Yes or no to AV?

Truly my last blog on the arguments for and against AV for Thursday’s UK referendum on AV.  It’s been quite a campaign, but the arguments made by either side are weak or worse.  This may get a little better in this last week.  In its broadcast tonight the Yes campaign is at long last explaining what the system is and why it is a good idea, and even toning down some of its exaggerated claims.  The Yes campaign had left too much of the explaining to its opponents, while spending too much time twittering to to the converted.  By contrast the No broadcast seems much more about rallying the converted, especially Labour supporters; it rehashes the usual arguments in quick soundbites, using a variety of politicians and vox pops.  Up to this week the No campaign has been much more vigorous, albeit scurrilous.

First, for the benefit of those that haven’t decided, and want to get beyond the soundbites, let’s have a quick round up of the usual, weaker, arguments before identifying the stronger ones.  First the Yes:

  • It will make all MPs work harder.  The idea is because most MPs will need second preference votes to win, as well as a good haul of first preferences, then they will be more sensitive to people’s needs.  Well maybe.  But they are already trying quite hard for the first preference votes of minor parties.
  • Tackles “jobs for life”, duck houses, etc.  Well it should reduce the number of safe seats – but there will still be plenty left.  So some change, but not that much.
  • All MPs will need 50% of support.  A stronger argument, but of course this is 50% before abstentions.  Some voters will not offer second or third preferences so they will drop out, meaning that the winner gets a bit less than 50% of the voters who turned up.  The Economist newspaper seems to think this is a big problem, but if voters are indifferent between candidates then surely that’s fair enough.
  • It’s change.  True, but is it for the better?  Change would certainly rock the older politicos – but this is weak stuff.
  • It will keep the Tories out of power forever.  Not an argument to persuade Conservative supporters.  Frankly, I’m not at all convinced.  The Lib Dem vote could implode, the Tories scoop up second preferences from UKIP; if Labour fluffs it that could easily deliver the Tories an outright victory.  And if David Cameron succeeds in “de-toxifying” the Tory brand, it’s all to play for.

It says much about the Yes campaign that they haven’t said much more than this until this week.  The Nos, on the other hand have given us a massive battery of arguments:

  • It will cost £250m which is best spent on other things.  There has been a lot of heat generated by this claim, based on the costs of running the referendum (too late) and buying counting machinery (unnecessary).  Still, there will need to be an information campaign to explain the system, and it will take longer to count the votes, which will mean a bit more overtime.  Cheaper not to vote at all, of course.  What price democracy?
  • More countries use FPTP than AV.  My Tory leaflet says 2.4 billion to 29.5 million.  So?  I don’t know who they have counted into their 2.4 billion, but a large part of it is India, where there are literacy issues (and which doesn’t deliver stable government either).  The US has got round many of the weaknesses of FPTP through primary elections (which really are more expensive!) .  Many states also use run-off elections which work a bit like AV, and AV itself is not unknown.  And for President, if they used FPTP then Al Gore would have beaten George Bush in 2000 – but in fact they use an electoral college system.  New Zealand abolished FPTP for proportional representation.  That leaves Canada amongst developed countries; that country’ electoral experiences are not an advertisement for the system.  Today the Conservatives won a general election because the left-wing NDP took votes away from the centre parties.  What’s more many other nations, including France and Italy, have a single member run-off system that works a bit like AV.
  • The Australians don’t like AV.  My Conservative leaflet claims that 60% of Australians want to go back to FPTP.  That isn’t what the poll in question actually asked.  What many Aussies don’t like is that they are forced to preference ALL candidates, even if they are indifferent.  We aren’t proposing that in the UK.  In fact the principle of preferential voting (as they call it) is not controversial there.
  • AV gives weight to extreme parties, like the BNP.  Extremists will find more difficult to win under AV.  But they find it hard enough under FPTP (though George Galloway did sneak in in 2005).   But their second preferences will count.  Just as they would if there was no candidate of their party at all.  This is true, but it’s called democracy.
  • Soppy centrists will get elected.  This is the exact opposite of the extremist argument.  It isn’t made by the mainstream No campaign, but it is the argument of choice of the magazine Spiked, and Matthew D’Ancona.  The idea is that the trawl for second preference votes will put a premium on being unobjectionable.  But you still need first preference votes to be in contention, since you will almost always need to be in the top two on first preferences to stand a chance (and this is the Australian experience).  Soppy centrists are likely to get knocked out.  Besides appealing to the centre is how marginal seats are won under FPTP too.
  • There will be permanent hung parliaments and coalitions.  This is a valid argument against proportional representation, but not AV.  The argument runs that the Lib Dems will get more seats, denying a majority to Labour or Conservatives.  You have to believe in a Lib Dem recovery to think that; they will have a real problem to get enough first preference votes to be in contention in enough seats.  Even if you accept this, the balance between the top two parties is likely to favour the winner (because they get more second preference votes as well as first preference votes), and this will offset the effect.  One academic has suggested that the only election since the war that would have given a hung parliament under AV was last year’s, which, um…
  • We want PR.  AV is not remotely proportional; that’s why a lot of people like it.  But FPTP isn’t either.  PR isn’t on the menu.  The danger is that a No vote will put people off electoral reform of any kind for a long time.
  • We’ve been using FPTP for 300 years and we should stand by our traditions.  Well I’m exaggerating, but only slightly, based on Mr Cameron’s utterings.  One person one vote has only been around in the UK since 1950 when the university seats were abolished.  It’s not all that long ago when we abolished rotten boroughs.  We forget how much our constitution changes and adapts.

Enough.  What are the arguments that count?  For yes:

  1. It reduces the chances of rogue candidates splitting the vote and letting the enemy in.  This will make it easier for MPs to take an independent line against party managers.  Perverse results where people vote for the left and let a right wing candidate in (which seems to have happened in Canada today) are prevented.
  2. It’s more transparent.  Today a lot of voters vote for their second preference because they don’t think their first has a chance of winning.  The importance of first preference votes under AV will not stop this entirely, but it will be a big help.  And the winning candidate will know where his or her second preference votes came from.  Today they like to claim that all their votes are positive first preference ones – time to expose this.
  3. It’s a majoritarian system, like FPTP.  Coalitions only happen when the public really can’t make up its mind.  Of course many people prefer coalitions…but see above.  We aren’t turning the political world upside down, just making it a bit better.

And for the Nos:

  1. There is clearer bond with the voter, who needs to make a binary decision, which then gets counted in a highly dramatic process.  There is a little magic in the old ways.
  2. If No wins then the Conservatives will have to give the Lib Dems a consolation prize, perhaps in Lords reform.  If Yes wins then the opposite applies.

And that’s enough!

The intellectual cowardice of Spiked

I really try to like the online magazine Spiked.  They are liberals that challenge the paternalism of the bulk of those who think of themselves as liberal.  They try to make common cause with the attitude ordinary people, outside the ruling and media elites.  But then I read things like this:

Nuclear energy: clean, reliable and powerful.  Physicist Wade Allison expertly demolishes fears about radiation. If only he was equally as sceptical about the fear-fuelled climate-change panic.

It links to a book review by deputy editor Rob LyonsSpiked is trying to resist the scare stories around nuclear power and, separately, climate change.  But its writers seem incapable of engaging in a sensible debate.   They are happy to agree Wade Allison about the threat from radiation, but can’t engage with his arguments about climate change.  Spiked’s writers form a view, cheer anybody that agrees with them, and boo anybody that disagrees.  And this case cheer and boo both at once.  No weighing of the arguments on either side is attempted.

I have a similar issue with their attitude to AV.  Fair enough to challenge the public arguments made by the Yes camp, a lot which are quite shallow, and call for a better standard of debate.  But they don’t bother much with the even weaker (and downright fraudulent) arguments made by the Nos.  And the arguments they offer themselves are just as shallow as the arguments they reject.  Apparently AV will make our politicians even more insipid.  As I have argued elsewhere, because AV makes it easier to field spoiler candidates, there is good reason to think the opposite.  They only have to look at the Australian experience to see.

Spiked simply doesn’t have the courage to take the higher ground when it is offered them.  They won’t engage in real debate because they are too afraid that it will expose their prejudices.  What a shame.

Why vote no to AV?

In my earlier posts on the alternative vote (AV) in advance of the forthcoming referendum, I have focused on the positive case for the reform, and considered some of the practical consequences.  Now it’s time to consider some of the arguments being put forward by people advising us to vote No, in support of first-past-the-post (FPTP).

The leading argument from the No camp, to judge by the reporting on the BBC, is that AV undermines the principle of one person one vote.  Partly this argument is used simply to confuse matters, alongside the idea that AV is complicated.  But the more serious point is that idea that people who vote for candidates who are eliminated get another go, so it seems like they get a bonus.  Meanwhile, as my local Conservative leaflet puts it: “This means that supporters of the major parties, the Conservative Party and the Labour party, will not have their votes counted more than once”.  This is a candy floss argument that disappears if you try to think about it.  AV is in effect a succession of run-off elections, with the loser of each election being eliminated between each round.  The voters of the top two parties are counted in every vote, without their votes needing to be transferred.  Far from being disadvantaged, they are setting the agenda.

But this argument leads to a more subtle one.  Voters of the eliminated candidates  influence the outcome, and these voters are less deserving.  This is endlessly backed up by a quote from Winston Churchill that AV would give power to “the most worthless votes for the most worthless candidates.”  A group of prominent historians were somehow persuaded sign a letter to The Times in support of the No vote, that managed to put this quote alongside the argument that AV undermined “one man, one vote”.  We can summarize this juxtaposition so: “FPTP means one man, one vote as long as you are not worthless.”  Supporters of AV argue that it is precisely the principle of one person, one vote that means that we must count the views of people who initially back less popular candidates.  Even if they support the BNP.  Far too much has been said about the BNP in this debate already; the BNP does not support AV for reasons that I talked about in my last post on AV.

There are rather better No arguments on offer, though you rarely hear them.  Brendan O’Neill of Spiked offers two.  The first is that AV will tend to promote insipid middle of the road candidates.  He doesn’t try to justify this claim very hard, but I think the argument goes like this: when making their choices voters will put less offensive candidates above ones that are more offensive to them.  That means that major parties with a real chance of winning a seat have an interest in selecting inoffensive candidates.  A conservative candidate, for example, will be trying to pick up second preferences from both UKIP and Lib Dems; Labour candidates will be after the Lib Dems too, and the Greens and any fringe left candidates, as well as hoping for some of the UKIP votes; this might be done simply by being less offensive than your main rival.  But it is hard to make the case that this is any more true under AV than FPTP, where the major parties fight hard for these voters’ one and only vote on the basis that only the top two parties count.  Also if a candidate is too insipid voters won’t preference them at all.  There is a more strategic argument too: FPTP suppresses spoiler candidates (i.e. breakaways from the major parties) because by standing these candidates might simply let the real enemy in.  If it is more likely that major party candidates will be challenged by breakaways, as would be the case under AV, won’t politics become more dynamic?  Mr O’Neill spoils his own argument by praising the spikiness of Australian politicians, which he puts down to compulsory voting.  But since Australia uses AV, this shows that at worst AV is not much of problem on this front.  Australian politics is full of challenges by independent candidates, many of them successful; AV helps them. (Incidentally there is an interesting analysis of the impact of AV in  recent Queensland and New South Wales state elections here, important because they use the same system that is being proposed in the UK, rather than the full preferential system used in Australian federal elections.)

But Mr O’Neill also fields a much stronger, if less tangible, argument for FPTP, which comes close to the real reason why most ordinary No voters are going that way.  FPTP is simple, direct and dramatic.  The voter focuses his or her mind on making a single, dramatic choice.  The votes are counted and the election resolved in a very clear process.  This strengthens the bond between the system and the ordinary voter.  AV is by no means a complicated system, but it does reduce the immediacy and drama of the process.  Is this enough to tolerate the problems of FPTP, with the power it gives to unaccountable party machines?  I say no.  And if it was, I would replace FPTP with a system of run-offs, like they use in France and Italy, which have the best of both worlds, but are much more expensive.

Which leaves me with the real reason that major party establishment types want a No vote.  FPTP makes it very hard for rebels in their own ranks to challenge the officially selected candidate, for fear of letting the opposition in.  AV makes it much easier for party rebels.  Candidate selection processes are subject to heavy influence from party hierarchies and give the established order real power over our political system.  Now, ask yourself, is that a good reason why ordinary voters should vote No?  Ed Milliband is very brave to see through this to wish for a more democratic political process, and support the Yes campaign.  He is consistently under-estimated by the politicos that dominate what passes for political debate in Britain.  It will be good for the country if he wins this vote.

Libya: the UN motion is not just a cynical gesture

I’m getting a bit fed up with commentators who launch into diatribes based on generalities, without bothering to examine the facts of the case in point.  Libya is the latest example.  I have read two articles critical of the UN motion authorising military action; Max Hastings in the FT, and Sean Collins in Spiked.  The situation in Libya is interesting because it is unique; these articles are almost worthless because they never get beyond generalities.  In fact exceptional circumstances make the UN-approved action a viable way forward; and no doubt that is why it was proposed.

Mr Collins’s article is the weaker – but it is a pretty typical offering for a Spiked writer.  (See my post on Spiked).  Its title is Libya: how the West just made things worse.  He says:

Far from rescuing the Libyan uprising, the resolution is a setback for the cause of democracy and self-determination.

He does not do a good job of explaining why though.  We get the usual complaints that it will undermine the rebels’ legitimacy; we also get a rather old-fashioned (and unsupported) reference to the sacred principle of national sovereignty.  He does not even attempt to explain how this is worse for the rebels than being overrun by Gaddafi’s forces, or at least how this would be better for self-determination and democracy.  This comes over as just another rant from a writer who would condemn any action taken by a Western leader, whatever it was.

Mr Hastings’s article is much more disappointing, because he is a military historian who should be able to deploy some insight and expertise, if he could be bothered.  His article is entitled US and its allies are too late to help Libya.  His contention is that only intervention by ground forces will save the Libyan rebels:

…the situation today is where it always was: once Muammer Gaddafi showed himself determined to fight, only direct ground intervention by the US and its allies would have enabled the ill-armed rebels to prevail.

This would ordinarily be a correct assessment; but Libya is different.  Libya consists of a series of settlements separated by expanses of desert.  Crossing this desert is the key to success, and that gives air power a much greater effectiveness than normal.  Ground forces must be motorised – but motor vehicles are vulnerable with so little cover.  Or you use airpower – which, of course can be neutralised by opposing airpower.  Added to which are the issues of logistics; advancing forces find it increasingly difficult to keep in fuel and ammunition the further they advance – and rely on motor or air transport for these too.  This is not Kosovo or Bosnia.  Gaddafi does not have huge forces at his disposal, so it is quite realistic for this intervention to halt them – although not to roll them back.

So it looks quite feasible for the West to sustain the rebel territory from Benghazi eastwards, especially given the moral boost that intervention gives them.  This still leaves Gaddafi in control of most of the country.  How is he to be defeated?  He will be defeated once his forces start to lose hope.  This is possible because he depends on two groups in particular: foreign mercenaries and tribal allies.  Both of these need to be on the winning side; a third group, Gaddafi loyalists who face the prospect of being lynched if Gaddafi loses, are more reliable but not enough.  Gaddafi’s problem is that the economy has collapsed: he needs those migrant workers and the oil trade.  More rigorous enforcement of sanctions is part of the UN resolution.

Which leads me to another exceptional circumstance: Gaddafi is diplomatically isolated.  The Arab League has come out against him, and he has no allies (apart from Syria perhaps and, who knows?, Iran).  This is just reward for his antics and excessive ego; he was never a reliable ally.  This puts him in the same situation as Saddam Hussein after his attack on Kuwait.  This isolation gives the West a much greater degree of legitimacy, as well as making it much more difficult for him to rebuild a sustainable state from the territory he does hold.

So the scenario for victory is this.  Gaddafi’s advances are halted and the resolve of the rebels sustained by the no-fly zone, and air strikes from Western powers and Arab states (with the US not necessarily playing a huge role).  Gaddafi’s support then gradually melts away as his tribal allies are tempted to change sides in order to bring the conflict to an end, and mercenaries become unwilling to expose themselves to air attack and the possibility of the regime collapsing.  This is not the only possible outcome – but it is viable.  Unlike trying to shift the Serbs from Kosovo with air power alone.

What are the morals for dictators wishing to avoid overthrow?  First keep the armed forces under your control (unlike Tunisia and Egypt).  Second make sure you stay friends with enough of your neighbours (unlike Gaddafi and Saddam).  All the worse for the incipient rebellions in Bahrain and Yemen.  Also it helps if your country isn’t mostly desert.  Robert Mugabe looks pretty safe.

10 years of Spiked

Yesterday was the 10th anniversary of this online journal.  Spiked represents a different sort of liberalism to the type that I associate with.  It stands up for freedom all right; in the words of its editor Brendan O’Neill in his 10th anniversary piece Spiked exists to:

…to fight the good fight for freedom, progress, growth, tolerance and a bit of Enlightened spirit.

But it sets itself against pretty much any attempt by the established political leadership to uphold liberal values.  It finds itself against the idea that climate change is a threat worth doing anything about; it was against the smoking ban in public places; it got quite hysterical about Cleggmania.  It has defined its enemies as “miserabilists” or, the current favourite, “misanthropists”.  I browse their weekly email digest and sometimes click through to their articles.  What do I think?

I want to like them.  I may disagree with them most of the time, but it helps to have challenge.  The problems start when I click through.  Mostly, the articles just aren’t very good.  They are usually too long and self-indulgent; they rarely credit the strength of the other side’s case.  If you have the patience you can dig out the odd cogent argument and the occasional interesting observation.  There is a general tide of negativity usually directed against an ill-defined “elite”.  There can be quite a lot of description of abstract ideas.  For example, one writer (Daniel Ben-Ami) in criticising the the fad for well-being economics spends so much time describing how these ideas evolved, and the other ideas it is associated with, that he scarcely engages with the ideas themselves.   It mostly reads like contributions to undergraduate journals, but Spiked’s writers should have grown up by now.  Unfortunately those that have got beyond the undergraduate ramblings (for example Mick Hume, the founding editor) just seem to rant rather than engage in sensible argument (for example this article about the judgement that caused the Littleborough & Saddleworth by-election).  It is a striking irony that a journal attacking “miserabilists” is so miserable itself, without a positive word to say for any establishment position.

Just as striking is how defensive Mr O’Neill’s celebratory article is.  He spends a lot of time trying to fend off the argument that Spiked takes its positions purely to wind people up, rather than out of a coherent set of principles.  I suspect the problem is not the lack of a coherent view as an unwillingless to engage properly with the opposing argument; people won’t try to understand you if you make no effort to understand them.  They also seem unwilling to host much of the way in genuine discussion on their website; I have had only one of a dozen letters published; looking at the letters page today, it hasn’t been updated this month at all.

Would Spiked’s world view start to fall apart if they did try to engage properly with the ideas?  That would be an over-complacent view from a “left-liberal” like me; but I would like to read more stuff that is properly argued.  Surely a missed opportunity.