Thinking of voting No to AV? Then know this! I’m an actor-comedian type who is currently writing two sitcom scripts. I could do with a bit of exposure and some ready cash. I was offered (*place finger on mouth*) ONE THOUSAND POUNDS, or to put it another way £1000 in my bank account, 1K, a pony for my Cockney readers (it probably isn’t a pony) to be in the No to AV campaign alongside Rik Mayall, who is one of my comedy heroes. He was as funny recently in Let's Dance for Comic Relief as he was at the start of his career in The Strike and A Fistful of Travellers' Cheques.
So I did my research. I really wanted to take the money and the fun of a few days’ filming with Mr Mayall. I knew the ad campaign would be on telly, and if I was funny enough, it would help my career (just for the record, I could have made that teacher part really funny). The director also said that if I didn’t want to do that I could play Rik’s secretary. So you can understand, I started my research kind of wanting to agree with the No to AV campaign. I even went down the route of trying to convince myself that we should say no to this reform because it isn’t full-on proportional representation. But this was desperate behaviour.
In the end I had to conclude that, to put it bluntly, you can’t side with this depressing and pessimistic bunch of lies, half-truths and myth of a campaign. Here’s why. Our voting system is broken. New Labour and the Conservatives are essentially the same party. There is fuck all to choose between their policies. I remember two Libertarian and Socialist friends of mine having many arguments down the pub and then finally agreeing on one thing: that neither of them had anyone to vote for. Our voting system doesn't allow most people's voice to be heard. It's basically one where once every five years a minority of swing voters in marginal seats decide the government.
It is mainly the Tory and Labour parties who in any way want to keep the current system. That is because the people in power desperately want to keep that power, an endless ping-pong between practically indistinguishable parties. Put simply, FPTP is undemocratic.
Keeping First Past The Post, which is a really bad name for it, as this fantastic blog from Gowers points out, implies that only people with mainstream opinions deserve a say. People should almost not be 'allowed' to vote for any other party, because what is the point? This seems to me to be most undemocratic. No-voters who don’t like the idea of the Lib Dems or other minority parties should consider that people who don't want to have to choose yet again between cat shit and dog shit, are not crazies or tree-huggers; they are serious voters with a point to make. Putting aside my view that, at some point, maybe not in our future but at some point in the future, anything other than environmental concerns will seem laughably fatuous, the parties other than Labour or Tory still have much to contribute politically to the concerns that will shape our lives.
This Tory party is not about to introduce any kind of Libertarian, small-state policies. The Labour party spent more of its time sucking up to big business and letting it have its rampant way than the previous Tory party could ever have dreamed of. When can we vote for a party that will actually do any of the things we want?
As you can see from this, there is nothing in this voting system that makes it inherently more likely to return 'mediocre' candidates. In fact, the opposite is potentially the case. The only exception to this is that the least popular candidate – probably the racist vote - WILL be eliminated. The fact that their second votes are counted is because..y'know.. because we live in a democracy. But it is likely that the least popular will be the racist vote, and that's why the BNP are saying No to AV.
Basically, AV is a non-wasted vote. That, surely, is what democracy is. AV is a good thing if you think that 'democracy' is a good thing. You can vote with your heart AND have a safety vote. At the moment, there are so many people in this country whose votes are being completely ignored. The only people who want to keep FPTP are the twats who’ve been in power for the past 30 years.
One final thing on the question of whether AV will lead to more coalitions. More coalitions are likely, but this is the case whether we have AV or not. To quote fullfact.org, because it's a devilishly sexy website, as I think I'm about to prove with my hot, hot, hot quote: “as the outcome of the 2010 general election proves, FPTP can no longer claim to guarantee ‘strong single-party government." The report argues that this is because of the rise of minority parties, and falling support for Labour and the Conservatives. Yeah? Phwooaaargh. Electoral reform gives me the horn.
To quote further:
“The current trends to multi-party democracy in the UK and the regional fragmentation of party support across the UK, make it more likely that no government will gain a majority in future elections, whether under AV or FPTP.
Neither of these trends are due to FPTP or AV.”
So I think that about wraps it up, as I don't think any of us can take any more of these come-to-bed facts. Democracy! Freedom! Liberty! Quoting from political nerd websites that nobody gives a shit about! My agent LOVES ME! (Actually, he does. He is ace for putting up with my ongoing moral principles).
And that’s why you should vote yes tomorrow. For the sake of liberty, and to in any way vindicate my decision and the loss of… oh, a monkey or whatever it’s called.
3 comments:
A Monkey is £500, but I appreciate that accuracy was in no way relevant for the post...
Thank you! I should have googled it, but I prefer to think of Cockney amounts of money as mysterious, mythical, exciting amounts that could be ANYTHING! Ooooh! No, but £500 is probably about right for a monkey.
Couldn't agree with you more. It does seem that the Yes to AV camp were doomed to failure right from the word go through their inevitable association with the Lib Dems, with the media managing to do little if nothing to dispel the notion that wanting electoral reform is some kind of covert endorsement of the Lib Dems and all that they stand for. Coming so soon after their climbdown over tuition fees, it is little wonder that the already depleted numbers of people with a modicum of sympathy for Lib Dem ideologies would then think twice about AV and fall back on the side of 'better the devil you know'.
However, what about the huge numbers of voters whose opinions are destined never to be heard simply by virtue of where they live, irrespective of which party they actually support? Living in Cambridge, I am one of the lucky ones, whose MP always has to listen to his or her constituents because it has always been a three-way marginal (with the Green Party now having gained sufficiently in support to be a credible contender). In Stoke-on-Trent (where I grew up), however, Labour can be so confident of victory from here to kingdom come under the FPTP system that the incumbents can afford to be positively recumbent - resting on their laurels through having had the good fortune to win the golden ticket of a Labour stronghold. It seems to matter not a jot what the actual party policies might be; they could be slaughtering first-born sons and still Stoke with vote end up with a Labour MP just as surely as Kensington and Chelsea will end up with a Tory. All fairly obvious and inevitable given the social make-up and conditions of these areas, but what I object to is the idea that some MPs have to work harder than others due to the FPTP system. If only we could all get away with working only as hard as the security of our jobs dictated without the need to be answerable for our performance along the way...
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