Lessons from the AV Referendum
The referendum on the Alternative Vote has resulted in a resounding “no”. While the political repercussions of the result begin their long and inevitable echo towards 2015, I want to highlight a couple of lessons that we can learn from this before the dust settles.
1. Electoral systems are not sexy
I am a bit of a political geek, but even I have not been stirred to excitement by a several-month long national debate on the election process. The mechanics of electoral systems are often difficult to explain and the philosophies behind them are equally difficult to pin down. The names given to electoral systems sound technical (because they are) and as if they have come straight out of an A-Level statistical mathematics text-book (because they have). In short, this is pretty boring stuff. Important, yes, but boring. The method of electing our MPs has a significant bearing on how the Commons functions, but because electoral systems are snore-talk, this referendum campaign has rumbled on dangerously in the background of the political consciousness.
2. The quality of political debate in this country is appalling
It is debatable whether AV would have had a significant bearing on the results of any recent general election. Irregardless, a change in the voting system would have marked a significant change in the nature and role of Parliament. Under AV, voters would be able to rank the candidates in order of preference, and in a tight race where their preferred candidate came bottom their other preferences would be reallocated. In many cases, the eventual winner would have been pushed across the 50% threshold by a kind of coalition vote in their kind-of-favour. A candidate’s success or failure would stem from a weak “I suppose so” on the ballot papers of people who were not keen enough to vote for them as their first preference. The result would be a House of Commons largely filled by people who had constituency-level coalition help in order to put them there. MPs would be well aware of the source of their kind-of-support, and would take care to vote in such a way as to draw from the same pools in future elections. This is a constituency-based coalition system where a single member has to act like a government of mixed party representatives.
The results would be striking. Party whips would be weakened as MPs find their loyalty in a rainbow coalition, not a single group of supporters. Majority governments would consist of a rainbow electorate, where most members would actually carry a proportion of minority support with them to the Cabinet table. The dynamics of debate in the House of Commons would change as government MPs struggled to go hammer-and-tongs against the minority opposition party whose supporters gave the 10% needed to get themselves into power. Under majority governments, a more conciliatory course of debate would develop. It is likely that under AV minority governments would be more likely, again resulting in a more conciliatory course of debate.
Whichever side of the AV debate you come down on, it is clear that the electoral system used has a significant bearing on the nature of Parliament. But both the Yes and No campaigns failed to argue their cases in a convincing and thorough way. Both sides resorted to cheap tricks, misdirection, outright deception and downright ignorant reasoning. They ignored the huge principles and philosophies underpinning their respective stances and instead made insultingly false claims about their preferred system and the alternative. The No campaign’s obsession with the supposed cost of AV is a staggeringly bad defence of democracy, while the Yes campaign’s consistent refrain that AV is “fairer” is based entirely on subjective opinion rather than objective fact. The quality of the debate was dirt poor, and ironically for a debate revolving around the democratic process it devalued the very voters it was meant to defend.
3. The Left/Liberal echo chamber punches above its weight
Out of 440 voting areas, only 8 voted in favour of AV. They will be the subject of intense interest, and rightly so: it is a sign of just how strong a result this was that a majority of voters in so few areas supported AV. But the Yes-voting areas themselves send an important message about the political scene of the UK. They were:
- Cambridge
- Camden
- Edinburgh Central
- Glasgow Kelvin
- Haringey
- Islington
- Lambeth
- Southwark
Five of the eight areas are in London’s typically trendy, Prius-driving, Guardian-reading Tony-Blair-was-nothing-without-us locations. If such categories of people exist, these are stereotypically recognisable as the dwelling-places of the social influencers; the media elite. It is striking that they alone supported AV. The “progressive” voices of York Road and Primrose Hill are a socially dominant force, but they punch well above their electoral weight. These results are more embarrassing than if no areas had supported AV at all, because they demonstrate how the champagne socialists are titanically dwarfed by the mainstream masses. AV was supported by a narrow group of people from the liberal left, the Yes campaign drawing heavily on celebrity endorsements to add credence to the cause. There was no political breadth to the Yes campaign whatsoever. The Yes-ers saw themselves as part of the “progressive majority” but the results proved that such a majority only exists in the restaurants of Upper Street. If you live near and work with people like yourself, you begin to believe that everyone agrees with you all of the time – but that is very rarely the case. The “progressives” have a social influence well beyond their means.
Nowhere is this more clearly seen than on the social networks and new media sharing websites. Of my (admittedly broadly independently schooled and university-educated) Facebook friends, several adorned their profiles with Yes logos but not one showed their support for the No side. Likewise on Twitter, it appeared that the Yes-sayers had much more support than the Nay-sayers. This is unsurprising because it is extremely likely that I am part of the demographic most likely to vote Yes. But that only goes to emphasise my point: the Yes folk were talking to themselves and calling it debate. They created noise and got themselves noticed among people who were statistically inclined towards their cause or towards apathy. This got noticed, of course, but it was a mere hologram of support. The Yes lobby sought to recruit support from their own number: I would even go as far as to say that they directed their campaign towards those they thought most worthy of support. The No lobby, on the other hand, aggressively targeted those less likely to vote and those who were undecided. Their campaign was appalling, in many ways, but they won because they campaigned well against a latent assumption that people in the UK are broadly “progressive”. They are not, as this referendum shows.
4. “Electoral Reform” can be a misleading phrase
To reform something is to change it for the better. To refer to a move to AV as “electoral reform”, therefore, is a subjective comment. The phrase sounds intrinsically positive, indicating that the current system is broken and the proposed system is an improvement. But I have come to disagree with that sentiment.
Way back in 2006, in an AS-Level class in Government and Politics, in room 304, I gave a defiant presentation about the benefits of Proportional Representation. By the end of the class, I had totally changed my opinion on electoral “reform”. Ever the debater, I defended my position with tight arguments and verbal dexterity. In my own mind, though, I argued myself out of my strongly held position. “Proportional Representation is fairer”, I asserted, and gave statistics about how a minority of the popular vote can deliver a majority government in the Commons. But what is fairness at an election? Is it the direct correspondence between the proportion of votes cast and the proportion of bums on the green benches, or is it the knowledge that the influences in government directly relate to the popular vote? Eternal coalitions provide a forum for minority parties to firmly establish themselves at the helm of government policy, even if they are only supported by a tiny minority of the electorate. They are unshakable parasites, clinging unwanted to the underside of a government and misdirection the popular will. The concept of “fairness” is in the eye of the elector, not the election statistics.
With this shift in place, I began to question the so-called “progressive”, “reforming” or “fairer” voting systems. It is a statistical fact that no representative democracy is “fair” in a strict sense, and most people would agree that you must cede ground somewhere in the interests of practicality. In other words, when selecting a voting system one must pick where to express “fairness” and where to sacrifice it. Under PR, the “fairness” of a party system is balanced by the “unfairness” of minority influence in government and a list system which puts enormous power in the hands of party officials and away from voters. Under AV the “fairness” of most MPs gaining majority support in their constituency is balanced by the “unfairness” of some votes being counted more than once. Also, any change in the voting system would change the dynamic of discourse in Parliament. Some would call it “reform”, whereby adversarial politics is replaced by constructive discussion. I would call it a retrograde step, whereby more power is put in the hands of politicians and less power remains with the electorate to remove unpopular or unwanted individuals or groups from office. “Reform” is always, by definition, good, and I wholeheartedly support “electoral reform”. It just so happens that I do not believe AV is “reform”, and that PR is worse. So in any future debate I hope people will use these terms more carefully, and I hope they will promote any electoral system which empowers the electorate.
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