I don't know if anyone else is having trouble commenting via Disqus on the Spectator website, but I've made about seventeen attempts to post a response to someone called Sue Ward, without success. Just to get it out of my system, I'll post it here instead.
From Fraser Nelson's article : "the people on the streets yesterday were, in effect, protesting against the British public’s choice."
Me : Rubbish. The absolute most you could claim is that they were protesting against the choice made by a mere 37% of the electorate.
Sue Ward : At least they got a higher percentage of the vote than Labour this time OR LAST TIME. Public voted against getting rid of FPTP preferring the democratic system that has served us well for decades and was never considered a problem by the left when it put them in power. This is our democracy so stop being a sore loser.
Me (what I would have said if Disqus had let me post) : I'm sorry, Sue, but as you know perfectly well, that is completely untrue. The public did not "vote against getting rid of FPTP" - they voted against adopting AV, which is a majoritarian system that would have produced an even bigger Tory majority on just 37% of the vote. If anything, the public voted for the marginally more proportional of the two non-proportional systems on offer, but that doesn't mean FPTP is good enough for them. As you'll doubtless recall, the No2AV campaign even had a section on their website entitled "Yes to PR, No to AV".
I'm afraid trying to rewrite history now simply isn't going to wash. If the Tories had wanted to defeat PR, they should have put it on the ballot paper and made the case against it.
Showing posts with label AV referendum. Show all posts
Showing posts with label AV referendum. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 23, 2015
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Holyrood's disgrace
If today's events hadn't been so devastating for our democracy, I'd be laughing right now. Absurd though it may seem, the Scottish Parliament has just installed one of the losing candidates as its Presiding Officer. It was clearly the settled will of the chamber for Hugh Henry to be PO, as evidenced by his crushing victory over Christine Grahame and Tricia Marwick with an overwhelming 38.6% of the vote. Now, if it had been serious, that should have been it, innit, that's the British Way. But no. Under the crazy standing orders, we instead moved on to a farcical "second round" which allowed some MSPs to have their votes counted more than once, and after which a confused looking Ms Marwick was somehow declared the winner. Even more disgracefully, the second round is estimated to have cost decent, hard-working families up and down the land an eye-popping seven hundred and forty-eight billion pounds, as the extra ballot papers had to be specially shipped in from Brazil, and because Johann Lamont broke her pencil. Let's face it - we've just made ourselves the laughing-stock of the world.
When oh when is Holyrood going to restore some dignity to this country by introducing simple, cheap, fair One Person, One Vote? Isn't that what we fought the war for?
When oh when is Holyrood going to restore some dignity to this country by introducing simple, cheap, fair One Person, One Vote? Isn't that what we fought the war for?
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Colour coding genius, and a grand polling day for ducks
Well, what a wizard idea it was to make the referendum ballot paper grey. I almost put it in the wrong ballot box because it was barely distinguishable from the faded lilac paper in the gloom, but that's as nothing compared to what's happening in England - apparently the local election ballot papers are white. So no danger of confusion there! Reports are also surfacing of polling station staff not handing over referendum ballot papers unless specifically requested to do so - which if true ought to cause a monumental stooshie, but will probably be glossed over as per usual.
One thing that interested me was to see how well the 'Alex Salmond for First Minister' description stood out this time - after all, unlike 2007 it wasn't at the top of the ballot paper for alphabetical reasons, and wasn't the sole wording in the SNP box. But to my surprise I think it actually was quite eye-catching - probably because most other parties didn't bother with an additional description.
As for myself, I've spent part of polling day being royally entertained by right-wing Tories (ie. the most natural of all Yes to AV voters) who assure me that my 'arrogance' in pointing out the lies of the No campaign has single-handedly persuaded them all to "switch from Yes to No" at the last minute. Now, obviously I'll be gutted to be solely responsible for any defeat, but I can't deny it's rather thrilling to discover that I unwittingly wield such enormous power. Even better, one of the "Yes voters" I alienated was none other than Martin Coxall, the former Tory council candidate who you may remember had his fifteen seconds of fame last year after donning a John Prescott mask, allegedly assualting two female Labour party workers, and being arrested for his troubles. Yup, these are quality votes I've been squandering.
Last but not least, I have a nagging worry there may be something symbolic about a campaign of glorious weather that concludes with a polling day of relentless drizzle. Let's hope it's not a grey day presaging a Gray outcome...
One thing that interested me was to see how well the 'Alex Salmond for First Minister' description stood out this time - after all, unlike 2007 it wasn't at the top of the ballot paper for alphabetical reasons, and wasn't the sole wording in the SNP box. But to my surprise I think it actually was quite eye-catching - probably because most other parties didn't bother with an additional description.
As for myself, I've spent part of polling day being royally entertained by right-wing Tories (ie. the most natural of all Yes to AV voters) who assure me that my 'arrogance' in pointing out the lies of the No campaign has single-handedly persuaded them all to "switch from Yes to No" at the last minute. Now, obviously I'll be gutted to be solely responsible for any defeat, but I can't deny it's rather thrilling to discover that I unwittingly wield such enormous power. Even better, one of the "Yes voters" I alienated was none other than Martin Coxall, the former Tory council candidate who you may remember had his fifteen seconds of fame last year after donning a John Prescott mask, allegedly assualting two female Labour party workers, and being arrested for his troubles. Yup, these are quality votes I've been squandering.
Last but not least, I have a nagging worry there may be something symbolic about a campaign of glorious weather that concludes with a polling day of relentless drizzle. Let's hope it's not a grey day presaging a Gray outcome...
The wall-to-wall insult to our intelligence that has been the 'No to AV' campaign
As we move into polling day for only the second UK-wide referendum in history, I think this recent tweet sums up the position rather succinctly -
"Having spoken to a few & watching Facebook.. those voting YES tomorrow understand why. Those voting NO don't. Which is scary."
There's no great mystery as to why that's happening - the Yes campaign have actually been making the case for AV, while the No side have utterly failed to make a case for the current system. Their main strategy has been to sow confusion and doubt over what AV would mean, often contradicting themselves to the point of absurdity in the process. In fact, it's been such a cynical effort that many opponents of electoral reform haven't even bothered trying to defend the campaign - their holding line has been "but the Yes campaign has been just as bad". Well, it hasn't. It hasn't been perfect by any means, but the closing broadcast fronted by Dan Snow was 100% focussed on illuminating for voters how AV actually works (as opposed to the fantasy) and the strong case for concluding that it produces outcomes that reflect the will of the electorate much more accurately. The final No broadcast, by contrast, served up yet more drivel about how AV would mark the end of "one person, one vote", and the entirely invented "cost" of the system. (And that's leaving aside the appearance of a Rogue's Gallery of some of the most thuggish and illiberal politicians this country has produced in recent times, who have all - coincidentally - lined up on the No side.)
The magnus opus of the campaign of deception was of course the glossy leaflet the No side sent out to every household in the land a couple of weeks ago. I meant to dissect it at the time, but now is as good time as any. Let's take it in bite-sized chunks...
The Cost :
In spite of the fact that the figure has been long since discredited, the leaflet lies through its teeth with the headline "The Cost of AV is £250 Million". It then brazenly begins its breakdown of that number by revealing that £91 million of it is the cost of the referendum itself. In other words, money that will have been spent regardless of whether the result is Yes or No. By this logic, we'd be equally justified in calling the £91 million "the cost of retaining the current electoral system". Or perhaps their implicit pitch is "Vote No and this referendum will never have happened"?
The bulk of the remainder of the "£250 million" is the cost of counting machines - which it has been repeatedly pointed out won't be needed, since all the countries that use AV count votes by hand, just as we do at present. Of course counting machines can be used under AV - but equally they can be used under the current system, or under any other system. Perhaps the No campaigners would like to take up this issue if we ever have a referendum on whether to switch to using counting machines - but we're not having one of those at the moment. Indeed, the best reason of all for being reassured that we wouldn't use such machines if we move to AV is that the decision would be taken by the UK government - which is dominated by the very No to AV campaigners in the Tory party who have been prattling on about the subject for months. You can't get a much more effective 'double-lock' than that.
The last bit of the breakdown of the "cost" is £26 million for explaining the system to voters. Well, the Electoral Commission runs information campaigns before each and every significant election, so it seems reasonable to assume that explanations of the new system could be easily incorporated into those.
In a nutshell, switching to AV would cost virtually NOTHING.
What the "money saved" could be spent on :
(Note - to deal with the idiocy of this bit of the leaflet, we have to assume for the sake of argument that the £250 million figure has some validity, which of course it doesn't.) We're offered some startlingly specific examples of what we could have "instead of AV" - 2,504 doctors, perhaps, or if it's more to your taste, 35,885 hip replacements. The implicit argument here is that it's a moral outrage if good money is ever spent on absolutely anything other than these core priorities. Well, that's intriguing, because one thing that the sight of the aforementioned Rogue's Gallery of No supporters brought home the other night is that there's a considerable overlap between opponents of AV and those who are most keen on wasting billions of pounds on the utterly useless status symbol of Trident. Perhaps they'd like to talk to us some time about the 2,457,519,874 teachers they decided were far less important than the nominal capacity of David Cameron to annihilate the population of St Petersburg on a whim?
And it has to be said that the No campaign have spent rather a lot of money themselves. Surely according to their own laudable strictures that money ought to have been donated to a medical charity instead, or some such other good cause?
The Map :
It's a tough call, but arguably the most ludicrous part of the leaflet is the map which splits the world into just two camps - those countries that use AV, and those that don't. So apparently all the many things that divide countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia, North Korea and the UK (you know, whether they have Islamic theocracy, absolute monarchy, communist dictatorship, or "good old" first-past-the-post democracy) pale into insignificance compared to the one and only thing that unites them - that they don't use AV. This argument becomes even sillier when you bear in mind that many of the "non-AV countries" (France, for instance) use run-off systems that are actually much closer in principle to AV than to our current system.
Now, if I was going to split the democratic world into two camps (and it can really only be done for the democratic world - praying in aid the likes of Burma is daft and offensive beyond words), the division would be between those countries which have introduced some kind of electoral reform, and those that still use first-past-the-post - mainly because they inherited it from the British colonial era and haven't got round to changing it. The primary reason that only three countries specifically use AV is quite simply that most countries go the whole hog when they introduce electoral reform, and jump direct to full-blown proportional representation. Most Yes campaigners would like to do that here. Who stopped us from making that choice? Why, that would be the No campaigners in the Tory party, who brought forward a referendum on AV alone as "a final offer" to the Liberal Democrats, to "go the extra mile". It's a bit rich for them to now claim that the wrong sort of electoral reform is on the ballot paper, when they were the ones who put it there and denied us every other choice.
The Sporting Metaphor :
Ah, a No to AV leaflet simply wouldn't be complete without a picture of a sporting event, with an arrow pointing to a losing athlete, designating him as "the winner under AV". The problem here is that I can clearly detect a winning line in that picture, which makes it grossly unrealistic if it's supposed to be a depiction of the current voting system. AV has a clearly defined and logical winning post (50% of the vote) that everyone can understand - ironically, the so-called 'first-past-the-post' system has nothing of the kind. How many 100m races have you seen in which the contest was called off and a winner declared after 37 metres, because the judges felt it was "too complicated" to wait and see who would have been ahead after 100 metres? That's the present Westminster electoral system in a nutshell. The winning line might be 24% of the vote, it might be 48% - don't worry your pretty little heads about it, you'll find out after the race. See here for a jaw-dropping example of a candidate elected under first-past-the-post on the basis of just 7.7% of the vote. That happened in Papua New Guinea - which might just give you a small clue as to the rather good reason why that country switched to AV in the first place.
The Scottish Factor :
As far as I can see, the only nod to Scottish distinctiveness in the leaflet is some small print that indirectly acknowledges that we have already scrapped first-past-the-post for most elections, but asks us to consider this -
"There are already five different voting system in use in the UK - do we really need to complicate things with another?"
Just how slippery can they get - are they talking about "we in Scotland" (as Mrs Thatcher would say) or "we in the UK"? If the former, we in fact have four electoral systems at present - AMS for the Scottish Parliament, first-past-the-post for Westminster, a list system for the European Parliament, and STV for local elections. If we vote Yes to AV, we'll still have four - AMS, AV, list and STV. I don't know about you, but I make that exactly the same number.
* * *
I'm under no illusions here - if the polls are to be believed, the vested interests in the London establishment (not least in the odious right-wing press) are about to succeed in snuffing out hope for change. But this has been my potted guide to why they don't deserve to succeed - and I still hope that as many people as possible vote Yes, to keep the electoral reform torch burning, however dimly.
"Having spoken to a few & watching Facebook.. those voting YES tomorrow understand why. Those voting NO don't. Which is scary."
There's no great mystery as to why that's happening - the Yes campaign have actually been making the case for AV, while the No side have utterly failed to make a case for the current system. Their main strategy has been to sow confusion and doubt over what AV would mean, often contradicting themselves to the point of absurdity in the process. In fact, it's been such a cynical effort that many opponents of electoral reform haven't even bothered trying to defend the campaign - their holding line has been "but the Yes campaign has been just as bad". Well, it hasn't. It hasn't been perfect by any means, but the closing broadcast fronted by Dan Snow was 100% focussed on illuminating for voters how AV actually works (as opposed to the fantasy) and the strong case for concluding that it produces outcomes that reflect the will of the electorate much more accurately. The final No broadcast, by contrast, served up yet more drivel about how AV would mark the end of "one person, one vote", and the entirely invented "cost" of the system. (And that's leaving aside the appearance of a Rogue's Gallery of some of the most thuggish and illiberal politicians this country has produced in recent times, who have all - coincidentally - lined up on the No side.)
The magnus opus of the campaign of deception was of course the glossy leaflet the No side sent out to every household in the land a couple of weeks ago. I meant to dissect it at the time, but now is as good time as any. Let's take it in bite-sized chunks...
The Cost :
In spite of the fact that the figure has been long since discredited, the leaflet lies through its teeth with the headline "The Cost of AV is £250 Million". It then brazenly begins its breakdown of that number by revealing that £91 million of it is the cost of the referendum itself. In other words, money that will have been spent regardless of whether the result is Yes or No. By this logic, we'd be equally justified in calling the £91 million "the cost of retaining the current electoral system". Or perhaps their implicit pitch is "Vote No and this referendum will never have happened"?
The bulk of the remainder of the "£250 million" is the cost of counting machines - which it has been repeatedly pointed out won't be needed, since all the countries that use AV count votes by hand, just as we do at present. Of course counting machines can be used under AV - but equally they can be used under the current system, or under any other system. Perhaps the No campaigners would like to take up this issue if we ever have a referendum on whether to switch to using counting machines - but we're not having one of those at the moment. Indeed, the best reason of all for being reassured that we wouldn't use such machines if we move to AV is that the decision would be taken by the UK government - which is dominated by the very No to AV campaigners in the Tory party who have been prattling on about the subject for months. You can't get a much more effective 'double-lock' than that.
The last bit of the breakdown of the "cost" is £26 million for explaining the system to voters. Well, the Electoral Commission runs information campaigns before each and every significant election, so it seems reasonable to assume that explanations of the new system could be easily incorporated into those.
In a nutshell, switching to AV would cost virtually NOTHING.
What the "money saved" could be spent on :
(Note - to deal with the idiocy of this bit of the leaflet, we have to assume for the sake of argument that the £250 million figure has some validity, which of course it doesn't.) We're offered some startlingly specific examples of what we could have "instead of AV" - 2,504 doctors, perhaps, or if it's more to your taste, 35,885 hip replacements. The implicit argument here is that it's a moral outrage if good money is ever spent on absolutely anything other than these core priorities. Well, that's intriguing, because one thing that the sight of the aforementioned Rogue's Gallery of No supporters brought home the other night is that there's a considerable overlap between opponents of AV and those who are most keen on wasting billions of pounds on the utterly useless status symbol of Trident. Perhaps they'd like to talk to us some time about the 2,457,519,874 teachers they decided were far less important than the nominal capacity of David Cameron to annihilate the population of St Petersburg on a whim?
And it has to be said that the No campaign have spent rather a lot of money themselves. Surely according to their own laudable strictures that money ought to have been donated to a medical charity instead, or some such other good cause?
The Map :
It's a tough call, but arguably the most ludicrous part of the leaflet is the map which splits the world into just two camps - those countries that use AV, and those that don't. So apparently all the many things that divide countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia, North Korea and the UK (you know, whether they have Islamic theocracy, absolute monarchy, communist dictatorship, or "good old" first-past-the-post democracy) pale into insignificance compared to the one and only thing that unites them - that they don't use AV. This argument becomes even sillier when you bear in mind that many of the "non-AV countries" (France, for instance) use run-off systems that are actually much closer in principle to AV than to our current system.
Now, if I was going to split the democratic world into two camps (and it can really only be done for the democratic world - praying in aid the likes of Burma is daft and offensive beyond words), the division would be between those countries which have introduced some kind of electoral reform, and those that still use first-past-the-post - mainly because they inherited it from the British colonial era and haven't got round to changing it. The primary reason that only three countries specifically use AV is quite simply that most countries go the whole hog when they introduce electoral reform, and jump direct to full-blown proportional representation. Most Yes campaigners would like to do that here. Who stopped us from making that choice? Why, that would be the No campaigners in the Tory party, who brought forward a referendum on AV alone as "a final offer" to the Liberal Democrats, to "go the extra mile". It's a bit rich for them to now claim that the wrong sort of electoral reform is on the ballot paper, when they were the ones who put it there and denied us every other choice.
The Sporting Metaphor :
Ah, a No to AV leaflet simply wouldn't be complete without a picture of a sporting event, with an arrow pointing to a losing athlete, designating him as "the winner under AV". The problem here is that I can clearly detect a winning line in that picture, which makes it grossly unrealistic if it's supposed to be a depiction of the current voting system. AV has a clearly defined and logical winning post (50% of the vote) that everyone can understand - ironically, the so-called 'first-past-the-post' system has nothing of the kind. How many 100m races have you seen in which the contest was called off and a winner declared after 37 metres, because the judges felt it was "too complicated" to wait and see who would have been ahead after 100 metres? That's the present Westminster electoral system in a nutshell. The winning line might be 24% of the vote, it might be 48% - don't worry your pretty little heads about it, you'll find out after the race. See here for a jaw-dropping example of a candidate elected under first-past-the-post on the basis of just 7.7% of the vote. That happened in Papua New Guinea - which might just give you a small clue as to the rather good reason why that country switched to AV in the first place.
The Scottish Factor :
As far as I can see, the only nod to Scottish distinctiveness in the leaflet is some small print that indirectly acknowledges that we have already scrapped first-past-the-post for most elections, but asks us to consider this -
"There are already five different voting system in use in the UK - do we really need to complicate things with another?"
Just how slippery can they get - are they talking about "we in Scotland" (as Mrs Thatcher would say) or "we in the UK"? If the former, we in fact have four electoral systems at present - AMS for the Scottish Parliament, first-past-the-post for Westminster, a list system for the European Parliament, and STV for local elections. If we vote Yes to AV, we'll still have four - AMS, AV, list and STV. I don't know about you, but I make that exactly the same number.
* * *
I'm under no illusions here - if the polls are to be believed, the vested interests in the London establishment (not least in the odious right-wing press) are about to succeed in snuffing out hope for change. But this has been my potted guide to why they don't deserve to succeed - and I still hope that as many people as possible vote Yes, to keep the electoral reform torch burning, however dimly.
Monday, April 25, 2011
I agree with Nick (first time in a year) : Salmond should be involved in 'national' TV leaders' debates
From the Independent on Sunday :
"After emerging victorious from the TV debates last year, Clegg has been imagining a leaders' broadcast on the referendum. "So, on one side of the stage, pro-AV, you'd have me, Ed Miliband, (Green) Caroline Lucas, (Ukip) Nigel Farage, (SNP) Alex Salmond and (Plaid Cymru) Ieuan Wyn Jones.""
Not to worry that it hasn't come to pass this time, Nick - we'll be on hand to remind you of your very fair-minded suggestion for a leaders' debate line-up when the next Westminster general election comes round...
"After emerging victorious from the TV debates last year, Clegg has been imagining a leaders' broadcast on the referendum. "So, on one side of the stage, pro-AV, you'd have me, Ed Miliband, (Green) Caroline Lucas, (Ukip) Nigel Farage, (SNP) Alex Salmond and (Plaid Cymru) Ieuan Wyn Jones.""
Not to worry that it hasn't come to pass this time, Nick - we'll be on hand to remind you of your very fair-minded suggestion for a leaders' debate line-up when the next Westminster general election comes round...
Saturday, April 23, 2011
The current voting system just isn't cricket
I see that the No to AV campaign wheeled out cricket stars Darren Gough and David Gower a few days ago as their latest converts. Which is intriguing, given that the No side have had such a predilection for sporting analogies about 'losers winning' and so on. Perhaps, given the circumstances, they'd care to explain how the following things can - and regularly do - happen in cricket...
1) The team that scores far fewer runs over a five-day Test Match 'draws' the game.
2) The team that scores fewer runs in a one-day international or Twenty20 match actually wins the game, courtesy of the Duckworth-Lewis method.
Does this mean that the game of cricket itself is not a "level playing field", to use Gough's own words? Quite the reverse. It would be utterly insane to automatically award a win in a rain-interrupted one-day international match to the side with most runs, regardless of whether they had also batted for more overs. It would be an incomplete picture. Just like the current voting system for Westminster uses an incomplete picture to award a win to a candidate with as little as 26% of the vote, taking no account of whether the majority of the electorate would have much preferred a different candidate. A vivid example of this problem is the Belfast South result in the 2005 election -
Unionist vote (DUP/UUP) - 51.1%
Nationalist vote (SDLP/Sinn Féin) - 41.3%
Under the current system, a nationalist won. Under AV (or indeed under any run-off system), a unionist would have won. Which would have been fairer? In what sense did the nationalist who was elected truly have a mandate?
1) The team that scores far fewer runs over a five-day Test Match 'draws' the game.
2) The team that scores fewer runs in a one-day international or Twenty20 match actually wins the game, courtesy of the Duckworth-Lewis method.
Does this mean that the game of cricket itself is not a "level playing field", to use Gough's own words? Quite the reverse. It would be utterly insane to automatically award a win in a rain-interrupted one-day international match to the side with most runs, regardless of whether they had also batted for more overs. It would be an incomplete picture. Just like the current voting system for Westminster uses an incomplete picture to award a win to a candidate with as little as 26% of the vote, taking no account of whether the majority of the electorate would have much preferred a different candidate. A vivid example of this problem is the Belfast South result in the 2005 election -
Unionist vote (DUP/UUP) - 51.1%
Nationalist vote (SDLP/Sinn Féin) - 41.3%
Under the current system, a nationalist won. Under AV (or indeed under any run-off system), a unionist would have won. Which would have been fairer? In what sense did the nationalist who was elected truly have a mandate?
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Your super soaraway Salmond
Much as I've become an enthusiastic supporter of the Yes to Fairer Votes campaign, one thing that irritated me slightly in the early days was that I kept receiving emails during the passage of the referendum bill inviting me to revel in the fact that - "We're almost there, James! It looks like we're going to have our referendum on May 5th!". I of course didn't for one second want a referendum on the same day as the Scottish Parliament election, and the fact that the London coalition selected that day of all days drove a coach and horses through their much-vaunted 'respect agenda' towards Scotland.
Until now, it appeared I needn't have worried - the AV campaign has been staggeringly low-profile for what is only the second UK-wide plebiscite in history. However, that seems to be changing slightly with the widespread reporting of cross-party events by both sides, and that's where the problem kicks in - it means that the news will once again be unduly dominated by Westminster politicians talking about a Westminster issue, right in the heart of the Holyrood campaign period. I suppose we should just be grateful that the broadcasters haven't used the vote as an excuse to hold another series of rigged Prime Ministerial (sic) Debates!
In any case, it's hard to be too downbeat on the evening that the country's biggest-selling newspaper comes out for the SNP. It's too early to assess the likely effect - in one sense it just evens up the score, with the Record continuing to churn out mindless propaganda for Labour as only they know how. However, the fact that the Sun's stance is completely new (and indeed a total reversal of their notorious 2007 hatchet job attempt) might just mean that it carries a bit more punch with readers.
And one other small piece of good news tonight - the combined support for the SNP and Plaid Cymru in ICM's latest GB-wide poll of Westminster voting intentions stands at a healthy 5%.
Until now, it appeared I needn't have worried - the AV campaign has been staggeringly low-profile for what is only the second UK-wide plebiscite in history. However, that seems to be changing slightly with the widespread reporting of cross-party events by both sides, and that's where the problem kicks in - it means that the news will once again be unduly dominated by Westminster politicians talking about a Westminster issue, right in the heart of the Holyrood campaign period. I suppose we should just be grateful that the broadcasters haven't used the vote as an excuse to hold another series of rigged Prime Ministerial (sic) Debates!
In any case, it's hard to be too downbeat on the evening that the country's biggest-selling newspaper comes out for the SNP. It's too early to assess the likely effect - in one sense it just evens up the score, with the Record continuing to churn out mindless propaganda for Labour as only they know how. However, the fact that the Sun's stance is completely new (and indeed a total reversal of their notorious 2007 hatchet job attempt) might just mean that it carries a bit more punch with readers.
And one other small piece of good news tonight - the combined support for the SNP and Plaid Cymru in ICM's latest GB-wide poll of Westminster voting intentions stands at a healthy 5%.
Monday, April 18, 2011
Actions speak louder than words, no. 279 : Scottish Labour godfather enters unholy alliance with the Tories in middle of Holyrood campaign
If you ever had any doubts that Yes to AV is the right side of the argument, this should helpfully dispel them for you -
"...former Labour Cabinet minister Lord [John] Reid is today due to share a platform for the No campaign with Prime Minister David Cameron.
The former home secretary, who is to appear at the event in London with Mr Cameron, claimed first past the post was the "British way".
He said: "There are some issues so important that they transcend party politics, issues on which people expect politicians to put aside their party differences for the sake of the people and the public interest...""
This, remember, is the Labour politician who is so absurdly and destructively tribal that in the aftermath of last year's general election he made abundantly clear that he much preferred to see a Tory government take office to the prospect of having to work with other parties (ie. the Lib Dems, SNP and Plaid Cymru) to form a non-Tory administration. And what is this issue that is of such overwhelming national importance that it could possibly coax him into joining forces with his supposed arch-enemies just twelve months after helping them into office? Oh, the threat to the cosy system that allows both Tory and Labour MPs alike to be elected on minority shares of the vote, naturally. Nice to see you've got your priorities straight, John - although how many voters will believe this is all for the 'sake of the people' and not the sake of your party is another matter entirely.
As far as I can see, the attitude of leading SNP figures towards AV ranges from moderate support to indifference, but one thing's for sure - they won't be giving succour to the axe-wielding Tories by sharing a platform with David Cameron in the middle of an election campaign. Perhaps it's time to give one of John Reid's own 'greatest hits' (ahem) a spin, suitably altered to fit the occasion -
"And where were you, John, when the Tories were slashing jobs and public services?
You keep making speeches for the Tories, John. We'll keep making history for Scotland."
"...former Labour Cabinet minister Lord [John] Reid is today due to share a platform for the No campaign with Prime Minister David Cameron.
The former home secretary, who is to appear at the event in London with Mr Cameron, claimed first past the post was the "British way".
He said: "There are some issues so important that they transcend party politics, issues on which people expect politicians to put aside their party differences for the sake of the people and the public interest...""
This, remember, is the Labour politician who is so absurdly and destructively tribal that in the aftermath of last year's general election he made abundantly clear that he much preferred to see a Tory government take office to the prospect of having to work with other parties (ie. the Lib Dems, SNP and Plaid Cymru) to form a non-Tory administration. And what is this issue that is of such overwhelming national importance that it could possibly coax him into joining forces with his supposed arch-enemies just twelve months after helping them into office? Oh, the threat to the cosy system that allows both Tory and Labour MPs alike to be elected on minority shares of the vote, naturally. Nice to see you've got your priorities straight, John - although how many voters will believe this is all for the 'sake of the people' and not the sake of your party is another matter entirely.
As far as I can see, the attitude of leading SNP figures towards AV ranges from moderate support to indifference, but one thing's for sure - they won't be giving succour to the axe-wielding Tories by sharing a platform with David Cameron in the middle of an election campaign. Perhaps it's time to give one of John Reid's own 'greatest hits' (ahem) a spin, suitably altered to fit the occasion -
"And where were you, John, when the Tories were slashing jobs and public services?
You keep making speeches for the Tories, John. We'll keep making history for Scotland."
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Labour MP helpfully lives up to caricature
Tuesday evening's very funny broadcast by the Yes to AV campaign featured a self-satisfied MP being confronted by voters while he is busy enjoying the finer things in life. They suggest to him that AV will make him work harder for them by forcing him to seek 50% of the vote at general elections. "Work...harder?" he mouths disdainfully, with the emphasis on the word that seems to cause him almost physical pain. "Can we rely on you to vote Yes on May 5th?" the voters press him. "Certainly not!" is the emphatic reply.
Yesterday, in a stunning exemplar of the famed self-awareness of certain Labour MPs, Ian Murray announced that he was so miffed at the suggestion in the broadcast that he and his colleagues could possibly "work harder" that he has now decided to vote No, having previously been undecided. In other words, he's quite brazenly admitting that he's made this important decision entirely on the basis of his wounded pride as an MP, rather than on the merits of the two voting systems we're choosing between. Yep, Ian, that's a grand way of demonstrating to us all that the Yes campaign's depiction of MPs as being totally self-absorbed and self-interested is well wide of the mark.
It's also worth pointing out that if the message of the broadcast hit such a nerve with MPs, it's also likely to have hit a nerve with voters - but probably in a slightly different way.
*
Scottish Conservative leader Annabel Goldie came up with a devilishly original ploy on Newsnight Scotland last night, dodging an awkward question by flatly denying that she is the leader of the Scottish Conservative Party. Now, if she tries that defence in one of the leaders' debates, we really will be entering Alice in Wonderland territory...
Yesterday, in a stunning exemplar of the famed self-awareness of certain Labour MPs, Ian Murray announced that he was so miffed at the suggestion in the broadcast that he and his colleagues could possibly "work harder" that he has now decided to vote No, having previously been undecided. In other words, he's quite brazenly admitting that he's made this important decision entirely on the basis of his wounded pride as an MP, rather than on the merits of the two voting systems we're choosing between. Yep, Ian, that's a grand way of demonstrating to us all that the Yes campaign's depiction of MPs as being totally self-absorbed and self-interested is well wide of the mark.
It's also worth pointing out that if the message of the broadcast hit such a nerve with MPs, it's also likely to have hit a nerve with voters - but probably in a slightly different way.
*
Scottish Conservative leader Annabel Goldie came up with a devilishly original ploy on Newsnight Scotland last night, dodging an awkward question by flatly denying that she is the leader of the Scottish Conservative Party. Now, if she tries that defence in one of the leaders' debates, we really will be entering Alice in Wonderland territory...
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
The first principle of 'first past the post' is that no-one has a clue where the 'post' actually is
I've just caught up with the No to AV television ad. Based on the delights of the poster campaign to date, I was naturally expecting the following tearful dialogue at a hospital bedside -
"But what happened, doctor? He seemed to be getting better..."
"I'm so sorry, Mrs. Peters. It was the alternative voting system."
But, no, it seems they've now moved on from tragedy to 'comedy'. We were treated to three basic messages - AV makes coalitions likely (it doesn't), AV means losers win and winners lose (they're thinking of the current system), and AV is really, really complicated (it's actually simpler than the voting system on the X Factor). To drive the latter point home, a 'teacher' was depicted trying to explain this fantastically straightforward system to her 'students' in the most garbled way imaginable. Having evidently concluded that her charges were nowhere near befuddled enough, she then resorted to a piece of outright invention from her trusty 'AV manual' -
"No, you can only use the third preferences for those people who have already been eliminated twice."
Now, of course what she's describing here bears absolutely no resemblance to AV, but all the same, a voting system under which a candidate can be eliminated, reinstated and eliminated again (at which point the returning officer rings round the voters and informs them that they can now use their third preferences if they'd like) certainly sounds like cracking good fun. Can we have a referendum on that one as well, please?
Meanwhile, the 'losers win' point was illustrated by means of the ubiquitous horse-race visual metaphor, with the 'winning jockey' moaning that he'd passed the finishing line first, but AV had handed victory to the horse that came in third. Now, this bugs me, because as I've pointed out before, if there's one system that can most accurately be described as 'first past the post', it's actually AV - for the very simple reason that it provides a fixed 'winning post', namely 50% of the vote. By contrast, under our supposedly 'simple' current system, no-one has the faintest idea what will constitute the winning post - it might be as little as 15% of the vote, or as much as 45%. Where it finally falls is determined by a complex mixture of how many candidates there are, and how evenly the vote is spread between them. So to return to the horse-racing metaphor, Jason Maguire may have thought he won the Grand National on Saturday, but if the race had been conducted according to the principles of our current voting system he might well have had this to say afterwards -
"I thought I'd won, because I was ahead after all nineteen fences, and I was still ahead where the finishing line normally is, but now they're saying they've moved the winning post back to fence 11 because there were so many horses in the race, and that means someone else has won instead. I asked them why they couldn't just tell us in advance that the winning line would be there, because after all they knew how many horses were in the race before we started, but they said it wasn't as simple as that. Apparently they had to wait and see how big the gap was between all the horses midway through the race before they could work out which fence would be the last one. It's a bit confusing, really. I'm gutted. Totally gutted."
"But what happened, doctor? He seemed to be getting better..."
"I'm so sorry, Mrs. Peters. It was the alternative voting system."
But, no, it seems they've now moved on from tragedy to 'comedy'. We were treated to three basic messages - AV makes coalitions likely (it doesn't), AV means losers win and winners lose (they're thinking of the current system), and AV is really, really complicated (it's actually simpler than the voting system on the X Factor). To drive the latter point home, a 'teacher' was depicted trying to explain this fantastically straightforward system to her 'students' in the most garbled way imaginable. Having evidently concluded that her charges were nowhere near befuddled enough, she then resorted to a piece of outright invention from her trusty 'AV manual' -
"No, you can only use the third preferences for those people who have already been eliminated twice."
Now, of course what she's describing here bears absolutely no resemblance to AV, but all the same, a voting system under which a candidate can be eliminated, reinstated and eliminated again (at which point the returning officer rings round the voters and informs them that they can now use their third preferences if they'd like) certainly sounds like cracking good fun. Can we have a referendum on that one as well, please?
Meanwhile, the 'losers win' point was illustrated by means of the ubiquitous horse-race visual metaphor, with the 'winning jockey' moaning that he'd passed the finishing line first, but AV had handed victory to the horse that came in third. Now, this bugs me, because as I've pointed out before, if there's one system that can most accurately be described as 'first past the post', it's actually AV - for the very simple reason that it provides a fixed 'winning post', namely 50% of the vote. By contrast, under our supposedly 'simple' current system, no-one has the faintest idea what will constitute the winning post - it might be as little as 15% of the vote, or as much as 45%. Where it finally falls is determined by a complex mixture of how many candidates there are, and how evenly the vote is spread between them. So to return to the horse-racing metaphor, Jason Maguire may have thought he won the Grand National on Saturday, but if the race had been conducted according to the principles of our current voting system he might well have had this to say afterwards -
"I thought I'd won, because I was ahead after all nineteen fences, and I was still ahead where the finishing line normally is, but now they're saying they've moved the winning post back to fence 11 because there were so many horses in the race, and that means someone else has won instead. I asked them why they couldn't just tell us in advance that the winning line would be there, because after all they knew how many horses were in the race before we started, but they said it wasn't as simple as that. Apparently they had to wait and see how big the gap was between all the horses midway through the race before they could work out which fence would be the last one. It's a bit confusing, really. I'm gutted. Totally gutted."
Friday, April 8, 2011
'Yeah, they had that AV in Mongolia, that's how the giraffes went extinct'
I caught up with the Daily Politics AV debate on the BBC iplayer earlier, and I think I may have just discovered why the No campaign's star turn John Prescott was never made Foreign Secretary. We were treated to an impressively confident recital of assorted 'facts' about the electoral systems of foreign countries, most of which Prezza seemed to have gleaned from a conversation with his mate Dave down the pub. For your delectation...
1. The German Greens dumped their Social Democrat coalition partners midway through a parliament, and put in the Christian Democrats instead.
(The German Greens have never done any such thing, and at federal level have only ever been in coalition with the Social Democrats. Prescott is thinking of something the liberal FDP did in 1982. This, is any case, has no relevance whatever to AV, given that Germany uses a proportional and non-preferential voting system that bears no resemblance to the preferential and non-proportional system we're currently being offered.)
2. AV has led to the current coalition government in Australia.
(Australia doesn't have a coalition government at present, for the very good reason that the only independent third party with representation in the lower house of parliament holds just one seat. What there is instead is a minority government, the first of its kind under Australia's AV system for several decades, and one that occurred simply as the result of an unusually close election. In case Prescott hasn't noticed, something remarkably similar happened in Britain under his own beloved voting system just last year.)
3. AV in Australia meant that the right-wing Liberal-National coalition was always in power until last year's election, and even then Labor was only able to assume office with the help of the Greens and "a couple of farmers".
(Prescott seems to have slept through the previous Labor administrations led by well-known Prime Ministers such as Gough Whitlam, Bob Hawke and Paul Keating. He also seems oblivious to the fact that the current Julia Gillard administration were the incumbents going into the last election, and had an outright majority.)
4. How do we know that AV makes coalitions more likely? Well, it's only used in three countries, and in Belgium they've been without a government for a year.
(A sentence that would make considerably more sense if only Belgium was actually one of those three countries that uses AV. The proportional system it instead uses does of course make balanced parliaments and coalitions far more likely, but as that system bears absolutely no resemblance to AV, what in God's name is the relevance in pointing this out?)
But apart from these minor quibbles, I must say I learned a great deal.
1. The German Greens dumped their Social Democrat coalition partners midway through a parliament, and put in the Christian Democrats instead.
(The German Greens have never done any such thing, and at federal level have only ever been in coalition with the Social Democrats. Prescott is thinking of something the liberal FDP did in 1982. This, is any case, has no relevance whatever to AV, given that Germany uses a proportional and non-preferential voting system that bears no resemblance to the preferential and non-proportional system we're currently being offered.)
2. AV has led to the current coalition government in Australia.
(Australia doesn't have a coalition government at present, for the very good reason that the only independent third party with representation in the lower house of parliament holds just one seat. What there is instead is a minority government, the first of its kind under Australia's AV system for several decades, and one that occurred simply as the result of an unusually close election. In case Prescott hasn't noticed, something remarkably similar happened in Britain under his own beloved voting system just last year.)
3. AV in Australia meant that the right-wing Liberal-National coalition was always in power until last year's election, and even then Labor was only able to assume office with the help of the Greens and "a couple of farmers".
(Prescott seems to have slept through the previous Labor administrations led by well-known Prime Ministers such as Gough Whitlam, Bob Hawke and Paul Keating. He also seems oblivious to the fact that the current Julia Gillard administration were the incumbents going into the last election, and had an outright majority.)
4. How do we know that AV makes coalitions more likely? Well, it's only used in three countries, and in Belgium they've been without a government for a year.
(A sentence that would make considerably more sense if only Belgium was actually one of those three countries that uses AV. The proportional system it instead uses does of course make balanced parliaments and coalitions far more likely, but as that system bears absolutely no resemblance to AV, what in God's name is the relevance in pointing this out?)
But apart from these minor quibbles, I must say I learned a great deal.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Mebyon Kernow leader backs Yes to AV
I'm encouraged to read on his blog that Councillor Dick Cole, leader of the Cornish nationalist party Mebyon Kernow, is strongly supporting a Yes vote in the forthcoming referendum on electoral reform. MK is an ally of the SNP and Plaid Cymru in the European Free Alliance, and like its Scottish and Welsh counterparts is firmly in the social democratic, civic nationalist mould.
"I say this because it is my strong view that the present First Past the Post system does not work as part of a 21st century democracy. I fully support a more proportional voting system (PR) and recognise that AV is not PR, but I do see this reform as a step in the right direction. At the present time across the UK, the vast majority of parliamentary constituencies are safe seats and the main political parties pour disproportionate resources into a small number of marginal seats...
Politics is also becoming increasingly pluralistic with more and more political parties entering the fray, but the electoral system has not caught up. In modern parliamentary contests, as I know from experience, great pressure is brought to bear on people to vote tactically to stop certain political parties from winning. I feel that this distorts political debate and often derails serious consideration of the issues that really matter to communities throughout the UK. AV will eliminate tactical voting, allowing voters to always support their first-choice candidate."
In a Scottish context, this of course means an end to Labour's false - but all too often persuasive - argument that only a vote for them in Westminster general elections can keep the Tories out. In future, voters will be able to simply say "no problem, I'll give you my second/fourth/seventh preference, ahead of the Tories".
By my reckoning, all three leaders of the nationalist parties in Scotland, Wales and Cornwall are now supporting a Yes vote, albeit with varying degrees of enthusiasm.
"I say this because it is my strong view that the present First Past the Post system does not work as part of a 21st century democracy. I fully support a more proportional voting system (PR) and recognise that AV is not PR, but I do see this reform as a step in the right direction. At the present time across the UK, the vast majority of parliamentary constituencies are safe seats and the main political parties pour disproportionate resources into a small number of marginal seats...
Politics is also becoming increasingly pluralistic with more and more political parties entering the fray, but the electoral system has not caught up. In modern parliamentary contests, as I know from experience, great pressure is brought to bear on people to vote tactically to stop certain political parties from winning. I feel that this distorts political debate and often derails serious consideration of the issues that really matter to communities throughout the UK. AV will eliminate tactical voting, allowing voters to always support their first-choice candidate."
In a Scottish context, this of course means an end to Labour's false - but all too often persuasive - argument that only a vote for them in Westminster general elections can keep the Tories out. In future, voters will be able to simply say "no problem, I'll give you my second/fourth/seventh preference, ahead of the Tories".
By my reckoning, all three leaders of the nationalist parties in Scotland, Wales and Cornwall are now supporting a Yes vote, albeit with varying degrees of enthusiasm.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
The ever-resistable allure of a Farage à trois
The UK Independence Party confuse me, and I strongly suspect they confuse themselves. According to the BBC report of their campaign launch, they want to scrap direct elections to Holyrood and instead have a Scottish Parliament comprised of double-jobbing Westminster MPs - all in the name of greater "democracy". This would imply a very traditionalist Tory view of British democracy, and yet UKIP are supposedly strongly in favour of proportional representation. Indeed, they are backing a Yes vote in the AV referendum, in line with the vast majority of PR supporters in the mainstream parties. Why on earth, then, do they want to scrap PR for the Scottish Parliament and replace it with an in-built, overwhelming, near-permanent Labour majority?
It's plainly a double-edged sword that Nigel Farage spearheaded the launch - on the one hand he is the party's only remotely recognisable figure, but on the other hand it simply emphasises that they are basically an English party going through the motions of fighting a Scottish campaign. One very silly blunder is Farage's repeated and patronising use of the word "our" in relation to Scottish institutions, which brings to mind Mrs Thatcher's infamous gaffes of the "we in Scotland" variety. It's testament to the extent to which the Tory party of those days simply didn't 'get' Scotland that by all accounts she was explicitly advised to adopt such a condescending tone. Apparently at one point it was even suggested she should put on a Scottish accent when venturing north - a comedy spectacle of truly epic proportions that in the end we were cruelly denied from witnessing.
It's plainly a double-edged sword that Nigel Farage spearheaded the launch - on the one hand he is the party's only remotely recognisable figure, but on the other hand it simply emphasises that they are basically an English party going through the motions of fighting a Scottish campaign. One very silly blunder is Farage's repeated and patronising use of the word "our" in relation to Scottish institutions, which brings to mind Mrs Thatcher's infamous gaffes of the "we in Scotland" variety. It's testament to the extent to which the Tory party of those days simply didn't 'get' Scotland that by all accounts she was explicitly advised to adopt such a condescending tone. Apparently at one point it was even suggested she should put on a Scottish accent when venturing north - a comedy spectacle of truly epic proportions that in the end we were cruelly denied from witnessing.
Sunday, April 3, 2011
One for the connoisseurs...
Yesterday's Daily Mail editorial on the AV referendum was one for the true connoisseurs of that newspaper's idiocy, because virtually every substantive point it made was the polar opposite of the truth. For example -
"It [AV] is also so fiendishly complicated that even its articulate proponents struggle to explain how it works."
Each voter lists the candidates in order of preference. The first preference votes are counted, and if any candidate has more than 50% of them, they have won the election. If not, the lowest-placed candidate is eliminated and each of his/her votes is redistributed to the voter's next-preferred candidate. If any candidate has more than 50% of the vote at that stage, they have won the election - if not, the process continues in the same way until someone does have more than 50%.
That took me all of 86 words. Fiendishly complicated? As has been so often pointed out, AV is considerably simpler than the voting systems for Dancing on Ice or Strictly Come Dancing, and people somehow seem to get their heads round those.
"It is no exaggeration to say that a Yes vote could condemn this country to permanent coalition politics which would allow political elites to stay in power indefinitely."
If you replace the word 'no' in that sentence with the word 'an', it suddenly becomes strikingly accurate. As it is...not so much. AV doesn't conceptually make balanced parliaments (and by extension coalitions) any more or less likely. In the specific circumstances of the UK, where there is a medium-sized third party perceived to be ideologically in between the two larger ones, it's true it might in practice make balanced parliaments very marginally more likely because the third party will be well-placed to pick up second preferences. But the idea that 10-20 extra Lib Dem seats would be sufficient to bring about "permanent coalition politics" (especially when that party's support is currently dropping like a stone) is utterly risible. For the avoidance of doubt, that is a Bad Thing and not a Good Thing.
"Yes means that leaders like Margaret Thatcher would probably never have been elected"
This, believe it or not, is one of the examples the Mail puts forward to support its proposition that "Britain is sleepwalking into a historic disaster". What a pity it isn't true. Mrs Thatcher would have had more than sufficient support to claim outright victory under a majoritarian system like AV. That, again, is a thoroughly Bad Thing. The good news is that by having to cast the net wider to seek second preferences from centrist voters, she might have had to moderate her policies slightly. It probably would have been only very slightly, but that's still better than nothing.
"it is utterly deplorable that he [Cameron] was blackmailed by the Liberal Democrats into accepting the referendum could be passed with less than a 40 per cent turnout. On such stitch-ups the wheel of history turns."
So, on Planet Mail, a situation where the No side won't be able to claim victory if they receive fewer votes than the Yes side is a "stitch-up". Oh-kaaay...
"It [AV] is also so fiendishly complicated that even its articulate proponents struggle to explain how it works."
Each voter lists the candidates in order of preference. The first preference votes are counted, and if any candidate has more than 50% of them, they have won the election. If not, the lowest-placed candidate is eliminated and each of his/her votes is redistributed to the voter's next-preferred candidate. If any candidate has more than 50% of the vote at that stage, they have won the election - if not, the process continues in the same way until someone does have more than 50%.
That took me all of 86 words. Fiendishly complicated? As has been so often pointed out, AV is considerably simpler than the voting systems for Dancing on Ice or Strictly Come Dancing, and people somehow seem to get their heads round those.
"It is no exaggeration to say that a Yes vote could condemn this country to permanent coalition politics which would allow political elites to stay in power indefinitely."
If you replace the word 'no' in that sentence with the word 'an', it suddenly becomes strikingly accurate. As it is...not so much. AV doesn't conceptually make balanced parliaments (and by extension coalitions) any more or less likely. In the specific circumstances of the UK, where there is a medium-sized third party perceived to be ideologically in between the two larger ones, it's true it might in practice make balanced parliaments very marginally more likely because the third party will be well-placed to pick up second preferences. But the idea that 10-20 extra Lib Dem seats would be sufficient to bring about "permanent coalition politics" (especially when that party's support is currently dropping like a stone) is utterly risible. For the avoidance of doubt, that is a Bad Thing and not a Good Thing.
"Yes means that leaders like Margaret Thatcher would probably never have been elected"
This, believe it or not, is one of the examples the Mail puts forward to support its proposition that "Britain is sleepwalking into a historic disaster". What a pity it isn't true. Mrs Thatcher would have had more than sufficient support to claim outright victory under a majoritarian system like AV. That, again, is a thoroughly Bad Thing. The good news is that by having to cast the net wider to seek second preferences from centrist voters, she might have had to moderate her policies slightly. It probably would have been only very slightly, but that's still better than nothing.
"it is utterly deplorable that he [Cameron] was blackmailed by the Liberal Democrats into accepting the referendum could be passed with less than a 40 per cent turnout. On such stitch-ups the wheel of history turns."
So, on Planet Mail, a situation where the No side won't be able to claim victory if they receive fewer votes than the Yes side is a "stitch-up". Oh-kaaay...
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Five reasons why Hamish Macdonnell has made my eyes roll to the heavens - again
I've just caught up with Hamish Macdonnell's Caledonian Mercury article from a couple of weeks ago, entitled 'Five reasons why the AV system should be voted out'. I of course wholeheartedly agree with his opening sentiment that the No campaign should be moving on to substantive points about the subject in hand, and away from their ludicrous and offensive "electoral reform kills babies and soldiers" claims. But as for the five suggested reasons themselves...oooh, where to start. Let's take them in turn -
1. "The current system works...whether it is the most fair system or not, it works. FPTP has, generally, delivered the outcome the country wanted to see."
I beg pardon? A clear majority of the electorate voted for centrist or left-of-centre parties in 1979, 1983 and 1987, and yet unalloyed Thatcherism was the outcome "the country" wanted to see? The only possible way of reaching that conclusion is via a kind of circular logic - it must have been the outcome they wanted because they voted for it. How do we know they voted for it? Oh, because that was the outcome the electoral system delivered. If we'd had PR during the eighties, there may well have been a more moderate centre-right coalition government (and quite possibly even a centre-left coalition), and we'd now have a journalist in Macdonnell's position looking back and sagely noting that what we got was, after all, exactly what the public voted for. The difference is that he would have been right.
"Far better, it would seem, to have a system which reflects the mood of those key swing voters who carry with them the mood of the nation, than to hand it those candidates who come third, fourth or fifth."
Yes, I think I can see where Hamish is going astray here. He believes the "mood of the nation" is not determined by the majority of the whole electorate, but rather by a majority of the 65-70% of the electorate who happen to vote for one of the two largest parties - a 'majority' that worked out as just 35% of the vote for the Labour government in 2005.
2. "FPTP usually delivers strong government."
For strong government read "elective dictatorship". Remember the poll tax, Hamish? Its implementation entirely against the public will may have been a sign of governmental 'strength', but how that was in any sense a good thing is a bit of a mystery.
3. "AV is not actually backed by any major political party in Britain."
But there are many, many parties and individual politicians who regard it as clearly preferable to first-past-the-post. In an imperfect choice between two systems, should they really be voting for the system they prefer less?
4. "The real argument here is between FPTP and single transferable vote (STV). The Lib Dems want STV, not AV. If that is what they want, then we should have a real and proper debate about the merits of a fair system of proportional representation and the current winner-takes-all system. That is the real argument."
Say what you like about the Lib Dems (and I generally do), but if the Tories had been democratic enough to offer a vote on the full range of options for electoral reform, it seems rather unlikely that offer would have been rejected. It is those opposed to electoral reform who have moved heaven and earth to prevent Hamish's "real argument" from taking place, not the Yes campaigners. Mysteriously, Hamish fails to clarify how voting No will actually take us any closer to having that real argument, rather than - as it surely will - move us much further away.
5. "There is no reason to change the system if it’s not broken."
See above.
"I worked at Westminster during the dying days of the John Major government, which had such a narrow majority it risked defeat on every vote. The precarious nature of that administration reflected the public mood and worked at keeping the government from doing anything too outrageous."
Well, do you want an electoral system that delivers "strong government" or don't you, Hamish? If you do, that clearly wasn't what we had during the Major years, was it? And are you now suddenly saying you want an electoral system that prevents a government from doing anything "too outrageous" against the public will? In that case, why do you support the system that gave us unalloyed Thatcherism on 42% of the vote?
Taking the five points together, the thrust of Hamish's argument is as clear as mud. He seems to concede that PR would be fairer than the current system and a referendum on that would be worth having - and yet two of his points are really arguments against PR and in favour of majoritarian systems in general, of which (more's the pity) AV is one.
He finishes by going off on a rather random tangent to inform us that not only does first-past-the-post 'work', but the old system of hereditary peers making laws for the rest of us mere mortals also worked "really, really well". At least that helpfully puts in a better perspective where he's coming from. Yes, of course the Lords 'worked', if your main political concerns were protecting privilege, preserving discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, and permitting animal cruelty in the name of sport - and doing it all against the democratic will of the electorate, naturally.
1. "The current system works...whether it is the most fair system or not, it works. FPTP has, generally, delivered the outcome the country wanted to see."
I beg pardon? A clear majority of the electorate voted for centrist or left-of-centre parties in 1979, 1983 and 1987, and yet unalloyed Thatcherism was the outcome "the country" wanted to see? The only possible way of reaching that conclusion is via a kind of circular logic - it must have been the outcome they wanted because they voted for it. How do we know they voted for it? Oh, because that was the outcome the electoral system delivered. If we'd had PR during the eighties, there may well have been a more moderate centre-right coalition government (and quite possibly even a centre-left coalition), and we'd now have a journalist in Macdonnell's position looking back and sagely noting that what we got was, after all, exactly what the public voted for. The difference is that he would have been right.
"Far better, it would seem, to have a system which reflects the mood of those key swing voters who carry with them the mood of the nation, than to hand it those candidates who come third, fourth or fifth."
Yes, I think I can see where Hamish is going astray here. He believes the "mood of the nation" is not determined by the majority of the whole electorate, but rather by a majority of the 65-70% of the electorate who happen to vote for one of the two largest parties - a 'majority' that worked out as just 35% of the vote for the Labour government in 2005.
2. "FPTP usually delivers strong government."
For strong government read "elective dictatorship". Remember the poll tax, Hamish? Its implementation entirely against the public will may have been a sign of governmental 'strength', but how that was in any sense a good thing is a bit of a mystery.
3. "AV is not actually backed by any major political party in Britain."
But there are many, many parties and individual politicians who regard it as clearly preferable to first-past-the-post. In an imperfect choice between two systems, should they really be voting for the system they prefer less?
4. "The real argument here is between FPTP and single transferable vote (STV). The Lib Dems want STV, not AV. If that is what they want, then we should have a real and proper debate about the merits of a fair system of proportional representation and the current winner-takes-all system. That is the real argument."
Say what you like about the Lib Dems (and I generally do), but if the Tories had been democratic enough to offer a vote on the full range of options for electoral reform, it seems rather unlikely that offer would have been rejected. It is those opposed to electoral reform who have moved heaven and earth to prevent Hamish's "real argument" from taking place, not the Yes campaigners. Mysteriously, Hamish fails to clarify how voting No will actually take us any closer to having that real argument, rather than - as it surely will - move us much further away.
5. "There is no reason to change the system if it’s not broken."
See above.
"I worked at Westminster during the dying days of the John Major government, which had such a narrow majority it risked defeat on every vote. The precarious nature of that administration reflected the public mood and worked at keeping the government from doing anything too outrageous."
Well, do you want an electoral system that delivers "strong government" or don't you, Hamish? If you do, that clearly wasn't what we had during the Major years, was it? And are you now suddenly saying you want an electoral system that prevents a government from doing anything "too outrageous" against the public will? In that case, why do you support the system that gave us unalloyed Thatcherism on 42% of the vote?
Taking the five points together, the thrust of Hamish's argument is as clear as mud. He seems to concede that PR would be fairer than the current system and a referendum on that would be worth having - and yet two of his points are really arguments against PR and in favour of majoritarian systems in general, of which (more's the pity) AV is one.
He finishes by going off on a rather random tangent to inform us that not only does first-past-the-post 'work', but the old system of hereditary peers making laws for the rest of us mere mortals also worked "really, really well". At least that helpfully puts in a better perspective where he's coming from. Yes, of course the Lords 'worked', if your main political concerns were protecting privilege, preserving discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, and permitting animal cruelty in the name of sport - and doing it all against the democratic will of the electorate, naturally.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Memo to Finkelstein - we've never "weighted" votes by levels of enthusiasm
One of the recurring patterns in the AV referendum to date is that of a sanctimonious commentator informing us that the quality of arguments "on both sides" has been extremely poor, and that he really couldn't care less about the whole thing. He then - with no sense of irony whatsoever - trots out one of those extremely poor arguments himself, and declares himself a committed supporter of the No side on that basis. Really is uncanny how that keeps happening.
Exhibit Y : Danny Finkelstein (now, who'd ever have guessed Hague's old aide wouldn't be an electoral reformer?) -
"I’ve been thinking why the arguments in the referendum campaign have been so poor...Which all brings me to the reason why I intend to vote “no”...The system gives my fourth preference the same weight as someone else’s first preference. And it shouldn’t."
Just as well it doesn't, then. Under AV, just like the current system, everyone has an equal vote in any given count, and that vote is always for their most preferred candidate left in contention at that stage. Of course you might wish that your vote could still count towards the candidate you like even more but who has already been eliminated - but for obvious reasons it can't. Similarly, under our present system, you might wish you could vote for any one of several thousand superior hypothetical candidates who are not on the ballot paper - but you can't. And yet your unenthusiastic vote for the 'least worst available' will have exactly the same weight as someone else's full-blooded vote for a candidate they consider to be superb. If Finkelstein genuinely wants to call time on this long-standing 'problem', he might want to campaign for a US-style option to write in the candidate of your choice, rather than peddling the hoary and contrived fantasy that it's somehow an issue unique to AV.
Exhibit Y : Danny Finkelstein (now, who'd ever have guessed Hague's old aide wouldn't be an electoral reformer?) -
"I’ve been thinking why the arguments in the referendum campaign have been so poor...Which all brings me to the reason why I intend to vote “no”...The system gives my fourth preference the same weight as someone else’s first preference. And it shouldn’t."
Just as well it doesn't, then. Under AV, just like the current system, everyone has an equal vote in any given count, and that vote is always for their most preferred candidate left in contention at that stage. Of course you might wish that your vote could still count towards the candidate you like even more but who has already been eliminated - but for obvious reasons it can't. Similarly, under our present system, you might wish you could vote for any one of several thousand superior hypothetical candidates who are not on the ballot paper - but you can't. And yet your unenthusiastic vote for the 'least worst available' will have exactly the same weight as someone else's full-blooded vote for a candidate they consider to be superb. If Finkelstein genuinely wants to call time on this long-standing 'problem', he might want to campaign for a US-style option to write in the candidate of your choice, rather than peddling the hoary and contrived fantasy that it's somehow an issue unique to AV.
Monday, March 14, 2011
Why is less democracy always the solution?
Interesting to learn from Subrosa that Their Man In Edinburgh, the esteemed Michael Moore, is touting the idea that the one-off planned five-year term for the next Scottish parliament should be made a permanent arrangement. Subrosa poses this question -
"The cynic in me ponders the benefits to unionist Westminster; there must be some or the idea would never have been mooted, although there is evidence from Germany that when Bundestag and state elections (which are conducted by Länder rules) are the same year, the state elections were completely overshadowed. Yet what are the benefits to Westminster?"
I actually don't think there's any great mystery about what's going on here - it must have finally occurred to some bright spark in the Lib Dems that the 'solution' of putting the 2015 Holyrood election back a year doesn't even begin to address the problem thrown up by five-year fixed term parliaments at Westminster. If the Holyrood parliament starting in 2016 runs its natural course, there will again be a scheduled election that would clash with a Westminster contest in 2020 - presumably necessitating a further 'one-off' extension, and the whole process will continue on into perpetuity, leaving everyone (not least London Lib Dems) looking extremely stupid. Of course, this snag could have been deferred for quite a while if only the 2015 election had been brought forward by a year, rather than put back. Three-year parliaments work perfectly well in Australia without the sun falling out of the sky - but it seems giving the public more democracy rather than less is an option that would never even occur to our masters.
But my own question is this - what happens if (as is perfectly possible) the Westminster coalition collapses in a heap well before 2015, rendering all these shenanigans totally redundant? Can we have our own election back then, please?
Subrosa also makes this observation -
"All these constitutional changes we're hearing about at present favour the libdems. No matter how badly they do in future voting, if the AV result is a yes, then they will be the king-makers."
That's not really true. As a majoritarian system, AV will for the most part continue to produce majority Tory or Labour governments, which for the avoidance of doubt is a bad thing not a good thing. Because of the specific circumstances of UK politics, though, with a medium-sized third party that is ideologically somewhere between the two larger ones (and thus well-placed to attract second preferences) it will give the Lib Dems more seats than the current system would, and therefore make future balanced parliaments very slightly more likely. The Lib Dem-sceptics among us shouldn't be squeamish about that, because without balanced parliaments there's simply no hope of achieving more meaningful electoral reform at a later date. The idea that a majority Labour government would ever voluntarily introduce PR is in the realms of fantasy.
"The cynic in me ponders the benefits to unionist Westminster; there must be some or the idea would never have been mooted, although there is evidence from Germany that when Bundestag and state elections (which are conducted by Länder rules) are the same year, the state elections were completely overshadowed. Yet what are the benefits to Westminster?"
I actually don't think there's any great mystery about what's going on here - it must have finally occurred to some bright spark in the Lib Dems that the 'solution' of putting the 2015 Holyrood election back a year doesn't even begin to address the problem thrown up by five-year fixed term parliaments at Westminster. If the Holyrood parliament starting in 2016 runs its natural course, there will again be a scheduled election that would clash with a Westminster contest in 2020 - presumably necessitating a further 'one-off' extension, and the whole process will continue on into perpetuity, leaving everyone (not least London Lib Dems) looking extremely stupid. Of course, this snag could have been deferred for quite a while if only the 2015 election had been brought forward by a year, rather than put back. Three-year parliaments work perfectly well in Australia without the sun falling out of the sky - but it seems giving the public more democracy rather than less is an option that would never even occur to our masters.
But my own question is this - what happens if (as is perfectly possible) the Westminster coalition collapses in a heap well before 2015, rendering all these shenanigans totally redundant? Can we have our own election back then, please?
Subrosa also makes this observation -
"All these constitutional changes we're hearing about at present favour the libdems. No matter how badly they do in future voting, if the AV result is a yes, then they will be the king-makers."
That's not really true. As a majoritarian system, AV will for the most part continue to produce majority Tory or Labour governments, which for the avoidance of doubt is a bad thing not a good thing. Because of the specific circumstances of UK politics, though, with a medium-sized third party that is ideologically somewhere between the two larger ones (and thus well-placed to attract second preferences) it will give the Lib Dems more seats than the current system would, and therefore make future balanced parliaments very slightly more likely. The Lib Dem-sceptics among us shouldn't be squeamish about that, because without balanced parliaments there's simply no hope of achieving more meaningful electoral reform at a later date. The idea that a majority Labour government would ever voluntarily introduce PR is in the realms of fantasy.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Why a Yes to AV would make it impossible for the BNP to win a seat at Westminster
I see from yesterday's Daily Mail that a Tory party panicked by the possibility of a Yes vote in the AV referendum is about to raise the silly spectre of "advances for the BNP" under a reformed electoral system. Now, I'm all for saying we shouldn't be squeamish about the potential effect of PR on representation for extremist parties - a fair voting system is a fair voting system, full stop. But the fact is that AV is not a proportional system, and far from making it easier for far-right parties to win seats, it will actually make it much, much harder. For a vivid illustration of why this is the case, let's have a look at the 2002 French presidential election, fought under a run-off system that is similar in principle to AV. Here is the first round result -
Jacques Chirac (Rassemblement pour la République) 19.88%
Jean-Marie Le Pen (Front national) 16.86%
Lionel Jospin (Parti socialiste) 16.18%
So if that had been a first-past-the-post election, Le Pen would have come within a terrifying three per cent of becoming President of France, on an absurd "mandate" consisting of less than a fifth of electors who turned out to vote. But as it was, the backers of the assorted eliminated candidates (Jospin was one of fourteen) were given the chance to express a preference between Chirac and Le Pen in the run-off vote. Look at the difference that made in terms of how close the National Front came to claiming the keys to the Élysée Palace -
Jacques Chirac (Rassemblement pour la République) 82.21%
Jean-Marie Le Pen (Front national) 17.79%
The lesson could hardly be clearer - if you want to make absolutely certain that Nick Griffin will not become an MP, vote to replace first-past-the-post with the instant run-off system AV.
Jacques Chirac (Rassemblement pour la République) 19.88%
Jean-Marie Le Pen (Front national) 16.86%
Lionel Jospin (Parti socialiste) 16.18%
So if that had been a first-past-the-post election, Le Pen would have come within a terrifying three per cent of becoming President of France, on an absurd "mandate" consisting of less than a fifth of electors who turned out to vote. But as it was, the backers of the assorted eliminated candidates (Jospin was one of fourteen) were given the chance to express a preference between Chirac and Le Pen in the run-off vote. Look at the difference that made in terms of how close the National Front came to claiming the keys to the Élysée Palace -
Jacques Chirac (Rassemblement pour la République) 82.21%
Jean-Marie Le Pen (Front national) 17.79%
The lesson could hardly be clearer - if you want to make absolutely certain that Nick Griffin will not become an MP, vote to replace first-past-the-post with the instant run-off system AV.
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Decision day in Wales
It's great to see Malc at Better Nation devote a post to the referendum in Wales today - it's received so little coverage in the "national" mainstream media that you'd be forgiven for not being aware that it's even taking place. On one point I'd quibble with Malc, though -
"To be clear, this isn’t a referendum to extend devolution or bestow more powers on the National Assembly for Wales. They already have the opportunity to get the powers which will be delivered in the event of a Yes vote in today’s referendum – they were bestowed on the NAW by the Government of Wales Act (2008).
This is more about speed of delivery – rather than having to apply to Westminster for individual powers in each of 20 fields specified in the Act using a lengthy process known as Legislative Competence Orders (LCOs)..."
To my mind, the vote plainly is about the extension of devolved powers. The whole point of having to apply for a power, surely, is that the application can be refused - or to put it another way, the power isn't actually 'bestowed' on the Assembly until an application is accepted.
Malc also reveals the entire lengthy preamble to today's referendum question, which includes this rather startling sentence -
"The Assembly cannot make laws on subject areas such as defence, tax or welfare benefits, whatever the result of this vote."
Which is as good as saying "you don't get to choose on such grown-up matters, so suck it up". Doubtless, though, there'll still be somebody brazen enough to claim a Yes vote today as a "vote against nationalism", just as Roy Hattersley did after the Scottish devolution referendum of 1997. Tell me, Roy - how exactly could I have gone about voting for independence in that referendum? A No vote? An abstention? How?
Still, in a way it's a pity that the AV referendum question won't be fronting up to its limitations in quite such a direct manner...
"At present, our voting system is not proportional. However you vote today, that will not change. Tough luck, baby."
"To be clear, this isn’t a referendum to extend devolution or bestow more powers on the National Assembly for Wales. They already have the opportunity to get the powers which will be delivered in the event of a Yes vote in today’s referendum – they were bestowed on the NAW by the Government of Wales Act (2008).
This is more about speed of delivery – rather than having to apply to Westminster for individual powers in each of 20 fields specified in the Act using a lengthy process known as Legislative Competence Orders (LCOs)..."
To my mind, the vote plainly is about the extension of devolved powers. The whole point of having to apply for a power, surely, is that the application can be refused - or to put it another way, the power isn't actually 'bestowed' on the Assembly until an application is accepted.
Malc also reveals the entire lengthy preamble to today's referendum question, which includes this rather startling sentence -
"The Assembly cannot make laws on subject areas such as defence, tax or welfare benefits, whatever the result of this vote."
Which is as good as saying "you don't get to choose on such grown-up matters, so suck it up". Doubtless, though, there'll still be somebody brazen enough to claim a Yes vote today as a "vote against nationalism", just as Roy Hattersley did after the Scottish devolution referendum of 1997. Tell me, Roy - how exactly could I have gone about voting for independence in that referendum? A No vote? An abstention? How?
Still, in a way it's a pity that the AV referendum question won't be fronting up to its limitations in quite such a direct manner...
"At present, our voting system is not proportional. However you vote today, that will not change. Tough luck, baby."
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
F - P - T - P - Can - We - Fix - It? F - P - T - P - Yes - We - Can!
I'm just back from visiting ConHome, in search of my nightly fix of daft defences of our glorious first-past-the-post voting system. Yet again, I wasn't disappointed. At first I thought Ed Hall was seriously trying to compare those who point out the unfairness of FPTP with a tearful three-year-old stamping his feet and demanding that he be allowed to watch Bob the Builder again, but no, it's even better than that - the comparison is actually with Hall himself, and how he feels about the 'unfairness' of electoral reform. A few unkind souls might suggest that's rather revealing.
Pointing to the example of the forthcoming London mayoral election, which will use a system similar to AV, Hall claims -
"If the leading candidate doesn't get 50% of the first preference votes, then London's Mayor will be chosen by the second choice votes of the electors that voted for the political wings of fundamentalist Christian, Karmic flying and neo-Nazi parties. That is not just unfair, it's plainly irrational. It gives undue weight to the voters who chose to use the election as a platform to promote their fringe views."
No, it doesn't, Ed. It gives precisely the same weight to every single voter, which is how - in my naivety - I always thought a democratic system was supposed to work. But I can certainly understand Hall's confusion, given that his only previous experience is with a system that saw Russell Johnston elected MP for Inverness in 1992 on 26% of the vote. To use Hall's terminology, first-past-the-post gave 100% "weight" to the one-quarter of people who happened to vote for Johnston, and literally zero "weight" to the three-quarters of people who voted against him. I dare say some of the latter group were sorely tempted to go off and indulge in a bit of foot-stamping afterwards - after all, in those days they didn't even have episodes of Bob the Builder to distract them from the injustice.
Whether Hall realises it or not, what he's actually arguing against is not the idea that fascist-inclined voters and "Karmic fliers" should have a greater say than the rest of us, but rather the idea that they should even have an equal say. That may be superficially attractive to some, but it's an argument against universal suffrage, not AV. Hall doesn't seem to have spotted that under FPTP, fascist voters are already able to decide the outcome of elections, either because they've switched tactically to a mainstream candidate, or because there is no BNP candidate and they consequently have no choice but to vote for a mainstream party. If he finds that so distasteful and "unfair", I presume Hall will be proposing fundamental changes to the current system to - somehow - ensure it can never happen again in future? Mysteriously, it seems not.
But if you think Hall's argument can't get any weaker, you're underestimating the man. He goes on to compare the self-evident 'fairness' of the current system with the way TV talent shows work -
"In modern politics, a winner should be a winner. Try it round your dinner table or next time you watch the X Factor or Strictly Come Dancing. Everyone votes for their favourite book, film or act: surely the candidate with the most votes wins? How would the BBC or ITV possibly explain or justify a programme format with public voting in which the candidate that got the most votes did not win?
'Thank you for calling Britain’s Got Talent. Your vote for the Trapeze Sisters has been counted. Now you can choose a second choice contestant instead. If The Trapeze Sisters don't win, your vote will be transferred to your second choice contestant. Press 2 to register a second preference vote.'"
Oh dear. I'm afraid, Ed, that the voting system for Britain's Got Talent and Strictly Come Dancing is much closer to AV than first-past-the-post. If it worked like the latter, Strictly wouldn't have run for ten or fifteen weeks or whatever it was - there would have been just one programme and one set of dances, at the end of which Ann Widdecombe would have been declared the series winner, on the grounds that her 14% of the popular vote was fractionally higher than any other individual. Your average dinner-party would deem that much fairer than what actually happened, apparently.
Comically, Hall seems to spot this gaping hole in his reasoning almost before he finishes uttering it -
"Of course you do get to vote again in the TV formats as the candidates are knocked out, and the next week's programme starts, but do we really want General Elections every week until we get a winner? That would be the only way to give equal weight to everybody’s second choice votes."
No, it wouldn't, Ed. There's another ingenious way of achieving just that, and you'll be thrilled to hear we're about to hold a referendum on it. It's called AV, or to use its US name, Instant Run-off Voting. The Americans call it that because it produces much the same effect as successively eliminating the least popular candidates and holding subsequent run-off votes until someone wins a majority, but without any of the additional time, hassle and expense. If what I've just described is Hall's ideal - and unless he's guilty of intellectual dishonesty I can only assume it must be - then why on earth is he supporting the status quo in this referendum?
Pointing to the example of the forthcoming London mayoral election, which will use a system similar to AV, Hall claims -
"If the leading candidate doesn't get 50% of the first preference votes, then London's Mayor will be chosen by the second choice votes of the electors that voted for the political wings of fundamentalist Christian, Karmic flying and neo-Nazi parties. That is not just unfair, it's plainly irrational. It gives undue weight to the voters who chose to use the election as a platform to promote their fringe views."
No, it doesn't, Ed. It gives precisely the same weight to every single voter, which is how - in my naivety - I always thought a democratic system was supposed to work. But I can certainly understand Hall's confusion, given that his only previous experience is with a system that saw Russell Johnston elected MP for Inverness in 1992 on 26% of the vote. To use Hall's terminology, first-past-the-post gave 100% "weight" to the one-quarter of people who happened to vote for Johnston, and literally zero "weight" to the three-quarters of people who voted against him. I dare say some of the latter group were sorely tempted to go off and indulge in a bit of foot-stamping afterwards - after all, in those days they didn't even have episodes of Bob the Builder to distract them from the injustice.
Whether Hall realises it or not, what he's actually arguing against is not the idea that fascist-inclined voters and "Karmic fliers" should have a greater say than the rest of us, but rather the idea that they should even have an equal say. That may be superficially attractive to some, but it's an argument against universal suffrage, not AV. Hall doesn't seem to have spotted that under FPTP, fascist voters are already able to decide the outcome of elections, either because they've switched tactically to a mainstream candidate, or because there is no BNP candidate and they consequently have no choice but to vote for a mainstream party. If he finds that so distasteful and "unfair", I presume Hall will be proposing fundamental changes to the current system to - somehow - ensure it can never happen again in future? Mysteriously, it seems not.
But if you think Hall's argument can't get any weaker, you're underestimating the man. He goes on to compare the self-evident 'fairness' of the current system with the way TV talent shows work -
"In modern politics, a winner should be a winner. Try it round your dinner table or next time you watch the X Factor or Strictly Come Dancing. Everyone votes for their favourite book, film or act: surely the candidate with the most votes wins? How would the BBC or ITV possibly explain or justify a programme format with public voting in which the candidate that got the most votes did not win?
'Thank you for calling Britain’s Got Talent. Your vote for the Trapeze Sisters has been counted. Now you can choose a second choice contestant instead. If The Trapeze Sisters don't win, your vote will be transferred to your second choice contestant. Press 2 to register a second preference vote.'"
Oh dear. I'm afraid, Ed, that the voting system for Britain's Got Talent and Strictly Come Dancing is much closer to AV than first-past-the-post. If it worked like the latter, Strictly wouldn't have run for ten or fifteen weeks or whatever it was - there would have been just one programme and one set of dances, at the end of which Ann Widdecombe would have been declared the series winner, on the grounds that her 14% of the popular vote was fractionally higher than any other individual. Your average dinner-party would deem that much fairer than what actually happened, apparently.
Comically, Hall seems to spot this gaping hole in his reasoning almost before he finishes uttering it -
"Of course you do get to vote again in the TV formats as the candidates are knocked out, and the next week's programme starts, but do we really want General Elections every week until we get a winner? That would be the only way to give equal weight to everybody’s second choice votes."
No, it wouldn't, Ed. There's another ingenious way of achieving just that, and you'll be thrilled to hear we're about to hold a referendum on it. It's called AV, or to use its US name, Instant Run-off Voting. The Americans call it that because it produces much the same effect as successively eliminating the least popular candidates and holding subsequent run-off votes until someone wins a majority, but without any of the additional time, hassle and expense. If what I've just described is Hall's ideal - and unless he's guilty of intellectual dishonesty I can only assume it must be - then why on earth is he supporting the status quo in this referendum?
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