The Alternative Vote: An undemocratic step backwards

(c) M H Johnson

Most people had thought that Labour’s enthusiasm for electoral reform had been killed off in the late 1990s. Back then, Tony Blair offered a ‘progressive century’ underlined by devolution, directly elected mayors, a reformed House of Lords and a new electoral system for the House of Commons. There had even been talk of cooperation with the Liberal Democrats before 1997. But the landslide election victory of that year ended the chances of a coalition and with that the chances of electoral reform.

Unfortunately for Blair, 1997 was a landslide of parliamentary seats rather than votes. The party won 63% of seats in the Commons on just 43% of the vote. Although the new government set up a commission led by Roy Jenkins, its recommendations have never been implemented. Indeed, Labour’s support for electoral reform progressively diminished after 1997.

Jenkins reported in September 1998 suggesting a system called the Alternative Vote top-up, or AV+. In a standard Alternative Vote (AV) system, electors list the candidates on the ballot paper by order of preference. The object is for the representative to have the support of a majority of their constituents, so any candidate with 50% +1 of the vote is elected. If, after the first preferences are counted, no candidate has 50% +1 of the vote, the voters of the last placed candidate have their second preferences distributed and the tally is recounted. This continues until a candidate has the support of a majority of those who vote.

Ultimately, Jenkins dismissed standard AV because it was no more representative than the current First Past The Post (FPTP) system. It would be highly unlikely to bring any new voices to the House of Commons and areas of electoral desert for parties would remain so. A Conservative voter in the Scottish Highlands, for instance, could only hope to affect the outcome of the election with their second preference.

A graver problem isolated by this commission was that, as the report states; “simulations of how the 1997 result might have come out under AV suggest that it would have significantly increased the size of the already swollen Labour majority.” We cannot be certain how a new electoral system would precisely affect parliament, but it seems likely that standard AV would produce stronger governments with larger majorities and firmer grips on the legislative process.

This is why Jenkins suggested a modified version of AV. AV+ has regional as well as constituency representatives. The regional members would be elected proportionally and distributed to make up for disproportional representation from the constituency members.

So Gordon Brown’s recent conversion to the Alternative Vote is something we should be wary about. Not only does the proposed system have deep flaws exposed by the Jenkins Commission but also is a system that, apparently, Brown was firmly opposed to in the past. Electoral reform is what pollsters call a ‘low-salience issue’; jargon meaning that most people don’t really care about it. But it is hard to escape the conclusion that this is a scheme cooked up to woo vital Liberal Democrat voters ahead of this years general election.

A further problem with AV, brought up by the Jenkins Commission member Lord Alexander, is that it treats a second, third or forth preference vote with the same weight as a first preference vote. Meaning that a candidate with the most first preferences could be beaten by the least unpopular candidate. An advantage of FPTP is that the candidate with the most positive support behind them will always win. There is a danger with AV that the candidate who most people think is the best on offer could lose to a compromise candidate.

For traditionalists, AV would at least preserve the link between voters and a single-member constituency. Indeed, it is probable that Jack Straw’s opposition to multi-member systems of proportional representation is a major reason why the government’s current proposals do not contain the ‘top-up’ element suggested by the Jenkins Commission. Indeed, as Secretary of State for Justice, Straw holds responsibility for government policy regarding the constitution.

Sadly, the current government proposal for reforming the electoral system for the House of Commons is typical of many programmes of constitutional reform that have been attempted over the last one hundred years, especially those since 1997. By this I mean that there have been great constitutional changes, but precious few of these appear to have made government or parliament either more democratic or more effective.

Similarly, it is not at all clear how adopting AV as our electoral system would make the House of Commons any more representative, open, responsive, liberal, democratic or effective as a legislator and scrutiniser of the government. On the contrary, introducing this system would likely bring the legislature further under the control of the executive branch of government. Furthermore, it seems probable that this legislation will be rammed through parliament with whipped votes as quickly as possible, leaving no time for a substantial public or parliamentary debate on the issue.

Yet by labelling this deeply illiberal and cynical measure ‘constitutional reform’, Brown tries to label himself as a democratising reformer. By doing so, he hopes to cast the opponents of these proposals as non-democratic, ultra-conservatives. Yet to oppose systemic change is not to oppose change full stop and to oppose a specific constitutional reform has no bearing on whether or not one is a democrat.

Instead of adopting a new electoral system in the hope that this will solve all of the problems UK democracy currently faces we need to work within the current system to make it more democratic. That means widening the use of open primaries so that MPs with safe seats can genuinely be held to account. There is also a need to introduce recall powers so that bad MPs can face a public vote of confidence.

Vital here is the important, though chronically boring, issue of parliamentary procedure. There must be an end to government domination of the parliamentary timetable, while select committees and their chairmen must be elected by the House of Commons rather than appointed by the whips. It is probably also time to look at the Royal Prerogative, perhaps allowing the House of Commons to determine the date of elections itself; forcing the normally secretive decision out into the open.

Instead of being deceived that the government’s proposal to hold a referendum on the Alternative Vote is anything more than a dangerous, headline-grabbing stunt calculated to win over Liberal Democrat voters we have to work towards introducing proper democratic reforms. There are no quick fixes, and the UK constitution is a perpetual work-in-progress. But if the House of Commons were ever to be elected by AV, democracy would have been dealt a terrible blow.