Bad taste and complete fiction from No2AV

By Ben Bradshaw MP

The paucity of the arguments of the No campaign in the AV referendum have been badly exposed by their latest advertising wheeze.

This is a picture of a sick baby in an incubator next to the slogan: “She needs a cardiac facility, not an alternative voting system.” Apart from the fact the No Campaign is being run by Matthew Elliott of the so-called Tax Payers Alliance – who has spent the last few years lambasting every extra pound Labour spent on the NHS as “waste” – the timing of the ad is in particularly bad taste in the week that hospitals and health trusts up and down the country have announced tens of thousands of job losses.

Not only that, but the figure used by the No campaign for the cost of moving to AV of £250 million is complete fiction. It includes £130 million for “voting machines” which are not used in Australia – the other main country to use AV – and the Electoral Commission has confirmed there are no plans to introduce them here. All AV requires is a simple ballot paper – just like the one we use now. The No figure also includes the £84 million one off cost of the referendum – incurred whether the referendum is won or lost.

David Cameron peddled the myth about these fantasy counting machines in his anti AV speech last week and argued that AV was “less accountable.” How exactly is it less accountable for MPs to need the support of more than half of the voters in their constituency? How is it less accountable to make it easier for voters, as AV would, to evict lazy, incompetent or corrupt MPs?

Another favourite argument of the Tories and the No campaign is that AV is “too complicated” – that the British voter will not be able to cope with listing candidates in order of preference 1,2,3 rather than using a single cross. How patronising is this? Millions of Britons already take part in AV elections for organisations as diverse as the Royal British Legion to trades unions.

And where the No campaign isn’t disingenuous or patronising it’s confused. I’ve shared platforms with No spokespeople in the last week who have claimed AV will deliver “permanent coalition” (as Cameron did) and “bigger single party majorities” – sometimes in the same breath. You don’t have to be capable of counting 1,2,3 to spot the contradiction there.

No, the reason Cameron is resorting to untruths and scare stories and is putting the whole weight of the Conservative machine behind the No campaign is because AV would be bad for the Tories. The independent British Election Survey shows that under AV the Tories would have done worse in every election since 1983 – with the exception of 1987. That is why Tory MPs to a man and woman oppose reform.

But more seriously for Cameron personally, if he loses the referendum, will be his position with his own back-benchers. They are already growing mutinous and, as the Conservative’s house magazine, the Spectator, put it recently, if the public vote Yes in the referendum it would be “disastrous” for Cameron and his parliamentary party would become “almost uncontrollable.”

That’s why reform minded people who are still holding back because AV doesn’t offer them everything they want, or people who are tempted to support the No campaign to “give Nick Clegg a kicking” should remember that Cameron and the Tories will be the winners from a No vote on May 5th.

This is the first time that people have been asked for their say and it’s important that we have an open debate and that we both play by the same rules- outright lies should have no place in this referendum.