Paul Anderson, Tribune column, 13 May 2011
Last week's defeat for the “yes” campaign in the alternative vote referendum was richly deserved.
The “yes” campaign failed miserably to put across its case for changing the electoral system for the House of Commons from first past the post to preferential voting.
Its efforts were risible from the start, when its launch was fronted by a comic and an actor, and went downhill from there.
The “yes” campaign never managed to make better arguments for AV than that it “would make MPs work harder” (though it never explained how) and that it was somehow “fairer” than the status quo (ditto). Within a couple of weeks of its launch, it had been reduced to whining that the “no” campaign were nasty rough boys – and after that it became all-but-invisible for a while.
It got a few headlines when Ed Miliband belatedly gave it lukewarm support (though only after he made it clear that he would not appear on a pro-AV platform with Nick Clegg) and a few more when increasingly desperate Liberal Democrats entered the fray to repeat the complaint that the “no” campaign were nasty rough boys.
But that was it. The Independent and to a lesser extent the Guardian filled in a few of the gaps in the “yes” campaign with coherent if hardly powerful leaders and opinion columns in favour of the principle of preferential voting, the New Statesman added its tuppence-ha'penny-worth in typically incompetent fashion – and then the great British public had their say.
Their verdict was decisive. Of those that voted (42 per cent, which in the circumstances wasn't bad), 69 per cent backed “no” and just 31 per cent “yes”. The alternative vote is now dead as an option for reform of the voting system.
It would be wrong, however, to claim that the incompetence of the “yes” campaign was the sole factor in the result. It was up against a much-better-funded “no” campaign that was brutally populist. And, Guardian and Independent apart, the media were indifferent when they were not hostile.
But the most important reason that the “yes” campaign lost was that it was trying to sell a prospectus it didn't really believe in itself – and voters smelt a rat.
There are a handful of people who genuinely believe that AV is the best possible system for electing a legislative assembly, among them the Labour MP Peter Hain, the journalist John Rentoul and the pollster Peter Kellner. (For all I know, Ed Miliband might be another, though I have my doubts.)
For most of the “yes” camp, however, AV was not what they really wanted.
Extraordinarily, even Nick Clegg, the man who made the referendum on AV a condition of Liberal Democrat participation in coalition with the Tories, didn't really want it. He memorably dismissed AV in an April 2010 interview as a “miserable little compromise”.
No, what Clegg and the overwhelming majority of the “yes” campaigners really wanted was proportional representation. They were pushing for AV only as a step towards PR.
(As regular readers will be aware, this column argued that the notion that AV was a step to PR was twaddle, and that supporters of PR should vote “no”. Very few other pro-PR people agreed, however, and most joined the “yes” campaign.)
Of course, they couldn't say that they saw AV merely as a means to a different end during the campaign. On one hand, it would have split the pro-AV camp, because one of the things true believers in AV find attractive about it is that it is not PR. On the other hand, it would have given the “no” campaign a golden opportunity to claim that AV was a Trojan horse for PR.
So we ended up with the grotesque spectacle of supporters of proportional representation running around the country trying to whip up enthusiasm for a change they saw not as an end in itself but as a first step towards something completely different, all the time denying that they were doing any such thing.
It's hardly surprising that voters saw through the ruse and gave the “yes” campaign the same treatment they'd give a dodgy insurance salesman.
The decision of so many supporters of PR to attach themselves to the “yes” campaign has done serious damage to the credibility of proportional representation from which it will undoubtedly take time to recover – and several prominent pro-PR people in the “yes” campaign should at very least be issuing public apologies for making a very bad call on the referendum.
At least, though, on the bright side, the lost referendum was not about PR. Although the alternative vote now has no credibility, the case for a proportional lower house remains as strong as ever – and untested with the electorate.
13 May 2011
7 May 2011
AV RULED OUT FOR A GENERATION
The resounding defeat for the alternative vote in this week's referendum means that Nick Clegg's "miserable little compromise" has been consigned to the dustbin of history (at least for the forseeable future), which is no bad thing. I'm in Barcelona on the Orwell trail with limited internet access right now, so you'll have to wait until next week for my comprehensive response, but I've put up a short post on AV IS NOT PR giving my initial thoughts.
28 April 2011
ROYAL WEDDING? LEAVE IT OUT
I hate it. The Sex Pistols got it right in 1977. And here's the tacky public blow-job moment. They really have no shame at all:
15 April 2011
PLEASE, NO MORE REFERENDUMS
Paul Anderson, Tribune column, 15 April 2011
There was a time, long ago, when referendums were anathema to us Brits.
Referendums were French – and we didn’t do French, at least at home. Referendums had a role in the colonies, but in Britain they had no place. We had a functioning representative democracy that had no need of vulgar plebiscites any more than it needed bidets or garlic.
That all changed in the 1970s. We discovered genital hygiene, Mediterranean cooking – and the delights of voting “yes” or “no” to a question put to us by the government.
There was a referendum in Northern Ireland in 1973 on whether the Six Counties should remain in the United Kingdom – “yes” won – and, more importantly, Labour won the 1974 general election promising a referendum on continued British membership of what was then called the Common Market. It took place in 1975, and “yes” swept the board. In 1979, there were referendums in Scotland and Wales on devolution. Scotland voted for devolution but not by a sufficient majority to have it implemented. Wales voted against.
All these 1970s referendums were the product of shameless political opportunism – those on Europe and devolution came about because Labour needed a way out of its deep divisions on both issues – and none of them solved anything.
The Northern Ireland sovereignty ballot was little more than a farce because it was boycotted by nationalists (surprise, surprise). And the main effect of the 1979 devolution referendums, held as the Labour government went through its death throes, was to spur proponents of devolution to redouble their efforts.
Even the overwhelming “yes” to Europe in 1975 was less decisive than it seemed. The “yes” campaign had the support of every single national newspaper, the Tories, the Liberals and most members of the Labour cabinet, and it was lavishly funded by big business. The “no” campaign had Tribune and the Morning Star, Michael Foot and Enoch Powell, and a tiny budget. The resentment of the anti-European Tory right about the way their party was manoeuvred into the “yes” camp came to dominate Tory politics in the late 1980s and still remains poisonous.
The 1970s experience put a lot of politicians off referendums – but not Tony Blair or Gordon Brown (who first made his mark as organiser of Labour’s “yes” campaign on devolution in 1979). Under their leadership, Labour went into the 1997 election promising referendums galore – on devolution to Scotland, Wales and the English regions, on changing the electoral system for the House of Commons, on British membership of the single European currency.
Those on Scotland and Wales took place – both countries voted in favour of devolution in 1997 – and there was one (utterly farcical) ballot on creating an English region in the north-east, in 2004. Otherwise, however, Labour did not keep its referendum promises. Blair pencilled in the euro referendum several times, but Brown got out his eraser for each, and Labour did nothing serious on the electoral reform referendum until Brown desperately made it part of the party’s 2010 general election pitch.
And of course, that promise ended up as government policy – but not of a Labour government. One of the concessions Nick Clegg wrought from David Cameron last year as the price for coalition was a referendum on electoral reform. Which is what we’ve got coming up in three weeks.
I’m not going to get into the arguments about the alternative vote again here. It suffices to say that Clegg’s deal with Cameron to introduce an AV versus first past the post referendum was one of the lousiest opportunist Realpolitik sell-outs in living memory in Britain. His party stood for proportional representation, and the least he should have demanded last May was a multi-choice referendum on the electoral system in which PR was an option. I think he could have got it, but there is no evidence that he even asked.
Whatever, we’ve got AV versus FPTP next month, and who gives a toss outside the political class? The referendum campaigns are run by idiots, and both “yes” and “no” have adopted the most cretinous strategies. “The alternative vote kills babies!” “Sexy celebs want change!” None of the key arguments, for or against AV, has had any purchase. The “no” campaign has been bankrolled by hardline Tory millionaires. The “yes” mob has had liberal charitable foundations dishing out cash that could be better used elsewhere.
But this is what plebiscitary democracy is like. Referendums are always useless for anything important. Most solve nothing, and they’re demeaning. They reduce politics to the lowest common denominator, and when anything that matters is at stake they give big media the whip hand. They are OK for small local things – should you allow the pub to stay open after 11pm? – but that’s about it. Ed Miliband take note: please, no referendum promises.
There was a time, long ago, when referendums were anathema to us Brits.
Referendums were French – and we didn’t do French, at least at home. Referendums had a role in the colonies, but in Britain they had no place. We had a functioning representative democracy that had no need of vulgar plebiscites any more than it needed bidets or garlic.
That all changed in the 1970s. We discovered genital hygiene, Mediterranean cooking – and the delights of voting “yes” or “no” to a question put to us by the government.
There was a referendum in Northern Ireland in 1973 on whether the Six Counties should remain in the United Kingdom – “yes” won – and, more importantly, Labour won the 1974 general election promising a referendum on continued British membership of what was then called the Common Market. It took place in 1975, and “yes” swept the board. In 1979, there were referendums in Scotland and Wales on devolution. Scotland voted for devolution but not by a sufficient majority to have it implemented. Wales voted against.
All these 1970s referendums were the product of shameless political opportunism – those on Europe and devolution came about because Labour needed a way out of its deep divisions on both issues – and none of them solved anything.
The Northern Ireland sovereignty ballot was little more than a farce because it was boycotted by nationalists (surprise, surprise). And the main effect of the 1979 devolution referendums, held as the Labour government went through its death throes, was to spur proponents of devolution to redouble their efforts.
Even the overwhelming “yes” to Europe in 1975 was less decisive than it seemed. The “yes” campaign had the support of every single national newspaper, the Tories, the Liberals and most members of the Labour cabinet, and it was lavishly funded by big business. The “no” campaign had Tribune and the Morning Star, Michael Foot and Enoch Powell, and a tiny budget. The resentment of the anti-European Tory right about the way their party was manoeuvred into the “yes” camp came to dominate Tory politics in the late 1980s and still remains poisonous.
The 1970s experience put a lot of politicians off referendums – but not Tony Blair or Gordon Brown (who first made his mark as organiser of Labour’s “yes” campaign on devolution in 1979). Under their leadership, Labour went into the 1997 election promising referendums galore – on devolution to Scotland, Wales and the English regions, on changing the electoral system for the House of Commons, on British membership of the single European currency.
Those on Scotland and Wales took place – both countries voted in favour of devolution in 1997 – and there was one (utterly farcical) ballot on creating an English region in the north-east, in 2004. Otherwise, however, Labour did not keep its referendum promises. Blair pencilled in the euro referendum several times, but Brown got out his eraser for each, and Labour did nothing serious on the electoral reform referendum until Brown desperately made it part of the party’s 2010 general election pitch.
And of course, that promise ended up as government policy – but not of a Labour government. One of the concessions Nick Clegg wrought from David Cameron last year as the price for coalition was a referendum on electoral reform. Which is what we’ve got coming up in three weeks.
I’m not going to get into the arguments about the alternative vote again here. It suffices to say that Clegg’s deal with Cameron to introduce an AV versus first past the post referendum was one of the lousiest opportunist Realpolitik sell-outs in living memory in Britain. His party stood for proportional representation, and the least he should have demanded last May was a multi-choice referendum on the electoral system in which PR was an option. I think he could have got it, but there is no evidence that he even asked.
Whatever, we’ve got AV versus FPTP next month, and who gives a toss outside the political class? The referendum campaigns are run by idiots, and both “yes” and “no” have adopted the most cretinous strategies. “The alternative vote kills babies!” “Sexy celebs want change!” None of the key arguments, for or against AV, has had any purchase. The “no” campaign has been bankrolled by hardline Tory millionaires. The “yes” mob has had liberal charitable foundations dishing out cash that could be better used elsewhere.
But this is what plebiscitary democracy is like. Referendums are always useless for anything important. Most solve nothing, and they’re demeaning. They reduce politics to the lowest common denominator, and when anything that matters is at stake they give big media the whip hand. They are OK for small local things – should you allow the pub to stay open after 11pm? – but that’s about it. Ed Miliband take note: please, no referendum promises.
4 April 2011
ORWELL BEATS KIPLING HANDS DOWN
I had great fun yesterday at the Oxford Literary Festival at a debate put on by the Orwell Prize on whether George Orwell or Rudyard Kipling was the better or more relevant writer. I was backing Orwell, along with Sarah Bakewell, author of the much acclaimed How to Live - A Life of Montaigne, against the Kiplingites Charles Allen (Kipling Sahib) and Andrew Lycett (Rudyard Kipling and Kipling Abroad) – and the audience backed my lot. The video of the event starts here: I'm the one with ants in his pants attempting to squeeze a talk he knows last 10 minutes into five ...
17 March 2011
WHY AV IS WORSE
Paul Anderson, Tribune column, 18 March 2011
The week before last, Tribune published a letter from Terry Ashton, one-time general secretary of the London Labour Party, arguing that my last column had not substantiated my claim that the alternative vote is worse than first past the post for parliamentary elections. I know it’s not done for columnists to abuse their privileged position to take issue with letters to the editor, but what the hell – this one needs to be thrashed out.
My starting point is that the main problem with first past the post is that it is not proportional. It is based entirely on single-member constituencies and has no mechanism to ensure that the share of parliamentary seats won by parties reflects their overall level of support.
Indeed, in most general elections of the past 80 years, FPTP has yielded spectacularly disproportionate results, the beneficiaries being the Conservative and Labour parties and the losers the Liberals (and their successors) and other smaller parties. At the last general election, the Conservative Party won 36 per cent of the vote but 47 per cent of Commons seats, Labour won 29 per cent of the vote but 40 per cent of seats and the Lib Dems won 23 per cent of the vote and only 9 per cent of seats. In five out of the last eight general elections – 1979, 1983, 1987, 1997 and 2001 – parties have won landslide Commons majorities on much less than half the vote.
Now, proportionality is not the only criterion by which electoral systems can be judged – and supporters of first past the post argue that its main strengths are precisely a function of its disproportionality, that it usually delivers clear victories for either Labour or the Tories and that it tends to prevent extremists from gaining a foothold in parliament. Post-election haggling over coalition arrangements is the exception rather than the norm under FPTP, they say, and the disproportionality of the Lib Dems’ representation excludes them from undue influence as perpetual king-makers.
As it happens, I believe that the benefits of proportionality – both in giving legitimacy to the electoral system and in allowing relatively easy development of new parties – would out-weigh the supposed disadvantages. But this is irrelevant in the context of the May 5 referendum.
The referendum gives us a straight choice between AV and FPTP; and, despite the claims of some of its proponents, AV is neither a proportional system, nor a “more” proportional system than FPTP, nor a step towards a more proportional system. AV is simply preferential voting in single-member constituencies. Voters mark their ballots “1, 2, 3, 4 …” instead of “X”; if no candidate wins more than 50 per cent of first preferences, the second preferences of the last placed candidate are distributed, and so on until one candidate reaches 50 per cent.
So what makes AV worse than FPTP? Advocates of AV say that it has the advantage of ensuring that every MP is elected with 50 per cent or more of the vote – but it also turns electioneering into a desperate battle for the second, third and fourth preferences of fringe candidates. It eliminates tactical voting in the sense that it makes it unnecessary for voters to make considered choices between voting for someone they want and voting for someone with a chance of winning – but it does so only by allowing some voters more than one bite of the cherry.
The worst problem with AV, however, is that it in the long term it would probably be even less proportional and even less conducive to pluralism than FPTP. No one can know precisely what its effects would be in Britain – and guesswork based on recent general elections has been rendered obsolete by the Lib Dems’ entry into government with the Tories.
But the 90-year experience of Australia suggests that AV has even more of a tendency than FPTP to force politics into a de facto two-party mode.
In Australia, elections for the lower house of parliament, the House of Representatives, are a stand-off between the centre-left Labor Party and a permanent conservative coalition of the Liberal and National parties (as they are now known). One reason the conservative coalition became permanent is a function of AV: each right-wing party needs the second preferences of supporters of the other to win seats – so each formally recommends that its supporters give their second preferences to the other to keep Labor out.
Parties outside these two blocs are more effectively excluded from the Australian House of Representatives than they are from the House of Commons. Partly because of this, landslide parliamentary majorities on minorities of first-preference votes are more common in Australia even than landslides for minority-supported parties under FPTP in Britain.
Of course, the disproportional effects of AV could be mitigated if it were used in conjunction with regional top-up seats, as recommended by Roy Jenkins’s Independent Commission on the Voting System in 1998. But “AV-plus” isn’t on offer on May 6 or at any time afterwards. Nor is what Australia has that Britain has not – an elected upper chamber with a quasi-proportional electoral system under which smaller parties have repeatedly won representation.
If we vote yes, we get AV pure and simple, without an elected second chamber, and we get it for keeps. And, even though it puts me in the same camp as the dreadful David Owen on an important issue for the first time in 30 years, that’s why I’m voting “No to AV, Yes to PR”.
The week before last, Tribune published a letter from Terry Ashton, one-time general secretary of the London Labour Party, arguing that my last column had not substantiated my claim that the alternative vote is worse than first past the post for parliamentary elections. I know it’s not done for columnists to abuse their privileged position to take issue with letters to the editor, but what the hell – this one needs to be thrashed out.
My starting point is that the main problem with first past the post is that it is not proportional. It is based entirely on single-member constituencies and has no mechanism to ensure that the share of parliamentary seats won by parties reflects their overall level of support.
Indeed, in most general elections of the past 80 years, FPTP has yielded spectacularly disproportionate results, the beneficiaries being the Conservative and Labour parties and the losers the Liberals (and their successors) and other smaller parties. At the last general election, the Conservative Party won 36 per cent of the vote but 47 per cent of Commons seats, Labour won 29 per cent of the vote but 40 per cent of seats and the Lib Dems won 23 per cent of the vote and only 9 per cent of seats. In five out of the last eight general elections – 1979, 1983, 1987, 1997 and 2001 – parties have won landslide Commons majorities on much less than half the vote.
Now, proportionality is not the only criterion by which electoral systems can be judged – and supporters of first past the post argue that its main strengths are precisely a function of its disproportionality, that it usually delivers clear victories for either Labour or the Tories and that it tends to prevent extremists from gaining a foothold in parliament. Post-election haggling over coalition arrangements is the exception rather than the norm under FPTP, they say, and the disproportionality of the Lib Dems’ representation excludes them from undue influence as perpetual king-makers.
As it happens, I believe that the benefits of proportionality – both in giving legitimacy to the electoral system and in allowing relatively easy development of new parties – would out-weigh the supposed disadvantages. But this is irrelevant in the context of the May 5 referendum.
The referendum gives us a straight choice between AV and FPTP; and, despite the claims of some of its proponents, AV is neither a proportional system, nor a “more” proportional system than FPTP, nor a step towards a more proportional system. AV is simply preferential voting in single-member constituencies. Voters mark their ballots “1, 2, 3, 4 …” instead of “X”; if no candidate wins more than 50 per cent of first preferences, the second preferences of the last placed candidate are distributed, and so on until one candidate reaches 50 per cent.
So what makes AV worse than FPTP? Advocates of AV say that it has the advantage of ensuring that every MP is elected with 50 per cent or more of the vote – but it also turns electioneering into a desperate battle for the second, third and fourth preferences of fringe candidates. It eliminates tactical voting in the sense that it makes it unnecessary for voters to make considered choices between voting for someone they want and voting for someone with a chance of winning – but it does so only by allowing some voters more than one bite of the cherry.
The worst problem with AV, however, is that it in the long term it would probably be even less proportional and even less conducive to pluralism than FPTP. No one can know precisely what its effects would be in Britain – and guesswork based on recent general elections has been rendered obsolete by the Lib Dems’ entry into government with the Tories.
But the 90-year experience of Australia suggests that AV has even more of a tendency than FPTP to force politics into a de facto two-party mode.
In Australia, elections for the lower house of parliament, the House of Representatives, are a stand-off between the centre-left Labor Party and a permanent conservative coalition of the Liberal and National parties (as they are now known). One reason the conservative coalition became permanent is a function of AV: each right-wing party needs the second preferences of supporters of the other to win seats – so each formally recommends that its supporters give their second preferences to the other to keep Labor out.
Parties outside these two blocs are more effectively excluded from the Australian House of Representatives than they are from the House of Commons. Partly because of this, landslide parliamentary majorities on minorities of first-preference votes are more common in Australia even than landslides for minority-supported parties under FPTP in Britain.
Of course, the disproportional effects of AV could be mitigated if it were used in conjunction with regional top-up seats, as recommended by Roy Jenkins’s Independent Commission on the Voting System in 1998. But “AV-plus” isn’t on offer on May 6 or at any time afterwards. Nor is what Australia has that Britain has not – an elected upper chamber with a quasi-proportional electoral system under which smaller parties have repeatedly won representation.
If we vote yes, we get AV pure and simple, without an elected second chamber, and we get it for keeps. And, even though it puts me in the same camp as the dreadful David Owen on an important issue for the first time in 30 years, that’s why I’m voting “No to AV, Yes to PR”.
5 March 2011
BARNSLEY: GOOD NEWS BUT ...
Labour's decisive victory in the Barnsley Central by-election is excellent news, if only because it seems to show that (a year too late) the party has got over the worst of the MPs' expenses scandal. The seat was one of Labour's safest, but the cause of the by-election – MP Eric Illsley's conviction for fiddling the taxpayer – might just have made the by-election a tricky one.
The Lib Dems' dire performance, on the other hand, is undoubtedly cause for Schadenfreude but hardly cause for celebration: it is not a good sign when even the most opportunist centre party is outpolled both by the fascists of the BNP and the xenophobic populists of UKIP. I'm not panicking yet, but – along with recent poll data suggesting that there is a potentially massive constituency for a anti-immigrant party in Britain – the Barnsley result suggests that the far right might well be a major beneficiary if the coalition's current troubles continue.
The Lib Dems' dire performance, on the other hand, is undoubtedly cause for Schadenfreude but hardly cause for celebration: it is not a good sign when even the most opportunist centre party is outpolled both by the fascists of the BNP and the xenophobic populists of UKIP. I'm not panicking yet, but – along with recent poll data suggesting that there is a potentially massive constituency for a anti-immigrant party in Britain – the Barnsley result suggests that the far right might well be a major beneficiary if the coalition's current troubles continue.
23 February 2011
22 February 2011
'CORE VOTE' IS NO LABOUR PANACEA
I've only just caught this – an excellent piece from the current Tribune by Paul Hackett of the Smith Institute on Labour's electoral prospects. Read it all, but the points on class and voting patterns are particularly telling:
There has been much hand-wringing in Labour circles about the collapse of the C2 vote (skilled manual workers). The figures are horrifying. There has been an 11-percentage-point fall (a 7.5 per cent swing towards the Conservatives), with a corollary DE (semi-skilled, unskilled and unemployed) swing of 7 per cent. Clearly, Labour needs to re-engage with those who used to be regarded as its core voters in order to win again.
However, on closer inspection, the electoral map is a lot more complex and a political strategy based solely on the core vote would be an extremely risky one. The way social grades are split suggests that each grouping represents a quarter of the electorate. In fact, this is not the case. Not only do C1s out number other grades (and ABC1s outnumber C2DEs), there is also the impact of turnout. The data is unequivocal in showing that the poorest in society don’t vote. The difference between AB and DE turnout is nearly 20 percentage points. If you weight the social grades, it shows Labour cannot possibly win on the back of working-class support alone.
At the 2010 election, Labour gained more votes from ABs than from C2s and similar numbers from C1s as DEs. ABC1s contributed slightly more to Labour’s tally than C2DEs. That said, while Labour’s support among ABs looks fairly strong, there is a delicate balancing act to be managed between the social grades. Labour needs to win back more DE voters, but not at the cost of its AB vote.
Back in 1992, for example, Labour secured just 19 per cent of the AB vote (compared with 30 per cent in 1997 and 26 per cent in 2010). If Labour’s AB fell back to 19 per cent, it would require a relatively larger (9 per cent) rise among DEs to secure the same national support as it did in 2010 (this is against the backdrop of rapidly falling DE support). So there is no turning back to the idea of a working-class majority for Labour and to pretend otherwise would be counter-productive.
20 February 2011
IF GADDAFI GOES ...
I can't be the only old saddo who wonders what might come out of the archives about his generous support of the far-left in Britain.
17 February 2011
A VERY BAD START
Paul Anderson, Tribune column, 18 February 2011
Something tells me that the campaign in the run-up to the referendum on the voting system on 5 May is going to be rather less than riveting.
It’s not just that the issue itself – whether or not to drop the first past the post system for Westminster elections and replace it with the alternative vote – is technical and not at the front of most voters’ minds. Even campaigners for the “yes” and “no” camps appear to lack all conviction.
Last week, the “yes” camp plumbed the depths of desperation when one of its official spokespeople tried to appropriate the forthcoming royal wedding for the AV cause. “We will put all the arguments, but around the wedding it will be a coming-into-summer, more optimistic, more of a yes mood,” a “campaign source” told the Guardian (which for some reason thought this risible banality warranted a front-page story).
This week, the “no” camp sank even deeper, with an official launch at which its key argument (picked up by the Sun) seemed to be that AV would cost a shocking £250 million, mainly because councils would have to buy expensive vote-counting machines. The press conference subsequently degenerated into a catty exchange about whether “yes” or “no” had the hotter celebrity endorsements.
The real problem is that very few people even among the campaigners for “yes” and “no” are for or against the alternative vote as a matter of principle.
There are a few in the “yes” camp, among them the journalist John Rentoul and the Labour MP Peter Hain, who think that AV is a good thing in itself because it would ensure that every MP received more than 50 per cent of the vote. (AV retains single-member constituencies from first past the post but voters mark their ballot papers "1, 2, 3, 4 ..." in order of preference instead of placing an “X” next to the name of their favoured candidate. If no candidate wins more than 50 per cent of first preferences, the second preferences of supporters of the last-placed candidate are distributed, and so on until one candidate has more than 50 per cent of votes.)
But most supporters of the “yes” campaign are there either for reasons of political self-interest – most analysts believe that the Liberal Democrats would win more seats under AV than under FPTP – or because they see AV as a step towards a more proportional system of representation.
AV itself is not PR. Indeed, it could, and probably would, yield results even more disproportionate than first past the post – and no serious supporter of PR argues otherwise. But AV can be used, in conjunction with regional top-up seats, in a PR system, which is what the late Lord Jenkins advocated – he called it “AV-plus”— in the report of his Independent Commission on the Voting System in 1998. Many in the “yes” campaign, among them the constitutional campaigner Anthony Barnett and the Guardian newspaper, think that a vote to change to AV would open the door to further changes.
I really don’t buy this argument: I can’t see any reason whatsoever to expect that we won’t be stuck with AV for the long term if we vote for it in the referendum – and so, as a supporter of PR who thinks that AV is in many respects even worse than first past the post, I’m going to be voting “no” on 5 May.
Not that I’m happy with my bedfellows. The “no” camp is dominated by self-interested Tory and Labour big-wigs who back first past the post on the grounds that they believe AV would damage their parties’ prospects and that a “no” vote on 5 May will damage Nick Clegg. Hardly anyone in the official No to AV campaign is prepared to make the best principled argument against AV – that it is not proportional – for the simple reason that hardly anyone in No to AV supports PR.
Hence the hogwash at the No to AV launch about how expensive AV would be – which will no doubt be followed by groaning about how complicated AV is, how it would spoil the fun of election night and sundry other irrelevancies.
All of which is a crying shame, because how we vote in elections actually matters – and the referendum will determine whether we are saddled with a system even worse than the one we’ve got now. I'm hoping that the cretinous exchanges of the past week will prove an aberration. But I'm not putting money on it.
Something tells me that the campaign in the run-up to the referendum on the voting system on 5 May is going to be rather less than riveting.
It’s not just that the issue itself – whether or not to drop the first past the post system for Westminster elections and replace it with the alternative vote – is technical and not at the front of most voters’ minds. Even campaigners for the “yes” and “no” camps appear to lack all conviction.
Last week, the “yes” camp plumbed the depths of desperation when one of its official spokespeople tried to appropriate the forthcoming royal wedding for the AV cause. “We will put all the arguments, but around the wedding it will be a coming-into-summer, more optimistic, more of a yes mood,” a “campaign source” told the Guardian (which for some reason thought this risible banality warranted a front-page story).
This week, the “no” camp sank even deeper, with an official launch at which its key argument (picked up by the Sun) seemed to be that AV would cost a shocking £250 million, mainly because councils would have to buy expensive vote-counting machines. The press conference subsequently degenerated into a catty exchange about whether “yes” or “no” had the hotter celebrity endorsements.
The real problem is that very few people even among the campaigners for “yes” and “no” are for or against the alternative vote as a matter of principle.
There are a few in the “yes” camp, among them the journalist John Rentoul and the Labour MP Peter Hain, who think that AV is a good thing in itself because it would ensure that every MP received more than 50 per cent of the vote. (AV retains single-member constituencies from first past the post but voters mark their ballot papers "1, 2, 3, 4 ..." in order of preference instead of placing an “X” next to the name of their favoured candidate. If no candidate wins more than 50 per cent of first preferences, the second preferences of supporters of the last-placed candidate are distributed, and so on until one candidate has more than 50 per cent of votes.)
But most supporters of the “yes” campaign are there either for reasons of political self-interest – most analysts believe that the Liberal Democrats would win more seats under AV than under FPTP – or because they see AV as a step towards a more proportional system of representation.
AV itself is not PR. Indeed, it could, and probably would, yield results even more disproportionate than first past the post – and no serious supporter of PR argues otherwise. But AV can be used, in conjunction with regional top-up seats, in a PR system, which is what the late Lord Jenkins advocated – he called it “AV-plus”— in the report of his Independent Commission on the Voting System in 1998. Many in the “yes” campaign, among them the constitutional campaigner Anthony Barnett and the Guardian newspaper, think that a vote to change to AV would open the door to further changes.
I really don’t buy this argument: I can’t see any reason whatsoever to expect that we won’t be stuck with AV for the long term if we vote for it in the referendum – and so, as a supporter of PR who thinks that AV is in many respects even worse than first past the post, I’m going to be voting “no” on 5 May.
Not that I’m happy with my bedfellows. The “no” camp is dominated by self-interested Tory and Labour big-wigs who back first past the post on the grounds that they believe AV would damage their parties’ prospects and that a “no” vote on 5 May will damage Nick Clegg. Hardly anyone in the official No to AV campaign is prepared to make the best principled argument against AV – that it is not proportional – for the simple reason that hardly anyone in No to AV supports PR.
Hence the hogwash at the No to AV launch about how expensive AV would be – which will no doubt be followed by groaning about how complicated AV is, how it would spoil the fun of election night and sundry other irrelevancies.
All of which is a crying shame, because how we vote in elections actually matters – and the referendum will determine whether we are saddled with a system even worse than the one we’ve got now. I'm hoping that the cretinous exchanges of the past week will prove an aberration. But I'm not putting money on it.
9 February 2011
WIKILEAKS LESSONS – 1
The Guardian's instant book on the biggest news story de nos jours, WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy by David Leigh and Luke Harding, is a great piece of work, and I'll be reviewing it shortly. In the meantime, a gem from Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger's introduction to the book, which I missed the week before last when it was published in the paper: the text of an email he received on WikiLeaks from the American media lawyer Max Frankel, who defended the New York Times in the Pentagon papers case 40 years ago:
1. My view has almost always been that information which wants to get out will get out; our job is to receive it responsibly and to publish or not by our own unvarying news standards.Rusbridger says: "There have been many longer treatises on the ethics of journalism which have said less." And, apart from the use of "which" when it should be "that", I couldn't agree more.
2. If the source or informant violates his oath of office or the law, we should leave it to the authorities to try to enforce their law or oath, without our collaboration. We reject collaboration or revelation of our sources for the larger reason that ALL our sources deserve to know that they are protected with us. It is, however, part of our obligation to reveal the biases and apparent purposes of the people who leak or otherwise disclose information.
3. If certain information seems to defy the standards proclaimed by the supreme court in the Pentagon papers case ie that publication will cause direct, immediate and irreparable damage we have an obligation to limit our publication appropriately. If in doubt, we should give appropriate authority a chance to persuade us that such direct and immediate danger exists. (See our 24-hour delay of discovery of Soviet missiles in Cuba as described in my autobiography, or our delay in reporting planes lost in combat until the pilots can perhaps be rescued.)
4. For all other information, I have always believed that no one can reliably predict the consequences of publication. The Pentagon papers, contrary to Ellsberg's wish, did not shorten the Vietnam war or stir significant additional protest. A given disclosure may embarrass government but improve a policy, or it may be a leak by the government itself and end up damaging policy. "Publish and be damned," as Scotty Reston used to say; it sounds terrible but as a journalistic motto it has served our society well through history.
4 February 2011
AV IS NOT PR BLOG LAUNCHED
I have set up a new blog AV IS NOT PR, to put the argument for voting "no" in the referendum on the voting system on the grounds that the alternative vote is not proportional representation. Please visit it!
21 January 2011
WOULD LABOUR HAVE WON OLDHAM WITH AV?
Paul Anderson, Tribune column, 21 January 2011
It’s an old adage of political journalism that it’s a mistake to read too much into a single by-election result, and Oldham East and Saddleworth last week is no exception.
Indeed, you could argue that it’s not very significant at all. Oldham East and Saddleworth is a very unusual constituency, one of a handful of Labour-Liberal Democrat marginals, and the circumstances of the by-election were odd in the extreme – the nullification of the general election victory won only eight months ago by Labour’s Phil Woolas, and Woolas’s disqualification from parliament on the grounds that he had untruthfully claimed that his Lib Dem opponent, Elwyn Watkins, had sought the support of Islamist extremists in his campaign. Unless there is a spate of by-elections following convictions of sitting Labour MPs for fiddling expenses, Labour isn’t going to have to fight many fights in conditions remotely similar.
Add the likelihood that nearly all constituency boundaries will be redrawn as a consequence of the coalition’s plans to reduce the size of the House of Commons and the possibility that the next general election will take place under a different electoral system, and Debbie Abrahams’s victory for Labour last week looks in certain lights to be very small potatoes.
But it’s not completely insignificant. It is, most importantly, a win for Labour under Ed Miliband at a time when – how to put it politely? – he has yet to establish a commanding presence on the political stage. If Labour had lost, his leadership would now be being lampooned widely, and not just by the usual suspects in Labour’s ranks who still haven’t got over his beating his brother last September. As it is, he has a little more breathing space.
Oldham East and Saddleworth also provides a fascinating snapshot of how voters’ allegiances have shifted in the eight months since the Tory-Lib Dem coalition government was formed. Labour won essentially because it attracted thousands of votes from people who had voted Lib Dem at the general election. The Lib Dem share of the vote held up, but only because thousands who had voted Tory in May 2010 switched tactically to the Lib Dem to keep Labour out.
This pattern of Lib Dems defecting to Labour and of Tories tactically voting Lib Dem was good news for Labour last week – but it need not always be so. If anti-Labour tactical voting becomes the norm in other Labour-Lib Dem marginals, it’s quite possible that Tories tactically voting Lib Dem will outweigh Lib Dems defecting to Labour, with very bad results for Labour. It would be even worse if Lib Dem supporters opt to vote tactically for Tories to keep Labour out in Labour-Tory marginals.
And that’s on the assumption that the electoral system remains the same. If it is changed to the alternative vote, as will happen if voters vote yes in the forthcoming referendum on the electoral system … well, the message for Labour from Oldham East and Saddleworth is not at all reassuring.
Under AV, single-member constituencies are retained, but voters mark their preferences on their ballot papers by ranking the candidates (“1, 2, 3, 4 …”) rather than choosing one (“X”). If no candidate wins more than 50 per cent of first preferences, the second preferences of the last placed candidate are redistributed, and so on until one candidate has more than 50 per cent.
Now, no one can do more than guess how preferences would have stacked up under AV in Oldham East and Saddleworth. But the scale of Tory tactical voting for the Lib Dem suggests that he would have picked up many, many more second preferences than the Labour candidate from the 13 per cent of voters who voted Tory last week. And it’s by no means an outrageous conjecture that the Lib Dem would also have picked up an overwhelming majority of second (or third or fourth) preferences from the 11 per cent who voted UKIP or the BNP. I know it’s only a parlour game, but on this scenario I think that Labour would have lost narrowly last week.
Party self-interest is not of course what should count in choosing an electoral system – but in reality it will count a great deal come the AV referendum. Oldham East and Saddleworth is a warning to those Labour supporters of AV who have blithely assumed, on the basis of the experience of anti-Tory tactical voting in the four general elections before 2010, that Labour would benefit from a switch to AV. If anti-Labour feeling is widespread among voters, it could lose even more comprehensively under AV than under first-past-the-post.
That’s not my principal, principled reason for voting “no” in the referendum. But it’s a reason all the same, and it’s related to the principal, principled reason – of which more anon.
It’s an old adage of political journalism that it’s a mistake to read too much into a single by-election result, and Oldham East and Saddleworth last week is no exception.
Indeed, you could argue that it’s not very significant at all. Oldham East and Saddleworth is a very unusual constituency, one of a handful of Labour-Liberal Democrat marginals, and the circumstances of the by-election were odd in the extreme – the nullification of the general election victory won only eight months ago by Labour’s Phil Woolas, and Woolas’s disqualification from parliament on the grounds that he had untruthfully claimed that his Lib Dem opponent, Elwyn Watkins, had sought the support of Islamist extremists in his campaign. Unless there is a spate of by-elections following convictions of sitting Labour MPs for fiddling expenses, Labour isn’t going to have to fight many fights in conditions remotely similar.
Add the likelihood that nearly all constituency boundaries will be redrawn as a consequence of the coalition’s plans to reduce the size of the House of Commons and the possibility that the next general election will take place under a different electoral system, and Debbie Abrahams’s victory for Labour last week looks in certain lights to be very small potatoes.
But it’s not completely insignificant. It is, most importantly, a win for Labour under Ed Miliband at a time when – how to put it politely? – he has yet to establish a commanding presence on the political stage. If Labour had lost, his leadership would now be being lampooned widely, and not just by the usual suspects in Labour’s ranks who still haven’t got over his beating his brother last September. As it is, he has a little more breathing space.
Oldham East and Saddleworth also provides a fascinating snapshot of how voters’ allegiances have shifted in the eight months since the Tory-Lib Dem coalition government was formed. Labour won essentially because it attracted thousands of votes from people who had voted Lib Dem at the general election. The Lib Dem share of the vote held up, but only because thousands who had voted Tory in May 2010 switched tactically to the Lib Dem to keep Labour out.
This pattern of Lib Dems defecting to Labour and of Tories tactically voting Lib Dem was good news for Labour last week – but it need not always be so. If anti-Labour tactical voting becomes the norm in other Labour-Lib Dem marginals, it’s quite possible that Tories tactically voting Lib Dem will outweigh Lib Dems defecting to Labour, with very bad results for Labour. It would be even worse if Lib Dem supporters opt to vote tactically for Tories to keep Labour out in Labour-Tory marginals.
And that’s on the assumption that the electoral system remains the same. If it is changed to the alternative vote, as will happen if voters vote yes in the forthcoming referendum on the electoral system … well, the message for Labour from Oldham East and Saddleworth is not at all reassuring.
Under AV, single-member constituencies are retained, but voters mark their preferences on their ballot papers by ranking the candidates (“1, 2, 3, 4 …”) rather than choosing one (“X”). If no candidate wins more than 50 per cent of first preferences, the second preferences of the last placed candidate are redistributed, and so on until one candidate has more than 50 per cent.
Now, no one can do more than guess how preferences would have stacked up under AV in Oldham East and Saddleworth. But the scale of Tory tactical voting for the Lib Dem suggests that he would have picked up many, many more second preferences than the Labour candidate from the 13 per cent of voters who voted Tory last week. And it’s by no means an outrageous conjecture that the Lib Dem would also have picked up an overwhelming majority of second (or third or fourth) preferences from the 11 per cent who voted UKIP or the BNP. I know it’s only a parlour game, but on this scenario I think that Labour would have lost narrowly last week.
Party self-interest is not of course what should count in choosing an electoral system – but in reality it will count a great deal come the AV referendum. Oldham East and Saddleworth is a warning to those Labour supporters of AV who have blithely assumed, on the basis of the experience of anti-Tory tactical voting in the four general elections before 2010, that Labour would benefit from a switch to AV. If anti-Labour feeling is widespread among voters, it could lose even more comprehensively under AV than under first-past-the-post.
That’s not my principal, principled reason for voting “no” in the referendum. But it’s a reason all the same, and it’s related to the principal, principled reason – of which more anon.
20 January 2011
WELL, WELL, WELL ...
The resignation of Alan Johnson as shadow chancellor is a surprise – but then so was his appointment, and he had hardly shone in his role. Ed Balls takes his job, which is good news (he should have been appointed instead of Johnson last October), and Yvette Cooper moves from shadow foreign secretary to shadow home secretary, which also makes sense. I'm not so sure about Douglas Alexander as shadow foreign secretary – he was a distinctly lacklustre Europe minister, though that wasn't entirely his fault – and Liam "I’m afraid to tell you there's no money left" Byrne is anything but an inspired choice to shadow work and pensions.
I'm prepared to bet anyone a fiver that whingeing about Balls's appointment from the Blairite ultras will be heard on news bulletins before midnight.
I'm prepared to bet anyone a fiver that whingeing about Balls's appointment from the Blairite ultras will be heard on news bulletins before midnight.
14 January 2011
MIXED NEWS FROM OLDHAM EAST
Labour's victory in the Oldham East and Saddleworth by-election was hardly a surprise, though it was more emphatic than I expected. But a few things are worth noting:
- The result is a reminder that a political party is not always tainted by the shaming of one of its MPs. It's true that Phil Woolas was shamed for over-vigorous attack campaigning rather than fingers-in-the-till – and to my mind was far too severely punished – but that augurs well for Labour, if it selects a clean candidate, in the forthcoming Barnsley Central by-election, brought about by the resignation of Eric Illsley over expenses fiddling.
- Even though Labour won, the willingness of voters who supported the Tories at the general election to switch tactically to the Lib Dems – which resulted in the Lib Dem candidate retaining the share of the vote he won last May – is a little worrying for Labour. It suggests that the party is vulnerable to negative tactical voting in the (few) seats held by the Lib Dems where it came second in 2010.
- It is impossible to tell how the by-election would have turned out under the alternative vote – the electoral system hardly anyone wants that is to be the subject of a referendum in May. But Labour opponents of AV have a point when they say that the pattern of Tory to Lib Dem tactical voting yesterday, along with the showing of UKIP, suggests that the result might just have been a narrow Lib Dem victory.
31 December 2010
26 December 2010
CAMILLA POKED WITH STICK – 3
Socialist Workers' Party ideological chief Alex Callinicos has responded to Laurie Penny on the student movement on the Guardian's Comment is Free website.
Surprise, surprise, he argues that Penny's rejection of Leninist "leadership" of the student movement is naive. She hasn't realised, apparently, that students need the power of the working class to achieve their ends. It might or might not be true that she hasn't realised – I think it's not – but:
Surprise, surprise, he argues that Penny's rejection of Leninist "leadership" of the student movement is naive. She hasn't realised, apparently, that students need the power of the working class to achieve their ends. It might or might not be true that she hasn't realised – I think it's not – but:
- Since when has the SWP provided an effective means for anyone to forge links with the organised working class?
- Why are Callinicos and the SWP – or any other self-appointed Leninist experts or leaders – any better placed than informed independent-minded students to make decisions about the future direction of the student movement?
What a cheek, them think we meekIn short, Leninism is, as ever, part of the problem, not part of the solution. Do it yourselves: you don't need leaders. And you don't need me to tell you ...
That we can’t speak up for ourself ...
The SWP can’t set we free
The IMG can’t do it for we
The Communist Party, true dem too arty farty ...
23 December 2010
TOMMY SHERIDAN: YOU COULDN'T MAKE IT UP
The conviction of Tommy Sheridan for perjury is hardly a surprise to anyone who has followed the former MSP's case since he sued the News of the World for reporting his visits to a swingers' club in Manchester. It was clear from the outset that he had told his former comrades in the Scottish Socialist Party leadership a completely different tale to the one he related in his libel action, and it really was only a matter of time before the disparities between his accounts brought him down.
There remain two intriguing questions, however. The first is why he decided to take on the Screws when he knew it had him pretty much bang-to-rights even if it got some of the detail wrong, as he admitted to his SSP comrades. If he'd stuck to the line that he'd been a naughty boy but that it was nobody's business but his own (and his sexual partners'), the story would have been a flash in the pan – damaging to his reputation and to his relationships, almost certainly, but temporary. Instead, he lied brazenly, apparently convinced that his world-historical role as proletarian revolutionary leader excused him from being held to account for his actions. I can't help but see this as a Leninist personality trait.
The second question is what would have happened to the SSP if Tommy had not been found out. It was the most succesful electoral party of the far-left of the postwar era – a beneficiary of the proportional representation system introduced by Labour for the Scottish Parliament, lest we forget – and briefly threatened to transform the rules of British politics. But the Sheridan scandal caused it to implode just as it reached its peak of influence. A genuinely democratic left party might have survived and rebuilt: one based on the cult of the leader and the culture of Leninism had no chance.
There remain two intriguing questions, however. The first is why he decided to take on the Screws when he knew it had him pretty much bang-to-rights even if it got some of the detail wrong, as he admitted to his SSP comrades. If he'd stuck to the line that he'd been a naughty boy but that it was nobody's business but his own (and his sexual partners'), the story would have been a flash in the pan – damaging to his reputation and to his relationships, almost certainly, but temporary. Instead, he lied brazenly, apparently convinced that his world-historical role as proletarian revolutionary leader excused him from being held to account for his actions. I can't help but see this as a Leninist personality trait.
The second question is what would have happened to the SSP if Tommy had not been found out. It was the most succesful electoral party of the far-left of the postwar era – a beneficiary of the proportional representation system introduced by Labour for the Scottish Parliament, lest we forget – and briefly threatened to transform the rules of British politics. But the Sheridan scandal caused it to implode just as it reached its peak of influence. A genuinely democratic left party might have survived and rebuilt: one based on the cult of the leader and the culture of Leninism had no chance.
CAMILLA POKED WITH STICK – 2
It’s all gone quiet on the student revolt over the past week – for one simple reason: it’s vacation time, and the kids have gone home to rest. OK, parliament has also approved the tuition fees hike, so the immediate cause for mobilisation ain’t there no more, but that’s a technicality.
I’ve no idea whether student protests will spring up again after the holidays: hunch says they will, but it’s not down to me. What I do know is that the whole show will be scuppered if the students allow the traditional left – Leninist or Labour – to seize the controls.
The great strength of the student movement of the past couple of months is that it is self-organised and self-managed. It has done its business without leaders. It has made the New Labourite president of the National Union of Students, Aaron Porter, look a prat, and it has done so with minimal use of demo placards supplied by the Socialist Workers Party. Now it must ensure it protects its autonomy.
The hiatus of the winter vacation is being used by the SWP and the other 57 varieties of Leninist no-hopers to attempt to recruit the movement's militants. Meanwhile, the NUS bureaucrats who’d like careers in grown-up politics are doing their best to co-opt its anger and channel it into respectability.
But remember, kids – you’re better-off without self-appointed leaders. Do it yourselves. Develop your own ways of practising politics. Forget the trad left. And please occupy my university, any old way you choose.
I’ve no idea whether student protests will spring up again after the holidays: hunch says they will, but it’s not down to me. What I do know is that the whole show will be scuppered if the students allow the traditional left – Leninist or Labour – to seize the controls.
The great strength of the student movement of the past couple of months is that it is self-organised and self-managed. It has done its business without leaders. It has made the New Labourite president of the National Union of Students, Aaron Porter, look a prat, and it has done so with minimal use of demo placards supplied by the Socialist Workers Party. Now it must ensure it protects its autonomy.
The hiatus of the winter vacation is being used by the SWP and the other 57 varieties of Leninist no-hopers to attempt to recruit the movement's militants. Meanwhile, the NUS bureaucrats who’d like careers in grown-up politics are doing their best to co-opt its anger and channel it into respectability.
But remember, kids – you’re better-off without self-appointed leaders. Do it yourselves. Develop your own ways of practising politics. Forget the trad left. And please occupy my university, any old way you choose.
- Laurie Penny has a piece here on the Guardian's Comment is Free that makes some salient points. I don't agree with her about Labour: in the long run, under the electoral system we have, Labour is still the only place democratic left politics can have serious electoral purchase; and old-fashioned electoral politics matters as much as it ever did. But she's right about the Leninists and their entirely parasitic relationship with the student movement.
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