On May 5th the second ever referendum was held in Britain, and the first to be unconditionally binding. It was on the proposition to adopt AV as the voting system for Westminster instead of the existing grossly undemocratic first past the post (FPTP).
The result (as expected) was a resounding 70% plus NO victory - despite the depth of public anger over Parliamentary corruption in 2009 and since. This is a major setback for the cause of electoral or constitutional reform in Britain. It was a vote for a small-c conservative model of the British political system. It was the political equivalent of the Royal Wedding which took place shortly before.
It was clear from the start that a NO victory would be used by its supporters to entrench FPTP whilst a YES victory would have strengthened those who want a further process of change towards PR. Some localities did record a YES majority - mainly (but not only) inner-city working class multi-ethnic communities - but they were a small minority.
The Tories fought the referendum campaign with a ferocity which showed the depth of their commitment to the status quo - FPTP in particular, which they see as their ticket to the domination of the 21st century in the way they were the principal party of government in the 20th century. The NO campaign was massively funded with Tory money and staffed by Tory Central Office full-time staff. It was a stance which played well with the Tory right, who could not throw enough plaudits at Cameron after the victory was in the The lack lustre YES campaign, on the other hand, sleepwalked into the referendum oblivious to all this. Instead of conducting a campaign on the democracy of voting systems they relied on celebrities. They thought they could have a rational debate with dinosaurs. What they got was ranting nationalism and a tirade about babies dying in their cots if AV was introduced and soldiers being sent into battle without equipment. They went on about the cost of counting more than one vote on the ballot paper. Margaret Becket speaking for the NO campaign said that AV was 'deeply un-British' and argued that it subverts the principle of one-person-one The YES campaign was overwhelmed by the sheer weight of lies, distortion, and nationalism before it had got off of the Although all the main parties other than the Tories - Labour and the Lib Dems along with Plaid and the SN a YES vote, Labour was split from top to bottom with half its MPs supporting a NO vote. This split was major factor in the NO vote. Like the Tories the Labour dinosaurs want to preserve a two party system which they see as giving them and the Tories "buggins turn' in office to the exclusion of The left and the referendum. Unfortunately most of the left (other than the Green Party the CPGB and Workers Power) supported the NO campaign, although their support was a non-factor in the campaign itself. Much of the Labour Left and most of the trade unions also called for a No vote. The PCS and the CWU were exceptions to this The GMB, Aslef, the POA all and Unite all urged their members to vote against AV. GMB General Secretary Paul Kenny said his union had "long held the policy that the tried and tested FPTP is the system that should be used for general elections for the UK Parliament". He said FPTP delivered "strong, single-party government, was easy to understand". This was the mantra of the Tories and the mainstream Many on the left were drawn along behind the undoubtedly popular sentiment to give Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems a good kicking. This did not make sense even in its own terms, however. Whilst a NO vote would (and did) cause serious problems Clegg a YES vote would have caused equally if not greater problems for Cameron. Nick Clegg in nay case has his local election disaster to deal with.
The Guardian editorial put it well the day before the vote: 'A NO victory will weaken the Lib Dems. But it will not kill the coalition. Instead it will bind them together on increasingly Tory terms... A YES vote, by contrast, would enflame the Tory grassroots, threaten Mr Cameron's control over his party and strengthen the resolve of progressive Lib Dems to be more assertive about their party's values on social justice, civil liberty and democratic In any case why kick the puppet when you can kick the puppet master.
This whole approach, however, was seriously mistaken. The issue was not whether to kick Clegg or Cameron or the effects of AV on this or that party interest or political expediency. The issue was the democracy of the electoral system - whether AV was a step forward, democratically, * Britain and what the effect of the alternative referendum outcomes would have on further democratic reform in the future.
Since AV would indeed be a democratic advance, even if a small one, and a NO vote would entrench FPTP for the foreseeable future, a YES vote was correct. This is why the slogan of vote NO and fight for PR (which was popular on the left) made no sense. A No vote created a new barrier to PR - a referendum endorsement of FPTP.
Not that AV produces a proportional Parliament (any more than FPTP) since it only deals with voting at the constituency level. But the 50% requirement is progressive and AV allows the voter to support their preterred party whilst still registering a vote on the other parties.
This is good for small parties which are heavily discriminated against under FPTP. People can vote for the small party as a first preference and still express a preference between Tory and Labour for example. This tackles the problem of the wasted vote and the need for tactical voting. It also tackles, least to some extent, the 'safe seat' scenario which FPTP creates and which disenfranchises large swathes of voters at every election.
AV is certainly not the best system available (that would be PR) but it was the best on the ballot paper after Caroline Lucas's amendment calling for more choice on the ballot paper was rejected.
An argument advanced by the NO campaign was that AV leads to coalition government (it was remarkable to see Cameron as the leader of a coalition government elected under FPT stridently arguing this and failing to see the irony). Whether it true or not that AV would create more coalitions than FPP the problems of coalitionism cannot be dealt with by loading the electoral system to create distorted and undemocratic majorities. The starting point must be a system which accurately reflected the way the electorate An argument prevalent amongst NO vote supporters on the left was that voting reform was a distraction from the struggle against the cuts or that elections are not the main thing anyway' - which the SWP This reflects not only a deep-rooted economism in the British left but a serious underestimation of the importance of the struggle for the highest possible democracy whilst living under a capitalist society.
It is instructive that at the time of writing these lines tens of thousands of young people are on the streets of Spanish cities
page 18 of the scan
with a list of demands which includes the reform of the electoral system. They are right about this and the British left were This is not the history of the workers movement in Britain, however, which has historically addressed the issue of democratic representation. The Chartists in the 1840s took it up as did the early Marxist organisations at the end of the 19th century. The First International called both for PR and for universal suffrage, which was reflected in the votes for women campaigns in the first part of the 20th Another argument advanced by left supporters of the NO vote (Counterfire for example was that the 50% requirement was both undemocratic and a problem for the left since left candidates would find it very hard to surmount the 50% threshold. But why would we defend the left getting elected on a minority vote even if this prediction was true? Though whether left candidates with the ability to win under FPTP would actually find it more difficult under the AV 50% threshold is not at all clear.
None of this is workers democracy, of course, it is bourgeois democracy, but while we live under a capitalist system we are entitled to a system of election in which the number of MPs correspond to the number of votes a party receives in an election rather than being grossly distorted Nor is this just an abstract principle. Massive damage was done to the workers movement in the 1980 by governments with minority votes and big Parliamentary majorities. They were elected dictatorships without even a majority electoral mandate.
Today when the need for the left is to build broad pluralist parties to tackle the problem of working class representation, the electoral system for Westminster is a major obstacle. Under a fair voting system based on PR, and united under a single banner the left in Britain would be more than capable of winning and maintaining radical representation in Parliament.
This must be the guiding goal in mind when we look at the issue of the voting system. Does the proposition in front of us take us in that direction or not. The answer in this case would have been a Yes vote in the referendum on May 5th. No vote strengthened status quo In the event the fallout has been even worse than predicted since the NO vote supporters have presented their victory not just as settling the issue of electoral reform for a long time but as an endorsement of the status quo right across the The Tories have now virtually withdrawn their support from the mild reforms they had signed up to under the coalition agreement - when they were telling us that the existing political system in this country was 'broken' and had to be fixed. Now, with a NO victory behind them they are stridently defending the status quo.
This Tory U-turn was clear in the debate on the House of Lords Reform Bill currently going through Parliament as a government Today when the need for the left is to build broad pluralist parties to tackle the problem of working class representation, the electoral system for Westminster is a major obstacle. Under a fair voting system based on PR, and united under a single banner the left in Britain would be more than capable of winning and maintaining radical representation in Parliament. bill under the coalition agreement. Both Tory and Labour dinosaurs in both houses of Parliament (fresh from the NO campaign) joined forces to stamp all over it.
The Bill calls for a reduction of the House of Lords from 800 plus (Cameron has appointed 100 new Peers in the last year) to 300 with at least 80% elected by STV for a single 15-year term (with a third of seats up for election every 5 years) and with an option for a fully elected chamber.
In the Commons speaker after speaker defended the obscenity of an 800 plus wholly appointed House of Lords (with 26 Bishops) on the basis that the scale of the NO vote demonstrated that there is no appetite for any constitutional reform. The referendum proves, they ranted, that the British people' support the status quo and are not interested in any of these proposals for change.
Labour MP, David Winnick, said that he had never seen a government sponsored Bill met with such lack of enthusiasm from the government benches. In fact it was met with contempt and derision.
In the Lords, Lord Strathclyde (the Tory eader of the Lords) introducing the Bill on behalf of the coalition, made it clear that he was now against it and predicted that it would not get on the statute book before Yet both the Tories and Labour stood in the general election on manifestos calling for the reform of the House of Lords - on the basis that Lords reform has been on the Westminster agenda for over 100 years. In the election Labour and the Lib Dems had manifesto commitments for a fully elected' second chamber and the Tories for a 'mainly elected' second The clock is now being turned back on any sort of constitutional reform. Even the fixed-term Parliament, which was a modest progressive reform already introduced is being called back into question. This could well block any constitutional change between now and the constitutional crisis likely over Scottish independence which is posed by the SNP victory in Scotland.
The left should of couse reject the 15 year term and insist on a wholly elected second chamber with full powers of recall but it would be wrong to see the White Paper (or the current attack on it) as irrelevant. In this case, as with AV however, the relationship of forces is such that support for even the most modest reform is in the end better than voting for the status quo so beloved of the Tory grandees.