And then there were lots
The two party system is dead. I’ll come back to that.
I am currently off work following an operation and, with time on my hands and limited physical options, I have been passing the time analysing Ladbroke’s constituency odds for the general election to work out the national picture from the ground up. Clearly this isn’t what the odds are designed for, and they reflect the betting market as well as the bookies predictions, but they are a much better reflection of reality on the ground than say the old BBC swingometer based on the convenient fiction of a uniform swing between two parties. Moreover, even if the concept of spending hours analysing bookies odds on constituency results appals you, the results are fascinating.
The national picture is rather messy, but what hit me the most was looking at the 100ish (106 actually) seats, excluding Northern Ireland, that Ladbroke’s had as the hardest to call. Only 47 of these were seen as straight Labour/Tory fights. Next came Con/LD (17), Lab/SNP (15), Con/UKIP (9), Lab/LD (5), LD/SNP (4), Lab/UKIP (3), 3 one-off rarer beasts of Lab/Plaid, Lab/Green and LD/UKIP, and 3 that were seen as (different) three-way fights. It gets even messier when you realise that in a handful of cases neither of the two parties that Ladbrokes have in a close tussle actually hold the seat at the moment.
If your head is starting to hurt then there are two simple ways I could summarize this. One way is to say that the most marginal seats will see 13 different types of party-contest involving 7 different parties. A clearer way though is to say that well over half of the most marginal seats will not be straight fights between Labour and the Conservatives. Which brings me back to the two party system being dead.
The implications of this are huge. Firstly it makes a mockery of a two-way leader’s debate on ‘who should be Prime Minister?’ – voters in 55% of the most volatile seats aren’t making that choice. You’d need five leaders before you got close to covering all of the bases. Secondly it explains why it’s so much harder now for parties to write a sensible national manifesto – they have to be relevant to very real fights against several very different opponents, so even choosing the main issues is tricky. I suspect that this is one reason why every party is proclaiming their love for the NHS – it’s the rare issue that plays in a similar way almost everywhere. As a more specific example if Labour have key battles with six different parties (with a seventh, against Respect, almost making this list) then no wonder that Milliband seems to get in a lather about what his message is – who he wants to please and who he doesn’t want to offend. If he wants to maximise his gains then he needs to be virtually all things to all men.
In the longer run it raises other questions too. About PR obviously, but also about the constitutional implications of so many of these key seats being in Scotland: the SNP is involved in 20 of them which makes them a major influence in an election to a body that will have far greater impact on the other parts of the UK.
Where it gets tricky is when you ask how exactly parties can adapt to fighting such a mixture of battles, without just falling back on a sweeping minimum-offence ‘one size fits nobody’ national campaign. One option would be to openly allow local candidates more wiggle room from the national programme, and perhaps even establish the principle that they can vote with a certain number of explicit local manifesto promises against the party whip, with impunity. A related idea could be to expand local open primaries – reflecting the differing key issues and contests by allowing the people to choose the precise contenders. Both of these options would move us more in the direction of a looser party system, like that of the US, and neither is without drawbacks.
An alternative to looser parties would be to go French and have more parties – for example effectively splitting Labour facing Lib Dems from the Tory facing, or granting full ‘independence’ to the Scottish parties – and then relying on post-election coalition negotiations to sort out the national picture. This would allow each of the smaller parties to put together a more coherent programme, although many might effectively become very regional, and the need for PR would be further strengthened.
Which brings me to one final thought: whoever ends up looking at being in the almost certain post-election coalition – and this has to include at least five plausible mainland contenders – will have just emerged from several messy battles with all of their potential partners, and will have half an eye on the repeat battles at the next election. Fun.
* Adam Killeya is a Lib Dem member, activist and town councillor. He has held various positions in the party including as a parliamentary candidate and agent. He is currently Regional Chair of Devon & Cornwall Lib Dems. In the real world he is Head of Sixth Form of a Secondary School in Cornwall.
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39 Comments
Where can we find a list of these 106 marginal seats? If it’s not already available, can you post it, please.
Dead?
Not doing well today, maybe. The two-party share in opinion polls has dropped to 68 per cent before only to return to the 80s after a few years. A week is a long time in Parliament.
“One option would be to openly allow local candidates more wiggle room from the national programme, and perhaps even establish the principle that they can vote with a certain number of explicit local manifesto promises against the party whip, with impunity”.
This supposes that the voters will trust the politician to stand by their local promises.
Adam Killeya
but what hit me the most was looking at the 100ish (106 actually) seats, excluding Northern Ireland, that Ladbroke’s had as the hardest to call. Only 47 of these were seen as straight Labour/Tory fights.
Yes – and what of the other 528 seats? I suspect the vast majority of them are straight Labour or straight Conservative.
It seems to me rather obvious that the seats which are hardest to call will be disproportionately those with a substantial third party chance. These are not typical constituencies, so an article which goes on from this as if the whole of the country is like that is getting it seriously wrong.
Yes, both the LibDem and UKIP share of the votes is very hard to call, and could probably change substantially during the weeks of the general election, that is why the seats where they are in contention are falling in this list of 106.
I think it highly unlikely that the LibDems will see an increase. I suspect the more dire predictions of a wipe-out won’t come about, and the LibDems will be able to hold on to a fair share of those where they are incumbents. But I don’t see any obvious signs of seats where they’re going to make gains. So we’re very likely to see a reduced Parliamentary LibDem party after the next general election.
If UKIP manages not to implode, and their inconsistencies and high proportion of people with serious character defects isn’t shown up in the election campaign, my guess is that it will be like the Liberals in 1974. They enter it looking good, with the by-election victories under their belt, and their share of the vote does shoot up – but it results in very few actual seats won because their vote is just too evenly spread. There are sociological factors which mean they do well in certain places, but I don’t think there’s anywhere much they are so dug in that they are serious contenders. The 15 seats in the Ladbroke’s list gives that away – even if they won all 15 would that exceed the number of LibDem losses?
There’s no sign of serious support for anyone else in enough places to result in many other third party MPs appearing. There may be the odd case, like the single Green MP in 2010, just perhaps some independent like Richard Taylor manages to use a local issue to get in. But, unless something dramatic happens in the next sixth months, we’re talking in single figures.
The only place where I can see the number of third party MPs is with the SNP, but that is, obviously, limited to Scotland. I think for England the next election will see a return to the two-party system. I predict that the FPTP electoral system will work its usual magic, and hand government completely to Labour or the Conservatives. Since we had that in every election between 1974 and 2010, despite substantial proportions of the vote in each of them going to Liberal/SDP/LibDem, I don’t see any particular reason why 2015 shouldn’t go back to that.
Drnnis: The list of 106 seats is only in my spreadsheet: I felt I might be pushing my luck with Ladbroke’s a bit if I published such a list based on their data, rather than simply my own thoughts arising from it. However you see for yourself if you look at their seat odds: the line ended up falling in the seats where the favourite was 4/11 or less (1/2, 8/11, evens etc)
Matt: three points.
1 Actually no: the party that Ladbrokes has running the most second places is UKIP. In many cases these are distant seconds but still
2. Regardless, it’s the marginal seats that decide an election
3. If you take all of these most marginal seats as up for grabs then five parties could get 15MPs or more
Irrespective of whether the next government is a coalition or not, I think the future for Scotland and probably Wales is what happens in Bavaria with the CDU/CSU – effectively permanent electoral pacts between territorially distinct parties of roughly the same agenda who are independent but co-dependent. At the moment, the relationship between ourselves and the Alliance Party in NI is the nearest thing we have to this at a House of Commons level, but the relationship between the Scottish Greens and the roughly equivalent party in England and Wales is also on this model.
Longterm, one can even speculate more wildly and envisage this happening in the English regions, too, but maybe not with every party.
Matthew’s comments make most sense. Even with a depleted vote for Lab/Con combined, FPTP will again yield the vast majority of seats to one or the other. No overall control would be a freakish outcome. Only in Scotland is it conceivable that SNP could upset the apple cart, but in Scotland the Con side of the duopoly has already been written off by FPTP.
Matthew’s comparison with Liberals in 1974 is apposite. I think it more likely that UKIP will not be able to advance beyond the 2 representatives that they have already got through defections and byelections. They could have a sizeable vote though.
A sizeable vote, as we should know only too well, does not mean very much under FPTP. If many vote UKIP on the basis that their vote is not going to count anyway, what can be inferred other than voters do know where their vote is not going to make a difference?
In 2010 we were ‘beneficiaries’ from voters who had little appetite for either Labour orConservatives, yet we lost seats. In other words the increase in our overall vote was on the back of ‘wasted votes’. It certainly looks as though we are to lose almost all of such votes, but to little effect and little benefit too UKIP, Greens, Labour or whoever.
I hardly think it makes much sense to look at betting odds. The aim of betting companies is to exploit ignorance and unrealistic expectations (UKIP expectations are bound to be over egged); to claim that they reflect much of a reality is rather stretching a point.
I agree with others that FPTP, which has produced majority one-party government in all but three elections since the war, will probably succeed in delivering another such travesty
The SNP’s current dominance in the polls will be eroded by the onslaught of the London-based media nearer the election, concentrating on the Labour and Conservative offerings. Remember that in the election which quickly followed losing the 1979 referendum, SNP representation at Westminster was cut from 11 to 2. It is a different beast now, but its most likely role will be as a small and powerless constituent of the Opposition.
We are going to need a sharp change of tactics to save even our safer seats. Miranda Green on “This Week” last night was persuasive that we should be trumpeting the coalition policies more than highlighting where we differ from the Tories in case we end up appearing to denigrate the policies we supported.
No overall control is not only not a freakish outcome for 2015, it is *by far* the most likely outcome. The figures I have looked at suggest that Labour would have to win almost all of the most hard to predict contests in which they are involved (against several different opponents remember) to have a small overall majority – i.e a small labour majority is right at the top of their plausible range. The plausible Tory range does not get to a majority even at the top because FPTP still favours Labour more.
It is true that Lab and the Cons will still get over 80% of the seats, but that is low enough to make single party govt very implausible unless one completely nails the other.
Things can of course change before May. They may get less messy. They may get messier.
If we are going to look at betting I would reccomend The Spread Betting Market, it seems to be used more by Serious punters. The current “prediction” is for Libdems to hold around 30 Seats & for Lab/Con to be vitually equal. If you are tempted to bet on it then remember that you can lose or win a lot more money than on normal betting, you arent resticted to simply losing your stake.
On the Death of the 2 Party system, there is a clear Trend over 60 years for the combined Lab/Con vote total to decline slowly, by about 0.5% a year. The rise of the SDP sees the graph fall away from the Trend & then return with no long-term effect. The lesson from the whole SDP episode is that things can happen very quickly.
A lot of people feel that something Big & Fast is happening now, in Scotland it s already happened – The old System has been replaced by a One Party state with a giant SNP towering over a handful of Minor Parties. Currently The SNP has a membership 8 times larger than the next biggest Party, Labour & still growing. Thats assuming Labour still have 13,000 members in Scotland, we should know more tomorow morning.
Could a similar earquake happen in England ?
Adam: obviously, as the % of Con/Lab seats decrease, the prospects of No Overall Control increases, however although I cannot second guess which are your 106 marginals, but my expectation is closer to or even greater than 90% of seats going Con/Lab. The FPTP system is too erratic to make well grounded predictions, but the inherent instability mitigates against NOC, and even more against No Overall Control where there is a choice of alternative coalitions.
paul barker – the earthquake has happened in England – and has resulted in the collapse of the Lib Dems in most of the country. The sad thing is that it was inflicted by its own leaders on its activists and members and to mix metaphors, ‘the band played on’.
According to those of us in the Con/LibDem battleground trenches may just have received a tremendous fillip in the form of a Phillip Desmond Express kipper grenade.
doh… that should read according to reports in the Guardian.
paul barker 12th Dec ’14 – 1:00pm
“.. Currently The SNP has a membership 8 times larger than the next biggest Party, Labour & still growing.
Thats assuming Labour still have 13,000 members in Scotland…”
I am reliably told that Liberal Democrat membership in Scotland is less than 3,000.
I believe the Greens in Scotland may have a slightly bigger membership than us and that Green Party membership in Scotland is growing because they did not line up with The Unionists in the referendum
It may not be true that there are more pandas in Scotland than Conservative members but who knows?
It would appear that the Scotland MEP for UKIP has shifted his membership to their Trumpton branch because it is less of a parody than the official UKIP party in Scotland.
@matt (Bristol) – that idea was floated about after the 2011 Scottish Elections for the Lib Dems. I was (still am) generally in favour of it – certainly, at that time it would have given us significantly increased Short money to spend in Scotland, and would have allowed us to differentiate ourselves from the UK party much, much more.
Just as a point about increased number of parties, though, and PR. If we devolve more and more power to Scotland, Wales, NI and whatever England has, then as long as these parliaments have PR does Westminster need it?
@JohnTilley
Scottish Greens have 7800 members. Official figures say 7500, but numbers from Patrick Harvie and the Green leadership say that it’s 7800 and growing fast with the expected 8,000th member to be enrolled by January.
But isn’t the end of the two party system one of the main out-comes of the LibDem’s proposals for electoral reform? and hence we should be celebrating the rise of smaller and more diverse political parties…
Obviously a few posters do not follow Scottish Politics. The media has lost it’s control over Scotland (including the BBC).
I don’t think the SNP will take 40+seats but they will have at least 30 in total.
For the LibDems I forecast ONE in Scotland and less than Fifteen for the entire UK.
The Fifteen is only due to the hardworking activists in your core seats. Otherwise it would be single figures.
Whatever the precise outcome, the FPTP system will ensure that a huge number of voters are not represented proportionally in parliament. The country is already highly cynical about Westminster politics and the growth of UKIP and the Greens means that the likely outcome of the May election will provide a democratic deficit on a scale not seen before. This will provide an opportunity to galvanise public opinion in favour of PR which we must be prepared for. The classic arguments for FPTP can be easily refuted as we have proven that coalition works and in both 2010 and 2015 FPTP will not have produced a working majority for the party with the largest vote share.
So May 8th (and a possible Constitutional Convention) will provide a huge opportunity for a big new campaign on PR. Let’s start planning for it now by building the message of FPTP injustice into the general election campaign
Drew Durning
In the results of the 2010 General Election in Scotland you already had very good evidence of the failures of FPTP.
Labour. 42% of votes. 41 seats
SNP. 20% of votes. 6 seats
Lib Dems. 19% of votes. 11 seats
Con 17% of votes. 1 seat.
Of course as a result of that election we had a Deputy Prime Minister who promised “the greatest reform since 1832”; he had words like ‘Department of Constitutional Reform’ painted on his office door and he made lots of grand speeches and boasted that he would do far more than Blair’s 1999 tinkering with the House of Lords.
But before too long he appointed lots of new people to the undemocratic, unelected, unaccountable House of Lords and appointed not a single woman to the Cabinet.
As we used to say in Focus Newsletters —
DON’T BELIEVE WHAT THEY SAY, BELIEVE WHAT THEY DO.
Coalition government does not work. Why? You might ask. Well as you’ve seen over the last 4 and a half years the libdems have sold their soul for an AV referendum and for the House of Lords to be reformed. Neither of which they got. So what did the lib dems sell for their 30 pieces of silver. Well they trebled tuition fees, increased VAT, the start of the privatisation of the NHS, cut the top rate of TAX for millionaires from 50% to 45% and worst of all the BEDROOM TAX which has cost people their lives and children to be evicted from their homes. And the libdems are so proud even tho there membership has collapsed and their support in the country is down to 6% in the polls. On Wednesday you have the chance to give an early Christmas present to hundreds of thousands of disabled people and carers children who are relying on food banks for their christmass diner and foster parents who are struggling to take in the children who are being evicted today and tomorrow. Please please all you libdems who have a heart who have compassion vote with labour on Wednesday to abolish the BEDROOM TAX. Tonight we must all pray for those this christmas who are less fortunate than ourselves who are having to choose between heating and eating paying the rent or the bills, because their aren’t enough smaller properties to downsize to. Our lord Jesus Christ will look down on us this day and judge each and every one of us on what we do for our fellow human beings because with power comes great responsibility. May I wish you all a merry christmas and let’s hope and pray a better new year without the hated TORY BEDROOM TAX, thank you, SUSAN
We have a country where roughly one third of the electorate don’t choose either of the two main parties. When the other parties combined have the same support either of the two main parties do then yes, clearly the two party system is dead.
The problem is the voting system doesn’t reflect our country’s democratic needs.
There is no right or wrong voting system. The voting system is either good for what it is needed to deliver or it is not. For example, I think AV would have been even worse than FPTP and didn’t vote for it for that reason. AV is a majoritarian system that seeks to select a mainstream candidate suitable to the majority, rather than FPTP which selects who has more support than anyone else regardless of what the feelings of the majority are. AV would punish the smaller parties even more than FPTP does, in countries that use it like Australia there is even less room for third parties than there is here. However, AV might be good for selecting who should lead your party. For a question like that, a majoritarian system that selects a mainstream candidate acceptable to the majority is probably the way to go.
Anyway, I guess I’m saying that the UK is not a two party system anymore because the voters that don’t vote that way, and that FPTP is not a suitable system for this country anymore and that AV would only make things worse.
I think the best voting system for the UK nationally would be the FPTP plus the regional list system that they use for Holyrood elections.
Susan
Coalition government does not work. Why? You might ask. Well as you’ve seen over the last 4 and a half years the libdems have sold their soul for an AV referendum and for the House of Lords to be reformed.
So would you have preferred a 100% Tory government? Because that was the alternative.
You may think this government is bad, I think that as well. The frightening thing is that what the Tories really wanted was FAR WORSE than what we have now. What we have now DOES result from the LibDems pushing them and having to compromise between what the Tories really wanted and what they would concede to.
Thanks to the distortion of the electoral system the Tories got five times as many MPs as the LibDems, even t hough they got only half as many votes. That big difference is why the coalition is so Tory. Unfortunately, the distortion ruled out any other coalition, meaning the LibDems had no bargaining power. Had the coalition not been formed, we would have had a minority Tory government which would have called another general election within a year saying “We can’t govern properly due to the Liberal Democrats, so give us a majority by getting rid of them” – and they’d have avoided the nastier policies till they got it.
On the “bedroom tax”, well I was a councillor dealing with people who were living in horrendously overcrowded situations and were told they would never get council housing. When you see that, it’s not so easy to defend other people living in council property bigger than they really need. The “bedroom tax” was not pure vindictiveness, as it has been painted. You are quite right however over the issue being that people can’t just move out instantly to smaller property. The “bedroom tax” should not have been implemented as it was, it should have been done in a way that no-one would lose their rent subsidy unless they had first been offered a smaller property to meet their needs.
@Matthew huntbach
The Tories got five times more MPs on one and a half times the vote it is true, so why the lib dems wanted an AV vote I will never understand. AV is worse than FPTP and would punish smaller parties more. The lib dems should have just asked to keep the constituencies and add additional top up MPs to the regions like in scotland and wales. They could have done that by legislation but if not I’m confident the public would back that in a referedum.
But no, you settled for an AV vote? A vote for something worse than the status quo? How many seats do you think the greens, ukip, yourselves and other smaller parties would win under AV?
Mr Wallace
For example, I think AV would have been even worse than FPTP and didn’t vote for it for that reason. AV is a majoritarian system that seeks to select a mainstream candidate suitable to the majority, rather than FPTP which selects who has more support than anyone else regardless of what the feelings of the majority are.
Tom and Dick are standing for election to be MP for Libbyton. Tom has 55% of the vote, and Dick has 45% of the vote. At the last minute, Harry put in his nomination, and of the 55% who prefer Tom to Dick, 15% prefer Harry to Tom. So why do you say that Harry’s turning up means Dick is the best person to be MP for Libbyton with 45% of the vote? Tom didn’t do anything, and the people of Libbyton still prefer Tom to Dick. Or why should those 15% who prefer Harry yo Tom feel they can’t show their true feelings and actually express the support they have for Harry, because to tdo so “splits the vote” and so lets in Dick?
I want the answer to these question NOW, Mr Walllace. You say that FPTP is better than AV, and the way I’ve put it is at the heart of the difference between AV and FPTP.
Matthew, what you have just described would only be better if Tom, Dick and Harry were all individuals running on their own merit for a position and nobody else got that position. For example if we elected a president in this country then I think the AV system you just described would be the best way to do it.
But the reality of a UK General Election is rather different. Firstly Tom, Dick and Harry aren’t really individuals in their role of MP. They are first and for most members of a party who will mostly vote with other members of their party in parliament as a block. Which party there are in matters more than who they are and that party is not standing in just that one constituency.
Do that AV system for a handful of parties across hundreds of constituencies and you will find all but the mainstream parties almost completely excluded. Even a party who represents the views of just 5% of the population should get some seats because those voters while they are a minority they are still citizens of this country and deserve to have at least some representation.
FPTP, wrongly in my opinion, punishes those minority views by going though the country constituency by constituency eliminating their party wherever they aren’t the single biggest group, which is likely to be everywhere.
AV is even harder on them. It goes through the country constituency by constituency eliminating every party that doesn’t have majority support leaving a parliament where minority views are even less represented than they are now.
And you made getting a vote on that part of the coalition agreement?
Mr Wallace
Do that AV system for a handful of parties across hundreds of constituencies and you will find all but the mainstream parties almost completely excluded. Even a party who represents the views of just 5% of the population should get some seats
Yes, I agree, that is why I support proportional representation. Also, a party which has say 20% of the vote in region X deserves 20% of the seats in region X. I don’t believe it is a suitable compensation if it get 100% of the seats in region Y where it gets 60% of the vote. That means the particular issues of those party’s supporters in region X don’t get represented, and give the false impression that the party is just a region Y party.
I am not saying that AV is better than a proportional system, and it angered me that when we were offered the choice of either FPTP or AV in 2011, those of us who said “Well in that case, we’ll have AV” were insulted in various ways because previously we had dismissed AV in favour of proportional representation. AV deals with one issue – the fear that you can’t vote for who you really want because that might split the vote and benefit the one you least want, and I think it’s worthwhile to have it if that’s as far as the other side will go on electoral reform. Saying that does NOT mean saying we think AV is the best system possible.
Your claim that AV is harder on small parties than FPTP only really works if you suppose that enough Harrys will turn up to split the big-party Tom vote and so let in the smaller party Dick candidate. I think it is just as likely to work the other way round. In addition, AV gives smaller parties the chance at least to demonstrate what support they really have because it ends the line “Don’t vote for them – they haven’t a chance, but it will split the vote and so let in the bigger party you like least”. Under AV a small party can say “Vote for us to show you support us, and just maybe more people will do that than was supposed and we will win. Otherwise, your vote will switch to your second choice from the big parties, so don’t worry – voting for us won’t lose then the seat if we don’t win it.
Mr Wallace
And you made getting a vote on that part of the coalition agreement?
Well, I didn’t personally, no. Who is this “you” that you mention here? It isn’t me.
However, suppose the Liberal Democrats had held out and said “No coalition unless proportional representation is brought in”. Would theTories concede? I think not. What about “No coalition unless a referendum proportional representation is brought in”? Well, I hope that was at least very much tried for, and the reason we didn’t get it is that the Tories wouldn’t concede on that either. However, suppose we had said “Very well, no coalition then”, how would it have gone down? While you and I may recognise the importance of proportional representation, my experience is that most people in this country – the vast majority, 95% if not 99% – don’t. So it would have come across as the Liberal Democrats wrecking the country by refusing to give it the only possible stable government for selfish reasons for a silly political thing only they are interested in and only because it benefits them. Sadly, I think the Liberal Democrats would have suffered badly had they stuck it out on that – and Labour and the Tories would get together to have a new general election on the lines “Get rid of these people whose existence is denying our country the government it needs”.
Matthew, ‘Mr Wallace’ is engaged in a wind up. He knows full well that at least with AV it is possible to cast your favoured vote without fear that it is wasted because your second preference is taken into account. But there is little point in arguing this, and particularly with one who asserts that FPTP is better and uses some rather transparent sophistry to make out that it is fairer.
To those of us for whom the commitment to representative democracy is a major draw to the Liberal Democrats, the AV referendum was a disaster. The only mitigation is that the outcome should enable us to rule AV out of the question ab initio whenever the issue becomes live again.
It is quite clear what we are up against: the duopoly will stoop to any misrepresentation and do anything to ensure the status quo.
Martin
Matthew, ‘Mr Wallace’ is engaged in a wind up. He knows full well that at least with AV it is possible to cast your favoured vote without fear that it is wasted because your second preference is taken into account. But there is little point in arguing this
Oh sure, but he needed to be pushed to demonstrate this. He has used no sophistry, because he has just asserted that FPTP is “worse than AV” without any sort of logical argument using examples to say why.
The reality is that when he says “The lib dems should have just asked to keep the constituencies and add additional top up MPs to the regions like in scotland and wales” that’s a very big “just”. That IS full proportional representation, though not a good form of it. Still, I would very much have preferred it to AV if it were on offer. However, the Tories were not going to offer it, were they, because it would mean a permanent end to the two-party system.
Martin
To those of us for whom the commitment to representative democracy is a major draw to the Liberal Democrats, the AV referendum was a disaster.
Indeed. I think my Tom, Dick and Harry story was a reasonably good an understandable explanation of how AV works. But the ad-men and PR-people who ran the “yes” campaign refused to use simple examples like that to explain it properly. I know, because I discussed it with some of them, and they pooh-poohed me for suggesting that we needed that sort of clear explanation to make our point. I then predicted, on the basis of the material they were putting out, that we would lose, and this was when the opinion polls were still putting “yes” comfortably ahead.
These are the same ad-men and PR-people now running our party’s public image. We need to sack the lot of them to make progress. I reman a member of the arty, but pay only minimum membership to it and give no donations to it nationally, because it is pointless to do so while these useless people waste the money in campaigns which only damage us.
Matthew, I’m not engaged in a wind-up and I will answer your points. But before I do, just let me say one thing. This was studied in depth a long time ago when the voting system was reviewed for something called ‘The Jenkins Report’. The report recommended AV+, AV plus a regional list. However the report said AV should never be used on it’s own because it could increase rather than reduce dis-proportionality. This is why I didn’t vote for it, the last thing this country needs is an even more dis-proportional electoral system which is what I believe AV is… Anyway, to answer your points…
“AV deals with one issue – the fear that you can’t vote for who you really want because that might split the vote and benefit the one you least want,” – It does, but the cost of that is that you will probably have an even less proportional result nationally. I don’t think an even more disproportionate result is a price worth paying, I really don’t and for me that is what the choice came down too. The evidence I see suggests to me that AV would be more disproportionate than FPTP. So I’d stick with FPTP before I’d say yes to AV.
“I think my Tom, Dick and Harry story was a reasonably good an understandable explanation of how AV works.” – Again, I don’t. I think your explanation would only be accurate if we were all electing independent individuals to represent our areas in parliament and we didn’t have political parties, just independent individuals. If that were the case we would want the person who is most acceptable to the majority in each area to represent that area. The reality is however that in a General Election the entire country is choosing between about five or six parties on the question of who they want to run the country. A system that produces an even more disproportionate result nationally is not an improvement in my mind, even if it does mean people aren’t having to vote tactically.
“Your claim that AV is harder on small parties than FPTP only really works if you suppose that enough Harrys will turn up to split the big-party Tom vote and so let in the smaller party Dick candidate.” – The evidence I see suggests that it is much harder on smaller parties. Are you telling me that it is not?
“While you and I may recognise the importance of proportional representation, my experience is that most people in this country – the vast majority, 95% if not 99% – don’t. So it would have come across as the Liberal Democrats wrecking the country by refusing to give it the only possible stable government for selfish reasons for a silly political thing only they are interested in and only because it benefits them. Sadly, I think the Liberal Democrats would have suffered badly had they stuck it out on that ” – Do you honestly believe that the Lib Dems would have been more damaged from refusing a coalition than the have been. The Lib Dems have fractured their social democratic base by being in coalition with the Tories and passing the bedroom tax. They have alienated the young with the part of the coalition deal to treble tuition fees. I really doubt it.
Mr Wallace
Matthew, I’m not engaged in a wind-up and I will answer your points. But before I do, just let me say one thing. This was studied in depth a long time ago when the voting system was reviewed for something called ‘The Jenkins Report’. The report recommended AV+, AV plus a regional list.
Yes, and so? There you go again, suggesting that I and the Liberal Democrats think AV on its own is better than AV plus a regional list. But neither I nor the Liberal Democrats have EVER said that. Simply because given a choice where the only options are AV or FPTP I would choose AV does NOT mean I regard AV as superior to any sort of proportional representation system.
However, because AV is not proportional, introducing it is likely to keep a system where most of the time we have a single party government, either Tory or Labour. Whereas AV+ or any other proportional representation system would mean we NEVER AGAIN have a single party government. That is quite obviously the reason why the Tories were prepared to concede to a referendum on AV but not on AV+ or any other proportional system.
Mr Wallace
The reality is however that in a General Election the entire country is choosing between about five or six parties on the question of who they want to run the country. A system that produces an even more disproportionate result nationally is not an improvement in my mind, even if it does mean people aren’t having to vote tactically.
You keep asserting that AV would give a more disproportionate result, but you have given no explanation as to why you think this would be the case. It COULD under some circumstances give a more disproportionate result, but under others give a less disproportionate result.
Mr Wallace
Do you honestly believe that the Lib Dems would have been more damaged from refusing a coalition than the have been.
I believe the coalition has been handled very badly by the Liberal Democrat leadership, but that’s another issue.
Now, when you talk about the bedroom tax, you are another of these people who can’t see that the idea behind it is actually a good one – that people in homes too big for their needs should be encouraged to move to smaller properties, so that people who need the bigger properties can be allocated them. Why make a big thing about the small number of people on housing benefit paying for empty rooms in council houses and say nothing about the much larger number of people on the council house waiting list who don’t even have the rooms they need? What was wrong with it was the way it was implemented – it should have been done in a way that no-one’s spare bedroom rent subsidy would be ended until they had been offered an alternative property of a size suitable to them.
On the tuition fees system, well if the government had just borrowed the money directly to subsidise universities, then it would STILL be the next generation paying it back through taxes. Tuition fees aren’t bringing extra money into universities, we lecturers aren’t being paid any more thanks to them – our pay has instead been slowly declining in real terms as we keep getting pay increases below the level of inflation. However, if universities were still being subsidised directly through taxes, there would now be massive cuts being made to them, as there is in local government. The reality is that agreeing to tuition fees – and making the loans and payback system so generous that it is in effect just another tax – has probably saved the university system.
However, the point is that if the coalition had not been formed, the Tories would have formed a minority government, not put through any of the unpopular policies, blamed the economic consequences on it being impossible to govern thanks to the Liberal Democrats denying them a majority, and called another general election a few months later to get a majority – and Labour would have supported them in that general election, as they did in the AV referendum, using the line “get rid of the Liberal Democrats and the instability they cause, return to the two-party system”. And we’d have a majority Tory government right now. If you think the coalition is unpleasant (and I very much do think that), you onky have to look at the ranting and raving about it in the Tory ranks to see that a pure Tory government would be even worse – MUCH worse, MUCH more right wing.
Mr Wallace
The evidence I see suggests that it is much harder on smaller parties. Are you telling me that it is not?
You have given me no such evidence. I fail to see how small parties can win so many more seats under FPTP which you are claiming, but would not win them under AV. The only way I could see this happening is if somehow small parties benefit from the vote being split, but I can’t see this as particularly likely to happen. I don’t see it as any more likely (in fact I see it as rather less likely) than small parties doing better under AV because the “don’t vote for them, as it’s a wasted vote” line has gone, and then managing to win a few more seats through transfers.
Matthew
The Jenkins Commission demonstrated 15 years ago that AV could very well have a less proportional result than FPTP. Specifically, in 1997 and 2001 it would probably have resulted in even larger majorities for Labour — that’s partly to do with the different ways that support for the two main parties is spread, and partly to do with the strong anti-Conservative sentiment among the public at the time.
Mr Wallace has also explained how this can operate at constituency level. Of course, if one assumes that by “smaller party” one always means a centre party (or one that is perceived as centrist) then that party is always likely to benefit from AV if only it can make it to a close second on first preferences. However, a party that is seen as being further from the centre (whatever that means) might achieve the odd victory in highly contested seats by getting 30-odd perc cent of the vote (as Caroline Lucas did in Brighton) but be overwhelmed by the combined vote of more mainstream candidates on second preferences. (Which system, do you think, would be more likely to elect a handful of UKIP MPs, for example?)
Please don’t respond with another post about how you personally want PR not AV and aren’t responsible for the dubious choices of Nick Clegg. I know all that. But there is indeed good reason, as the Jenkins Commission recognised, for believing that AV on its own (which is all we were offered in 2011) could be even less proportional than FPTP, which is all that Mr Wallace is saying.
(And by the way, despite serious doubts, I did vote “Yes” in the referendum.)
Why do smaller parties do better under FPTP than AV? Look at the Lib Dems in Scotland for your answer, they currently have 11 seats here, almost 20% of the total seats. The Lib Dems have won at least one of those with less than one third of the vote (31%), this is only possible when the vote is split 4 ways. How do you think the Liberals and the Tories would do here under AV?
I’m no fan of the Tories but about 15% to 20% of Scottish people support the Tories so they need some representation from our 59 seats, they currently have 1. AV would probably make that none. That is even worse than FPTP regardless of any other benefits AV has.
FPTP is unfair and not suitable for our national elections for one huge reason, it produces a hugely disproportionate result. AV does the same only worse in most cases. All the other benefits of AV are not worth the price of an more disproportionate result than FPTP.
Matthew, I don’t think the Lib Dems think AV is better than AV+. My point was an in depth study for the Jenkins report said AV on it’s own could produce a more disproportionate result than FPTP and should not be used for that very reason. This is evidence. The only Western democracy that uses AV is Australia, the evidence from there suggests the AV voting system leaves even less room for smaller parties than ours does.
The problem with you explaining how AV works in the way that you do is your examples assume that nobody outside that constituency has any interest in the result. But it is not like this because our MPs are members of parties so there is more at stake than how the people feel about their own individual MP.
Anyway, we are going round in circles, I have given you two solid pieces of evidence that AV produces a more disproportionate result than FPTP nationally (the Jenkins report and elections in Australia). Prove to me that this is wrong and AV on it’s own will produce a more proportionate result, most of the time, than FPTP does and I will say you are right and I am wrong.