James Graham (Quaqeuam blog): Stuart Weir's summary of the Combining All Our Strengths seminar on electoral reform
was interesting, but it was disappointing to hear so much consensus
(group think?) around the idea that the only electoral game in town is
the alternative vote. It is disappointing because we have
heard this coming out of the Labour camp and some senior Lib Dems for
several years now and yet so little progress has been made. If
a Labour government was ever going to make this reform, it would have
had to have done so from a position of strength not at a time when it
is most vulnerable.
Usually
presented as the ultimate insider fix, if Labour reformers are serious
about this by now they should be able to name at least 100 Labour MPs
who are signed up to AV. The fact that instead we just
hear the names of the usual suspects (Peter Hain, Charles Clarke, John
Denham, possibly Jack Straw on a good day) suggests that the Labour Campaign for Electoral Reform (LCER), Fabians et al
really ought to spend a little less time telling the rest of us to fall
in line and a little more time shoring up their own support.
I
would summarise the push for AV as a call for a lot of pain in exchange
for very little gain. Pushing through this reform will mean facing down
the combined might of every single minority party, the Conservatives,
the media and a large proportion of the Labour Party. Even if the Lib Dem leadership were convinced of this strategy (which I doubt), a lot of the grassroots will be in uproar. It
will mean convincing the potential activist base to curb their
enthusiasm and compromise on almost everything that they believe in -
that tends not to work as much of a motivator. For every
supporter of first past the post who might be prepared to compromise on
AV there will be a supporter of proportional representation who would
not. The whole thing reeks of stalemate and Whitehall farce.
For
three manifestos in a row, Labour has stated that any change to the
electoral system for the Commons would be subject to a referendum. Supporters
of AV may believe the change they are proposing is small enough to not
trigger this pledge and it could be rushed through before the next
general election. They may well be right but it is highly doubtful their most stringent opponents and the general public will feel the same way. For
many the journey is as important as the destination and forcing through
any constitutional reform by the back door without broad cross-party
support - whether it is the Lisbon treaty, detention without charge or
even a change in the electoral system - is simply unacceptable.
If this were a rational debate I would expect a lot of opponents of AV to be wild supporters of it and vice versa. For many Labour AV supporters and their Tory opponents, AV would be a way of keeping the Conservatives out of power forever. A "progressive alliance" of Labour and Lib Dem voters would ensure they never got close. The problem with this theory is that it is 10 years out of date. As
Stuart states, it largely draws on the Democratic Audit's research in
1997 which found that under AV the Conservative rout in the general
election that year would have been even greater. This was based on (well founded) notions about Lib Dem and Labour voters' priorities, yet these priorities have changed. In 2005 we already began to observe what was dubbed "tactical unwind"
and this year we saw Lib Dem voters in London split evenly between Ken
Livingstone and Boris Johnson - an unthinkable turn of events back in
2000.
Even
if you do still buy into the idea that there is some kind of
progressive alliance, you shouldn't be blind to the fact that in a
number of recent opinion polls recently, the combined Labour and Lib
Dem support was smaller than the Conservatives' share. If an AV general election had taken place last month, Labour would have been wiped out. Under FPTP their inbuilt advantage would have given them some modicum of protection. So in the best Yes, Minister
sense of the word, it is certainly "brave" of Labour supporters to call
for AV, but they should be clear that what they are calling for is not
a safety net but a high wire act.
Given all that, it is surprising to me that people continue to bang the AV drum given the alternatives. A
fully proportional system for the House of Commons may not be an
option, but a semi-proportional one such as 3-member STV (the system
used for local government in Scotland) would appear to be a much neater
compromise. Big swings wouldn't distort the result. There would still be a strong constituency link. Boundaries could be set quickly (it doesn't take a genius to bunch three constituencies together). Voters
would still have a greater choice of candidates but in most cases
parties would still only field one or two per constituency. Parties
interested in gender and ethnic balance could adopt quota-based systems
for candidate selection which are likely to be far less divisive than
all-women and all-BAME shortlists. Fundamentally, it
would certainly not be any harder to implement at a Westminster level
and in some respects could be a great deal easier.
Finally, there is a tactical reason why electoral reformers ought to avoid an explicitly pro-AV strategy. You should never enter any negotiation by compromising as far as you are willing to go; it leaves you with no wriggle room. If
there really is no prospect of getting anything other than AV past the
political establishment, then asking them politely to do so is not
likely to achieve anything; worse, it could lead to a national rolling
out of the disastrous and offensive Supplementary Vote system. In
my view this has been the underlying flaw at the heart of the LCER
strategy for a number of years now, which is why so little progress has
been made. Far better to make the case for meaningful electoral reform first while being prepared to fall back on AV as a compromise.
