Stop talking ¤¤¤¤. Stop taking the piss with privilege. Stop taking politics as merely a game about being elected over your rivals. Stop believing PR is the most important part of being a politician. Stop destabilizing debate with mindless cross party bitching. Stop ignoring facts and experts when drawing up policy. Stop reactionary policy. Start taking the younger generation seriously. Grow some balls and stand up for progress not the status quo

Now, the chances are that most, or all, of these opinions are widespread amongst the 35% of people who didn’t vote in the last general election. So let’s talk about ways that politicians can address some of them.

Learning to act like responsible adults

The expenses scandal isn’t the first time politicians could have been accused of “taking the piss with privilege”. There have always been some politicians who milked the system for personal advantage, and I doubt it’s possible to stop it completely. But what we can do is put safeguards in place. Building in accountability to expenses systems, cutting down on privileges that have traditionally come with some political offices, making sure that politicians are not privileged above the people whose lives we affect, for example. Taking a current issue – if Parliament is demanding that civil servants pay more into their pensions, get less out, and get it later why are they not doing the exact same thing to MPs pensions?

Finally, as politicians, we need to take personal responsibility when it comes to public office. Elected politicians should, if possible, make sure they have some kind of accountability structure in place when it comes to salaries and expenses. Don’t wait until it becomes a news story or election issue to have somebody check up on these things. And get it in place even if you’re just a local councillor with limited opportunities to go wrong.

When it comes to mindless cross party bitching, I agree with that sentiment. Whenever I watch Prime Minister’s Questions, the impression I always come away with is that it is utterly childish. Now, I understand that those of us involved in the day to day of politics will have gripes about the other parties, but we need to keep them in perspective. Yes, some parties may play dirty. Others may have sold out their principles. Others may be hopelessly naïve, or utterly clueless. But let’s remember that, for the most part, they are trying to make the world a better place. Keep the bitching to internal meetings, and only when it’s appropriate (e.g. working out clean ways to counter dirty tactics on the campaign trail).

Unless a particular politician has clearly proven themselves corrupt or incompetent, let’s focus on the reasons our principles and policies are better than theirs, rather than attacking the people. This is particularly important for bloggers, and those who post on twitter. Because the nature of the medium, it’s too easy to get caught up in day-to-day politicking, and make instant judgements, which clear-thinking hindsight should regret. By all means, lambast parties like the BNP, who have no redeeming features – but do so by highlighting their fascist policies, and the way that their councillors and MEPs have proven themselves unfit to hold public office.

In terms of not demonising the other side, one thing that I find particularly helpful is having good friends of very different political persuasions, with whom I occasionally talk politics. For example, a couple of months ago I spent a good hour talking politics with a good friend who is a natural Tory voter. Value getting to understand where the other side is coming from. Be prepared to listen to them. Work out if there are ways to incorporate their concerns into your policies,

Focus on the substance

Whilst public relations are clearly an important part of politics, let’s not be bound too tightly by them. Yesterday, I had a conversation with a friend about this very issue, and he said that the Prime Ministerial debates in 2010 got him more interested in politics because the leaders of the big three parties had to talk policy. – something that is missed in the vast majority of day-to-day media coverage of politics. Let’s aim to appeal to people like that by being more about substance than spin. Yes, it’s harder to sell in these days of soundbite-dominated news. Yes, it doesn’t always fit with the media narrative. Yes, it may sometimes lose you seats or even elections. But if enough politicians focus on the substance, then the media would have no choice but to cover it.

If you want to see a textbook example of us getting it wrong, look at the referendum on AV. Instead of being a debate about the relative merits of the voting system, both sides ignored the substance. The Yes campaign went for guff about it “making MPs work harder”, rather than pointing to the advantages – like tactical voting being made effectively irrelevant. The No campaign went for scare stories about it being too complicated for our tiny little brains, and how it would keep Nick Clegg in power for ever. They also made up a massive figure for how much it would cost, rather than defending First Past the Post. Let’s not stoop to those levels of inanity or dishonesty in our politics.

Finally, it’s bad for politics if politicians to always be chasing after the same bit of centre ground. If there are only small and minor differences between the parties, then it’s far easier for the media to focus on the Westminster gossip angle of politics, or to reduce it to a popularity contest between party leaders. Yes, our current electoral system doesn’t help, but lets not blame First Past the Post for the way the big parties have gradually reduced their ideological differences over the last few decades. Let’s ensure that voters are given as real a choice as possible at election time.

Oh, and let’s make sure that politicians are free to voice dissent. If a party has a substantial body of policy, then it’s inevitable that party members (including those holding elected office) will disagree with some of it. As long as they make it clear that’s what they’re doing, let’s not complain about it, or let the media get away with attacking their party. The Green Party’s policy of not having a party whip is a step in the right direction, let’s find more ways to make political debate within parties open and transparent.

Make good policy

Too often policy is made purely on the grounds of how it plays in the media, rather than on the grounds of the actual evidence. I recently came across a guardian article about a book that showed instances of the media playing exactly such a role. Lets not let our drugs or immigration policy be dictated by headlines in the Daily Mail. But, on the other hand, let’s not crack down on the bankers just because the Mirror or the Guardian say so. Now, I’m fairly confident that my party’s policy-making process takes into account the views of experts, and our policy is usually easy to change when there are new facts that come to light (or old mistakes that are highlighted). But there are undoubtedly some areas where we fall short. Let’s keep an eye out for bad policies, and make sure that we do genuinely consult the experts before making policy.

Engaging the young

Now, it’s quite easy to see why policy is often biased towards older people – there are more of them, and they’re more likely to vote. But if we want to draw people in to the political process, then we absolutely have to show young people why it is important, and how it directly affects their lives. The wrong way to do this is to try to be cool. Don’t, for example, rave about the latest band unless you genuinely like them, and it is relevant to whatever you’re talking about. Young people can spot insincerity miles away and you’ll just look stupid. Instead, we need to address their issues, and then stick to what we said.

I’ll take two examples of this. Back in 1997, I was a student and – like most of the country at the time – was very happy to see the back of the Tories. However, within a couple of months, New Labour went from their election slogan of “Education, Education, Education” to abolishing student grants and simultaneously introducing tuition fees. I felt betrayed, particularly as the expert report that came out shortly after the election recommended only doing one or the other and not both. Whilst Labour hadn’t directly talked about an issue that would affect the students in the year below me, they clearly showed that they weren’t interested in my demographic.

Fast-forward to 2010, and the Liberal Democrats had learned part of that lesson. They did talk about tuition fees, and every Lib Dem who was elected signed a personal pledge to vote against a rise in tuition fees. They subsequently voted for the rise, and students – who were rightly angry – took to the streets in their thousands.

If we are to get young people interested in politics again, then we need to avoid mistakes like these. We need to be talking about their issues, and sticking to our guns. I don’t want to be responsible for somebody’s first experience of politics to be a feeling of betrayal. I want their first experience to be of politicians working hard on their behalf to make the world a better place. I want their first experience to be of people who work to make society better for the worst off – whose hearts are in the right place, and who have the skills to make a real difference (or at least to push as hard as possible for that difference).

In short, those of us involved in politics should make every effort to be the kind of politicians who are deserving of the trust people place in us at the ballot box. We should live up to the best hopes of the general public, even though those hopes have so often been crushed in the past. No, we’re not going to be perfect, we’re not going to get everything right. But let’s at least give it our best shot.

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General Impacts

The first thing to point out is that AV discriminates against parties who are hated outside of their base. In 1997, AV would have massively increased the Labour landslide, because the only voters who didn’t hate the Tories after 17 years of Thatcherism were the ones who were still voting Conservative. Of course, in a year like 2010 – when Labour and the Tories were both deeply unpopular – this effect may well have been balanced out.

The second thing is that under AV there would be no need for parties to deliberately stand down in the occasional seat, as they could simply ask their voters to use their second and third preferences in a particular way instead.

Under the existing system, this sometimes happens to ensure that a hated candidate loses (in 1997, Labour and the Liberal Democrats stood down in Tatton so that independent Martin Bell could oust the scandal-ridden MP Neil Hamilton). Small parties might also do this to ensure that a similar party or candidate wins. So in 2010 the Greens didn’t stand a candidate in Birmingham Hall Green in order to help Respect’s Salma Yaqoob – who has worked closely with the Birmingham Greens. In the end she was 4000 votes short, but if the Greens had stood, their votes would likely have come from her rather than the winning Labour party.

The third thing to note is that it may well change the way election campaigns are run. Because there will be no benefit in encouraging tactical voting (as happens in a lot of seats under First Past the Post), election campaigns under AV will be about policy, rather than about whether a seat is a two horse race.

Impact on Political Parties

Before examining the parties (which I’m ordering from right-wing through to left-wing), I want to do a little bit of political geekery, which is basically the foundation of my arguments. If you just want the conclusions, skip down to the BNP heading.

In order to win a seat under first past the post, you just need to get more votes than anybody else. In Norwich South, this meant that the Lib Dems were able to win with just 29% of the vote. Under AV, there are a couple of ways to win a seat.

The first method is to win on first preference votes. As you’d expect, this means getting half the first preference votes. However, if you get 45% or more on first preferences, and the second party is some way behind you, then the chances of them overtaking you with second or third preference votes taken from other parties are pretty slim.

The second method is to win on transfer votes. To demonstrate this, I’ll use an example of the rare case when a third party can win.

Counting first preferences in our imaginary constituency we have:

Conservative 10,053 (30%)
Labour 9,345 (28%)
Green 7,789 (23%)
Other parties 6,389 (19%)
Turnout: 33,576

None of the other parties get enough transfer votes to overtake the Greens, so to make the example simple, we’ll skip ahead to the final three:

Conservative 11,488 (34%)
Green 11,167 (33%)
Labour 10,921 (33%)

Whilst the Greens have fewer first preferences, they are more popular than both Labour and the Conservatives amongst voters for parties who have been eliminated. Because they were fairly close behind Labour, this has taken them into second place. In order to win, they need to have 322 more transfers from Labour voters than the Tories do. After these preferences are reallocated, the result looks like this:

Green 20,167 (60%)
Conservative 13,409 (40%)

Because the vast majority of Labour voters hate the Tories, this gives the Greens an extremely comfortable win on the final round, and the majority of voters in our imaginary constituency have an MP they are reasonably happy with.

So, now we know how you win a seat under AV, how will the individual parties be affected?

The BNP

The BNP are the clear losers from AV. The number of BNP supporters who vote tactically is almost certainly close to zero and, as their best result at the General Election was a distant third place with only 14.8% of the vote, they have no chance of winning on first preferences. It’s difficult to imagine them winning more than the tiniest handful of transfer votes either. AV will keep them out much more effectively than first past the post would.

UKIP

Are also unlikely to be immediate winners. Whilst they will almost certainly win plenty of first preference votes from people who currently vote Conservative, their support is too widely spread for them to be in a strong third place anywhere. If you don’t believe me, look at their 2010 general election results – they came third in only four seats, and in all four seats the winner got 45% or more of the vote. The only seat where they got more than 10% was Buckingham, a seat in which none of the major parties was on the ballot paper. If UKIP were to develop a good targeting strategy, then they might well be able to break through into Westminster more easily than under first past the post, but at the moment that seems a long way off.

The Conservatives

Are likely to lose out. The good news for them is that, whilst some current Conservative voters will probably give their first preference vote to UKIP under AV, they will get those votes back on transfers. In marginal seats where UKIP get a good vote share, the Tories may well gain seats. The bad news for them is that there are a lot of seats where (presumably) left-wing voters form a majority, but where their votes have been split between Labour, the Lib Dems, Greens, and the various far-left parties. These are seats that the Tories are more likely to lose under AV,. Having said that, it’s worth noting that Tory safe seats tend to be safer than Labour ones, and they have more seats that they would win on first preferences.

The Liberal Democrats

Unlike a lot of commentators, I’m really unsure what AV will do to the Lib Dem vote. The problem with predicting it is that they’ve won an awful lot of their current seats by encouraging tactical voting – which makes it difficult to know just how many voters in winnable seats would actually put them as their first preference. They will probably hold on in seats like Colchester, where their MP has a lot of local popularity, but there are likely to be a lot of seats where they slip from their current second place to being in third place on first preferences. On the other hand, they are likely to gain seats from the Conservative in constituencies where they are able to keep Labour in a reasonably distant third. And, regardless of whether the referendum is won or lost, they’re going to lose most or all of the seats where it’s currently a straight contest between them and Labour.

Labour

Like the Tories and Lib Dems, Labour are likely to lose first preferences to smaller parties (most likely to the Greens and various small left-wing parties), but get them back on transfers. The chances are that the overall effect on Labour will be fairly neutral – although their seats are less safe, on average, than Tory seats, they’re only likely to lose from AV are in areas where Lib Dem voters are a large chunk of the electorate and where they prefer the Tories to Labour.

The Greens

We’re likely to do relatively well from AV. The evidence suggests that there are a lot of greens who vote tactically, so our first preferences should be a lot higher than our current general election vote. And with the current hatred of the Lib Dems, there are probably quite a few seats where we could ease into a comfortable third, which leaves serious potential for longer term gains. However, it’s less clear about our short-term prospects which, realistically, concern just two seats (unless there’s a lot of tactical voting going on in other areas where we are strong).

In Brighton Pavilion we won with 31.3%, and if first preferences were the same as under FPTP, the result would most likely have depended on redistributing the Conservative vote between us and Labour. Of course, next time Caroline Lucas will probably have an incumbent advantage, and we might get plenty of first preferences from Labour voters, but it’s far from certain that we would keep the seat under AV.

Norwich South is a lot more interesting. It’s quite possible that a lot of Lib Dem voters (who won the seat this time with 29% of the vote) would have voted first preference Green. We have consistently won more votes in that seat in local elections over the last few years, and had the highest vote in Norwich in the last Euro election, so it’s quite plausible that we would have been first, second, or third on first preferences under AV. With the inevitable collapse in the Lib Dem vote, it’s quite possible that we could take the seat under either AV or FPTP next time, and quite likely that AV would make it that little bit easier.

Far-left Parties

I’ve ignored most of the fairly small parties in this discussion because, whilst they will see more first preference votes, those votes will almost certainly be quickly redistributed to larger parties. For most of the socialist parties, the most they can realistically hope for will be to take enough first preferences from Labour that they keep a few deposits (for example, the TUSC’s best performance was Dave Nellist in Coventry North East, where he lost his deposit). However, there is one seat in which a leftist party came just 4000 votes behind Labour – Birmingham Hall Green

Whilst I don’t know the constituency very well, it’s not impossible to imagine that under AV Salma Yaqoob might have got the couple of thousand extra votes to beat Labour on first preferences. In that case, the Tory and UKIP vote would probably gone almost entirely to the Lib Dems (or been discarded), which would have put Labour down into third place. And then all RESPECT would have had to do to win would be to gain substantially more transfers from Labour than the Lib Dems did.

In Summary

The main impact on Parliament will be to redistribute support amongst the big three parties. However, AV does leave open a greater possibility for some small parties to break through in areas where they have a lot of local support.

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AV will let in the BNP

This one is a complete lie. The thing that AV is best at is keeping unpopular extremists out of office. The BNP are the party that is most likely to suffer under AV, as they have no hope of getting 50% of first preferences anywhere in the country, and even less chance of getting a decent number of second, third, or even fourth preference votes from other parties. There’s a good reason why Nick Griffin described AV as “a conspiracy against the BNP”.

AV will lead to pandering to extremists

This is the softer, and more plausible, version of “it will help the BNP”. However, if misses the fact that candidates from the big three parties already pander to the interests of parties like the BNP. Phil Woolas broke election law to do so in Oldham East and Saddleworth. In fact, it’s possible that this may become less common. If voters for more moderate parties are turned off by such pandering, then bigger parties that do pander to the extremists could be denied seats.

AV will cost £250 million

This is a big claim from the No Campaign, and yet their own breakdown of the figures reveals that the figure is completely made up. Once you take away the £91 million for holding the referendum (which will be spent whether or not we change systems), and the £130 million on electronic vote counting machines (which nobody is planning to buy), you’re left with £26 million which they claim will be spent on explaining the new system to voters (is it really going to cost that much to say “rank the candidates in the order you’d prefer them”? The remaining £3 million is presumably the cost of spending a couple of hours more when counting some seats. So, in the end, we’re left with the real cost of AV being £3 million – which is almost nothing in terms of government spending.

AV will lead to undemocratic coalition governments

This one is possible, but by no means certain. In Australia, the only comparable country which uses AV, there has been a hung parliament precisely once (in 2010) since they introduced the system in 1918. Whilst there have been coalition governments, these have been the equivalent of the the Liberal/SDP Alliance of the 1980s (where the two parties that later merged into the Liberal Democrats didn’t stand against each other). By contrast, under first past the post Britain has elected five hung parliaments (1918, 1923, 1929, February 1974, and 2010) over the same period.

Also, coalition government is by no means undemocratic. The big three parties in the UK are already coalitions between different interest groups who aren’t always natural allies (the compassionate conservatives and the Thatcherites in the Tory Party, or “New Labour” and “Old Labour” philosophies). And the fact that in the current system, elections are decided by a small number of voters in marginal constituencies means that the big three parties have all tailored their policies to appeal to that particular group of swing voters. In a good proportional system like in Germany, however, the big five parties have retained their distinctive ideologies, and there are clear differences between them. The policies that a government follows reflects the way the electorate voted, rather than the electorate having to choose between three flavours of vanilla.

AV gives some people more votes

This is a serious misrepresentation. Everybody has one vote under AV. It’s just that those who vote for less popular parties get their vote redistributed. Nobody seriously believes that people who in London who voted 1st vote Green and 2nd vote Labour in the elections for London Mayor had more votes than those who voted the other way around, yet that’s exactly what No Campaigners using this argument are saying. Or, to use another analogy, it’s like going to a newsagents and finding out that your usual newspaper has sold out, and then buying your second favourite instead. You aren’t getting to choose two newspapers. If voters whose second are redistributed get their votes counted twice, then so do voters whose first preferences are still in.

AV will ensure that every MP has 50% of the vote

This is an exaggeration. Because nobody will be forced to list a preference for every party, there will be some constituencies where enough votes are thrown away that the eventual winner has less than 50% of the vote.

AV will end tactical voting

Depending on how you understand the claim, this is either an exaggeration or a lie. AV will end tactical voting as we know it. Nobody will be forced to vote for a party they don’t really support in order to prevent a party they really dislike from winning in their constituency. Instead, voters who do vote tactically will be able to put their genuine first preference, and indicate their preferences for the other parties with a lower placed vote. In other words, tactical voting will be built into the system, rather than actually eliminated.

Voting No will get back at Clegg or even bring down the coalition.

Whilst the first statement is mere opinion, it is seriously being put forward by some parts of the No Campaign. Hopefully the electorate will give this argument the contempt it deserves. Our votes in this referendum should reflect the merits of the two systems that are on the ballot paper, and not be about punishing one half of the coalition. The fact is that the coalition is split on the referendum and voting no on party-political grounds would be as pro-Tory as it is anti-Lib Dem.

Also, a no vote probably won’t make the Lib Dems leave the coalition and force a General Election. They know full well that doing so now would lose them most of their seats, so they’ll almost certainly hang on in the hope that things improve for them.

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What AV is

The Alternative Vote system is where, instead of voting for one candidate by putting a cross next to their name, you rank the candidates in order. If nobody gets a majority of the vote, then the least popular candidate is eliminated, and their second (or third) preference votes are given to the rest. This process continues until one candidate has a majority.

If this confuses you, think of it like a reality TV show, where viewers vote for their favourite contestant, and the rest are eliminated one by one. If nobody changes their favourite contestant until that person is voted off, then what you’ve got is essentially AV. The only real difference is that, once somebody has a majority of voters on their side, they are clearly going to win and we don’t bother counting any further, whilst the TV Show will probably continue until the bitter end.

For those of us who think carefully about who to vote for, the AV is actually simpler than first past the post, and those who just vote for their own political tribe can continue just voting for the one candidate.

The main impact will be that our votes will count for a bit more. The Voter power index site measures how much a vote is worth in any given constituency, and shows that there will be more ultra marginal seats and fewer ultra safe and very safe seats as a result.

What AV isn’t

AV is not proportional representation (where the number of seats each party gets in Parliament is roughly in line with their share of the national vote). Some parties will still be over-represented, and others will still be under-represented. In some past elections, AV would even have made Parliament even less proportional (in 1997, for example, the Labour landslide would have been even bigger because almost all of the Labour and Liberal Democrat voters would have preferred the other party to the Conservatives).

AV does not ensure hung parliaments. Australia, the only comparable country to use AV, has had only one hung Parliaments over the century they’ve been using the system, whilst we’ve had five.

What are the main advantages and disadvantages of AV?

Like all voting systems, AV has good and bad points. Most of these are shared with first past the post, but the differences are significant:

Shows the true level of support for smaller parties

Under First Past the Post, many voters who would naturally support a smaller party (such as the Greens) will vote for a larger party because they believe their party cannot win, and they want to keep parties they really dislike (such as the Tories or the BNP) out of office. AV allows these voters to express their real preference without risking the parties they hate getting in.

Reduces the level of tactical voting

Whilst AV doesn’t actually eliminate tactical voting, it does reduce the need for it. Instead of pretending that, for example, you want a Labour MP when you’re really a Green or a Lib Dem you can simply list your preferences. Your constituency may still end up as a Labour-Tory marginal, but at least you don’t have to choose between voting honestly and ending up with an MP you hate.

Keeps out extremists

The one thing AV does better than almost any other system is to keep out extreme parties. Under a genuinely proportional system, extremist parties can still get in by having enough support over a wide area. Under AV, they need the support of half the electorate in a particular seat. Even in constituencies where a party like the BNP is in with a genuine chance of doing well, I can’t imagine them getting enough votes to win on first preferences, nor can I imagine them getting more second/third preference votes than other parties. If the BNP got popular enough to win seats under AV, then no electoral system could keep them out of office.

Will AV lead to further reform?

This is the big unanswered question – especially for those of us who want to see a genuinely proportional system. If we vote yes, then it’s possible that that’s all the voting reform we will get for a generation or more, Labour and the Tories will proclaim the system fixed (yes, the Tories are likely to be in favour once it’s been in place for a while), and we’ll get no more reform out of them. But if we vote no, it’s almost certain that Labour and the Tories will say that the public are against even modest reform of the voting system, and it will be even harder to get genuine electoral reform.

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English Locals

Scottish Parliament

Welsh Assembly

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