AV is a miserable little compromise; insulting me won’t make me vote for it

By Sarah Hayward / @sarah_hayward

I’ve resisted writing this blog since before Christmas but I’ve been pushed over the edge in recent days. I’ve blogged before about AV in the context of the other constitutional reform that the coalition are embarking on. I said back in July I’d begrudgingly vote for it. Since then I’ve hardened against it but could still be persuaded to vote for it – I am a waverer and should be a target for both campaigns.

But here’s a news flash for those campaigning in favour: Trying to insult me in to submission is not going to work.

The more you call me a refusenik, insinuate I’m some kind of democratic Luddite, claim I support first past the post (FPTP), am engaged in some kind of Labour lensed arithmetic of electoral outcome, that I would’ve campaigned against women’s suffrage or worse I’m too stupid to understand AV, the more I’m inclined to vote against.

AV is a miserable little compromise. And I want genuine voting and constitutional reform, and have done since my teens.

Optional AV, which is what’s proposed, is not a proportional system of voting. It would have produce a larger Labour majority in 1997, when we already got over 60% of the seats off 43% of the vote (remind me, who is it who’s looking at the electoral advantage?), this is not a democratically good thing, however good it might have been for Labour. It’s argued that it removes the need for tactical voting but that’s not true – can Luke Akehurst tell me that he’ll be campaigning for anything other than Labour inclined voters only using their first preference? This is a voting tactic. And what happens if every voter only uses their first preference under optional AV – oh that’s right – we end up with first past the post. What kind of voting reform is that?

The AV referendum to me is a lost opportunity – a real miserable little compromise. Major democratic and constitutional change in this country has a history of moving at glacial pace. It took over a century of campaigning to get women the vote. Blair’s government lost appetite for both lords and voting reform for myriad reasons including the blocks that the political establishment put on it (he may have forced the issue if he’d had more appetite personally). Again election of the lords has ebbed and flowed on the political agenda for nearly two centuries…

The crisis created by the MPs expenses scandal put constitutional issues at the top of the agenda. A subject normally reserved for public law or comparative politics geeks (a club I proudly consider myself a member of) & pshephologists was suddenly getting coverage in the tabloids.

This presented a golden opportunity to debate the issues and completely rebalance our constitutional settlement in favour of the voters that our political system is supposed to serve. We could have debated a fully elected house of lords, proportional representation for both houses, whether we want an upper chamber with specialists skills and knowledge to provide expert check and balance or a lay version, what it is we want our MPs to do and therefore how many of them we need and should we the voters be able to punish them between elections and if so how. You know, actually I may be able to stomach FPTP for the commons – maintaining the direct constituency link – if we had genuine proportional representation in a fully elected Lords. But we’ve lost the opportunity for parliament to put forward options of different systems of both voting and parliament for us the voters to really consider, debate and scrutinise.

I am happy to have all of these debates and whatever the outcome means for Labour I would work and campaign tirelessly within that framework to press the case for social democratic solutions to the challenges we face as a country. Our constitutional and voting settlement should not be about short term electoral advantage for the three main parties. It should be about giving voters greater control over and involvement in their democracy.

I know Labour has sound arguments for our policy solutions and I am confident enough in my political beliefs that I can make and win those arguments in any democratic or voting system. Bring it on.

But we blew it. By acquiescing to this miserable little compromise we’re basically closing the debate for a least another generation. That is the history of constitutional change in Britain.

I understand the political imperative for Miliband to support AV. And there is merit in the arguement for reformers that this is the change on the table so we should vote for it. But perhaps the Yes to AV campaign should be a little more honest about this. The message should be, “we need reform, we want more reform, this is what’s on the table, so we’ll take it, but we will re-open the debate when Labour are back in power”. This approach would allow us to attack the Lib Dems as failures at their own mission and the Tories as the real ‘democratic Luddites’.

Otherwise we’re just buying in to the miserable little compromise that allows the, largely Tory, establishment to close down the argument for at least another generation.

If you want me to vote for AV, or even engage in getting others to vote for it, talk to me as a reformer, don’t insult me as an ignorant.

This post was originally published here.