal Democrats left the general election last year on a downward trajectory. The support was built up for our party by heavy activist work in the week leading up to the official declaration of the election, but wrongly attributed to “Cleggmania”. This attribution led all attention to be put onto Clegg, and the more people saw of his faltering performance, the more our support dropped.
Had we, as we always used to in the past, put on support in the weeks of the official campaign, it would look very different. We would be the ones who could say “Go on, we dare you, call another general election”, knowing we would win more seats in it, but our real line would be that it would be silly to have another election so soon, so better that the other parties come closer to our position in order to avoid it.
With the Liberal Democrats exiting the election as the real losers – expected to gain much but not doing so – we lost a lot of bargaining position. This added to the weak bargaining position coming from there not being enough Labour MPs to make a Labour-LibDem coalition viable. Had AV been in place, there would have been more LibDem MPs and fewer Conservative MPs, so a Labour-LibDem coalition would have been viable. It is really weird how so many people are voting “No” to AV to “punish” Nick Clegg for his weakness, when it’s the very electoral system they are voting for which made him so weak, and the principal argument of the supporters of that system is that it is better for the one who comes “first past the post” to win everything, even if what they got is way behind the only real post, which is 50%.