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It's not very controversial to say that the result of the AV referendum on was disastrous for the cause of Electoral Reform in the UK. Almost everyone was surprised by the scale of AV's defeat and this has been followed by an immediate consensus that electoral reform is off the political table for at least a decade, if not a generation. For reformers, after 80 years of campaigning and finally getting the referendum they had dreamt and hoped for reform is now, cruelly, even further away than before.
It's not very controversial to say that the result of the AV referendum on was disastrous for the cause of Electoral Reform in the UK. Almost everyone was surprised by the scale of AV's defeat and this has been followed by an immediate consensus that electoral reform is off the political table for at least a decade, if not a generation. For reformers, after 80 years of campaigning and finally getting the referendum they had dreamt and hoped for reform is now, cruelly, even further away than before.This would seem an odd time then to talk about the future of electoral reform. But in reality now immediately after its big defeat is precisely the time that supporters of Reform needs to take stock, think clearly about what has happened and plan for the future. And there is no such thing as a perfect certainty when it comes to politics and the future. With boldness and a serious willingness to really reconsider both means and aims anything is possible.
First it is important to face up to the reality of what happened, what went so wrong, and what must be learnt from 2011 to make sure next time is extremely different. So this is what I try to do in this article. In my next article I set out what I believe to be a better option for achievable electoral reform than AV, and then argue how we can apply the lessons outlined here to give the best chance to achieve that success as soon as possible, however long that may be.
Just a quick note. If at any point I make rude comments about electoral reformers, I mean the core of leaders of pro-reform organisations, politicians, media commentators and the rest of the small group of people who frame and direct the public image and fight for electoral reform, rather than supporters of electoral reform generally, of whom I am one.
Just a quick note. If at any point I make rude comments about electoral reformers, I mean the core of leaders of pro-reform organisations, politicians, media commentators and the rest of the small group of people who frame and direct the public image and fight for electoral reform, rather than supporters of electoral reform generally, of whom I am one.
So what happened? And what went so wrong?
2 weeks ago the UK held its first ever referendum on the subject of electoral reform. This represented the 2nd closest Britain has ever got to ditching First-Past-The-Post as its electoral system. The 1st being when a switch to AV and STV was narrowly rejected by parliament after a lot of argument and numerous votes in the 1920's. The particular chance of electoral reform on offer was of course the Alternative Vote. This was rejected by 68%-32% on a 42% turnout, or in other words by 13 million votes to 6 million. It is hard to over-estimate the scale of the thrashing. AV lost in every region of the UK and in 430 out of 440 counting regions. Equally telling is the fact that in the tiny number of areas AV did pass in it squeaked through with around 55% of the vote, only gaining more than 60% in a single London Borough. In contrast it was defeated by margins of 70-30% in literally hundreds of areas. Most UK regions did even contain a single voting area that supported AV.
Personally I was broadly neutral on the question of AV or not. I remain massively unconvinced that AV would offer a significant improvement on the current system in terms of results or the problems of FPTP. Neither do I think its introduction would have been the end of the world. AV could be summarised as a system that is slightly better than FPTP in some areas and slightly worse in others. At best it would solve 10% of our problems, at worst it would occasionally make them slightly worse. That said, in one sense it is a deep shame that AV was defeated so badly, because it discourages the thought of considering further ideas for reform, and gives the resemblance of a mandate for the current pure FPTP system, something that system does not deserve.
In a weird way though I'm glad AV was destroyed so badly. I'm glad because the result was decisive, thus forcing the defeated party to admit clear and straight defeat. The worst of all possible worlds would have been a close result on a low turnout, whether for Yes or No. Such a result would have only fuelled bad feeling about any change or lack of it and damaged the credibility of the result. It would have led to an orgy of blame with the losing side looking for any chance to excuse their defeat by blaming a technicality or their opponents misdeeds. The sheer scale of the result luckily means that the defeated side was left with no option but to give way gracefully(ish).
In a weird way though I'm glad AV was destroyed so badly. I'm glad because the result was decisive, thus forcing the defeated party to admit clear and straight defeat. The worst of all possible worlds would have been a close result on a low turnout, whether for Yes or No. Such a result would have only fuelled bad feeling about any change or lack of it and damaged the credibility of the result. It would have led to an orgy of blame with the losing side looking for any chance to excuse their defeat by blaming a technicality or their opponents misdeeds. The sheer scale of the result luckily means that the defeated side was left with no option but to give way gracefully(ish).
The second silver lining, from my point of view, is that even when Electoral Reform does come back onto the political agenda it is highly unlikely that pure AV will be the alternative option. This is good because I don't think AV is significantly better than pure FPTP for Britain, nor solves the problems that pure FPTP brings. It is a step sideways, the illusion of reform without actually solving the serious issues with the current system. I think it was said best by a journalist, raging against the progressive majority's failure to vote through AV, who complained that FPTP was a "broken, majoritarian voting system that disenfranchises millions of voters and puts power in the hands of a hundred thousand or so "swing" voters in "Middle England" marginal seats". To which his solution was to introduce a broken, majoritarian voting system that disenfranchises millions of voters and puts power in the hands of a hundred thousand or so "swing" voters in "Middle England" marginal seats. Right.
My general lack of interest in the Alternative Vote to one side, I think Electoral reformers made a big mistake in their approach to the referendum that has the capacity to seriously damage the hope of reform over the next years if not understood and overcome. Starting on entirely pragmatic grounds I think that whoever was running the YES campaign owes supporters of reform an apology, for monumentally cocking up the 1st decent chance for reform in 80 years.
The scale of AV's defeat means it may have been impossible for the best campaign in the world to have won for a YES vote. The circumstances were very adverse, but they certainly could have done a lot more with them and given the cause of reform a much stronger platform from here on. Now it is really easy to be wise with hindsight and blame the Yes campaign after it lost but there's more going on here than that. There have been numerous serious explanations about just how bad the Yes campaign was, most damningly by senior members of the national Yes campaign who felt unable to speak up before the vote itself, and feel crushed by how their efforts were thrown away. (For example, here, here, here and particularly here.) Even from miles away I can rattle off the top of my head 4 things the Yes campaign were obviously doing wrong.
Firstly, running a cosy, smug, left-wing campaign by Guardian readers for Guardian readers. The Yes2AV campaign made almost no effort to reach out to right-wingers, running a campaign opened by Ed Miliband, Caroline Lucas, and involving almost no attempt at political balance. This was an astonishing failure. Especially when they had an ace in the hole in the form of UKIP and its charismatic front man Nigel Farage. They could have used these to devastating affect to counter the solid Conservative No campaign among right-of-centre voters. They didn't almost certainly out of the liberal-left's general distaste for UKIP. They'd rather run a campaign by 'progressives' for 'progressives' and lose. Particularly remarkable was the comparison with the relative role given to the Green's Caroline Lucas, despite the fact that UKIP gets about 3 times as many votes as the Greens. The Yes campaign's seeming approach could be summed up by a short conversation I had with a friend. I said the Yes campaign was cocking up by failing to engage right-wingers. He said why should they bother when right-wingers were a minority and would just vote No anyway. My jaw dropped.
In fairness he was technically right on one thing. Identifiably right-of-centre parties gained 43% of the vote in the last election, which leads me to my 2nd point. If the Yes campaign were going to be so stunningly complacent as to write off almost half of voters they needed to make absolutely sure they had the other half locked down so tight they could hardly breathe. This again they failed to do. Right from the start it was clear to anyone with half a brain that Labour voters would be crucial to securing or defeating AV. They were the vital swing voters. Especially if the Yes campaign was planning to not bother with right-of-centre voters they needed to make damn sure they secured the support of the vast majority of Labour supporters.
One way to do this would be to make the referendum a vote on David Cameron, they barely mentioned him. The other way would have been to make sure they had almost all Labour MP's, CLP's and other senior figures on board. Again, they failed. They almost went out of their way to antagonise Labour MP's with their main message, which, bizarrely, was that MP's were lazy and corrupt and AV would make them work harder and be more honest. This understandably didn't fire up Labour MP's, Lords, Councillors and other party figures to throw their weight behind the Yes campaign. Once it became apparent that NO2AV had secured a considerable chunk of Labour support (let alone a majority of Labour MP's), combined with the Yes campaign's wilful neglect of right-wing voters, it was obvious they were going to lose.
The 3rd bizarre error was failing to reach out to as many voters as possible. Beyond their choice in problem 1, they failed to utilise the opportunities they have available to them. They and the NO campaign were both offered one free mailing to every house in the UK. The No campaign eagerly took the opportunity, producing a slick and compelling leaflet. The Yes campaign decided to just not bother. The No campaign launched one of the biggest political ad campaigns in UK history, with billboards around the country and vast quantities of online advertising. Yes2AV barely bothered. Yes2AV did manage to produce a TV political broadcast. It was absolutely bizarre. It contained voters going around harassing MP's through megaphones, who were portrayed as lazy, corrupt caricatures. It barely mentioned any real positives of AV, only vague nonsense about AV making MP's work harder with no back-up explanation and claiming it would have avoided expense abuses. It failed to make a genuine case for AV, it failed to make any case as to why FPTP was broken. It assumed voters were idiots. It may as well have promised them that AV would make diamonds rain from the sky.
The 4th failure was doing their opponents work for them. The Yes campaign spent far too little time genuinely making a case and clearly pushing the positive improvements of AV, or the glaring problems with FPTP. They spent far more time trying to rebut their opponents case and thus cemented it in the public's mind. It failed to pick a single message and stick to it, apart from the nonsensical line taken in their broadcast. The No campaign, on the other hand, desperately wanted to make people think that AV was expensive so the Yes campaign spent huge amounts of time arguing the toss over how expensive it was. The electorate, seeing the debate through a thick fog of apathy and other concerns, just heard that AV was expensive. The No campaign wanted to make it a referendum on Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems in general. So the Yes campaign obligingly filled the latter stages of the campaign with Lib Dem Cabinet ministers complaining about how mean the No campaign was, and to cap it off Ed Miliband publicly refused to share a platform with Nick Clegg. Thus making sure everyone knew the yes campaign thought Nick Clegg was important. Brilliantly done. These failures combined with the genuinely difficult circumstances the referendum was held in meant AV was doomed, and visibly so.
Apart from these pragmatic issues I think that electoral reformers made a serious strategic error in their more long term approach. The vast majority of reformers did not want AV before the referendum was called. For what I believe are very good reasons. In fact numerous individuals and organisations had been downright scathing about it. As soon as the referendum was called though most of them moved as one to pushing AV and doubling back on their previous opinions. In of itself I don't blame them for this. AV was all that was on offer. But that was precisely the problem. The electoral reform movement is built on an extreme point of principle, whereas AV was the result of some pretty seedy political bargaining. In particular Gordon Brown's death bed conversion to reform in 2010, in a late attempt to cosy up to the Lib Dems, all while holding out the one type of electoral reform that could possibly actually INCREASE Labour's already bloated electoral advantage. Pro-AV campaigners were caught between a rock and a hard place. Support AV too strongly and they just looked hypocritical, given their recorded objections to it. Damning it with faint praise was also not really an option, as that would just help speed it to defeat. Faced with this choice they went with the 1st option and just looked like hypocrites.
