Tomorrow we are being given a chance to do something that only one other bunch of people have ever had the chance to do in this country. Yet because of a piss-poor campaign (on both sides) and a deliberate and cynical obfuscation of the way AV works (from the No Campaign) most of the country can’t be bothered to go out and vote about the future of our voting system.
Babyfather and I spent a lot of time discussing the relative pros and cons, and came from different sides of the argument, but eventually both agreed that a Yes vote is the most progressive and the most fair way to vote tomorrow.
Several weeks ago, we were told that despite having blatantly lied to us, the No campaign would not be censured in any way whatsoever, as there is no law governing referenda. So I wanted to clarify just a few small things.
Money
The No Campaign kicked off with its posters making ridiculous claims. As in the poster shown here, they claimed that £250 million would be spent on electoral reform. They still have this claim live on their website now. A few points of clarity here:
a. The figures quoted include the cost of the referendum.
b. We don’t need electronic vote counting machines – as claimed. There are no plans to implement them if AV is implemented. This cost accounts for £130 million of the £250 million claimed.
c. The claims for the voter education are wildly inflated. They were based on the voter education costs in Scotland for the Single Transferable Vote – which is universally recognised as being a far more complex system than AV.
Of the assumptions about our intelligence which mean that the No Campaign says that we will not understand AV, more later. But what I found interesting was that when I received my postal leaflet from the No to AV campaign, they included a simple graphic on the page which follows the cost claims. If it’s so easy to explain, then why would it cost so much to educate voters?
d. It is distasteful and inaccurate to infer that if we get AV, then vital medical facilities will be compromised. The campaign used a whole raft of other signifiers in these posters – underfunded police officers, soldiers without adequate protection, newly born babies in need of maternity units – to appeal to middle Englanders who would take these claims at face value. But what a load of tosh! The economy is a balancing act which is not made up of these simplistic binary choices, as an analysis by New Statesman shows.
The “complexity” of AV
Perhaps it’s because they’re inherently more intelligent than us. You know, our political parties? Who all elect their leaders through AV. Whatever the reason, I for one find it insulting to be told the electorate won’t understand AV.
The current system means that if we’re on the left, we have to take into account what way we think the vote is going to go and then to second guess that outcome before deciding which way to cast our own vote. This great flowchart from Anthony Smith shows how much easier the AV system really is.
And this leads me on to
The fairness of AV
This is the point which makes me the angriest. We are a centre-left leaning country, with about 30-40% of our voters being conservatives. The remainder – with dips and peaks depending on prevailing political thought and circumstance – is usually about 65% of the electorate. Yet for the last 100 years our government has been dominated by the Tories. Thatcher had a mandate to rule with around 30% of the vote. This is because we on the left split the vote.
If I’m going to the cinema with a group of friends, the likelihood is that I’ll have a few choices in mind so that overall we are able to reach a consensus about what we’d all like to see. Dan Snow’s explanation uses another every day example to show that AV is fair and simple to grasp.
I am a hard-wired labour voter, but over the years (assuming we had an AV system) I would have used my first choice preference for The Green Party had I known that my second choice would be counted too. And don’t let them fool you when they say this effectively gives me two votes. It doesn’t. If the Greens are eliminated, my second choice is counted. My first is not. It means that far more people have a voice in who is elected.
When trying to show how unfair AV would be, the No campaign has focused on sports events. This misses the point entirely – as such events are decided on the talent, strength or prowess of a contestant, not how many people vote for them. An election is not a race. But even using their decidedly bizarre logic, it doesn’t add up. One of the examples used was this campaign van which showed two boxers. This included the indefensible claim that “under AV the loser can win.” In a two-man contest such as this, the loser cannot win – that is the point – that you need a majority to win, and with two contestants, one of them will have it. But add in more contestants, and for instance, a judging panel, and then you have to take into account different opinions, and AV allows these to be represented more fairly.
A miserable little compromise
This is one thing I agree with the No Campaign on. It is a compromise. It could be better – my personal reference is for AV plus, which Roy Jenkins suggested in 1998. This system balances out any lack of PR that AV leaves.
But, heartbreakingly, the left-wing supporters of No to AV seem to have fallen hook line and sinker for a very clever little piece of rightwing rhetoric. It may not be ideal. But it is all we are currently being offered. If we vote for AV now, we may open the way to further reform. If we don’t, we close down the argument entirely
We should vote AV to show our disapproval of the LibDems
It would appear that a high proportion of people are going to the polls tomorrow with the intention of giving Nick Clegg a bashing. I understand this. Although I worry that he is shouldering a far greater share of our disapprobation than Cameron, who is the architect of so much of the disastrous policy now being implemented, I believe he has let down the people who voted for him as a new left alternative.
But this is not Nick Clegg’s vote. This is our vote. We can now choose to lock in Tory power or to allow the left-wing leaning majority to get more and fairer representation.
Today I hit new lows of stress and panic. I’ts been a fairly hectic few months, not helped by the fact that we own a flat in London which we currently rent out. When we left London, selling the flat would have meant we lost loads of money as the market was so unstable. So we rented up in Yorkshire, and rented our flat out.
I won’t go into details, but due to a leaky bathroom, a neighbour in the flat below whose idea of diplomacy would put Pol Pot up for the Nobel peace prize in comparison, and the bastard thieving nature of insurance companies, we decided to sell the flat and be shot of the whole worrying package.
So this brings me on to the point of this post. It’s a simple sale. No chain – our buyers currently rent, and we’re not buying another place now. They were preapproved for a mortgage, the surveys went through all tickety-boo. So why are we now in a position where our tenants are moving out in just under 3 weeks and we have no end in sight?
Is there a secret conveyancers’ code? Our friends just went through a similar thing where the buyer’s solicitors kept giving absurd advice on the leasehold of the property, and taking this as a cautionary tale, we accepted our buyers’ much reduced offer subject to them taking the lease on as it stands. We’d protect ourselves by making the sale as simple as possible, we thought. Well, that’s out of the fucking water. We’ve been asked for all sorts of information – some of which we can get, some of which we can’t. The freeholder won’t provide some of it – he has no legal responsibility to do so, and we’re not obliged to either. But our buyers conveyancers are insisting on it. We’re now at an impasse where they want some info from us, we can’t get it, and no one will budge. So what happens now? No one seems to know.
What I do know is that every day about 3 hours are taken up with endless and pointless phone calls which seem to cause no shift in the process. I am trying to run a business and instead am spending my time speaking to my estate agent who is as bemused as I am about the whole process.
In the meantime, our tenants, given 2 months notice, decided to complain about us and to threaten us with legal action. We never got to the bottom of the basis for this, but they dropped it when they realised there was nothing in the law which catered for taking people to court for serving legal notice in the correct legal manner.
I am sorry – this is a rant-y and self interested post. But I do think the question needs asking. What do conveyancers actually do? Every piece of information etc that has been needed, I have chased up and eventually delivered. The solicitor – or more usually his secretary – speaks to me about once a week to let me know that the buyer’s solicitor has raised another concern.
Wow. Just slowly gearing up for a busy Friday when the Guardian homepage drew my attention to the balancing artist Eskil Ronningsbakken.
As a sufferer of vertigo (I even get a rush of fear, nausea and exhileration if I drop something down the stairs!) these pictures caused me much discomfort and some amazement. I recommend a look.
The press, in the main, is gushing today over the satanic alliance which we saw blessed in the gardens of No 10 Downing Street yesterday afternoon. The Liberals got a huge amount in negotiations – not least of which was a shelving (for the time being at least) of the inheritance tax changes proposed by the Tories. At the same time, great headline grabbers such as the very liberal decision to scrap ID cards, and the decision not to proceed with another runway at Heathrow, had those of us aligned to the liberal left wing axis of politics wondering if perhaps Dave’s promises were actually genuine. Perhaps this will be the most liberal Tory party of modern times. Maybe they’re right, and he really is a moderniser.
Please do not be fooled. Look into the policy, and see beyond the headlines. Apart from the parade of old Tories being slotted comfortably into Cabinet seats, apart from the appointment of a homophobic Home Secretary, apart from the fact that 23 out of the 30 cabinet seats have been given to millionaires, there is one thing which we should all raise immediately with our MPs. One little piece of proposed legislation which was published yesterday in the ConDem agreements for a fixed term parliament is truly worrying.
Here is the agreement:
“The parties agree to the establishment of five year fixed-term parliaments. A Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government will put a binding motion before the House of Commons in the first days following this agreement stating that the next general election will be held on the first Thursday of May 2015. Following this motion, legislation will be brought forward to make provision for fixed term parliaments of five years. This legislation will also provide for dissolution if 55% or more of the House votes in favour.”The first part is ok. It takes power away from Government, which is ok, although a little strange, given the peculiarities of how our parliamentary system works. But that last little sentence – that 55% – is hugely troubling.
Effectively, in our system, if a major piece of legislation is not passed by a parliament, any party can call for a motion of no confidence. This would obviously usually be the opposition, who would capitalise on the divided house to show that the leading party do not have the support they need to command the house, and if the motion is passed, parliament is dissolved and a new election is formed.
Now, this has always – for hundreds of years – been a vote on which a majority is needed. But according to this piece of legislation, the opposition would need to get more than half of the votes – 55%. This is blatantly undemocratic. What really makes it a concern though, is that the Tories have 47% of the seats in parliament (don’t forget – won with only 37% of the popular vote). If the LibDems find out that they cannot be shackled to a party which is not as progressive as it pretends (this is an if – but I’m setting out now for posterity that this would not surprise me one little bit), if they walk away wholesale from the Tories, if the alliance breaks down, then every single MP in opposition voting in favour could still not bring a no confidence motion. So MPs representing a massive 63% of the country cannot dissolve Parliament.
Commentators have already been saying that this is a worrying proposal. Legal experts are troubled. This goes against history, democracy, common sense and fairness, and if the Tories pass this piece of legislation, as well as their proposals to reduce MPs – which many see as an attempt to gerrymander the system in their favour, they could easily lock themselves in power for decades.
As in the poster shown here, they claimed that £250 million would be spent on electoral reform. They still have this claim live on their website now. A few points of clarity here:
c. The claims for the voter education are wildly inflated. They were based on the voter education costs in Scotland for the Single Transferable Vote – which is universally recognised as being a far more complex system than AV.
erhaps it’s because they’re inherently more intelligent than us. You know, our political parties? Who all elect their leaders through AV. Whatever the reason, I for one find it insulting to be told the electorate won’t understand AV.
When trying to show how unfair AV would be, the No campaign has focused on sports events. This misses the point entirely – as such events are decided on the talent, strength or prowess of a contestant, not how many people vote for them. An election is not a race. But even using their decidedly bizarre logic, it doesn’t add up. One of the examples used was this campaign van which showed two boxers. This included the indefensible claim that “under AV the loser can win.” In a two-man contest such as this, the loser cannot win – that is the point – that you need a majority to win, and with two contestants, one of them will have it. But add in more contestants, and for instance, a judging panel, and then you have to take into account different opinions, and AV allows these to be represented more fairly.