So you may notice that a lot of the updates at the moment are on subjects that are, like, so last month. Apologies - I've been meaning to update this thing for quite a while but it's been the dreaded case of too many things and not enough time.
...Anyway, I've been meaning to write something about the AV vote for a few weeks so here it is. The main reason for this was reading a very interesting article in the New Statesman from behind the No Campaign here. It's very well-written and a good read no matter what your thoughts on voting reform might be. As someone who studied politics at Uni, I've watched things unravel with interest in this whole farrago and, if I'm honest, the conclusion I can't help but come to is that the No campaign didn't really win the vote, the Yes campaign lost it.
Truth is, I think the case for voting reform was lost long before the whole campaign around it kicked in when Nick Clegg brokered his deal with David Cameron last year. Anyone with any sort of political knowledge will tell you that AV doesn't really represent a massive change from our existing First Past The Post system in that it keeps all the problems of the existing system (disproportionate, leads to large majorities which don't really reflect the way the public voted overall) while adding a whole load of new ones as well (makes it harder for smaller parties to get elected due to the second choice vote system, means that the first candidate doesn't always win). I really can't see what Clegg thought he was going to gain by signing up to this idea, especially as he'd dismissed it in the past. At the very least, they could have gone with the Green Party's idea and offered us a choice of voting systems - personally, I think the fairest system for us would have been an Alternative Member system with the number of constituencies reduced to about 400 or so and the remaining 200 MP's elected under a pure Proportional Representation system. But then maybe that's just me.
The fact is though that the Yes campaign could easily have won this if they hadn't run everything so shoddily. They were well ahead in the polls before the No campaign really shifted into gear and, even then, the arguments the No campaign was using were generally pretty flimsy and could easily have been blown apart with a bit of effective campaigning. The harsh truth is that they made a number of key mistakes which, in my mind, lost them the argument.
Firstly, they were far too slow to go on the attack against the opposition, presumably because they thought up until March that victory was in the bag. I think nearly everyone knows that it wouldn't have cost £250 million to implement a new voting system and the fact that the Yes campaign didn't even bother to put a poster out with something to counter this argument was a key factor in them losing the war.
Secondly, the campaign just wasn't inclusive enough. David Milliband and Nick Clegg's refusal to share a platform together just did untold amounts of damage. For all that I despise David Cameron and the Tories, they at least had the sense to realise that to present a united front when campaigning on a single issue, you need to share a platform with people who might be your ideological enemies the rest of the time - hence Cameron sharing a platform with John Reid. Now had the Yes campaign held its conference with Miliband, Clegg, Charles Kennedy, Caroline Lucas and Nigel Farage from the UKIP (yes, I don't like them either but on this issue they were in the same boat as the Libs, and it would've done a good job of showing the electorate that people whose views might be more right of centre and were disaffected with the Tories would have had a reason to vote yes) on the same platform - five people representing almost the full breadth of the political spectrum, then it would have comprehensively trumped Cameron's effort. Instead we had Miliband, Kennedy, Lucas and, um, Eddie Izzard. You do the maths.
Thirdly, while the No campaign came across as clear, concise and unwavering in their arguments (as erroneous as a lot of those were), the Yes campaign just seemed to throw their toys out of the pram at anyone who disagreed with them (a classic example, reading the Guardian board and seeing someone actually use the phrase "You're betraying your children's future if you vote No!" Oh please, give me a break, I don't think so somehow) and the constant barrage of complaining how the No campaign's tactics were unfair. Yes, they probably were but there's a good quote here from Sean Connery's character in the film "The Rock" which goes along the line that if you ever felt like you've been cheated, you probably deserved it because losers usually do. Winners just shut up, get on with it, go home and f**k the prom queen.
So to summarise then, I reckon if the Yes campaign had shown a bit of open-mindedness, a bit more of a "can do" mentality and generally hadn't acted like such a bunch of whinging spoilt pricks then they could have easily won the AV campaign. As it is, they've only themselves to blame for this defeat. Mind you, as said earlier, it's a defeat over something which, in my opinion, wasn't really worth winning in the first place. The campaign for REAL voting reform starts here. In the meantime, normal non-political service will be resumed on this blog as of the next entry...
No comments:
Post a Comment