This referendum could change the Tory party forever

10 July 2010

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Quietly, David Cameron is warming to Nick Clegg’s proposed plans for voting reform — even though it could bind the two parties together for a decade or more. James Forsyth on a Tory gamble that dares not speak its name

There’s no polling evidence to support this assertion. Yet. But it is possible that a large number of voters — on all sides — would cast a protest vote if they knew that it wouldn’t damage the chances of their candidate winning eventually. What this would do to the legitimacy of any Tory victory under AV is another question. What wvould the public think of a party that didn’t get the most first preference votes forming a government?

In this way, what seems to be a minor tweaking of the Westminster voting system could change our politics forever. For generations, the firm-but-unfair Westminster system of first past the post has created decisive governments for good or for ill. It has shaped the politics in every constituency: in every seat, you only need more votes than any other party to win. This has created a situation where a leader who has no desire to be popular with most of the people most of the time can still win — and win big.

Under AV this would be history. The emphasis would be on consensus. The second preference vote would be the swing vote: it would provide the stranglehold on our politics that the marginal seat currently does. Polls like ours, which seek to divine the second preference of Liberal Democrat voters, would come to define British elections. And this, to the opponents of AV, is the nightmare. They fear that it is a system, as Churchill once put it, of ‘the most worthless votes for the most worthless candidates’. It would lead to the three main parties picking a series of milquetoast leaders whose main quality is that no one feels strongly enough about them to vote against them.

That there is such a thing as a Tory case for AV shows how dramatically politics has altered in the past few months — fuelling the idea of a political realignment where a Con-Lib deal is the new normal. But the speed of this transformation is what should temper any Tory enthusiasm for a brave new electoral system. If the weather were to turn again, the Tories would find themselves running into a headwind of their own making.

YouGov interviewed 2,210 people between 5 and 6 July. More details at spectator.co.uk/av.

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Tim Hedges

July 8th, 2010 10:22am Report this comment

I voted Conservative because Cameron promised to repatriate powers from Brussels and it was the only major party not to condone AV. I have been cheated on both counts.

I shan't make the same mistake twice.

TGF UKIP

July 9th, 2010 8:27pm Report this comment

Except of course that at spectator.co.uk/av no polling details are available - just the magazine website which is of course accessible only to subscribers, but even we subscribers can't bring up the poll details. No doubt that's because Dave's house mag poodles don't want us delving too deeply or perhaps it's just a cock up. After all as we have seen from Gove this week, detailed execution and journalists don't exactly mix.

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