Well, it’s been quite a couple of days. First the Royal Wedding, then the beatification of John Paul II, for which it is said more than a million people gathered in Vatican City, now the assassination of Osama bin Laden.
A fourth major event occurs on Thursday, and for me at least it is highly important: the vote in the UK on changing the voting system. I am against the Alternative Vote and I should like to say why.
One reason is that second and third choices seem to me bogus votes. The system’s promoters say that a candidate has to get 50% of the votes, but if the Labour candidate scrapes a win on the back of my voting him third out of four, can he really say he got my vote? And with candidates having to pander to all sides it will be the death of conviction politics. No one will be able to campaign on what he really thinks, only on what he thinks will upset the people least. There will be no more Enoch Powells, no more Tony Benns, no more Dennis Skinners. Just dull people who toe the line.
But my main objection is that I am certain it will lead to a continual state of coalition; as we often see in Europe, the same people in charge seemingly forever, but in different groupings, different flavours.
The pro-AV camp seem to be worried about this, and are trotting out misleading statements about Australia, the only serious country in the world which uses the AV system. They say that there are fewer hung parliaments in Australia than even in England.
The truth is that we are not being invited to select the Australian system where for many years now it has been the law that you have to vote: it is a criminal offence not to. This and other factors have in time resulted in a two party system. Of course, if voters perceive their choice as one party or the other there is not going to be a round of complicated coalition negotiations: one wins, the other loses. But in Britain it is more complicated. As John Howard, four times Prime Minister of Australia pointed out, Britain has two and a half parties (in fact, with UKIP and the Greens, you can spot a couple of little quarter parties nudging through). So Britain is likely to form coalitions under the AV system whereas Australia is not.
And why are coalitions wrong? For the simple reason that the policies are made after you have voted, your future decided by the political elite without your input. As we saw in the UK elections last May, the Government's policy was stitched up by Mr Cameron and Mr Clegg and now whenever they are asked something they refer to the ‘Coalition Agreement’. You never voted on this. So if, for example you voted Liberal Democrat because they weren’t going to have tuition fees, you have been cheated. If, like me, you voted Conservative because Mr Cameron was going to repatriate powers from Europe (and, incidentally was going to have nothing to do with changing the voting system), cheated. You aren’t asked to vote again on the ‘Coalition Agreement’, you take what these two decide for you.
AV is, quite simply, undemocratic.
On the radio programme ‘Any Questions’ the other day a couple of panellists admitted they were going for AV because it would eventually lead to the AV+ system of proportional representation. This is an even worse system, where some of the candidates are elected as above, and a percentage come from a party list: you don’t vote for them, they are the Leader’s cronies. This is how Berlusconi’s dental hygienist became a legislator in Bologna. Remember Helmut Kohl? He was caught with his hand in the till, and his constituency voters quite rightly voted him out. But the following day he was back, being one of the Party List: not just an unelected candidate but a rejected candidate put into a position of power by his friends. This is corrupt and an insult to the voters.
I urge you to have nothing to do with AV. Vote NO.
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