Progressive majority? Not so fast Ed

By James Fitzpatrick

On Saturday morning Ed Miliband addressed the Fabian conference and his topic of choice was electoral reform. Whilst his audience seemed to lap up the leader’s speech (and you would expect that from a Fabian audience given the topic), what frightens me is the way we have accepted his thesis that Britain is a progressive country and that it would equate to victory for Labour under an Alternative Vote system.

The first myth that should be tackled is that the AV system would have meant victory for Labour last week. When analysing the result and what would have happened under AV, we obviously have to make assumptions on how people might have voted if their preferred candidate had been knocked out. Under any analysis of the current system, we have to make assumptions on what people would have done in a different system.

So let’s take a fairly simple premise. UKIP voters are known for being slightly to the right of Conservative voters on the whole and I think most Labour people who accept we don’t have much of a fan base there, but if we gave every second preference of the candidates outside the top fpur (Ukip, COnservative, Lib Dem and Labour) to Debbie Abrahams, Labour would be short of the 50% magical arbitrary mark that AV sets.

Even with this extreme assumption that the 67 Buss Pass Elvis votes would come our way and the 1,560 BNP votes would also (a very optimistic view I might add), it would then be fair to say that the Conservatives would have more than likely swung behind Elwyn Watkins. This leaves us in a situation where the 4th placed UKIP’s 2029 voters decide who becomes the Oldham MP. These votes would have already been allocated before the Conservative ones – but they certainly wouldn’t be coming Labour’s way either.

The result would have been a marginal Liberal Democrat win – exactly the party that stands to gain most from the proposed AV system – which is of course why they want it.

Many people can argue that the BNP vote splits in funny ways and that I am being kind in giving all the minor party votes to Labour and UKIP votes to the Tories. But my point is that our current leader (who wrote our last manifesto committing us to a referendum on AV) couldn’t foresee that under certain circumstances, such as the current coalition, we would suffer severely.

The 1990’s saw Labour change from a party portrayed as loony socialists who couldn’t be trusted on the economy and losing elections, to a reforming party that was prepared to fight for the middle ground. This process was long and hard and came about because those leading the party at the time knew that Britain was a centre-right country. To win power, we had to appeal to the majority of voters in places like Harlow, Enfield Southgate and Edinburgh South.

The last 13 years has seen this balance move ever so slightly and many of us would like to think that we have taken the public on a journey where most now accept that society works better when we work together rather than the Conservative dog-eat-dog mentality. However, the balance is still finely tuned and the last election showed us that people are still prepared to vote for reasons other than altruistic ones.

Our current leader has the party’s best interests at heart, but he should have been truly progressive in writing the manifesto that looked at reforming our political system in more potent ways such as tackling the full range of options available with voting reform, such as the way New Zealand tackled the issue in 92/93. Some would go even as far as calling for an elected head of state, but a step-by-step change has to occur in British politics.

Here is where the AV supporters claim that their proposed system fits in. “It’s a step in the right direction and is fairer” they would say. The problem with using words such as fair and progressive, is that over time, every side uses them and they become meaningless to the general public. Just look at how the coalition are claiming the term progressive.

And let’s not forget that many fellow comrades were looking for a progressive coalition in the days after the 2010 election, but the result of those discussions was that the Liberal Democrats showed their true colours by cosying up to whoever gave them the best deal. True progressives would not have shopped around for a good deal like they were on a political version of “bargain hunt”. So let us put to bed this idea that we can ever work with the Liberal Democrats on a permanent basis.

The path in front of the Labour movement is long and fraught with danger. We have to look at reforming our political system by giving people a real choice on how they elect their MP’s, like the New Zealand example and not just make it AV or bust. That would demonstrate a real progressive agenda.

Ed Miliband is right to try and woo those that voted Lib Dem last time round, but if we are to govern again as a majority Labour government, we need to aim to do so rather than accept that a coalition is inevitable. Flirting with the Liberal Democrats four years before the next election smacks of a leader who has already conceded that we cannot win outright on our own terms. If he and the minority of his shadow cabinet colleagues persist in supporting the lesser “reform” of AV, they will be showing their true colours and accepting that we can never govern on our own again – lets prepare for government dear comrades, albeit, with the Liberal Democrats in tow…