Last Wednesday saw one of the few debates on the issue of AV that are taking place in the run-up to the referendum. Vince Cable paired up with Ken Livingstone to speak for the Yes side, and for the No position Lord Michael Howard teamed up with Olympic Gold Medallist and prominent Labour supporter Martin Cross (with a very humorous Clive Anderson in the Chair).
After Vince opened the debate with a brief overview of the issue, Lord Howard made a good and impassioned speech. However, there seemed to be a contradiction in what he said which thankfully Clive Anderson picked up on. On the one hand the former Home Secretary had claimed that, under AV, Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair would have been given bigger majorities. On the other, he had claimed that AV would lead to more coalition Government, more horse-trading, and less accountability. Howard simply responded by saying ‘AV exaggerates existing trends’.
It was Ken Livingstone who gave the best, most passionate, and most well-reasoned speech of the night. Among other things he talked about the power of the Whips and how, under AV, MPs might (always having to remember where 2nd and 3rd preference votes are going to come from) be more concerned with what voters want than their party leader ‘what hands out the jobs’. He was at pains to stress that by taking power away from the Whips and giving it to the people, AV would make the whole of Westminster more democratically accountable. He also argued that, though research suggests that coalition governments will not necessarily be any more likely under AV than FPTP, coalitions are in many cases better than giving one party all the power anyway.
As for Martin Cross’s contribution, for the life of me I cannot find the argument in what he said. He spoke of the desire on the part of many Yes supporters for PR whilst pointing out the obvious fact that AV is not proportional. Whilst praising the Yes speakers for having such brilliant arguments he implied that AV will not deliver on these promises because it is not PR. But this was totally wrong – both Vince and Ken gave a nod to PR and acknowledged that AV is not proportional, but then gave arguments specific to AV. So either Martin wasn’t listening, just didn’t get it (he actually said, to rapturous laughter, ‘the details aren’t my strong point’ – worrying considering he is a history teacher), or was cynically playing rhetorical games. He also said that some people, mostly ‘older people’ found it hard enough to get to polling stations let alone have to move to a complicated system of ‘numbering candidates’. This was the most ludicrous, and most patronising, argument of the night, and thankfully Clive Anderson called him on it (though not as hard as he could have done thanks to Martin playing on the whole ‘I’m not a politician’ point). In any event, the idea of voting No to AV because you want PR is entirely self-defeating as pointed out recently by Andrew Jones in The Flawed Logic of No to AV, Yes to PR.
16 Comments
On that last point, Matthew Elliott (campaign director of no2av) is on record saying that a Yes vote will be a step towards PR and a No vote will shut the door on PR for a generation – putting the lie to the flawed logic of the No2AV, Yes2PR camp.
The ‘no to av yes to pr campaign are the Vicky Pollard of UK politics…
http://livingonwords.blogspot.com/2011/03/david-owen-margaret-thatcher-referenda.html
http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/news-and-media/news-releases/electoral-commission-media-centre/news-releases-referendums/electoral-commission-statement-on-electoral-reform-services-ltd
“Electoral Commission statement on Electoral Reform Services Ltd.
13 Apr 2011
In response to concerns raised about the role of Electoral Reform Services Ltd in the referendum on the UK Parliamentary voting system the Electoral Commission would like to reassure voters.
Jenny Watson, Chief Counting Officer at the referendum, said:
“We have put in place detailed and comprehensive arrangements for monitoring the performance of Counting Officers and their suppliers, and I have no reason to believe that there is any risk to the integrity of the administration of the postal voting process.
“Suppliers, including Electoral Reform Services Ltd, provide support to many Counting Officers. This is no different from the statutory elections and local referendums which have taken place for many years. As is always the case for elections only staff working for the independent statutory officer – Counting Officers – will handle returned postal votes for the referendum.
“Any organisation which supplies Counting Officers with ballot papers, postal voting packs or IT support is subject to normal public procurement, contractual and legal confidentiality requirements. There is no suggestion that these have been breached.”
As the regulator of party and election finance, the Commission does not comment on the financial or other interests of donors.”
Matthew Elliott is entitled to his opinion. But AV and PR are different animals.
I haven’t seen anyone criticise the logic of people who favour AV but would oppose PR. So why is it considered illogical that some advocates of PR believe that AV would be as bad as – or worse than – FPTP?
Chris: There’s nothing wrong with that position, although I’d like to hear why that is. But that isn’t the reasoning expressed by the No to AV / Yes to PR bunch, on the whole. They just seem to think that PR is likely to be easier and quicker to secure following a No vote in the only referendum on the table for the forseeable future.
“There’s nothing wrong with that position, although I’d like to hear why that is.”
The “No to AV / Yes to PR bunch” have a pretty informative website, which is a lot more accurate and lucid than anything I have seen from either the Yes or the No campaign. They point out there that according to projections AV would have been less proportional in three out of the last four general elections. And therefore, of course, a worse system, according to the criterion the Lib Dems have been setting forth from time immemorial.
Before you rush to say that’s just a coincidence, I am currently looking at an animated banner ad on this site, placed by the Yes campaign, telling me I should vote Yes because “AV will hurt the BNP.” What that means is that AV will make it even harder for minority parties NOT of the centre to gain any representation at all, let alone proportional representation.
I think maybe that’s the worst of all the arguments in favour of AV. It certainly puts a pretty big hole in the “fairer votes” part of the message.
Chris, you are quite right that AV is not PR and that support of the one does not necessarily require support of the other. However, there are clear pragmatic arguments, neatly summarised in the recent Andrew Jones article, as to why a vote for AV may facilitate eventual PR. Further, as Andy hints at, the No to AV/Yes to PR camp (if there is genuinely such a group) have not provided ANY reasons, pragmatic or otherwise, as to why we should vote No, other than the fact that AV is not PR. Martin Cross had the opportunity to advance such arguments last week and, like so many others, failed to do so. It doesn’t take a political scientist to understand that a reform may be better than the current arrangements even if it is not what you ultimately want. This is the point that the No to AV/Yes to PR proponents have repeatedly failed to seriously engage with.
Furthermore, in addition to the pragmatic reasons that Mr Jones has outlined in his piece, there is a point of principle as to why people in favour of PR should vote Yes in the referendum. If you want proportional voting that is likely to be because you feel that the current system denies fair representation. But the current system denies fair representation in way that AV would not. Because it forces people to choose just ONE candidate FPTP causes what I term ‘aberrations in voting behaviour’, i.e. the kind of tactical voting that we repeatedly see in constituencies up and down the country. By people knowing that their vote won’t count unless directed to one or other of the top two candidates in their constituency, FPTP causes significant under-representation of otherwise widely supported parties – including the Liberal Democrats. This form of unfairness in representation is potentially eliminated by the move to a preferential system such as AV. Whilst not being proportional, it does allow people to vote for the parties they actually want and eliminate those representation distorting aberrations in voting behaviour. So, regardless of whether a move to AV will in any pragmatic sense lead to eventual PR, PR supporters should ultimately support AV because it is, in this small sense at least, a fairer system of party representation.
“On the one hand the former Home Secretary had claimed that, under AV, Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair would have been given bigger majorities. On the other, he had claimed that AV would lead to more coalition Government, more horse-trading, and less accountability.”
There is nothing contradictory about that statement.
1. AV does reinforce a prevailing trend, so where a landslide change of government is due it becomes a super-landslide. Why does this matter? It matters because it dangerously hampers the ability of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition from performing its given function; holding the government of the day to account.
2. Given the Lib-Dem’s place in British politics, i.e. the centre, AV will lead to an increase in Lib-Dem MP’s at the expense of the two main parties. Why does this matter? If you like majoritarian government then it matters because it will increase the chance of a hung parliament, and thus the need for coalitions.
Explain to me what, precisely, is contradictory about Lord Howard’s statement?
If AV is lost in the referendum, the headlines and commentary will be “the people spoke and the people want NO change to the electoral system”. Nowhere at all will it be put that some voted “No” because they wanted more changes than offered by AV. In a similar way, consider the Scottish and Welsh referendums on devolution. I don’t know if there were significant numbers of extreme nationalists arguing for a “No” vote on the grounds that to do so was to express one’s wish that only full independence was acceptable. But if the “No” side had won the referendums, you can be absolutely sure they would have painted it as “NO change wanted – the people have spoken against even limited change” and it would have been seen as a crushing defeat for those who wanted independence.
AV is not PR, but it does mean an end to the argument “got to vote for X in order to avoid splitting the vote and letting Y in”, where in most places X and Y are Labour and Conservative or the other way round. It is for his reason that Labour and Conservative have a huge interest in maintaining the FPTP system, and the reality is that this is their underlying argument – “FPTP is good because is FORCES people to vote either Labour or Conservative”. They don’t put it that way, but it is the only logic that is behind their arguments. The logic behind the argument “FPTP means coalitions are rare” comes from two factors. Factor 1) is that it distorts representation in favour of the largest party, factor 2) is that it erects an almost impossible barrier to new parties coming forward and challenging the duopoly because of the “don’t split the vote” factor. PR deals with factor 1) and factor 2), while AV deals only with factor 2).
If we had a more mathematically astute population, this would be obvious and the FPTP-AV-PR argument would be couched primarily in these terms. But the FPTP people have a vested interest in keeping the campaign based on vague waffle, because then it’s harder to see just how self-serving their vague waffle is, and it hides the underlying mechanics – which i think if out as bluntly as I have put it would find very few supporters in this country.
‘It was Ken Livingstone who gave the best, most passionate, and most well-reasoned speech of the night. Among other things he talked about the power of the Whips and how, under AV, MPs might (always having to remember where 2nd and 3rd preference votes are going to come from) be more concerned with what voters want than their party leader ‘what hands out the jobs’’
But isn’t that a problem – having to think about people’s second preferences. What should matter is first preference, surely, not second guessing what people with weak preferences might want? If you want to diminish the whips, the answer is term limits, not changing the voting system. Term limits would give some period of freedom from the whips whilst preventing a free-for-all.
“Nowhere at all will it be put that some voted “No” because they wanted more changes than offered by AV.”
And rightly so if less than a third of the electorate bother to vote on electoral reform.
“FPTP is good because is FORCES people to vote either Labour or Conservative”
Non-argument; it is for the Lib-Dem’s to become relevant to the country at large, not for the political system to pander to their minority interests.
@jedibeeftrix: Please note that I said there was a ‘seeming contradiction’ in Lord Howard’s argument. In the original version of this article, which I had to edit down considerably for publication here, I expanded on this point and said: ‘. I think the point [Lord Howard] was trying to make is that in the current climate of indecisiveness and uncertainty on the part of voters, coalitions would be more likely; whereas when there is a wave of support for one party there might be bigger landslides. Though he did not state this explicitly, this is a fair point. I would, however, counter it by saying that no statistical research can possibly take account of the change in voter behaviour brought about by the switch to a preferential system. We just don’t know how people will vote when doing so within a the framework of a different electoral system (and Michael Howard himself quoted the Jenkins Commission on how ‘unpredictable’ the system is). I believe that it is more important to stop the aberrations in voting behaviour (i.e. cynical tactical voting) caused by the current system than to avoid possibly less proportional results.’ So, to answer you’re point, there is not a literal contradiction in what he said, which is why I kept in the quotation about AV exaggerating existing trends since it was a perfectly acceptable answer to Clive Anderson’s questioning. However, I think that we need not concern ourselves too much with super-landslides because I think AV will enhance, through a near elimination of tactical voting, pluralistic politics and remove the tight grip on governmental power that two biggest parties have enjoyed for so long.
As for your remarks on Matthew Huntback’s comment; decisions are made by those who show up. I don’t recall anyone refusing to accept Tony Blair’s orders as Prime Minister following a record low turnout in the 2001 election. Whilst I fight apathy and disinterest as much as I can, it is voters’ democratic right not to vote if they so wish – but it should not and will not invalidate the result. After all, if they don’t like the result then they should have voted for the other option (and it couldn’t be simpler in a referendum such as this – one question, one answer: either ‘Yes’ or ‘No’, or ambivalence which is not itself enough to entail discontent with the result now is it?). Furthermore, the fact that a political system forces people to vote either Labour or Conservative is not a problem for the Liberal Democrats, it is a problem for the country. There was a reason why voter turnout steadily declined under the Blair years – it was because people felt they had no other options but what they did not want to vote for. And poll after poll have repeatedly confirmed that voters would vote for other options if there was an electoral system that allowed them to do so without wasting their vote. So it is not pandering to minority Liberal Democrat interests at all, but giving people the more choice and more options that they have repeatedly and consistently demanded – and which both Labour and Conservatives are happy to provide for them in almost every other sphere (healthcare, education, public service provision more generally etc.) yet apparently not when it comes to democracy.
@Duncan: I disagree with you I’m afraid. Keeping only first preferences in mind encourages tribalism and pandering to existing supporters, whereas having to keep in mind that you don’t want to alienate a much larger number of people might actually do something to make politicians more democratically accountable. As for term limits, I am against them in principle because in a a democracy it should be up to the voters to decide not just who they want to represent them but for as long as they want too. I also don’t think that term limits would do anything to increase democratic accountability, whilst I accept that it may diminish the grip that the party machine has on MPs. This is because there will be even less incentive to keep voters’ interests in mind when you no longer have to seek their approval. I think AV justly diminishes the power of the Whips, not because it lets MPs do whatever the hell they like, but by forcing them to seek out a broad base of support from within their constituency for what they do in Parliament (if seeking re-election) and/or what they plan or propose to do.
@ Matt –
“I believe that it is more important to stop the aberrations in voting behaviour”
I do not believe that, it will merely transfer it to a new mechanism.
“I don’t recall anyone refusing to accept Tony Blair’s orders as Prime Minister following a record low turnout in the 2001 election.”
The conditions that should cause a referendum, and the criteria by which they should be governed differ entirely between the conduct of party politics and referenda. Referenda are explicitly useful in the situations where; it is a constitutional issue, an issue about the location of power, and an issue which cuts across party lines, and so cannot easily be settled at a general election.
If you want to cause a constitutional crisis just watch a successful Yes vote that slips through on a wafer thin margin, from a tiny proportion of the electorate, and brings a result opposite to that recorded by England, magnified by the fact that neither party was elected on a manifesto commitment to offer AV!
You are quite right about the times when referenda are useful. But the system we use to elect our MPs IS a constitutional issue, one that has been on the agenda in some form or other for a long time (albeit not a priority for either of the two biggest parties). Furthermore, if you mean to imply that it is somehow undemocratic to hold a referendum on AV because neither of the governing parties had an explicit manifesto commitment to hold such a referendum then I fail entirely to see your logic. A referendum is the MOST directly democratic device in the governmental chest. The fact that we all have the chance to vote on this constitutional issue is sufficient warrant for whatever outcome there is. So, as regards the issue of a low turnout then I repeat what I already have said: ‘Decisions are made by those who show up’ and if people who didn’t vote don’t like the outcome ‘then they should have voted for the other option’ in the first place. The No to AV camp, just like the Yes the Fairer Votes campaign, have absolutely no right to complain about the outcome following a low turnout when that low turnout would be the result of their failure to convince enough people to vote with them. This is the battleground of democracy and it is incumbent on everyone who desires a particular result to actually persuade voters to vote for that outcome. Following that fair fight, then, whatever the outcome is, that IS the right and just outcome. It simply won’t do to go on complaining about it; whether you like it or not democracy has its day, and that day is 5th May. I suggest you vote and encourage everyone you know, and everyone you don’t know for that matter, to go do the same.
while i don’t disagree with what you say, the conditions I describe will be an extremely divisive act if they come about.
This is getting confusing as I’m not the same person as “Chris” – who probably isn’t an old codger!
I don’t know whether a Yes vote – or a No vote – next month, will help or hinder the chances of ever getting PR.
If it’s Yes, the pro-PR lobby will have to explain why they want to return to the electorate asking for more, “Is AV not so great after all?” If it’s No, the anti brigade will hail that as a victory for no change at all.
Either way, we don’t get referendums very often and it’s a shame to waste one on AV – just holding this referendum may have kicked PR even further into the long grass.
The May referendum concerns FPTP v AV, nothing more and nothing less. We should all cast our votes accordingly.