Time for reformers to unite behind the Alternative Vote

Proportional representation won’t happen. Go for what’s feasible, not the impossible

This is the third of a three-part series about voting reform. In part one I argued that First Past The Post (FPTP) needs replacing. In part two I discussed the strengths and weaknesses of switching to a proportional voting system. In this part I make the case for the system that I believe most suits today’s multi-party era.

Unless almost everyone votes for one of just two parties (as was the case between 1945 and 1970) there is no perfect voting system – that is, one that ensures a) governments are chosen by voters on election day, rather than by parties negotiating with each other after the election; AND b) each party’s share broadly MPs matches its share of the national vote; AND c) every citizen is represented by a local MP.

Rather, we CAN have all those things if we elect the executive and legislature separately, as they do in France and the United States. But these days neither republic attracts universal admiration for its way of doing things. Given that our executive’s authority will continue to flow from the legislature, how should elections serve the dual purpose of choosing both?

My proposition is that every government should be accepted, at least tacitly, by a majority of voters, and no government is led by a party that most voters actively reject. Secondly, MPs should enjoy majority support in their area. Proportionality matters less, although last year’s election result went too far in the way it distorted the votes cast.

That ranking favours the Alternative Vote (AV). Instead of putting an “X” against the name of a single candidate, voters rank their preferences in order. A candidate who wins an outright majority of first preferences is declared the winner. Otherwise the candidates with the fewest votes are eliminated in turn, and their supporters’ second (and if necessary subsequent) preferences counted until a clear winner emerges.

That’s how parties choose their local candidates and national leaders. They insist on majority mandates. (Tory leadership elections have two stages – MPs, then local party members – but the principle holds.) Last week, the Government introduced a new Bill to revive the Supplementary Vote – a simplified version of AV – for mayoral elections. Extending the principle to electing MPs is the logical next step.

Last year’s election results strengthen the argument. Only one Conservative MP won more than 50 per cent of the vote (Bob Blackman in Harrow East). The 50 per cent plus club also has 70 Labour MPs, 18 Liberal Democrats, two Greens, one Plaid Cymru, four from Northern Ireland and the Speaker. The total membership of the 50 per cent-plus club is just 97 out of 650 MPs. No independent or Reform MPs are members.

What would have been the result of last year’s election under AV? The problem is that the voting system affects the way both parties and voters behave. We can only guess. But we can make an intelligent guess. Here’s an illustration of the kind of difference AV might have made. I make the simple assumptions that half of Labour voters would have given their second choice to the Lib Dems, and vice versa; and half of Tory voters would have given their second choice to Reform – and, again, vice versa.

For example, Labour’s Terry Jermy turned the Fens red when he won 26 per cent of the votes in Norfolk South West, defeating Liz Truss (25 per cent) and Reform’s Toby McKenzie (22 per cent). Josie Ratcliffe won 6 per cent for the Lib Dem. On my AV assumptions the former prime minister would have had held her seat with the second preferences of half of Reform’s supporters. Jermy’s victory was good for Labour but, whatever we think of Truss, bad for democracy.

Overall, Jermy would have been one of 49 Labour MPs to end up falling short under AV, although two other unsuccessful Labour candidates would have overtaken the Tories (in Devon Central and Exeter & Exmouth). Overall, Labour would have won 364 seats, and a majority of 78, while the Tories would have 167 MPs, up 46, the Lib Dems 71, down one, and Reform 7, up two. (The totals for other parties would have been unchanged.) Labour would have won a clear victory, but not a landslide.

Advocates of proportionality would spot the immediate problem. Reform would still be punished by the voting system, still ending up miles behind the Lib Dems, despite winning many more votes.

Those figures flow from my assumptions. However, they take no account of the second consequence of changing the voting system. It would cause any rational party to change its strategy, knowing it needs to chase not just first preferences (as with FPTP) but second and sometimes even third preferences.

Just now, this could matter to both Reform and the Tories. Would they adjust their plans in order to woo each other’s supporters, much as Labour and the Lib Dems had a de facto non-aggression pact last year, which helped them both via tactical voting?

Australia, which uses AV for its lower House, provides Reform with a salutary example. In 1998, in Blair constituency in Queensland, Pauline Hanson was the candidate for One Nation, a new party roughly equivalent to Reform UK. She won 36 per cent of first preference votes, well ahead of Virginia Clarke’s 25 per cent for Labor. Under FPTP Hanson would have been elected with a comfortable 7,000 majority. But she lost out as candidates with the fewest first preferences were eliminated and their supporters’ other preferences counted. Most of them rejected Hanson. In the final count she lost by 5,000 votes.

The lesson from that story is that AV tends to to punish any party with a reputation for extremism. Under FPTP these days, the winning post is often less than 40 per cent, sometimes (as we have seen) less than 30 per cent. Under AV, all parties need to search for sympathisers beyond their tribal base. In Australia, Hanson’s One Nation singularly failed. Could Reform do better? In my illustration above, I make no specific assumption about this. Reform’s performance under AV would depend on whether it can become more acceptable to a wider range of voters. Indeed, in Truss’s seat, had Reform’s McKenzie done this and overtaken Truss on first AV preferences, he could now be an MP.

This is more than a technical issue. It goes to the heart of the purpose of general elections. In a multi-party system, how are voters to have a say in who governs Britain, rather than leave it to post-election deals in which voters have no say? AV helps in two ways. First, it tends to favour larger parties. As the above scenario for lasty year’s election suggests, the bias is not as great as under FPTP, but it veers in the same direction.

Secondly, and just as important, is AV’s incentive for smaller parties to widen their appeal. If they insist on the purity of their cause and reject compromise then, like Hanson in Australia, they will do worse than under FPTP. For me, that’s a strength of AV, not a weakness.

That argument applies as much to the left as the right. One reason why left-wing groups reject AV is that they, too, would lose out, whereas a fully proportional system might give them, say, 30-50 MPs. Like other left-wingers outside the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn now advocates a proportional system in the hope that from time to time “true” socialists will have a place at post-election coalition talks.

That said, when political loyalties are so fragmented, no voting system can guarantee a clear majority verdict. But whereas FPTP can produce grotesque distortions, and proportional systems transfer the choice of government from voters to politicians, AV offers four advantages:

· It reduces the danger of landslide victories on one-third of the vote

· But it still makes majority government possible

· It encourages parties to broaden their support

· If the outcome is a hung parliament, it shows what combination of parties most voters prefer.

That last point could be the most crucial. Suppose Labour loses its majority at the next election but remains the largest party. One possible outcome – depending on the precise number of seats – is some kind of Labour-Lib Dem deal, either a formal coalition or confidence-and-supply arrangement. The deal’s legitimacy would be greatly enhanced if the AV voting patterns showed that Lib Dem supporters preferred Labour to the Tories.

In 2010, Nick Clegg agreed to form a coalition with David Cameron. FPTP delivered a hung parliament but gave no direct information about the preferences of Lib Dem voters. From the outset, the coalition had the backing of a clear parliamentary majority, but no clear evidence that this was what a majority of voters preferred.

The broader historical fact that, except in the early 1920s when Labour replaced the Liberals as Britain’s main anti-Conservative party, general elections have normally given voters a clear basic choice: let the governing party carry on or kick the rascals out. One party leads the government, and an alternative party stands ready ready to replace it. We have avoided the two opposite perils: a single dominant party on the one hand, or a smorgasbord of small-to-medium-sized parties that exclude voters from deciding who runs Britain.

Given the impossibility of designing a perfect electoral system, AV strikes a sensible balance: encouraging parties to broaden their support, securing governments that are acceptable to a majority of voters, preventing governments that most voters actively oppose, and giving small parties a voice but not a veto.

I grant that this is not a rousing call to arms. Like much of politics it offers a pragmatic solution to a tricky problem.

However, AV has one big, extra advantage over a fully proportional system. It is the only change that is at all likely any time soon. Suppose the next election, or the one after, produces a hung parliament in which, say, Labour is 50 seats short of a majority, and 70 Lib Dem MPs can give them a stable coalition. The Lib Dems want proportional voting. We can be certain that Labour will say no.

Here are two reasons for certainty. First, Labour would be killing any hope of ever forming a majority government. In a proportional system, the progressive vote is likely to be even more fractured than it is today. (Indeed, that’s what the far left wants.) Second, if Britain is to have a new electoral system, MPs elected under FPTP will have to vote for it. Far too many of them would be turkeys asked to vote for Christmas. AV would require far fewer turkeys. It’s as far as Labour (or a revived Tory Party) could go. The Lib Dems would moan and groan but in the end accept it.

So, my proportional-enthusiast friends on the centre-left and centre-right, my advice is this: don’t waste your energy on a change that has no chance of happening. Instead recognise that AV is the only system with any real hope of being implemented – and celebrate its advantages, both locally and nationally, over what we have today.