It is the first referendum to be held in Britain for more than 40 years and the first ever to be held on voting reform, making this the first generation of Britons with a say in how they elect those who lead them.

In addition to the unattractive mudslinging that normally accompanies such debates, a few other factors have come into play – such as the royal wedding and the death of Osama bin Laden - to leave people with not very much time - or desire - to make sense of the system that’s on offer.

As Nick Spencer of Theos said last night, “It’s all been rather inconvenient.”

He was introducing a debate on AV held at King’s College, London, between Baroness Oona King and Peter Facey of Unlock Democracy speaking for the Yes2AV campaign, and Gavin Shuker MP and Sam Gyimah MP for the No2AV campaign.

There was, we’re glad to say, not a hint of mudslinging during the good natured debate, and if you’re planning to vote but feel you still don’t understand quite what it’s all about then get the gist of it by reading the summary of last night’s debate here.

Baroness King – A vote for AV is a vote for progress

First up was Baroness King who told the audience straight out that she did not think that AV was the best system on offer.

“Is AV the best system we could have? Absolutely not, not by a long chalk. Is it good and far better than we have? Yes it is, it is absolutely better than what we have. It is a small change that will make a big difference.”

Why does she think that? Firstly, King believes it will encourage politicians to have greater regard for everyone in their constituencies rather than just their core vote.

“One of the impacts of the current system is that the majority of the country don’t really have any influence – or feel certainly as though they don’t have any influence on the outcome of elections,” she said.

“At the last General Election, only 400,000 people influenced the outcome in terms of marginal seats.

“This issue of politicians having a seat for life is an important one because it changes your outlook.

“In the majority of safe seats, if you are voting Labour and it’s a Tory safe seat your, vote is not going to make the slightest bit of difference.”

Not only that, but AV is already used by the main parties for certain elections, she points out. If it’s simple enough for the political elites to be able to use, surely it is simple enough for the British public to grasp, she contends.

Also swinging King firmly into the Yes camp is her conviction that AV will put an end to tactical voting.

“[It will help to] end the smoke and mirrors around politics. You can vote for who you believe in. You can vote for who you want to. You don’t have to have smoke and mirrors and you don’t have to have tactical voting.”

AV, she argues, would make it virtually impossible for radical parties like the BNP to win seats and end the tendency of first-past-the-post (FPTP) to “bury” one of the main parties for a generation.

It would also, she says, put a stop to the pandering of political parties to the interests of middle England, where the majority of marginal seats are.

“[AV] will make the views of all people count, not just those who live in marginal constituencies,” she said.

“Why is it that all the political parties campaign day in day out during a General Election campaign on what middle England wants and ignores the rest? Because our electoral system encourages politicians to do that.”

Most of all, however, it is the desire for change that drives King to support AV, and for her, change means progress.

“If you believe in progress then vote for progress, vote for change. It’s not a miracle cure, it won’t make everything fantastic, but it will make our politics better than it is now and it will make it less likely for politicians to go in for punch and judy politics around election time.

“So please let’s encourage politicians to work harder, to reach out, to not be so tribal, and to ensure that we have progress.”


Sam Gyimah MP – One person, one vote

“I have been painted as the enemy of process, a 35-year-old going on 60,” said Gyimah as he took his turn at the mic.

“Of course we all want progress. The question is: what sort of progress do we want and what direction do we want to go in?”

For Gyimah, any move to change the electoral system should spring from a desire within the British public to see change, rather than from politicians, and Gyimah is not convinced that the public want change.

“There is no public outcry for a change to our electoral system. People are fed up with politics, they are fed up with politicians and there are a lot of reasons why and there are a lot of solutions to those problems, but people are not crying for a change to our electoral system and that is why the whole debate about AV has been dominated by politicians.

“Where have the public been in this debate? Nowhere at all. We are only here because of an inter-party deal between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. There is no mandate for AV to be at the top of the political agenda.”

Gyimah is happy with the relative political stability that FPTP has given Britain over many years and notes that only three other countries that use AV – Australia, Fiji and Papua New Guinea.

Whilst the system works very well in Australia, Gyimah claims this is because they use compulsory voting, meaning that voters must rank every candidate in order of preference. In Britain, the AV on offer is optional, meaning that voters can vote for only one candidate if they want.

Optional voting means that under AV in Britain, there would still be situations where candidates win without 50% of the vote.

“A lot of arguments I have read in the press in favour of AV are actually arguments in favour of other systems of proportional representation,” he said.

What’s more, Gyimah is not convinced that AV will end tribal politics, as King claims it would.

“I would say the current coalition is, broadly speaking, working well. But let’s not kid ourselves that when you have coalitions, or specifically hung parliaments, that what you are getting is a sensible discussion of all the issues at stake. You are going to have squalid bargaining and distribution of the spoils of office.”

Gyimah is also concerned that AV will divorce the election process from how a government is actually formed post-election.

AV will simply deliver more seats to the Lib Dems, making it more difficult for either of the two main parties to cross the finishing line and creating hung parliament, he says.

“In that situation, you vote and politicians then go and decide for you what government should be formed and what the platform is going to be.

“In other words, the manifesto for which you voted becomes irrelevant. The manifesto becomes a shopping window to build up [the party’s] negotiating position to then go into hung parliament and get what [they]want. And I don’t think that is what reforming politics is about.

“I think what we want is politicians to stand on the platform they intend to enact and if they are elected to government they enact that.”

The “corrosive” impact of the Lib Dem’s U-turn on tuition fees is a case in point for Gyimah.

“People genuinely feel let down and short-changed by a party that said ‘we will do one thing’ and when they got into government said ‘well, sorry, Coalition agreement, we can’t really deliver on that promise’.”

What also concerns Gyimah, however, is the reality that many people simply do not have a second or third, or fourth, or fifth preference. They have one preference.
It is right for politicians to fight for a voter’s one and only preference, he says.

“What we don’t want to have is a leaflet from the Conservative Party saying ‘well, if you live here vote for the Conservative Party first, vote Greens second, and that party third’. That’s what happens.

“The political parties will try and gain the system to their advantage. AV will not eliminate tactical voting. You are going to get more political fixes.

“I would also like to think that someone else’s sixth preference does not have the same value as my first preference because I happen to think your sixth preference is not really the person you wanted. FPTP preserves that one person, one vote system.”

It’s also not true to say that AV will get rid of safe seats, he argues, because those already getting more than 50% of the vote are likely to carry on getting 50% of the vote.

“AV will have its own safe seats,” he concluded. “If we want to talk about real and radical change to the voting system what we should have on the table today is proportional representation.

“A lot of people proposing AV are supporting a change to the electoral system that in their heart of hearts is not what they really want.

“Our constitution has served us well. Why tinker with it?”


Peter Facey - Securing the support of the majority

For Facey, Britain’s changing political landscape demands a change in the electoral system.

“In the 1950s, when FPTP came in, around 90% of MPs had a majority in their constituencies and that was a time when 97% of us voted for either the Conservative Party or the Labour Party. But politics has changed and FPTP doesn’t work.”

He believes AV is the best way of ensuring that the winning candidate really has a majority of support. Under FPTP, the winning candidate could win with a minority of the overall vote – in Britain the lowest on record was 26%.

What also attracts him to AV is the ranking of candidates which he feels gives voters real choice.

“If you have just one choice you can cast one vote. People who do have a view on another candidate should have the choice,” he says.

The fact that it is used by trade unions, the main parties and the House of Lords in their internal elections, and in Scotland for local council by-elections, proves its merit for Facey.

“All three main political parties accept the principle that the elected candidate or party leader should have a majority of support in the party. The majority of the people in an area should actually have an MP they want rather than a situation where you can actually have someone elected on the minority of his constituency,” he said.

Facey also refutes the argument that AV will produce more coalitions – and he argues that point as someone who rather likes coalitions.

“In Australia they have had less hung parliaments than we have had under FPTP in the United Kingdom. This is not introducing Italy or Israel, this is introducing majoritarian elections,” he said.

Like King, Facey believes that AV will encourage more people to go out and vote for the party they actually want to vote for.

“There are people in my village in leafy Cambridgeshire who go out and vote Liberal Democrats who are not Liberal Democrats. They are actually Labour supporters and they pretend in the ballot box to be a Lib Dem, not because it’s their first choice but because it’s the only choice they think they can make to have a chance of affecting the result.

“I want people to be able to stand up and say ‘I’m a socialist, I’m voting Labour’ and not have to worry that by doing so they are going to let somebody else in.”

He points to the Canadian elections, where a centre-right party came to power this week despite the majority of people voting for centre-left parties.

Facey also admits, however, that AV is not the best system ever, but he believes it does offer voters more choice and is still an improvement on the current system.

“This isn’t going to completely revolutionise politics but if you vote yes on Thursday it will make it a bit better, it will improve it.

“Some say you should only change if it is going to be to your ideal choice. I’ve never bought my ideal car. I want an Aston Martin but I’m never going to be able to afford an Aston Martin.

“I would rather have a used Volkswagen than a clapped out old Lada. And in this referendum you have a choice between a clapped out old Lada and an electoral system which more countries have changed from than any other electoral system, to one that will actually make things better. So please go out and vote yes.”


Gary Shuker - False expectations?

As far as Shuker is concerned, the Yes campaign has taken the issue of a lack of trust in politics and “sold us a prescription for a solution”.

“Clegg and Oona say it is a small change that will make a big difference but I think it’s actually quite a big change.”

The reason, he says, is because it changes the relationship between the people choosing, and their elected representatives.

“With trust in politics at one of its lowest ebbs, that’s a real concern for me because when we mess with the relationship between the representative and the person who elects them we should have a damn good reason to do it and we better have a better system and not a worse one,” he said.

Not only that, but Shuker fears the Yes campaign is promising things that AV can’t deliver – MPs who work harder, an end to the ‘jobs for life’ culture in Westminster, and ‘votes that count’.

“It’s not a problem with who wins and who loses. It is a problem with the expectations that AV has sold us all and my real fear is that AV can’t deliver even around a quarter or a fifth of the things that are promised and we will go backwards in terms of a deficiency of trust and faith in our politics.”

The only choice he thinks it will strengthen is the choice of politicians after the election.

“We’ve seen the political carve up that’s happened after the last election. Many people in my constituency voted for one party and ended up with another one in government and being very, very offended that their voice wasn’t taken into account.”

It’s debatable whether AV will make MPs work harder, he says, because they are aware that they have been elected as the representatives of people who are asking them to exercise their conscience.

“That is a powerful and important thing that I would not expect to be different under [the AV] system.”

He also questions the legitimacy of candidates who win on second or third preference votes.

Pointing to the Labour leadership campaign, he said: “Who can say Ed Miliband’s legitimacy was strengthened by overtaking his brother in the final round?”

He’s also not convinced that AV will make it any more certain that winning candidates secure at least 50% of the vote.

“If you have an exhaustive system where you have six candidates and you rank them one to six then that’s true. But there is an imbalance between people’s votes if you have a non-exhaustive system where some people put one [preference], as around four in 10 voters will do under AV.”

And there’s a good reason why British politicians aren’t forcing an exhaustive system on the people - because they might have to give their last preference to a party like the BNP.

Rather than make politics more diverse, Shuker believes AV is going to put Britain in the position where candidates simply try to hold the centre position.

He does acknowledge that a lot of people feel the system is unfair, but it’s not because of FPTP, he contends.

“If you were to ask people what they think makes our system unfair they would not say it is the non-majoritarian system. They would say the number of votes cast does not reflect the number of seats in Parliament.”

Two ideologically coherent positions, he feels, are FPTP and proportional representation.

“AV is not a proportional system. Labour would have won with bigger majorities in ‘97, 2001 and 2005 and in the last election we would have been in with a shout at staying in Downing St.

“If we want AV lets have an exhaustive system. This is not one of those.”

Like Gyimah, he also feels that no one really wants AV.

“It’s a second choice voting system from the second choice candidates from the third choice party,” he quipped.

And it’s not going to bring more small parties into power, he thinks. Rather, it will simply change the way that the three parties carve up the seats and give more power to the Lib Dems.

He concluded: “There will be a far bigger crisis in democracy in 10 years’ time if we take AV and replace FPTP because people will have finally seen through the self-interested arguments of politicians, when they go out and say ‘it’s all about fairness’ when they actually mean ‘it’s all about me’. Change is not necessarily progress.”