It’s not quite Jeremy Paxman vs Michael Howard, but there’s a definite echo of it with Adam Boulton’s repeated questioning and Baroness Warsi’s unwillingness to answer. So if you’ve missed it doing the rounds on Twitter and Facebook so far, here it is to enjoy (or is that suffer?):
22 voting theory specialists voted to select the “best voting procedure” to elect one out of three or more candidates.
Each voter chose from a list of 18 nominated voting procedures as many as she/he approved of. From a possible maximum of 22 votes, First Past The Post (FPTP) – also known as Plurality Voting – received no votes. Approval Voting won the contest with 15 votes. The Alternative Vote (AV) took second place with 10 votes.
Tis the day for tickets for events in London it would seem, as the IPPR have been in touch about a few spaces left for tomorrow’s speech on electoral reform from Nick Clegg:
The Shape of the New Politics
Keynote speech by Rt Hon Nick Clegg MP, Deputy Prime Minister and Leader of the Liberal Democrats
Deputy Prime Minister and Leader of the Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg MP, will give a keynote speech at ippr outlining the case for the Alternative Vote as part …
On Monday 4th April, in the run-up to the AV referendum, the Gladstone Club hosted a debate in the National Liberal Club on electoral reform which featured Lib Dem Voice’s co-editor Mark Pack and the Chairman of the Edmund Burke society, Ian Alston. Both took a look at the lessons which can be learnt from history by those deciding how to vote in the referendum.
Yesterday Nick Clegg gave an excellent speech at the London Region Liberal Democrats conference, putting the case for a Yes vote in May’s AV referendum. I tried out filming it on my iPad, an experience that mostly worked pretty smoothly*, and you can watch the resulting footage here:
There are lots of ways to make the case for a fairer voting system for electing MPs, but I think I may have come up with the most novel. I was in the staff kitchen at work the other day when colleagues starting chatting about the referendum, triggered by a newspaper article about it. They were split between the YES camp and the NO camp, both drawing on what seemed like standard arguments deployed by both campaigns.
I started trying to win over the antis, but wasn’t really getting anywhere. Then a thought occurred to me. I was peckish at the time, about to head out to buy something for a very late lunch. It was the sort of time in the afternoon when the range of sandwiches at the nearby Pret A Manger starts to dwindle – maybe they’ll have run out of smoked salmon, BLT, chicken avocado or whatever else.
“I’ll buy everyone here a sandwich from Pret. You can choose what you want using either first-past-the-post, or the alternative vote. If you choose first-past-the-post then you get one choice and if it’s run out then you get nothing. If you use the alternative vote then you can, of course, let me know what you want ideally, but if they’ve run out of it you can let me know what you want as a second and third choice.”
You’ll be unsurprised to learn that they all decided to use the alternative vote, and I think this little exercise won over the sceptics too.
Of course if you meet someone who wants a less sandwich-based explanation of how the alternative vote works, I can heartily recommend this video that Jonathan Wallace shot of me setting out the case for change and explaining how the alternative vote works. Take a look:
It looks as if Warrington MP David Mowat could be the first Conservative MP so far to back the alternative vote in May’s referendum. The Liverpool Daily Post reports:
A Warrington MP is ready to defy David Cameron by voting to scrap the first-past-the- post voting system – potentially making him the only Conservative to do so.
David Mowat said he was considering backing a switch to the “alternative vote” (AV) for Westminster elections in the nationwide referendum to be staged on May 5.
The Warrington South MP described himself as an “agnostic” on the issue, but also stated his belief that
Nick Clegg’s article in the Indy today is a spare, evidential piece, as neatly sliced and lacking in rhetoric as an appointment diary.
But what a diary. Flip back a year, and Gordon was driving to the Palace to call the General Election, as the Liberal Democrats prepared to launch their manifesto.
Now, Nick writes,
…something is happening that, for the Liberal Democrats, is a new experience: the policies we championed during the election are becoming reality. I don’t mean that consultations are being announced, votes held, or papers published. Over the next few days, lives will be changed for
At the start of Budget week, Danny Alexander writes at Comment is Free that the coalition government is about more than balancing the books, but about enacting reform with a foundation of economic recovery.
The No2AV Campaign has been all too delighted to parade has-been politicians to back up its arguments — the Yes2AV Campaign has rather more wisely stuck to letting the public have its say in this first UK referendum in 35 years.
Here members of the public explain why they’ll be choosing the Alternative Vote this May:
It’s hardly surprising that Charles Kennedy and Ed Miliband would be appearing together to promote electoral reform. Kennedy has long been a supporter of electoral reform and by virtue of not being in government is seen by many in Labour as an easier figure to campaign alongside (even though one of Kennedy’s first acts on becoming party leader was to end the party’s then work in government with Labour). Ed Milband in turn is the author of Labour’s general election manifesto which not only pledged a referendum but also called for a change in the electoral system to follow from …
This evening Labour leader Ed Miliband will urge his party and the public to say yes to fairer votes in this coming May’s referendum.
All of us in favour of electoral reform, and a voting system that puts more power back in the hands of the people, should welcome his personal backing for the alternative vote. Ed, at least, is staying true to what Labour’s 2010 general election manifesto pledged, specifically:
To ensure that every MP is supported by the majority of their constituents voting at each election, we will hold a referendum on introducing the Alternative Vote for elections
David Owen chose the weekend of the Lib Dem Conference to offer his advice for the AV referendum. Having attacked the ‘First Past the Post’ voting system so vociferously for many years, it may seem odd to some people that he now urges support for this system on May 5th. He says that he hopes for a referendum with an option of a Proportional Representation system instead.
Almost all those people who have consistently supported the cause of electoral reform for much longer than he has take a different view. It is very clear that voting against change on May …
Nick Clegg said this week that the Government will shortly unveil its plans for reforming the House of Lords.
Answering questions in the Commons on Tuesday, Clegg said:
The cross-party Committee, which I chair, has been considering proposals for a wholly or mainly elected second Chamber. The Government will publish a draft Bill shortly, which will then be subject to pre-legislative scrutiny. The Government hope that that will be carried out by a Joint Committee of both Houses.
It’s very likely that the second chamber will be renamed, to reflect the constitutional changes.
Upper Houses around the world have a wide variety …
The FactCheck blog has been running its eyes over the claims made by No2AV about how much introducing the alternative vote would cost (the subject too of my letter published in yesterday’s Independent).
Here’s what they conclude:
No to AV claims that the combined costs of a referendum, implementing electronic vote counting and educating voters will cost Britain a cool £250 million. And just over half of this will be splashed out on shiny new electronic vote counting machines, the campaigners say…
The problem is however, that there are no current plans to implement electronic voting machines in the event AV passes…
Nick Clegg’s visit to Sheffield yesterday included the first in a new series of town hall meetings – this one in partnership with local newspaper the Sheffield Star:
THEY say the best form of defence is attack, which is exactly what Sheffield Hallam MP and the Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg decided to do by launching a new wave of meet the people sessions, here in his home city.
Mr Clegg is the first to admit he is under fire at the moment. He faces a barrage of criticism about his decision to renege on his promise not to vote for
The fact that it is AV on offer and not one of the other systems is the product of three specific factors: the offer on PR made by the last Labour government to woo the Lib Dems; the arithmetic of the general election result; and the mechanics of the deal between David Cameron and Nick Clegg that delivered the coalition administration. It is the product of specific circumstances. It is also the only game in town. In the world of realpolitik an academic debate
With May’s AV referendum finally passed by Parliament this week, both Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg have been taking to the public stage to argue for a Yes vote.
Nick Clegg’s speech today majors on how the alternative vote will hold politicians better to account:
Under the Alternative Vote, politicians will need to aim to get half of their constituents to choose them. That means they will have to work harder to appeal to more people than before. It means they will have to reach out to people who were ignored under First Past the Post. It means they will no longer
The unprecedented filibustering by Labour peers (or rather more accurately, given the splits between hardliners and moderates about Labour’s ranks in the Lords, some Labour peers) of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill is having two unintended side-effects which will be important for the future of political reform.
The most obvious is the way in which Labour’s chosen style of opposition has driven Conservative and Liberal Democrat peers closer together. A more subtle form of opposition might have looked to divide the coalition partners, but repeated late nights …
Over on Political Postcards, you can read the first in a series of four posts on how the Yes to Fairer Votes campaign is going in the North-East. The first post looks at the tactics that both sides are deploying to sway voters. Here’s an excerpt:
The Yes campaign are holding firm to their strategy. Strong messages about reform, greater choice and making politicians work harder seem to resonate with wavering voters.
I’d like you to reconsider your decision to ban the use of the word “reform” when your staff are reporting or commenting on the proposed changes to the voting system for the House of Commons (as reported in The Independent last month).
Given that the phrase “electoral reform” has been a widely used term for decades to describe all sorts of different proposals to change the electoral system and given that it has been widely used by proponents on all sides of those exchanges too, I’m surprised that you now are of the view that it isn’t an appropriate …
Salmon investigates and illustrates how usually over-looked provisions, such as the introduction of electoral registers, encouraged the formation of semi-permanent political organisations at a local level with resulting frequent party conflict over electoral registration as people tried to get their supporters on the register and their opponents knocked off it.
Julian Glover, writing on the Guardian website, has called the situation in the House of Lords well today. “This is a ceasefire not an armistice,” he says.
As of midday today (Wednesday), Lord “Charlie” Falconer appears to have retreated from the undertakings he was giving earlier in the week to expedite the Parliamentary Voting Systems and Constituencies (PVSC) Bill. Labour Peers are apparently determined both delay and elongate the Report Stage, so making it impossible for the AV referendum to take place on May 5th. As Julian Glover says, “the behaviour of a gang of timeserving Labour …
With attention understandably focusing on events in the Lords, the actual progress of the campaigns for the electoral reform referendum has had less coverage in the last few weeks. So here’s a quick score-card:
Funding: the No campaign has taken to the media to protest about “big money” funding the Yes campaign. Even as reported by the Telegraph the attacks are pretty thin going, but revealing in one respect. Many expected the No campaign to be well-funded by the sort of large donors who have heavily funded the Tories in the past (not to mention, possibly, trade union funding). However,
David Allen Tristan,
You're right in the sense that you didn't specifically call for PFI. But you did say "if you can persuade private money to provide the funding on t...
David Garlick Touted as bringing power to people.
Power brought down from Govt sounds good but power still not reaching the lowest possible levels in our Communities....
Tristan Ward @ David Allen
"PFI won’t help stop the planet burning"
Who said anything about PFI - I didn't.
The private money that is building (not enough) house...
Joey Vimsante I think the EU and UK needs to support not for profit, social media platforms that put the interest of the public, vulnerable people, young people, and nation a...
Nick Baird With regard to client-side image scanning, the danger of mission creep are real, but I have other concerns. One is whether this is truly a practical and effecti...
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Brechtian television: Leo McKern in Galileo (1964)
Good news on political donations?
Conference booked
Are Labour going to cross another red line?
David Allen 
David Garlick 
Tristan Ward 
Joey Vimsante 
Nick Baird 