Yes Men Looking for AV Support in Wales

I have received this e-mail from Iestyn Davies the Welsh Organiser of the AV referendum Yes Campaign:

Hello friend,

My name is Iestyn Davies - I'm your Yes campaign organiser in Wales.

I am here to help Yes campaigners like you to build your own campaigns so that Wales says "Yes" to AV on 5 May 2011.

Your leadership will be critical to this effort. Right now, I am looking for local organisers to help build the campaign where you are. Will you take up the challenge and join me?

The Yes campaign got off to a fantastic start on Bonfire Night, with people coming together at events across the country. Now we need organisers in your area to keep up that momentum.

We have just under six months to make sure that the country is ready to seize this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

This is your chance to make a difference to the Yes campaign and change the future of British politics. Click here to find out more about becoming a local organiser and how you can help make Wales say "Yes"

I am really looking forward to campaigning with you for a new way of doing politics!

Best wishes,

Iestyn Davies
Organiser, Wales

My answer to Iestyn is NO, I'm not interested in the Lib Dem abuse of the electoral cycle in order to try and gain support for their half baked electoral reform compromise.

I will be campaigning in a much more important electoral contest on May 5th.

But I publish his appeal for support in the hope that Liberal and Labour AV supporters take their eye of the ball and put their efforts into AV rather than the Assembly campaign!

Unscrupulous Liberal Bastards?

Next week the second reading of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill will be debated; the measure in parliament that intends to introduced the proposal to hold a referendum on the Alternative Vote system.

Caroline Lucas on behalf of the Green Party, Plaid Cymru and the SNP will proposed an amendment to the legislation which will offer alternatives to voters in the referendum. A choice between AV the list system used for Assembly elections and European elections, or the Single Transferable Vote system, a system that the Liberal Democrats have supported for several decades.

Under such circumstances, what will the Liberals do?

They can support the Green amendment in the hope that Labour and the Conservatives will join together to kill the motion between them. A dangerous proposition, because Labour might back the Greens just for the thrill of giving the coalition a bloody nose!

The Liberals can abstain; which will ensure that the vote is lost, or they can vote against the amendment, in effect vote against a policy that they have supported for decades!

Opposing the Green and Nationalists amendment is the most likely response; then spinning a justification for voting against a policy that has been at the core of Liberal policy for generations.

Unscrupulous bastards? We wait an' see!

The Liberal anti Democrats

Supporting fixed term parliaments and proportional representation are supposed to be indices of supporting democracy. Great I am all for both reforms.

It seems a bit odd though that the self proclaimed great party of fairness and democracy just happens to decide that the referendum on PR should be held on the same day as the 2011 Assembly / Scottish Parliament elections, and by coincidence the fixed term of the current Westminster Parliament will fall on the same day as the 2015 Assembly / Scottish Parliament elections!

Plaid and the SNP being excluded from the "British" debate in the last Westminster elections halted their progress and helped the Lib Dems campaigns in Scotland and Wales. Am I a cynic in thinking that the coincidence of two UK issues being dealt with on the same day as the next two Devolution votes is gerrymandering to benefit the Lib Dems?

The truth is that the Lib Dems couldn't give a damn about democracy – they are only in politics for what they can get out of it!

Shame on them for betraying their rich heritage of supporting democracy for democracy's sake, and selling their soul for power and party political advantage!

I sincerely hope that my acquaintances in the Welsh Liberal Democrat Party will tell Mr Clegg that this sort of fix is not in the party's tradition of campaigning for fair, honest and democratic elections. But I won't hold my breath waiting for them to do so!

The problems of PR

A recent YouGov Opinion poll for Scotland suggested that if a Westminster election was held this week that the likely result would be Labour 32%, SNP 30% Conservative 21% and Lib Dem 13% (96% total so I assume others 4%). If this is stuck into the Scottish Calculator on Electoral Calculus this gives a seat result of Labour 35 seats, SNP 10 seats, Conservatives 5 seats and Lib Dems 9 seats.

Clearly there is an "unfairness" element here. Labour and the SNP almost neck and neck, but Labour win more than three times as many Scottish seats. The Lib Dems on a third fewer votes than the Conservatives get almost twice as many seats! I can understand why people want PR, but I remain an agnostic on the issue.

I am not quite opposed to PR, because I can see the obvious failings of First Past the Post that this example gives. But I'm not convinced of the benefits either.

If one listens to party propaganda Plaid Cymru has had a huge effect on Welsh Politics between Gwynfor's election in 1966 and Plaid becoming a party of Government in 2009. Some of the claims might be taken with a pinch of salt, but some of them are probably fair. Tories might claim credit for the Welsh Language Act and S4C and Labour might claim credit for the Welsh Office and Devolution, but if it wasn't for the existence of Plaid, as a thorn in their side, these things would, probably, not have happened.

If Plaid has had only a quarter of the influence that party propaganda suggests over the past 50 years then Plaid's influence has been more than proportional to its vote tally, even under FPTP.

In the 1989 European Election the Green Party received 15% of the vote. This was before the partially PR D'Hont system was used in Euro elections, so the party won no seats. Under the present system they would have won a significant number of seats for the same number of votes. But despite winning no seats the party had an influence that was much grater than the size of its vote merited. Since 1989 every mainstream party has had to take green issues seriously. Not as seriously as the Green Party might wish, but the influence of that one election has been much more proportional than the vote merited and very much more than the Green Party vote has merited in subsequent elections.

Most political pundits accept that the Fascists will gain at least one, possibly as many as three seats in this year's Euro Election. They won't gain anywhere near as many votes as the Greens got in 1989. Under a FPTP system it is unlikely that they would have saved their deposits anywhere, they probably wouldn't have got enough votes in any constituency to make the difference between who won and who lost. But with PR they will gain seats.

Those seats will give them a platform worth much more than their vote and will make some mainstream candidates compromise with Fascist policies in order to retain and regain votes in the same way as Green issues were taken on board post 1989. This is the frightening side of PR.

As I said I am an agnostic on the issue - I can see both sides of the argument I can see merit on both sides and problems on both sides. But how does one square the circle?

Same old Labour

I have been going through a backlog of blogs and news stories that I have missed during the past week or so. The big story of the week seems to have been the publication of the IWA's new book Politics in 21st Century Wales, and especially Rhodri Morgan's contribution to it.

Many have commented on Rhodri's belief that the Labour party is perceived to be anti-Welsh by those of us living in the west. Personally I think that Rhodri's views are dated. What he says would certainly have been true 25-35 years ago, but I don't hear the same animosity to the Labour party in these parts as I heard in the days of George Thomas et all in the 70's. In general the attitudes towards Wales and its language expressed by the likes of Ian Lucas, Don Touhig and Chris Bryant are seen as oddities within the Labour Party these days rather than the mainstream view.

What struck me as most interesting in Rhodri's comments was his attitude towards Proportional Representation. Peter Black and Betsan Powys both touched on this subject, but neither of them noted the audacity of the First Minister's suggestion.

What Rhodri wants is PR in areas where Labour is under represented - like the West, but for First Past the Post to remain in those areas, such as the Valleys, where Labour thinks that it can get a majority of seats through the current system. He only supports PR in those areas where it will benefit Labour but is dead against it in those areas where it will harm Labour.

Rhodri's view on PR is so typical of the arrogant divine right to rule attitude of Welsh Labour that it is almost incredible. I suspect that it is this anti democratic streak in the Labour party that is the cause of its recent disappointments in Welsh politics, and that Rhodri's belief in PR for Labour but not for others will add to the party's decline throughout the country.