Liberal Burblings

My joy was unbounded when I found that the Alicia Best Western hotel in Sefton Park, Liverpool had the Parliament channel on offer last Tuesday night. I watched the Commons debate on new clause 88 – the Referendum on Voting Systems, for which the government has proposed an Alternative Vote system.

It is good to see a nudge in the right direction of voting reform. But my goodness, it was quite horrific to see the massed ranks of Tory dinosaurs desperately scrabbling around to find any possible argument against such a small change. I mean, in cheese terms, Alternative Vote is Tescos mild cheddar as opposed to the Mature Stilton of the Single Transferable vote. (And believe me, recently due to a delicate tummy I’ve had to eat Tescos Mild Cheddar and boy, is it mild? It is.) So it is quite breathtaking that the Tories are throwing everything including the kitchen sink at the proposal even to have a referendum on the matter. A referendum! Not actually making the change, but giving the people the chance to decide whether to make the change.

Here’s some examples of the amazingly peverse rag-bag of arguments used against an Alternative Vote Referendum by the Tories on Tuesday night:

The William Cash “Re-arrange these words to make an intelligible question” argument:

Given that the objective of a general election is to determine a Parliament and a Government, does the right hon. Gentleman not accept that merely to get a 50 per cent. majority for each individual constituency does not result in a party having 50 per cent. of the seats in Parliament, and therefore we do not get the 50 per cent. majorityimplicit in the principles he is putting forward on behalf of the idea of individual MPs for individual constituencies?

This was suitably answered by Jack Straw thus:

I usually follow the hon. Gentleman’s argument but disagree with him. On this occasion, I am afraid I do not follow him, so I do not know whether I agree with him or not.

The Michael Howard “people aren’t crying out for AV” argument

…can he tell us how many people who were gathered around his soap box in Blackburn on the last occasion that he was on it told him that the answer to the expenses scandal was the introduction of the alternative vote?

But surely the whole point of having a referendum is to engage voters in the possibilities of a new voting system, especially considering that those MPs in safe seats tended to be more than averagely embroiled in expenses scandals, and the public has been most exercised about that – is it not?

The Dominic Grieve “I want to be Secretary of State for Justice so I will start by quoting a poll from a Tory-owned website and try to pass it off as coming from Jack Straw’s son’s blog” argument

I am truly sorry to see the Secretary of State being obliged to be associated with this guff.

The best starting point would be for the Secretary of State to take a short absence from the Chamber to look at the excellent blog site run by his son, Will Straw, on which there has been extensive polling in left-of-centre areas of radicalism about these proposals. No more than 20 per cent., he has concluded, support the alternative vote proposed by the Government and 29 per cent. want no referendum at all. Perhaps we should not be surprised to learn, particularly from a left-of-centre blog, that the vast majority of the remainder want such disparate things that it is impossible to assess what they desire. I think that the Secretary of State would have done rather well to have considered that blog first.

Staggering. That was his opening statement! How utterly puerile! And by the way, 60% of respondents to the quoted poll were in favour of a referendum (in some form) on voting reform anyway! And, by the way, the poll was commissioned and published by Politics Home, not Left Foot Foward (Will Straw’s blog), who merely quoted from the poll! And who owns Politics Home? Lord Ashcroft. -Not a known offspring or relative of Jack Straw.

The Dominic Grieve “If people want to get rid of their MP they can’t do it under AV” argument

..the electorate want the opportunity to express their views, and that if they happen to have a very adverse view of a Member of Parliament, they will want that Member to be removed. The last thing that they want is a situation in which the person against whom they have an adverse view comes second, but then magically comes first when the alternative votes are transferred.

This point was loudly “hear heared”‘ by his own benches. Except there is no “magically” about it. AV allows people to express their preferences so that unpopular MPs can be removed. If, however, there is a broad enough consensus to retain an MP, then that consensus could win through. It’s not magic, it’s democracy – an expression of the will of the people.

The Edward Leigh “I am going to argue against AV but in doing so inadvertently argue for STV” argument

May we pursue the point that the Justice Secretarymade about whether voters would have changed their behaviour in 1983 so that there would not have been an even more disproportionate result? If my hon. and learned Friend’s constituents in Beaconsfield had been voting under AV, how could they have worked out how to vote to avoid having a bigger Conservative majority in 1983 or a bigger Labour majority in 1997? I do not quite understand what the Justice Secretary is going on about.

So, Leigh is saying that proportionality = fairness. Excellent. It rather pulls the rug from under his own feet on FPTP though, bless him. Oops.

The Dominic Grieve “Oops gave the game away there” argument

The (FPTP) system is straightforward, simple and requires people to make sensible choices about who is likely to be elected and who they might therefore wish to support.

Except that isn’t “straightforward” is it? A “straightforward” system would be one where the people simply vote for who they want to represent them. Introducing an element of guesswork by the voter as to “who is likely to be elected” makes the system far from “straightforward” and more like gambling. I mean, not every voter is Bob Worcester, are they?

The Dominic Grieve “PR brings inertia” argument

The more that people study proportional representation systems, including purist systems such as that in Israel, the more they must conclude that such systems saddle countries with impossible legislatures, that no proper governance can be carried out under them and that they bring inertia. For those reasons, PR does not commend itself to me.

So there you have it. The government of Israel is characterised by “inertia”. Hilarious! Tell that to the people of the Gaza strip and Lebanon!

The John Redwood “Look at me – I’m bonkers” argument

What is fair about a system that means that those who vote for the first or second-most popular parties only get to vote once whereas those who vote for the third or fourth-most popular parties get to vote twice? Why should they get to vote twice if the rest of us are not able to?

Hello?! Earth calling Redwood! Every voter has the opportunity to mark “1,2,3,4 etc” against the candidates. So every voter has the opportunity to vote three times if there are three candidates, four times if there are four candidates and so on. Are these Tories pretending to be stupid, or are they really stupid?

The Dominic Grieve “Some voters are idiotic or ridiculous” argument

I agree entirely with my right hon. Friend. I was not going to quote Churchill, but it seems to me that that is a problem that he correctly identified in 1931-the disproportionate weighting that the system would give to the views of those who are idiotic or ridiculous.

I see. So we need FPTP so that it is selective about whose views come to the fore, and keeps out the riff-raff. Fascinating.

The Dominic Grieve “I heard lots of noises coming out of a Labour meeting room” argument.

The way that the new clause has been introduced, the length of time that it took to germinate, the internal debates that clearly took place at parliamentary Labour party meetings and the sounds that one could hear coming out of the Room (my bolding) where they took place-all of that rather strongly suggests that the Secretary of State was fighting a rearguard action against a Prime Minister who was both losing the plot and taking leave of his political senses in a desperate bid to stay in office.

Blog polls. Sounds from meeting rooms. You have to hand it to Dominic Grieve. He really raises the level of debate doesn’t he? He brings really firm facts to the table. It’s like listening to a rather immature and pompous sixth form prefect.

The John Redwood “I don’t know what the hell I am talking about” argument

Labour and Liberal Democrat representatives seem keen to say that we use the alternative vote system for our internal party elections, but we do not. The system used for our leadership election is the progressive rounds model, under which one candidate drops out at each stage, with everyone being given a vote on the remaining candidates. That could not conceivably be adopted for general elections, as having six or seven candidates at the start would mean that the election would take about three months. The electorate would get bored, and the costs would be massive.

But that is the Alternative Vote system simply conducted over an elongated time period and with staged results announced. Alternative Vote is the same in a more manageable form without telling people part of the results as they vote. So you are simply asking voters for their preferences up front. Unless of course, you make the assumption that people are so stupid that they cannot make a decent “1,2,3,4″ choice up-front and need the help of knowing how other people have voted to help them make up their mind….

The Dominic Grieve “FPTP lets voters get rid of MPs” if they want argument

First past the post delivers clarity; it is well established in this country; and it enables electorates to get rid of Members whom they do not want and express a clear choice. The alternative vote system, with which the Liberal Democrats are being seduced, skews the result towards far greater unfairness than anything that first past the post could ever achieve.

This was answered brilliantly by Chris Huhne:

The hon. and learned Gentleman says that the existing system allows people to get rid of MPs whom they do not like, but they can do so only if they are prepared to change their party allegiance. Many people are not prepared to do so, and only the Irish system-the single transferable vote system-allows people to choose the party and the person. Indeed, one third of people who lose their seats in the Irish system lose it to members of their own party. That is discipline; that would get rid of safe seats; and that would ensure that voters’ choice really did count.

The Dominic Grieve “FPTP delivers clarity” argument

Clarity of what? Clarity of unfairness? It certainly doesn’t give a clear reflection of voters’ wishes. FPTP “delivers clarity” in the same way as a over-bearing and bad football referee “delivers clarity”.

The John Hayes “AV gives too much power to extreme parties” argument

The point that the right hon. Gentleman has made is disturbing enough when it involves the extra power that would be gained by those whom we deride on the Liberal Democrat Benches. It is chilling, however, when one considers that it would also give extra power to those whom we detest in small, extreme parties that I shall not honour by naming.

Has Mr Hayes got the right tape in? AV means that extreme parties would need to command more general consensus support to get their candidates elected than FPTP. So it would require, for example, the BNP to get the second preferences of LibDem and Labour votes to beat a Tory candidate. That’s only likely to happen if we really have started the countdown to Armageddon.

….And on and on it went like that for hours, with all sorts of old Tory retainers jumping out of their seats to spew forth, by turns, facile, puerile and asinine nonsense.

But wait – there’s more. Let’s award a few gongs for some real gems which came next:

The “Jude the Obscure – What the hell has that got to do with the price of fish?” award goes to:

Bill Cash for:

The hon. Gentleman referred to the Paddy Ashdown diaries. To take forward my point about cynicism and tactical voting, would he be interested to know that from C. P. Scott’s diaries it is clear that in his discussions with Lloyd George in 1931, the object of the exercise was a deal to create a Lib-Lab pact for two years from 1931?

The “Jimmy’s Farm award for denseness akin to particularly dense Porcine manure” goes to:

David Wilshire for

…requiring not one but two interventions to express his incredulity that someone could win under FPTP with 6% of the vote:

The hon. Gentleman claimed that under the first-past-the-post system, someone who gets 6 per cent. of the vote can be elected. I am puzzled. Could he explain how, with just 6 per cent. of the vote, under the first-past-the-post system, someone could win?

Der! Try 20 candidates each getting around 5% of the vote each! Der!

And the “Mills and Boon ‘Hearts and flowers’ award for infatuation indicated by constant criticism” goes to:

John Gummer for

…no less than twenty mentions of the words “Liberal Democrat”, “Liberal Democrats” , “Lib Dem” or “Lib Dems” in his speech, which contained great ridicule of the LibDems, much of it consisting of jokes that are so old they would have brought a blush to the cheeks of Ken Dodd. Indeed, at least one of the jokes (The Ten Commandments/Suggestions) originated within the Liberal Democrats themselves in the early nineties. The man is fixated with the Liberal Democrats. He pretends to hate us, but I bet he really loves us to bits. Indeed, I suspect he fantasises daily about being caught in a Focus deliverers’ sandwich.

With thanks to They Work for you for their excellent parliamentary debate text/video reporting facility.

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