AV (apathy vote)

As apathy upon wave of apathy has been heaped on the AV referendum debate, I thought I’d share with you a leader from the Times yesterday, urging voters to vote against. I don’t necessarily share the preference against, but it’s a useful addition to the compendium of material on electoral systems that teachers may have accumulated over the past several months. The strength of the argument presented, however, relates to the more glaring weaknesses in our government furniture. That said, it is likely that a wider debate on our constitution would stir up as much interest as the one focusing on this narrow feature of it.

No Alternative
AV is irrelevant to the need to improve the voting system
May 3 2011 12:01AM

Britain’s present voting system is far from perfect. But AV is an irrelevance. If the last election had been held using the alternative vote, it is likely that Gordon Brown would still be Prime Minister. Every attempt to simulate the 2010 result under AV shows both Labour and the Liberal Democrats winning considerably more seats. They would have been in a strong position to form a government together, as many in both parties wanted.
This fact alone shows that AV lacks the single most important quality of the current system — it cannot be relied upon to remove an unpopular government when national sentiment shifts.

First-past-the-post, like any voting system, is open to objection. Some regard it as a weakness that it can return fewer minority party MPs than their national share of the vote might suggest was fair. And it often has.

Yet this exact flaw is one of the things that helps to produce the current system’s greatest strengths — its long history of producing clear election results that reflect broad public opinion. It is hard to think of a single election in the modern era where, of the two contenders, the party that is acknowledged as the less fit to govern has nonetheless been victorious.

This includes the last one, where voters were keen to remove Labour and, in particular its Prime Minister, but were nervous about handing power to the Conservatives, despite liking David Cameron and feeling that he should probably take over in 10 Downing Street. The mathematical outcome was almost magically perfect for achieving this objective.

This repeated success in installing the prime minister that people want is a huge practical advantage to set against the theoretical advantages that are suggested for the alternative vote.

It is telling that the Yes to AV campaign emphasise the impact that they believe (wrongly) a new system might make on the conduct of individual MPs. This allows them to duck the question of the impact it might make on the election of governments. And while we continue to choose prime ministers by counting up the number of MPs supporting them in the House of Commons, it is this impact that is critical. Advocates of AV suggest, without grounds, that their new system will make individual MPs more accountable, and therefore more diligent. It might, however, have the opposite effect on governments. The directness of the current system, its ability to capture the national mood, would be lost, without obvious benefit.

There are many things that are wrong with the British Constitution. The standard of MPs is poor. Legislative scrutiny is too weak because there is not enough expertise in Parliament. The executive has dominion over the legislature, which leads to hasty and badly drafted laws. The House of Lords is still in a drama that began in 1911, with no end in sight. Turnout at general elections is too low. Local government has been emptied of power and Whitehall still tries to run things that are way beyond its competence.

None of these problems is a function of an electoral system. There is no solution to any of them even under discussion, let alone on offer. Instead of a serious discussion about why British politics isn’t working properly, we are being forced to sit through an irrelevant, tedious and hyperbolic argument about a small and unnecessary change to the electoral system. This is entirely about the internal politics of the coalition and not at all about the needs of the nation.
The electoral system is not perfect. No system can be. But it is not broken, either. Other aspects of the British Constitution are broken and nobody has a proposal to fix them. AV is not only the wrong answer, it’s the wrong question. But, given that it is the question that we have been asked, the answer has to be No.