Sam Iles's Blog

Woe is me. The people have spoken: No to AV. And what a genuine shame.

And, unfortunately I find myself hit with the burning, horrible question of “what would the result have been if the question would have been, ‘do you want to switch to full proportional representation?’ instead?”.

Why did it fail? Firstly, I think there were a large number of people hell-bent on the idea of being mean to Clegg (who they seem to think is running the country) and thus voted against AV. It’s a shame if anyone did, because it really is pointless.

The second reason is that they just didn’t understand. I’ve had several conversations with people who didn’t know about the referendum’s details or what AV was (mostly through no fault of their own, of course). Presented with the option or “switch or change?” most people would pick “stick”.

The third reason is the group of people who we’re taken in by the lies of the No campaign.

Incredibly, before the campaign started back in September, 60% polled said the would vote Yes to AV. At the end of the campaign: 60% polled said they’d vote No.

I’ve written a lot on here over the last week about “AV Myths” and whether or not you agree with AV, you can’t deny the No campaign have lied a lot.

Even on the day of the vote, David Blunket – poster boy for the No campaign – admitted that the £250 million cost figure was completely made up.

The Yes campaign (the honest one) succumbed to the lies and clever rhetoric of the No group.

So sad.

Alas, I just hope this result doesn’t put off electoral reform for a generation. As we continue to switch between Labour and Tory governments for the next fifty years, they’ll always be able to cite this referendum as proof that everyone loves FPTP – when all it really proves is that everyone hates AV…

But, in wonderfully good news, the Green Party had a smashing time. They took control of the council in Brighton and Hove and got many, many councillors elsewhere (although, where I live, there was only the option to vote Tory or Lib Dem – no Green or Labour or anyone else – perhaps I should stand next time…?). Now, I just have to wait for the next general election.

Update: Having just checked my site stats for the last few weeks, I am pretty stunned. Over 6,000 – yes, 6,000 – unique people have read my AV blog posts, making a total of 10,000 blog readings. Usually, around 200-300 people read each of my posts (depending on what they are), so this is a big jump. It’s mostly thanks to links on Facebook (over 1,000 people came from there) and some high Google search rankings. SO, my point is: thank you for reading. I also think these numbers say something for the apparent interest in AV… Anyway: thank you.

On the 5th of May the UK will vote in a referendum on whether or not to change our voting system to AV.

The history: this referendum was brought about by the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats entering into a coalition government because no clear winner emerged from the General Election last year. A referendum was agreed in negotiations to make the deal better for the Lib Dems.

The Hidden Agendas: Let’s be very, very clear. Labour would NOT benefit from AV. The Conservatives would NOT benefit from AV. The Lib Dems WOULD benefit from AV. Subsequently, these parties are campaigning in roughly that way (Ed Milliband notwithstanding).

The Alternative Vote system: Let’s be very clear again. AV is a miserable, pathetic compromise from the Lib Dems. Nick Clegg should be thoroughly ashamed of himself for even offering it. It is not proportional representation. It is a small change to our current system which the Tories wouldn’t actually mind that much.

How it works: essentially, rather than pick one candidate, you choose several. You Mark your first choice with a 1, your second with a 2 and so on until you get bored or run out of candidates. If you wish, you can choose just one. If no candidate gets more than 50% of the vote, then second choices are pooled and given to different people and all kinds of maths happens until a clear winner supposedly emerges.

The idea that AV will give multiple votes is an outright lie. You still get one vote: it just might be in a different place.

I think it’s interesting at this point to ask: what would have happened if AV had been used in the last election? The results are very interesting:

Source: London School of Economics (naturally, to be taken with a pinch of salt as the results are based on surveys of people’s second, etc, choices then extrapolated for the entire voting population)

In this situation, the Lib Dems could have formed a majority coalition with either Labour or Conservative. Interestingly, the smaller parties don’t change at all. The Greens still get one (yay) and the BNP don’t get any. Much to the contrary of the “BNP will rule the country under AV” stories we keep hearing.

On the topic of the BNP: They don’t want AV because they feel they are close to getting a seat in some areas (with around 35% support in some areas). They know they will never get the 50% required for a seat. AV will not lead to more BNP seats. This is a lie made by the Yes to AV group.

Hung Parliaments: One of the scare tactics used by the anti-AV tribe is that AV will lead to more hung parliaments. Well, this isn’t strictly true for one thing. Sure, it may to lead to a few more, but they will still be once in a blue moon – not every election as people seem to think.

Secondly, I have come to the conclusion that hung parliaments are not actually a bad thing. Hear me out – if you have one party in power, you have one party’s ideals (and therefore ideas) becoming law. If, however, there is a coalition, it brings balance to the thought in Westminster.

A simplistic example might be university fees. If we had a pure Conservative government, I think it’s conceivable to imagine that there wouldn’t be a limit of the fees at all (as was the original recommendation). Or, perhaps there wouldn’t be the same support for poorer students. I think it was the Lib Dem presence that helped with this. As such, I think hung parliaments are actually rather good once in a while.

What AV means is simple this: people won’t waste their votes as much.

Let’s use me as a case study: I live in one of the most Conservative constituencies in the UK. If I vote for the Green Party, nothing will happen. My vote won’t do anything. But, if I vote for the Greens and then put the Lib Dems as my second choice (purely hypothetical…) and by some miracle the Conservatives don’t get over 50%, my vote will help and will do something.

This is the basic point: my vote matters more. And that is good.

As I say: AV is a miserable, shameful, scam of a compromise. It is, however, a clear step in the right direction.

If you vote Yes in May then you tell our future politicians that you aren’t happy with FPTP and that you want a change. You send a clear message that PR is good and you could be laying the groundwork for a full PR referendum in the distant future.

So that is my plea: vote YES to AV in May. Ignore the silly scare stories and blatant lies of scared Tories and make a real difference to our political system.

Yes, AV isn’t true PR. And some people might vote No on AV because they feel the reform doesn’t go far enough. I will leave you with the words of the Green Party’s Deputy Leader Adrian Ramsay against such thoughts:

“If you vote No in this referendum, nobody would know whether you were rejecting AV because you wanted genuine reform, or were simply opposing any reform. We think the only logical vote for reformers is to vote Yes to AV, because everyone who does so is clearly showing that they’re unhappy with the current system.”

TLDR: I like to cater for you, too. Summary: Vote Yes to AV.

The Green Party’s new election video is so good, so clever, so brilliant, I just had to share it with you. Enjoy:

It’s not very often I promote a piece on Radio 4’s ‘Women’s Hour’, but I shall now.

Caroline Lucas was on the show today talking about parliamentary reform, which I’ve blogged about before.

She has a discussion with the host and a woman who thinks reform would be bad (for reasons which I still don’t understand and for which Caroline explains away perfectly).

Anyway, the segment starts at the very beginning of the clip and lasts for just 10 minutes or so. Well worth a listen.

So, go ahead and listen here.