Is anybody else fed up of hearing about electoral reform?

By Ryan Thomas

Is anybody else as fed up of hearing about electoral reform as I am? The merits of electoral reform are certainly up for debate, and I am among those who remain undecided on how they will vote. What I am finding increasingly unattractive, however, is the supercilious fashion in which the pro-AV camp is pitching its arguments. On these pages, David Talbot told AV “refuseniks” to “wake up” and stop supporting an electoral system, namely first-past-the-post (FPTP), that is “broken”, “rotten”, “antiquated”, “unfair” and “downright fraudulent”. Oh my…

By painting this referendum as one of totemic importance, the pro-AV camp position those who favor FPTP or are undecided as anachronistic relics of a bygone era who are simply too stupid or apathetic to realise the stakes. This is not the way to win support or to open up dialogue.

I am of the opinion that while FPTP is not perfect, it is also not any of the adjectives Talbot throws at it. I believe FPTP produces strong, stable government by majority, which is, in my view, a good thing. Before us is an opportunity to switch to AV, which would see us rank those candidates we like a little bit less than the one we really like, until we get to those we don’t like at all. I am not yet convinced that this is better than what we presently have. Sure, it provides choice, but that is if you consider your second, third, and fourth (and so on) preferences to be equivalent in weight to your first – which I don’t. I simply do not believe that what voters are desperate for is the opportunity to rank candidates from most to least liked. Instead, we should be looking at making our political parties more distinctive.

Talbot goes on to argue that the electoral system needs changing because: “At the last two elections, a third of voters rejected both the main parties only to find their voices grotesquely under-represented in the commons”. This is the same argument made by advocates of proportional representation (PR), who preach to us about the misery of wasted votes in safe seats. This argument is completely irrelevant and ignorant of the British electoral map. It may surprise Talbot, but we have a constituency system. Therefore, any narrative of national votes is spurious, so please, let’s stop this pathetic nonsense about wasted votes. There is no such thing as a wasted vote, only a vote for a candidate that does not win.

I have never been convinced by the argument that safe seats are somehow perilous to democracy. The idea that voters are either mindless automatons voting Labour or Conservative (or whatever) out of habit or sheer idiocy is profoundly patronising. The pro-electoral reform camp assume the worst instincts to be inherent to the British people, who are depicted as an unsophisticated mob who don’t know what is best for them.

Has it occurred to supporters of electoral reform that constituents in such safe seats have made those seats safe for their MPs, of whatever political stripe, because that MP is doing a good job, or because they belong to the political party that best reflects their views and values?

Then there is the argument that those bogeymen, the “Labour tribalists” (who, if you haven’t been reading The Guardian or following the proclamations of Compass, are apparently a collection of backward individuals with no redeemable features who are keeping Labour in the dark ages) might vote no out of spite, to “deliver a mortal blow to the coalition”. This, Talbot argues, is “the old politics”. (No, not the old politics. Anything but the old politics!)

I am sure I speak for many of my fellow backward tribalists when I say that one of the most compelling arguments against AV is the need to give Nick Clegg and his cronies a bruise on the nose. If voting no on an issue that I do not attach totemic importance to means I get to destabilize the coalition in some small way and send a message to Mr. Clegg that I am more than a little bit peeved at his support for the privatisation by stealth of the NHS, the damage to people’s livelihoods and prospects that his government will do, then that is a good thing, and I refuse to be made to feel like a reactionary simpleton for caring about these issues.

There is also the argument that we should not reject AV because if we do, we kill off any likelihood of future reform along PR lines. This would, in my opinion, be a positive outcome. I want a majority Labour government, not a shabby compromise. I do not want an electoral system that would make coalition government the rule rather than the present exception. I find the argument that compromise is a healthy feature of a democratic society to be utterly baffling and tinged with elitism. “If only we could have politicians working together, all of our problems will be solved”, goes the argument. What, then, is the point of an election under which parties stand or fall on their programme? Why not do away with manifestos altogether and just have the parties hash it all out behind closed doors? This is a highly specious argument that is again indicative of a lack of faith and trust in the judgment of electors.

There are ways of addressing the problems inherent to any electoral system. We could (and should) be looking into making manifesto commitments legally binding, for example, or taking a tip from Australia and making voting mandatory (the ultimate way of ensuring that elections are proportionate, yet a policy that gets very little traction from the reformers). I am not fundamentally wedded to “the old politics” and I am not fundamentally opposed to AV, but I see no reason why I should be quite so worked up about an issue that, to quote Mr. Clegg himself, is nothing more than a “miserable little compromise“.