The Alternative Vote lobby (including the IPPR) is arguing that the present First Past The Post system (FPTP) is based on the outmoded assumptions of 2-party politics, and also that the FPTP system is more likely to produce coalitions (like the present one).
These two propositions are not, quite, mutually incompatible. It is possible to want a voting system which better reflects multi-party politics yet which produces outcomes which eschew them. Possible, but ridiculous. Hilarious, even, when you consider that they’re asking Lib Dems to vote for it.
BTW, I really don’t care all that much either way. It’s chattering-classes twatterari. I haven’t had a single letter from a constituent about the matter.
18 Comments
I’m probably (instinctively) in favor of proportional systems as we in Scotland’s Nicest Party were so under-represented for years by FPTP systems at all levels. But AV seems to be doomed to failure, precisely because it is only the compromise of a compromise. LibDems didn’t want it (last year anyway) because it still consolidates parties that have strong first showings (most Scottish constituencies – bar one, perhaps).
I exchanged a few tweets with Tom Harris about this the other night. I had the vague memory that Gordon Brown had been a big advocate of AV. Mr H was *quite clear* that the PLP would never have tolerated it (and I can perfectly understand why). I have dug this out to support at least my recollections.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/7037302/Gordon-Brown-backs-Alternative-Vote-electoral-reform.html
But it was one of those limp topics that stumbled across the field of play as we spiralled down to the GE last May. And after a period of no-debate it looks like this will dominate the period leading up to the referendum, nicely filling our ‘grown-up’ time on telly with a UK issue just before the Holyrood poll. Ho hum…
Comment by MekQuarrie on 11/01/2011 at 12:15 amUtterly erroneous to imagine that there is only one viewpoint which supports AV or that the pro AV campaign should confine themselves to one such.
When Foot and Powell opposed Callaghan’s proposals to revise the House of Lords they did so for diametrically opposed reasons: AV admits of far more complex variances of view.
My feeling and reason favour AV which should put paid to AV+ and PR and increase the legitimacy of the next Labour or Labour led Government.
Over three months to go …
Comment by Quietzaple on 11/01/2011 at 8:00 amTom Harris was notoriously pro FPTP as most Scots Labour MPs have been presumed to be on grounds of self interest. His blog wss fiercely so.
It makes less difference wether we have AV or FPTP in most national electoral situations than is commonly supposed, so I’d expect Brown to be pro AV to increase the legitimacy of the next Labour Government.
Comment by Quietzaple on 11/01/2011 at 9:51 amEric,
I think you misunderstand the ippr report.
It is that first-past-the-post is “broken” – because it relies on electoral geography and party system which has disappeared.
It therefore fails the tests of its (majoritarian) supporters, as well as those of opponents from other perspectives (such as PR supporters).
As a result, it doesn’t do what could reasonably be claimed for it from 1945-70 – produce stable majority governments for the most popular party. It will do that in future if the major parties win by 100 seats (4 times in a century) or if the collapse of the LibDems leads not to different smaller parties (Greens, Nats, etc) but a return to 1950s-style two party politics. (It probably won’t).
Instead, it will produce hung Parliaments and coalitions very often (as half the elections did from 1900-1945).
Moroever, because the results of first-past-the-post elections with multi-party voting are dependent primarily on the vagaries of electoral geography, it is ever more likely to give illegitimate election results if we ever have close elections. We only had one election (2005) where Labour and the Tories were within 5% of each other in 30 years. if that happens, FPTP quite probably falls over.
It isn’t fit for purpose.
(Your point appears to be something like ‘If FPTP will give hung Parliaments, why shouldn’t PR supporters be supportive of it’ …. but I can’t see what the case is for arriving at hung Parliaments in a pretty random way if another system can resonably claim to be fairer and more legitimate.)
Traditional majoritarians could (like Jack Straw) see AV as a way to maintain key features of fptp in a more plural environment. If they aren’t happy with that, I think the only logical majoritarian position is to propose the direct election of either a prime minister or government (which gives you a ‘clear choice of governments’ which FPTP won’t anymore), and then to deal with the complications of reworking the political system around that.
AV is not a perfect solution to any of these issues. There are no perfect electoral systems. One has to trade-off how we choose the government, how we elect the legislature, how we choose the individual MPs. It used to be that FPTP was about preferring the first and PR the second. But the academic evidence shows that is no longer an accurate description of British politics in practice.
AV does, however, decide close constituency contests by asking what the majority of voters prefer, which is politically relevant, while the heavier reliance on geography of FPTP is often arbitary.
Comment by Sunder Katwala on 11/01/2011 at 10:25 amScotland’s Nicest Party – very neat
.
I completely agree with you about the timing of the vote. Labour’s official position is not to spend resources campaining on the matter as there are, as you point out, rather more important matters at hand at the same time. I’m afraid much of the chatter this year will indeed be about the referendum rather than the Scot elections.
Comment by ericjoycemp on 11/01/2011 at 1:35 pmI’m not sure AV would, in truth, allow for more complex variations of view. I think most folk will simply use their second (third, etc) to vote for who they dislike least after their first vote. As far as self-interest is concerned, most Labour MPs with reasonable majorities would be likely to win under AV too as far as I can see. I agree that a debate over FPTP vs AV+ or STV would be interesting, but the one we have seems of negligible importance compared to the other stuff going on at the same time in Scotland.
Comment by ericjoycemp on 11/01/2011 at 1:39 pm“The Alternative Vote lobby (including the IPPR) is arguing that:
the present First Past The Post system (FPTP) is based on the outmoded assumptions of 2-party politics”,
That’s absolutely right. FPTP works perfectly when there are only two candidates. That’s where the name comes from. When there are only two candidates, whichever gets over the 50% mark, past the post as it were, wins with a fair majority. When there are more than two candidates suddenly there’s no post to pass at all. AV is a modification of FPTP that ensures that the post is fixed at 50% regardless of the number of candidates. In doing this it removes the split vote problem and makes sure the winner is preferred to the other candidates by a majority of voters. Please see: http://bit.ly/eyHe8X
“and also that:
the FPTP system is more likely to produce coalitions (like the present one).”
Well no. FPTP and AV have roughly the same likelihood of producing coalitions. They’re both single member systems. The differences between the two are solely at constituency level, as under AV the MPs all have support from a majority of their constituency’s voters while under FPTP having merely the largest minority of voters, however small that may be, is enough.
On the other hand there are coalitions and there are coalitions. Some that work well, some that don’t. All parties are really coalitions. They work together under one colour, one name and one leader but they cover a spectrum of views with extreme ends in contradiction with each other. They’re examples of coalitions that work, such as any of the main parties in the UK, or the Austrlian Coalition party. On the other hand, the coalition that has formed the current government is a bizarre mismatch of parties, and a poor advert for coalitions and I believe it could only have come about from First Past the Post, from a combination of the laziness of MPs encouraged by First Past the Post’s minority safe seats and jobs for life, and First Past the Post’s pressure to vote tactically for one of the big parties so that even when voters were at the end of their tether with the big two parties, a large number still voted for them because the system discouraged voting for any alternatives. Please see: http://bit.ly/gXNmZQ
The thing about AV is it’s not the perfect system. It’s certainly not proportional, but it is a massive improvement on First Past the Post, and you don’t need to look any further than that for this referendum as it’s the only choice we have to make. Also, not being a dramatic change from First Past the Post, still being a single member system means that it’s not too big a leap. It keeps all the strengths of FPTP and corrects many of its biggest weaknesses.
If what you really want is a version of PR however, you mustn’t expect to get everything all at once. Reform has never worked that way. In fact the reason we have this referendum at all is because of decades of hard work from people campaigning for reform, people who ultimately want PR.
Say Yes to AV and we will scrap First Past the Post taking power from the establishment and handing it back to the voters where it belongs. We will also have a popular mandate for reform and we can say “We took the change that was offered, now give us the opportunity to implement more change”. The self-interest motive to keep FPTP wouldn’t apply to AV. We’d end up instead debating the relative merits of AV and PR which is as it should be. FPTP is the biggest obstacle to change and removing it will allow us to have whichever system the majority of us want.
But say No to AV and FPTP will be endorsed by a popular mandate. Whether or not you mean it as such is irrelevant, you won’t get to say so on your ballot. The referendum asks: change to AV or keep FPTP? If you choose the latter you will condemn this country to further generations of elections under the outmoded unfair voting system that’s been difficult enough to shift even without a mandate.
Comment by Ben Donnelly on 11/01/2011 at 1:43 pmPlease See: http://bit.ly/e8R6rk
Scottish Labour MPs benefit even more from FPTP than English Tories. It’s no wonder that Tom Harris is pro FPTP. In fact if you read his tweets his attempts to hide his motives are incredibly feeble and his disdain for voters is quite apparent.
Comment by Ben Donnelly on 11/01/2011 at 1:45 pmBecause of AV’s 50% criterion, you don’t actually have to vote for anyone ahead of preference. If you dislike someone put them last, or not at all. Then your vote will never count towards a majority for them.
If you put your least disliked of the front-runners 2nd last and the one you really don’t want last or not at all then you have your tactics fully covered without having to put anyone ahead of the candidates you really prefer. The one you don’t want will either get a majority and win fairly, or they won’t and tactics will not matter.
A majority is a majority. With a majority you’d win regardless of how the other votes are distributed, and without it you won’t so it would come down to a head to head between the last two candidates, between whom a voter could choose with their final preference while leaving the other blank.
There are other tactical issues with AV and they are mathematically fascinating but they’re far too complicated to be implemented with any success. Please see: http://bit.ly/fCa7mK
Comment by Ben Donnelly on 11/01/2011 at 1:50 pmYou make some well-argued points, which I actually agree with. But why then say “we took the change that was offered”? I feel it lets the side down a little to accept no-one’s favorite compromise…
Comment by MekQuarrie on 11/01/2011 at 2:39 pmEric: I didn’t write that AV would lead to more intricate debates but that it was naive to compare the multifarious positions of those who support AV with the position on most more straightforward issues
There are several points of view one might hold and different sightings of the facts which might lead to support for AV just as FPTP advocates are not entirely of one mind
Comment by Quietzapple on 11/01/2011 at 5:13 pmI am a constituent of yours. Please consider this as a letter in favour of AV. Or can the fact that I haven’t used paper and pen be used to dismiss my opinion as that of the twatterati?
Comment by Neil Paterson on 11/01/2011 at 5:55 pmHmmmm. The AV lobby appears to be asking the Lib Dems to vote for something they believe will be more likely to keep them (LDs) out of government. That’s odd, you have to admit, and it’s unlikely to be what they’re putting to Lib Dems. Moreover, I’ve asked everyone in my office if they think it’s odd to argue for a more pluralistic process as a means to secure a less pluralistic outcome and they all agree with me that that it is. Mind you, I’d sack them if they didn’t, obviously.
Comment by ericjoycemp on 11/01/2011 at 6:52 pmJust to be clear, I wasn’t arguing that FPTP is more likely to produce coalitions. I was pointing out that the IPPR is arguing that (see the link in main piece).
Comment by ericjoycemp on 11/01/2011 at 6:55 pmAh, that’s fair enough.
Comment by ericjoycemp on 11/01/2011 at 6:55 pmThanks for this, Neil. If you hadn’t written to me by any means, paper and pen or otherwise, then that’ll be why I wrote here that no constituents had written to me. Now you have and that’s super. Fancy meeting to chat? If you do, just email me at ericjoycemp@parliament.uk
Comment by ericjoycemp on 11/01/2011 at 7:01 pmI should have said that the cases for AV admit far more etc Sorry
Keyboard problems and I still have problems with your black composing boxes
People are supporting AV for opposite reasons in some cases because we have different assessments of its consequences
I think the principal consequences will be more people will vote and they will be happier with their choices which will make for greater legitiacy
Comment by Quietzapple on 11/01/2011 at 7:38 pmJust interested to know, Eric, how many letters from your constituents would it take to make you care?
I don’t mean that to sound quite as confrontational as it comes across – am genuinely interested as someone who has never swayed the opinion of his MPs by writing letters (though to be fair, I haven’t swayed their opinions by any other route either)
Comment by Stephen on 12/01/2011 at 7:42 am