AV gladiators – put down your weapons

By Mark Ferguson / @markfergusonuk

There’s a war going on for the heart and soul of democracy. Two tribes are going to war – are you yes2AV or no2AV? Or perhaps you’re neither.

Much of the country is disinterested in the debate – and that’s if they actually know what is being argued about.

Worse, much of the Labour Party hasn’t formed a strong opinion on the matter, which turns loyal party tribalists into swing voters for the first time in their lives. And like swing voters, they dislike the dirty mud-slinging of the old politics.

For other parties the dividing lines on this issue are reassuringly tribal and familiar. Tories are on the whole against the changes, Lib Dems are strongly in favour (or what would be the point of them staying in the coalition?). For Labour supporters, the issue is more nuanced. The dividing lines are less clear – AV divides the old and the young, the left and the right – and there are a significant proportion of activists in between.

I’ve talked before about the AV agnostics. These people – the genuinely undecided – are the people who each campaign should be reaching out to with a positive campaign that inspires the #meh2AV crowd and turns them decisively one way or the other.

Yet the two campaigns have spent their time thus far engaged in bitter insider point scoring – with time and energy spent arguing over the voting intentions of MPs (when, after all, they’ll only have one vote like the rest of us) – and the latest addition to the campaign, allegations of Nazi slurs (yes, you read that right).

If you began this debate uninspired – you’re unlikely to have changed your mind.

It’s time for the AV gladiators to put down their weapons, and engage each other in more rational debate. What would be genuinely useful would be for either side of the debate to calmly, cleanly and simply explain why we should vote for their preferred option. This election is a straight choice between AV and first past the post. Arguments for the AV have been muddled (AV is fairer, but exaggerates swings/is good for Labour) whilst arguments for FPTP have been almost entirely absent from the debate. If first past the post is so bad that no-one will defend it, why have we had it for so long? And why do other countries use it?

Many of us AV agnostics are not indecisive swing voters by nature – on the contrary, most of us are staunch tribalists – but what we need to hear is a compelling and persuasive argument that will leave us enthused. I’m desperate to be able to say come May that one side of the argument has won me over. At this rate that’s unlikely to happen.

What this debate requires is a little illumination – at present all that the competing campaigns are doing is leaving us even more in the dark.