The quality of debate around the voting reform proposal has been a poor advertisement for referendums, writes MARK HENNESSY
SPEAKING OF war, Winston Churchill once said that truth should be surrounded by a battalion of lies. He could, if he was around now, say the same thing about the battle over the alternative vote referendum in the UK.
From the start, both sides in the battle that will be decided on Thursday have made claims that are “either false or exaggerated”, says Dr Alan Renwick of the University of Reading, in a forlorn call for a debate grounded in solid evidence.
Under the first-past-the-post system, voters mark an X for their preferred candidate, which has the advantage of clarity. Equally, however, it means that in all bar 150 constituencies or so, those who prefer others could just as easily stay at home because they have no hope of influencing the outcome.
Under AV, voters, still voting in single-seat constituencies, mark candidates in order of preference. Counting continues until one of them gets half of the votes cast, using second preferences, though more rarely subsequent ones may have to be counted.
For supporters of AV, such as the Liberal Democrats, a change would make MPs work harder to appeal outside of their core vote, though the claim that it would have prevented the MPs’ expenses scandal from occurring is risible.
For opponents, it threatens to bring the UK to a permanent darkness of coalition, where governments and programmes are decided in “smoke-filled rooms, if smoking was still allowed”, as one put it, by politicians, rather than by the voters.
The argument made by Conservative prime minister David Cameron and others that first-past-the-post allows the public clearly to reject “clapped-out governments” is weakened by one simple fact: in May 2010, it did not.
Indeed, it is far from clear that first-post-the post can ever consistently do so again, since the Conservatives and the Labour, with the growth of smaller parties, have suffered consistent falls in support since the 1950s.
Back then, the two giants took over 90 per cent. In 2010, they managed little more than 65 per cent, down three points on the 2005 figure.
First-past-the-post, in fact, has flattered to deceive in its ability to deliver stable government for much of the last 30 years.
Following defeat to Margaret Thatcher in 1979, Labour, moving ever leftwards, made itself utterly unelectable, while the Conservatives, going in the other direction, did the same after Tony Blair’s New Labour renaissance arrived in 1997.
The referendum campaign, ignored largely by the British media until recent days, has been marked by canards: that it would require hundreds of millions to be spent on voting machines, for one; or lead to extremists winning seats.
The Yes campaign has had its own sins. Liberal Democrats minister Chris Huhne, angered by the No campaign’s tactics, last week threatened legal action, though he must have known that no legal recourse was available.
Psephologists have pored over the election data, particularly of the last six decades, as they sought to offer guidance to voters about how power would have been shared if AV had been used in each of those campaigns.
In 2010, says Essex University’s David Sanders, the Liberal Democrats, then riding high under Nick Clegg, would have won 32 extra seats: 22 would have come from the Conservatives and 10 from Labour.
AV, they said, would not have changed the dozen post-second World War elections that produced clear victories; though the 1951 and 1992 parliaments might have been hung, while Labour might have had a working majority, rather than not, in 1950, 1964, and February and October 1974.
However, AV is not a proportional system, so on occasions it will increase the victors’ dominance. In 1997, for example, Blair would have won 27 more seats, but the Conservatives would have been all but wiped out, losing 95 of the 165 seats that it did win, according to the analysis.
Sometimes, however, the past acts as a poor guide to the future.
Tactical voting would end, some experts say, because a voter could vote for the candidate they really want.
Undoubtedly, this is true, but equally, it allows for new forms of tactical voting, where voters, if they become sufficiently adept, use their preferences to ensure that their preferred candidate ends up in a straight contest with a beatable opponent.
However, the experience of AV in six byelections for the Scottish parliament show little appetite for the choices offered by it, since less than 63 per cent listed a second preference, and less than 49 per cent marked a third.
Minor parties would win more votes under AV, it is sure – but only smaller parties in the middle-ground could expect to win more seats, unlike the British National Party, which would not get the second preferences required.
The BNP leadership opposes AV, but a New Statesman poll last week showed that BNP-inclined supporters like the idea of being able to register their backing for it, before having a say in the eventual electoral outcome. Interestingly, the Eurosceptic UKIP leadership favours a Yes vote, but more than 60 per cent of those who say they support the party do not.
Being in the centre-ground, the Liberal Democrats should benefit, particularly from Conservative-hating voters in the north of England and Labour-hating ones in the south of England, but, even here, that judgment is simplistic.
In some ways, AV would complicate things for the Liberal Democrats, since the party would come under pressure to guide its support on what they should do with later preferences – rather than being able to stay quiet until later.
The Australian experience shows that a third party can gain from issuing clear direction, but the Liberal Democrats are a divided lot: with so-called Orange Book liberals leaning towards the Conservatives mixing uneasily with social democrats favouring Labour.
Constitutional expert Vernon Bogdanor dismisses much of the rhetoric, though he accepts that it makes coalitions more likely even though such outcomes could happen anyway because of the haemorrhage of support from the Conservatives and Labour.
In recent days, the polls have indicated that the Yes campaign will lose, possibly by a significant margin – though all will depend on how many voters in England, half of whom are not being asked to decide on local councils on the same day, turn out.
Voters in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, who do not use first-past-the-post in elections for devolved parliaments, are expected to vote in favour of change; while the shires of England should be solidly against.
Either way, however, Thursday will have major consequences. A No vote will weaken Clegg, even though he once described AV “as a miserable little compromise” for his party’s preference for proportional representation.
If he loses, he will face pressure to quit the government from his own ranks, but his ability to work in harmony with the Conservatives will be damaged even if he decides to stay, which, of course, is what he wants to do.
For David Cameron, the stakes are equally large. He has campaigned hard against AV, even though his partners believed that he would not – though quite how they convinced themselves that he would be able to do so is hard to imagine given most Conservatives’ opposition to AV.
If AV is defeated, however, Clegg will be a truculent partner, forced to demand concessions in other areas to whet the appetite for vengeance from his own ranks – particularly an accelerated destruction of the House of Lords as it now stands.
Undoubtedly, so calamitous a defeat for a junior coalition partner late in a parliament’s life would inevitably mean a government’s collapse. The fact that it may happen 12 months in should mean that it will not, unless major players become careless.
The truly nightmare scenario for those favouring the Union, however, is that AV will win by a small majority – but one fashioned by Northern Ireland, Scottish and Welsh voters because English voters could not be bothered to vote, but who will be angry afterwards.
If so, even if it is unlikely given the polling figures, the break-up of the UK will have moved one decisive step closer.