Power to the people - the opposite more like

The Labourites who voted against the Alternative Vote (AV) system because they wanted to hurt the Liberal Democrats seem to be lacking mental faculties over this issue. I know that this accounts for more than half of Labour voters but there you go. These Labour agents normally have contempt for the Lib Dems, seeing them as a mere pale imitation of Labour and a ‘progressive’ distraction – not of the pure faith, but heretics. It was their clan’s leaders that were in the ascendancy in coalition talks, scorning the Lib Dems concerns and seeing them as an adjunct to further propagate Labour party policy. Having driven the Lib Dems into the arms of the Conservatives (as well as the figures not quite adding up), they are now really angry at this ‘betrayal’. They lap up the unpopularity of the Lib Dems over controversial policies and hope to go for the party’s jugular in a way they haven’t been able to do since the ‘Gang of Four’ broke away to form the Social Democrat Party (SDP) – another bone of contention towards the Lib Dems, who are the successor party to the Liberals’ alliance with the SDP. Yet in siding with the Tories to defeat the AV referendum, the real ‘progressive’ turncoats are not the Lib Dems but themselves. Their blinkered, tribal approach means they can’t see the big picture. They cut off their nose to spite their face last Thursday.
Their supposed overall leader, Ed Miliband, can see the big picture – he is a strategist, as he was in the leadership election, as he is now; not just a pretty face (some would be crueller after witnessing him congratulate Labour activists in Gravesham, Kent with considerable dried saliva clinging to his lower lip). He sees the short-term damage. To the tribalists, opposing AV is just a way to stamp their principles, even if in defiance of their party leader. To the general public, Labour looks like a divided party and that is why it didn’t do as well as expected in the local elections and in Scotland (only Wales bucking the trend).
Miliband the younger also sees the long-term punishment. The AV referendum was only Part One of electoral reform; the sweetener for the Tories to get them to vote for it was the boundary changes. Ostensibly, it is to equalise the size of constituencies and make each MP responsible for roughly the same number of voters. But it will hit Labour hardest, eviscerating their number of strongholds in the inners cities and sparsely populated areas of Wales and Scotland. There will be fewer MPs after 2015, overwhelmingly at a cost to centre-left parties. AV would have cushioned this blow for the ‘progressives’. Labour regressives (for that is what they are) think that the spending cuts will make the Colaition unpopular and one big push will return them to power and in a way that they won’t have to share it. Such a mindset kept the Tories from government for 13 years. Imagine the changes top the country if Labour are kept from office until 2023. By voting down AV, this has made that prospect a lot more likely.
I supported AV, as did virtually everyone I knew outside of my workplace, not because it represented a full stop or closure on reform but because it was fairer than what is currently on offer, which is the equivalent of the nineteenth century ‘rotten boroughs’. In 2005, Labour got a 50+ seat majority with only 35% of the vote (and only a fifth of the total registered electorate). In 2010, the Liberal Democrat share of the vote went up but their number of MPs went down – if that isn’t a broken system, I don’t know what is. The exemplar of this failing system is 1983 when the Liberals/SDP Alliance got 25% of the electorate behind them and Labour got 27%, but despite that 2% difference, Labour got 208 seats and the Alliance ten times fewer MPs. First past the post is rotten to the core. No new democracy of the last twenty-five years has adopted it. No campaigners happily turned it around without answering it by saying that none of them took up AV either. However, let us remind ourselves that in the Coalition negotiations this was all the Tories would countenance in case they lost the referendum. Even in the USA, which is hailed as a place where first past the post works given the domination of the two-party system, is failed by this process – in 2000 (forget Nader and the Supreme Court), Al Gore got a million more votes than George W Bush and still lost. A rickety two hundred-year old system designed for 13 states and three million people can’t cope with 50 states and 350 million people. First past the post is antediluvian.
The success of the No campaign has been nasty, dirty and personal. If the Yes campaign had stooped to such low tactics they might have a had a chance. Their television campaign explained the merits of AV without hyperbole; the No TV advert by contrast clearly implied that the British people were too stupid to understand AV. Add in the falsehood-peddling billboard ads and public pronouncements and you have, in the words of Lord Ashdown, a “regiment of lies.” Moreover, the Yes campaign revealed who their donors were early on, with the No campaign temporising claiming that they would unveil them on conclusion of the referendum – there is still no word but no-one of any sense truly believed such lowlifes would keep their word.
The primary aim now must be to press for a fully elected House of Lords, the nominal upper chamber. Lord Reid (or Lard Reid to give him his native Scottish burr) attacks any notion of “electoral reform via the back door.” This has-been politician therefore proves he’s not just against AV but all worthwhile democracy and will do his utmost to sully his country’s image and procedure. To keep the life experience of members of the Lords – its biggest asset – elections should be by proportional representation (the standard transferable vote) with a party list that grandees would be plucked from to sit on the benches. That should satisfy everyone interested in fairness but the narrative of politics is about winners and losers (expect the Tories to mount a rearguard action to defeat any attempt at this) – some will always try to keep as much power from the voters as possible, even if that means tricking them.