The more you think about it, the odder it is that the only national referendum ever legislated for in this country, apart from the 1975 referendum about whether or not to stay in the EEC, should be about the Alternative Vote. The only party which proposed AV at the last election was Labour, which lost. The Tories campaigned for the status quo and the Liberal Democrats for the single transferable vote. It would be more logical — more proportional, indeed — to put all three versions before the electorate. It would also be more proportional to legislate for a threshold, a substantial fraction which the referendum would have to surmount before its result could have legal effect. If just over half of those voting voted for AV, and if those voting were only, say, half of those entitled to do so, the great majority would find change imposed upon them without their agreement. You surely can’t have first-past-the-post for the vote to get rid of first-past-the-post.
Still, those of us who think the country would be better off with referendums should use this proposed one as a way of nudging the subject along. What, after all, is the stated justification for this referendum (as opposed to the political reason that it was the non-negotiable price which the Liberals demanded for coalition)? The answer must be that this is an important constitutional change which the voters did not endorse at a general election: their view must therefore be sought by other means. If this is the official view, then there must be other referendums in future. The government admits this when it says that it will have referendums on further changes to the European treaties if those changes transfer more power to Brussels. The stuffy old Conservative argument about referendums being alien to our constitution has now worn away.
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