The F word

· by · in Comment. ·

It’s that word again, the F word. Fair

It seems that the Yes to AV campaign has decided that rather than campaign on the details of the alternative vote system that they will campaign for the much more vague idea of “fair votes“.  Just like the proponents of PR systems they attribute all kinds of benefits to their favoured system without actually explaining how the benefits will come about.

For example one of the statements made on their site is “MPs will have to work harder to earn – and keep- our support. Doing just enough won’t be enough any more”, really?  How?  Another cracker is “Too many MPs have jobs for life. Lets shake those politicians out of their complacency”, yes lets. But how will AV do that exactly?
The ultimate argument is that 86 year old Ralph Hill (he fought in the war!) feels that that his vote has been wasted for most of the elections that he has voted in.  Clearly a “fair” voting system would have prevented that.  No need to fill in any details, HE’S 86.  What more do you need,  HE IS 86 FOR GOD’S SAKE!!!!!

I wonder if the Yes to AV team would be kind enough to explain to students who voted Lib Dem how a permanent hung parliament is more fair than expecting MPs to stick to their manifesto commitments.

4 responses to “The F word”

  1. Manifestos are for getting elected, not governing. The country is better governed by compromise of coalition policies in the sense that it gives representation to more views.

    Also, brief correction. The “Fair Votes” campaign was the campaign to get PR into the coalition agreement. The Yes to AV campaign are using the phrase “fairer votes” because they understand AV isn't PR. In fact, it is the No to AV campaign who are using the tagline “The Fight for Fair Votes”.

    In light of that, what do you think of describing FPTP as “fair” in comparison to AV?

    Your post also shows a leaning toward the idea that only LibDems are supporting AV – that simply isn't true. I brought it up at Tory conference a few times myself and I know that a lot of Labour activists will support it. Likewise, the nationalists are all in favour. It's not a partisan issues and is a policy of the Conservative Party as much the Liberals thanks to the coalition.

    The Yes campaign shouldn't be synonymous with the Liberals. It infuriates me that it seems to be becoming that way, given I'm a stalwart Tory campaigning for a Yes vote!

  2. I was a bit disappointed that 'fairvotes' was being used in the #Yes2AV campaign as 'fairness' would probably be seen as better suited to a campaign for PR by many people.

    However it is not an unreasonable
    tag as there is greater fairness in AV as it ensures that the winning candidate does have a majority of support.

    Regarding making MPs work harder and be more accountable – this is simple to answer, as AV means no MP can take their seat for granted – even if they have a safe party seat, they can be replaced.

    http://free-english-people.blogspot.com/2010/11/voting-reform-av-ends-safe-seats-for.html

    I hope this answers your worries and you will be voting #Yes2AV come the referendum!

  3. Hi James,
    I think that it is a little unfair to focus on a single video, which hopefully will be one of many. Perhaps, for the sake of comparison, you should look at the first ad campaign from the NO side:
    http://isupportav.co.uk/2010/11/vacuity-of-no-campaign-self-exposed/

    Here is the NO campaign's 'in depth' look at the benefits of FPTP:
    http://no2av.org/blog/?page_id=40
    That's 194 words, most of which is misinformation.

    Here's the YES campaign's equivalent page:
    http://www.yestofairervotes.org/pages/learn-more/
    Word Count: 291

    So while neither side is going over the top on the details, the YES campaign has made 50% more effort to discuss it than the NO campaign 🙂

    Luckily you can find a list of the merits of AV here:
    http://isupportav.co.uk/av-is-better/

    Of course, most of that will be information overload for a normal person, which is why the main campaigns are focusing on broad stroke issues.

    As for calling the campaign YES! To Fairer Votes, one should remember that they couldn't call themselves YES2AV, or any variant on that because Matthew Elliott, head of NO2AV is domain squatting on the main web address:
    http://www.internic.co.uk/whois.php?domain=yes2av.org

    While this video of Ralph Hill looks at an individual's reasons for supporting AV, I would ask you to look at the antics of the NO campaigners. They have bought up related YES domain names, the've made an advert attacking the cost of the referendum, they have made *personal* attacks on Nick Clegg and Ben Bradshaw, they have lied about AV giving people multiple votes, they have falsely tried to link the BNP to a YES vote, they have used the military dictatorship in Fiji as an example of a country getting rid of AV and they have spammed newspaper letter pages… pretty much anything but discussion of why they support First Past The Post.

  4. Thought I'd tag this on too…

    1) AV is no more likely to result in a hung parliament than FPTP.

    2) LibDem MPs that have reneged on personal pledges can be expelled at the next election (of under AV), by simply running an 'independent LibDem' against them — voters can put the independed LibDem first and the sitting MP next – so getting rid of the MP with no risk of 'splitting the vote' and letting another party in.

    Pretty much like Ken Livingstone did against Dobson in an earlier london mayor elections – running as an unofficial labour candidate he beat the official candidate then rejoined the labour party…

    No MP is safe, even if their seat is safe for their party – AV means individual accountability…

Leave a comment