Based on my timeline on Twitter I was not the only Lib Dem member paying attention to the AV debate in Parliament and getting frustrated at some of the comments made by Labour and Conservative MPs against the alternative vote referendum. I can’t have been alone in noticing a significant absence of Lib Dem MPs being as engaged in the debate in Parliament as I was on Twitter.
This got me thinking – are we doing our best to minimise unforced errors and build relationships with those we will be campaigning alongside in the AV referendum and to limit Yes Minister-style opposition to Lib Dem policies? As Lord McNally said on 29th June, shown on BBC Parliament just before the House of Commons reconvened, “It is a lot more difficult on [the government] side than it is on the other”.
I thought Nick Clegg gave an excellent speech, as he generally does, but he was one of few Lib Dems who spoke (Roger Williams, Mark Williams, Greg Mulholland were the other three). He also left too early – demonstrating a willingness to listen is a sign of consensual politics. 37 other backbench speakers railed against (part of) the bill, in addition to Jack Straw, Peter Hain and Mark Hunter who spoke for the respective front benches. We failed to punch our weight in the debate – let alone above it as we so often have done in opposition. Plenty of good interventions were made by Lib Dem MPs challenging Labour and Tory speakers but to me it seemed several opportunities were missed.
Our MPs let Daniel Kawczynski get away with saying AV allows the BNP and other extremists to “determine the result of a seat” – is he suggesting Labour or Tory MPs will vote for more racist policies because of racist constituents?
Similarly he, along with many others, peddled the line that voting for a minority party means you get more votes than voting for one of the two leading parties – you do not, because your preference for a major party gets counted at every stage the same way as another’s preference for minor parties is counted at every stage.
Peter Hain and several other Welsh MPs criticised the bill for a reduction in Welsh MPs, talking about constitutional conventions and other such nonsense I don’t recall voting on – what does he say to his English Labour colleagues about their need for almost twice the number of votes to be elected than Welsh Labour do in their constituencies?
David Davis and others talked about the partisan advantage to the Lib Dems of AV in increasing the number of seats we have and of “keeping” Ross, Skye and Lochaber. Our defence was that “lots of different models don’t show that and it’s complicated”. Why not challenge the hypocritical Tories on their willingness to attack Labour about the partisan advantage of equal constituencies but not their own partisan advantage from being a major party – as they see in Wales and Scotland.
We are risking alienating those in other parties who support introducing AV. While they will likely end up casting their own vote in favour in the referendum, we may miss out on their activists passionately mobilising their supporters in favour of a “yes” vote. It seems that we will never persuade the SNP and Plaid Cymru (and some Labour MPs) that it is better to have the referendum on the same day as other votes, but why did we not engage with them previously?
While our MPs, led by Nick Clegg, are saying that the time for the debates on the merits of AV and FPTP is for the referendum, our opponents are not following these rules and are using parliamentary debates as a dress rehearsal for the campaign – refining their arguments and testing their tactics. Our MPs should be challenging these opponents of AV at every opportunity and showing other parties that we believe in consensual politics by reaching out for partners where we can but not refraining from defending our beliefs.
Chris Jenkinson is a party member in Manchester, having just finished a Masters in environmental policy, and is @chrisjenkinson on Twitter.
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10 Comments
Good article Chris!
Couldn’t agree more. We may not win this fight, but we won’t get another chance for a generation, so if we let it go without giving it everything we have it would be unforgivable.
I think we need to go to the killer fact – under AV you’ll have an MP with a real majority in the constituency
This I think will be the biggest problem for the Lib-Dem’s in campaigning for a yes vote; in that it isn’t really a solution that the party or the activists want, and the limit of the electorates marginal interest in electoral reform is recognition that PR might be an interesting way of doing things, but this isn’t it.
The Conservative party will actively campaign for a no vote with 10.7 million broadly sympathetic voters behind them. Labour will half-heartedly campaign either way depending on which direction the electoral advantage lies, but have no particular enthusiasm for AV or electoral reform, and nor too does its 8.6 million voters. The Lib-Dems will strongly campaign in favour of a yes vote, but their 6.8 million voters don’t particularly want AV, and the Lib-Dem activists are divided between the view that a “yes” vote would provide a platform for further change or that it would lock them into a disadvantaging system for another generation. Of the rest, the pro BNP/SNP/Green vote is largely balanced by an anti UKIP vote, who while a small party are largely consisted of reactionary and disillusioned Tories.
http://jedibeeftrix.wordpress.com/2010/09/02/the-av-referendum-%E2%80%93-what-does-clegg-really-want/
Kawczynski has been consistently making misleading or downright inaccurate statements on this issue. In the same debate he pointed to the fact that turnout in the European elections (under PR) is lower than that for General Elections. True, but it was also lower when the European elections were held under FPTP.
The argument about Charles Kennedy’s seat is also misleading. To the north of his constituency is Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross. That constituency does not have a common border with any other constituency. Therefore, it will have to take in some of Ross, Skye and Lochaber to add to its current electorate of a little over 47,000. Those 25,000 R, S & L voters will then need to be replaced by taking in some of the neighbouring seats which will result in a significantly different constituency from the one Kennedy currently represents.
Headline: “our MPs need to be demonstrating consensual politics”
Nick Clegg did quite a thorough job of demonstrating consensual politics this week, I thought, when he robustly defended Andy Coulson.
Not entirely convinced that’s what I want to hear from him though.
The passage of the …Constiutional Bill’ through the `Yes’ Parliametary lobbies is a cause celebre for the `Coalition Government’ and Opposition to make parliament representaive,fair and transparent for the 21st C.
There are three critical reasons that underpin the need for constutional reform:
1.To make AV a `stepping stone’ fairer votes method of ensuring that all votes count in all constituencies and that winners must command at least 50% of the total votes cast.
2.The torid business of abolition of `Rotten Boroughs’, when all 57 were abolished in the first Reform Act 1832, that included `Old Sarum’, where virtually no one had lived sincer the 12th C but still sent 2 MP`s to Westminster,Dunwich that had disappeared into the Sea,but no one had noticed, as a resul of coastal erosion but still elected 2 MP`s and so on.These `Rotten Boroughs’ where an MP was elected by only about 5 privileged electors although abolished,in 1832, has in fact evolved a modern day de facto legacy, when over half the number of the culprits cited in the `Expenses MP`s’ were elected in one Party dominated Constituencies – in some for over one hundred years.This must end by dint of new drawn up fairer and more equal parliamentary single member constituency boundaries i.e. 73,000 electors.
3.The new Constitutional Bill also will contain many reforms,in addition to AV Referendum,that are meat and drink to all grass-roots liberal voters, that include `recall’ and the recomposition and new basis for the H of L`s and to clean up politics.
John: “I think we need to go to the killer fact – under AV you’ll have an MP with a real majority in the constituency”
That’s not even a fact, never mind a killer one. AV would only guarantee such a majority if it were compulsory for each voter to express a preference for every single candidate on the ballot paper.
Simple mathematics tells you that for every 1% of voters who vote for neither of the top two candidates, the minimum amount required to win falls by 0.5%.
So if, say, 30% of voters choose to vote only for candidates who come third or worse (perfectly plausible), it will be possible to win the seat with the support of just 35% of voters. (I use the word “support” loosely – many second or third preferences will be used tactically to keep someone out.)
Our MPs let Daniel Kawczynski get away with saying AV allows the BNP and other extremists to “determine the result of a seat” – is he suggesting Labour or Tory MPs will vote for more racist policies because of racist constituents?
FPTP forces people to restrict their choice to a very limited number of options – usually just two – for fear that to choose what they would really prefer will “split the vote” and thus let in the one of those limited options they most dislike at the expense of the one they could more tolerate.
So FPTP works by forcing those who would really prefer to vote for the BNP instead to vote for whatever of the main parties they feel is more like the BNP. Which is … ? Actually, probably Labour as on the rare occasions when the BNP can turn its attention away from its usual themes it tends to be fairly socialist. Or maybe some would claim its usual themes make it more like the Conservatives. Well, it is up to the person who would really want to vote BNP to choose, and this thus demonstrates that FPTP works like Kawczynski claims, but less honestly because it is hidden rather than made public by the transfers.
Thanks for all your comments!