Love and Liberty

The Liberal Democrat Conference opens today in Birmingham with perhaps the most depressing talking shop ever put on a Lib Dem Agenda. It’s the consultative session for the “May 2011 Election Review”: a big drop in the popular vote; a major setback on local councils; a disaster in Scotland; a total and utter thrashing in the AV referendum. And it’s the last that looks the most hopeless. Is electoral reform finished for good, or at least for a generation? Instead of endlessly debating what went wrong, there’s one major change we can make right now to improve things next time: never mention “STV” again. But I don’t mean running scared – I mean widening our appeal. Because if we’ve learned one thing, it’s that an electoral ‘reform’ campaign that only appeals to Liberal Democrats is stuffed, whether it’s this Spring’s or in a decade or two’s time.

I’m passionately committed to the system called the Single Transferable Vote. No system is perfect but, for me, it has two massive advantages. It’s broadly proportional – which means it’s fair to parties, and means that the House of Commons is broadly in line with people’s votes across the country. And it gives voters more power to choose the candidates who win – when every other system gives all the power to the parties. But I’m a political beast, and most people aren’t. Let’s not kid ourselves: a system where you choose different candidates in order of preference was obliterated this year, and it would be easy to attack STV as complicated and weird in just the same way (as Mark Thompson’s excellent if depressing article Outline of a No2STV Campaign illustrated). If there had been an STV referendum this year, it too would have been thrashed. And no proponents of STV have come up with anything like an answer save ‘campaign harder’. That’s necessary – but it’s not good enough.

Where AV Went Wrong (and more of AV’s greatest mistakes)

There’s still time, if you want to, to get your answers in to the Liberal Democrats’ Campaigns and Communications Committee’s consultation on the elections and the referendum. It’s already made up its mind on four key reasons for AV’s failure:

• Labour completely failed to deliver, being mostly part of the “No” campaign despite being the only party committed to AV in their manifesto;

• The Tories turned out to be complete bastards willing to say and do anything, and with an endless pot of money (who knew?);

• Holding the referendum on election day seemed like a good plan – maximising turnout, when polls showed broad but unenthusiastic support – but instead it meant both that Lib Dems were unable to give time to the referendum, and that the “No” campaign could give us an extra-big kicking, particularly through appealing to Labour voters;

• And, to contrast with the “No” campaign’s ruthless efficiency, the “Yes” campaign was basically rubbish.

But it’s really just looking mournfully at the stable door, and not wondering why the horse bolted. Similarly, the Electoral Reform Society has just elected a mostly new “Reform Slate” in reaction to the terrible result, but without making decisions on how to improve the message. And the aftermath for the victorious other side is that opponents of any kind of electoral reform, shameless conservatives in Labour and Tories alike, are claiming this was a vote against proportional representation, despite AV being often less proportional than “First Past the Post” (making the self-styled ‘No to AV, Yes to PR’ useful idiots look stupider than ever; hard to believe, isn’t it, that David Owen could have a catastrophic failure of political judgement).

The one good thing that came out of this year’s débâcle (other than establishing a grassroots movement for electoral reform, which is now largely dispersed and demoralised) is that we can learn how not to do it next time.

You know the story. The “No” campaign was full of lies. But it was brutally effective. They identified issues that Labour voters in particular wouldn’t like about AV – “Costly, Complicated, Clegg” – and pushed them hard. The Conservatives, always assumed to be anti-reform, as they have been for every reform in history from votes for ordinary people to votes for women, outdid themselves by at the same time using their party slogan “Working together in the national interest” to say how good it was that they were in coalition, and pouring wads of cash into vicious attacks on the Liberal Democrats for being in coalition and attacking the very idea of coalition to make AV scary. A finer example of saying one thing in one place and another elsewhere has surely never been seen. And perhaps most importantly, they made the political weather. It didn’t matter if what they said was truth or lie – they got in first. Almost every issue was then debated on ground set by the “No” campaign. The “Yes” campaign’s wider base of grassroots campaigners was completely let down by a disastrously faltering “air war”, and was simply overwhelmed by messages that they didn’t have the people or cash to counter.

Attack “First Past the Post”

So there are two key lessons to learn for ‘next time’, whenever it may come.The first is the lesson of the electoral mechanics, and that’s one for the long term: it can be planned for, but only really put into operation when the time comes. For what it’s worth, though, here are a few markers we must learn for taking the fight to “First Past the Post”:

• Explain the new system, or the “No” campaign will. “Yes” decided not to explain AV; “No” sent a Freepost booklet to every single house summing up “First Past the Post” as simply and positively as possible, and AV as complicatedly and unfairly as possible. “Yes” didn’t even send any leaflet to the vast majority of houses. Idiots. Perhaps even have a Parliamentary Bill ready to show how it’ll work and counter the inevitable lies.

• Perhaps the biggest reason why the “No” campaign won this year is that they had an enemy. The “Yes” campaign didn’t. And in politics, attack is much easier and more effective than defence; once you’re defending yourself, you’re already publicising your opponent’s attack points.

• So find an enemy. The simplest, biggest change would be to attack “First Past the Post” ruthlessly, and get our attacks in first. This was where this Spring’s “Yes” campaign was not just timid, but hamstrung: AV is in fact such a small change from “First Past the Post” that almost all of the same problems apply, so it was very difficult to make a case for change. With a fight between “First Past the Post” and “Proportional Representation”, you can take the gloves off and batter the current system.

• Under “First Past the Post”, most people vote against the “winning” party – but the system gives them all the power anyway. Why should any party be able to do whatever the hell it likes when most people are against it? Say that “First Past the Post” means that the loser wins. Every party since the War has lost the vote – then, until we finally got a hung Parliament, been able to do what it likes.

• In Labour areas, stick up big pictures of Margaret Thatcher: you never voted for her, but “First Past the Post” let her give you the poll tax. Add that in 1951, Labour got the most votes – but “First Past the Post” is so crooked that the Tories won anyway.

• In Tory areas, stick up big pictures of Tony Blair: you never voted for him, but “First Past the Post” let him invade Iraq. Add that in 1974, the Tories got the most votes – but “First Past the Post” is so crooked that Labour won anyway. Then throw in the Winter of Discontent.

• And when this year’s “No” campaign’s most breathtaking bit of chutzpah was in saying that AV would increase influence for the BNP – when it’s a fact that, of all electoral systems ever invented, AV most hurts the BNP – attack “First Past the Post” for how time and time again it’s let the BNP in when most people have voted against them. There have been dozens of BNP councillors elected – only one has ever had the majority of the vote. In the USA, they call it “swiftboating”, making your enemy’s strength into a weakness: next time, the “Yes” campaign should do it first, and ruthlessly. Show how “First Past the Post” helps the BNP and leave “No” gasping for air.

Time For British Proportional Representation

But the biggest lesson can – and must – be implemented as soon as possible, and it’s not about campaign mechanics, but about principles. If you’re involved in policymaking with the Liberal Democrats or with the Electoral Reform Society, here’s what you can do today, rather than in ten years’ time: never mention “STV” again.

Who, other than a political junkie, is going to get enthused about a set of initials? And when you expand it into the Single Transferable Vote and explain about transfers, people’s eyes are no less likely to glaze over. Yes, we’ll have to find a clearer, simpler way to explain how it works – but the name we use for it just makes it seem all about the mechanics. And that’s always going to be a loser. We’ve feebly addressed that by talking about “Fair Votes” – but that doesn’t appear on the ballot paper (you might say it’s a loaded term; when calling the current system “First Past the Post” is such a lie that it literally has no winning post, loaded terms are hardly new!), and we all saw how trying to refer to AV as the even feebler “Fairer Votes” failed.

The next campaign must be between “First Past the Post” and “British Proportional Representation”.

• The system now called STV was invented in Britain and used to be called “British Proportional Representation”. It’s used today throughout the British Isles – in Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland (do the “No” campaign want to say the English and Welsh are stupider?), and was even used for some of the House of Commons until 1950. When the “No” campaign smeared AV as weird and un-British, with British Proportional Representation we can fight back. Or we can keep an academic-sounding name, and leave it just an academic talking-point.

• To win the next fight, electoral reformers must win the battle of values, and that can’t be done overnight. With full-blooded proportional representation to fight for, attack “First Past the Post” as rigged and unfair, and make our system the one for “Fairness” – and do it first. But that’s not the only value we should appeal to. If fairness is a good one to reach out to Labour voters, Tory voters might respond better to patriotism and tradition. And if you can bed a change into British tradition, it’s much more likely to succeed. So change the name in the Lib Dem Manifesto; change the articles of the Electoral Reform Society; and change the name of the system from one that will only ever appeal to policy wonks to one that appeals across the board. And after a few years, no-one will ever use the term “STV” ever again.

• British Proportional Representation is about fairness, and it’s about British traditions. Look at how “First Past the Post” slices up traditional communities. Is it right to have MPs crossing county boundaries, or chopping neighbourhoods in half? Throw out this unnatural gerrymandering! Bring in British Proportional Representation to strengthen the link from MPs to Britain’s historic towns and counties, with boundaries everyone can understand. Make “First Past the Post” the complicated and weird one – make “No” explain why they want such bizarre and unnatural constituency boundaries. Bring in British Proportional Representation to get common sense, based on British values of fairness and Britishness.

Say no to the emulsified high-fat offal tube – call a sausage a sausage, and call our favourite system British Proportional Representation.


This is the ‘director’s cut’ of an article published earlier on Liberal Democrat Voice, written to follow this morning’s depressing consultation session and Simon McGrath’s article earlier today on election results within the Electoral Reform Society.

Labels: British Politics, Conservatives, Ideas, Liberal Democrats, Nationalism, Proportional Representation, Referendum