Don't be pessimistic, there is a way

I read this post by Peter Black yesterday and was struck by the pessimism of one part of what he said:

Labour ... are clinging to power in a desperate hope that the Liberal Democrats and other minor parties will join them in an anti-Tory coalition government. However, tempting as that is the numbers do not add up. Such a construct would not be stable and could not get its legislation through the House of Commons. That includes a PR Referendum Bill, which would surely fail to attract the support of all the Labour MPs, leaving Gordon Brown without anything to offer us.

And in this post on his blog today, he seemed at pains to downplay the chances of getting any sort of electoral reform:

Much as I want to see electoral reform these talks are about bigger issues

Gordon Brown is dangling a referendum in front of us but he cannot deliver. The sort of coalition of losers he is promoting would be unstable and would not deliver electoral reform because the outgoing Prime Minister could not deliver his own Parliamentary Party

we [may] get less than electoral reform but will still be able to take a significant step forward

I can see where he's coming from, but these are not good signals, just as what Nick Clegg said to the TakeBackParliament rally yesterday was very open-ended on any commitment to electoral reform. It's clear to me that this line of thinking will get nowhere. So what I want to offer is a better way of looking at it, one that will deliver electoral reform ... which I think should be the main prize to be won from the tight result of this election.

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At present the parties are talking at cross purposes.

• For the Tories, the emphasis is being put on a strong and stable government to get the UK out of the financial crisis. There might well be a role for the LibDems in this.

• For Labour, the idea is to maintain an "anything but the Tories" government, which they would of course lead.

But I would have thought that for the LibDems, the purpose is different. There must surely be one primary aim for the LibDems, namely reform of the voting method for the Commons. Other reforms are important too, but they must be instigated by the Commons and so it is right that they only happen when we have a House of Commons in which the number of seats more fairly represents the percentage of the vote obtained by each party. If we try and bundle everything together into one reform package to include fixed-term parliaments, the voting age, an elected House of Lords (and maybe a few other things) the chances of reaching an agreement become more remote. I firmly believe we should concentrate on only one issue: the voting system for the Commons.

There is a majority in the Commons for this reform:

Labour ... 258
LibDem ... 57
SNP ... 6
Plaid ... 3
SDLP ... 3
Green ... 1

Total ... 328

It should also be noted that the "winning post" is not 326. It is 323 because Sinn Fein will not take their 5 seats. It's a small point, but the numbers count.

That is enough to get a referendum bill through. The numbers do not have to remain in place to form a stable long-term government, and it is very unlikely that they would do so because the parties have different agendas on most other matters. They just have to stack up for this single issue.

The aim would be to get this bill through in a matter of months, and to then hold a new election under the new voting system if that referendum is successful.

     

Having established that there are the numbers to do it, the issue then becomes: What are the options that should be presented in the referendum? In broad terms, there are five possible options:

•  First-past-the-post (the status quo)
•  FPTP, plus additional members (Welsh Assembly and Scottish Parliament)
•  The Alternative Vote
•  The Alternative Vote, plus additional members
•  The Single Transferable Vote (Northern Ireland Assembly)

If there were just three options, it would be straightforward to ask two questions:

1.  Should the current voting system to the HoC be changed?
          Yes
          No

2.  If the current voting system to the HoC is changed, should it be to:
          System A
          System B

This would be an elegant solution, similar to the questions asked in the referendum to set up a Scottish Parliament (a Yes/No on the Parliament followed by a Yes/No on tax varying powers) but it relies on whittling down the five options to three. However it is possible, particularly as three options represent the respective positions of the big three parties; the Tories want to keep FPTP, Labour want the Alternative Vote (without additional members) and the LibDems want the Single Transferable Vote.

The other option would be for people to rank the five options in order of preference with a "1, 2, 3 ... " with the outcome decided by using the Alternative Vote mechanism. I think that would be better in terms of breadth of choice, but not as elegant. It would also involve two options which are compromises, rather than what any party really wants. Who would campaign for the two compromise options?

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So my conclusion is that the ballot paper for the referendum should contain these two questions:

1.  Should the current voting system to the HoC be changed?
          Yes
          No

2.  If the current voting system to the HoC is changed, should it be to:
          The Alternative Vote
          The Single Transferable Vote

Now I do not see why any party should object to a referendum in this form. After all, the UK is meant to be a democracy, so this format leaves us the voters to decide.

If the three parties can agree to a binding referendum in this form, followed by a new election at least three months but not longer than a year later, it then frees the parties to form whatever coalition or minority government they can negotiate based on all the other issues.