For or Against AV? We Are Missing the Point

By Nick Brown MP

Back in the bad old days, well, in the eighteenth century anyway, after the general election parliament would meet to consider petitions from individual constituencies saying that their election had been unfair and that the losing side had really won. The majority in the commons would then spend the first weeks of the parliament throwing out minority members, and replacing them with people more to their own liking. The merit of individual cases didn’t matter very much – the vote was down party lines. These bad old days when the winning party in parliament used its majority to change the rules and throw out its opponents are a long way behind us. Until now.

The referendum on the Alternative Voting system is not the real point. The government are changing the total number of MPs to a number that is better for the Conservative Party. They have ordered a new boundary review (we have only just had one) so that the boundaries will be redrawn in a way that will inevitably advantage the Conservative Party. This is just a cheat, and we should forcefully reject it.

If the Conservatives are genuine about evening up constituency numbers, why not ask the independent Boundary Commission to come forward with a scheme for public discussion and agreement in the normal way? The reason that they won’t do this is that a fair independent consideration of the issues would not necessarily reduce the number of seats or alter the boundaries to suit the Conservatives.

The Conservatives in parliament could not get away with this without the help of the Liberal Democrats. In exchange for voting for this fix, the Liberal Democrats get a referendum on the Alternative Voting system. This is not the voting system that Liberal Democrats really want. Nick Clegg famously described it as a “miserable little compromise”. However, they believe that second preference votes in constituencies where either the Conservatives or Labour are in third place will help them. Therefore, not for any reason of principle, but out of greed for political power, they are going along with it.

Bigger constituencies will “make MPs work harder”, as the Lib Dems say. Perhaps in the contented Home Counties Conservative MPs feel underworked, but in inner-city seats this change will mean MPs having less time to spend with each constituent. Furthermore, the value of your individual vote is diluted (because there are more voters). The AV voting system dilutes the value of your vote even further by giving fringe party voters another go. Surely it would be fairer if everyone’s vote counted the same, just the once.

The Tories have drawn up the legislation so that, even if the referendum endorses AV, parliament can’t actually bring in the new voting system without simultaneously passing the Boundary Commission’s new 600 seat electoral map of the UK. The Lib Dems were offered a package which overwhelmingly favours the Tories, and in their rush for power they fell for it. Regardless of the AV result on May 5th, the real outrage is that the Conservatives have fixed the election rules to disadvantage their opponents and make the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition better placed to win the next general election.