AV voting system could amplify swings in public opinion

Jun 11 2009 by Jonathan Walker, Birmingham Post

The expenses scandal and general lack of faith in politicians has reopened the debate on changing the way Britain chooses MPs.

One of the goals of reformers is to give MPs more power to scrutinise the work of the Government, and to have a real say on legislation instead of simply doing as they are told by ministers.

But the new voting system Gordon Brown is believed to favour may have the opposite effect.

MPs including Richard Burden (Lab, Northfield) and Lynne Jones (Lab, Selly Oak) have called for a debate on proportional representation.

This would end the days when one party had a massive majority in the Commons, forcing the Government to listen to the views of MPs and, it is argued, to the people who elected them.

To get legislation approved, ministers would need to compromise – to hear what members of Parliament were concerned about, and change their policies to reflect those views.

But if there was any chance of proportional representation being introduced, it has been scuppered by the results of the European election, which saw two BNP MEPs elected.

This was conducted under a PR system which allows smaller parties such as the BNP (and the Greens) to win seats.

One might argue that this is only fair, but fear of giving the BNP a foothold in the House of Commons has killed off any possibility of bringing PR to Westminster.

What Mr Brown is believed to favour, although he didn’t make this clear in his Commons statement, is something called the Alternative Vote system, which allows people to specify a second choice.

But this could actually lead to larger landslides for the winning party in elections, and make the Government even more dominant in Parliament.

For example, a poll by YouGov last week found that 42 per cent of Liberal Democrat voters would prefer David Cameron to Gordon Brown as Prime Minister, with just 34 per cent backing Mr Brown.

Under the AV system, in seats where the Labour and the Conservatives are the two major parties, the final result could be decided by the second choices of Lib Dem voters.

It would mean David Cameron’s party gained more seats.

But Lib Dem voters won’t always back the Tories. Every government becomes unpopular eventually, and the country demands change.

Imagine that the Tories hold office for ten years and start looking tired, while a fresh-faced new leader revitalises Labour. Liberal Democrats would surely tend to place Labour as their second choice in these circumstances.

In other words, AV may tend to amplify swings in public opinion, punishing unpopular parties and giving the winners even more seats than they get now.

With a bigger majority in Parliament, a victorious government would be even stronger than it is today, and even more able to ignore dissent from MPs.