Reworked game plan

With the referendum on electoral reform taking place this Thursday, a campaign which began slowly has finally intensified to near fever pitch. Ahead of the vote, Sam Macrory sets out the key questions which will follow either result.

If the NO campaign wins….

1. Where can the Lib Dems look for compensatory policy gains?

If the referendum is lost, then disgruntled Lib Dem backbenchers will be keen to contribute to a ‘shopping list’ for Nick Clegg to take to David Cameron. Insiders say the plans to reform the NHS will become a priority, while proposals for reform of the Upper House will be published at the end of the month. Olly Grender, former communications chief for the Lib Dems, sets out the desired gains from the NHS and Social Care Bill:

“There should be clear safeguards regarding the issue of competition and the private sector, and funding should be secured on the understanding that reform and reduction are impossible to achieve together,” Grender argues. “There should also be a change of pace regarding the introduction of GP consortia.” Further goals, says Grender, should include “a faster drive towards the increased threshold of £10,000 helping people on lowest incomes during the toughest times”, while greater safeguards of critical public services – “whilst continuing to try to pay down the deficit” – should, she says, be put in place. On top of House of Lords reform, Grender argues, climate change and social mobility need greater emphasis. That’s quite a wish list. Almost worth losing a referendum for…

2. Is FPTP locked in for a generation?

If the people reject the “miserable little compromise” (© Nick Clegg), then it is hard to see how any more substantive shake-up of the voting system – proportional representation, or something similar – would materialise for a generation or longer.

“A No vote would kick it into touch for a generation,” says Matthew Elliott, the campaign director of No2AV. Chancellor George Osborne believes the debate would be closed down “for the foreseeable future”, while Nick Clegg, kept at arm’s length from the Yes campaign, admits that “change in the way we do our politics comes along once in a generation”. A No vote would strengthen FPTP and make the case for change almost impossible to argue – barring a phenomenally low turnout at the next election, or a Commons- wide scandal to outdo 2009’s expenses meltdown.

3. Can Ed Miliband really beat David Cameron in a general election?

What Ed Miliband does next, in the eventuality of a No vote, will be fascinating. On the one hand, he can remind the prime minister that victory came at a price, and highlight the fraught final weeks of the referendum campaign as fighting between Liberal Democrat and Conservative ministers threatened to turn nasty. Alternatively, he could sidle up to a bloodied Nick Clegg and lay the groundwork for a future working relationship with the third party. Before the tactics, however, comes basic survival. Strong local election results might help mask the fact that Miliband had lost a high-profile poll to the Conservative leader, but he will have to move quickly to ensure that a reputation as a ballot box loser does not stick. Labour MPs will have noticed that Cameron’s interventions in the campaign provided a far bigger immediate fillip to the No campaign than did Ed Miliband’s contributions for Yes. Having gone against much of his party in supporting AV, Miliband will need to swiftly shut down recriminations over the referendum result.

4. How long will Labour keep blaming Nick Clegg?

For parliamentary sketchwriters, the highlight of the political month is deputy prime minister’s questions, a gruelling half-hour session which sees a frenzied baiting and bullying of Nick Clegg. Labour MPs simply cannot forgive him for taking his party – supposedly one of centre left principles – into coalition with the Tories. Last August, Ed Miliband, during his party’s leadership campaign, set the tone when he declared that “we have to make the Lib Dems an endangered species, and then extinct”. Miliband has toned down the language since then, and olive branches of sorts have been extended to potential Liberal Democrat friends such as party president Tim Farron and Richard Grayson, the former Lib Dem policy director now contributing – as a Lib Dem – to Labour’s policy review.

A large Social Democrat rump continues to exist in the Liberal Democrat Party, many of whom feel instinctively happier on the left. If the referendum is lost, and Nick Clegg struggles to show gains for his party, then a rejigging of the political spectrum cannot – and should not – be ruled out by Miliband and his party.

5. How will the mood of antipolitics manifest itself next?

A No vote, as Nick Clegg has so often pleaded, is a vote for old politics, for the status quo. Accordingly, predicts Peter Kellner, founder and president of pollsters YouGov, “The pattern of extraparliamentary protest will continue.” However, Kellner also suggests that a No vote points to a far more worrying development for Clegg: that the Liberal Democrats might have forfeited their mantle as the party of the new politics.

“Protest voters in future elections – local elections, by-elections, general elections – are far less likely to vote Lib Dem,” says Kellner. “Expect more support for UKIP and the Greens (the BNP would also have been a beneficiary, had it not suffered from internal feuds). A No result in the referendum would complete the Lib Dems’ misery.”

If the YES campaign wins…

1. On what issues will the Tories demand concessions from the PM?

Lose the referendum, and David Cameron will find himself under considerable pressure. At the start of the campaign the prime minister and his team were said to be relaxed about the result; a marked increase in his personal involvement suggests that his view has changed. Many Conservative MPs already feel that the coalition is too heavily weighted in the Liberal Democrats’ favour and, should AV be voted through, then expect the grumbles to become a deafening chorus. The EU (bailouts to the fore), defence, and the ECHR (particularly votes for prisoners), are pet projects of the Tory right, while Ken Clarke’s prisons policy will also come under pressure. According to Paul Goodman, of Conservative- Home: “There is also a bit of a head of steam building up over access and universities.” Goodman, a Tory MP until the 2010 election, adds: “It’s worth noting that not all of these issues are directly related to the Lib Dems. Cameron is balancing the interests of keeping the Liberal Democrats on board with keeping his back benches happy, and he will tend to lean towards whichever interest is unhappier at any particular time.” If AV is voted in, then unhappiness on the Tory back benches will hit a new high.

2. Is this a staging post to a more proportional voting system?

“There are some critics here. ‘STV ultras’, we know who you are. Well, to you. Just think of AV as the semi-final.” So said Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrat president, at the party’s spring conference. The referendum, he argued, was a vital step on the road to greater glories; his leader Nick Clegg prefers to use the less enticing description of AV being a “baby step in the right direction”. And while some, such as former SDP leader David Owen, have argued that AV should be rejected in the hope of a more proportional system establishing itself in future, this is surely wishful thinking. There is, of course, no guarantee that AV would lead on to STV (single transferable vote) or full PR (proportional representation), but the likelihood of such a system being adopted, one day, is far greater than if AV is rejected at the first attempt.

3. How much would Ed Miliband’s leadership of the Labour Party be boosted?

“Whatever the outcome, he’ll have divisions to heal within the party,” notes one experienced Labour backbencher. At the time of going to press, more than half of Labour MPs backed the No campaign, despite their leader’s decision to place himself prominently in the Yes camp. However, a win strengthens Miliband’s hand notably; in the absence of Nick Clegg from much of the campaign, he became the highest-profile politician to back AV. With Labour veterans such as Margaret Beckett and John Reid leading the No charge, a successful Yes campaign would give Miliband a real opportunity to demonstrate that a line has been decisively drawn under the old regime.

4. Is there greater potential for a progressive left alliance?

At the launch of the Yes2AV campaign, a tantalising glimpse into the future was offered for those who dream of a unification of the progressive left. On the stage at Methodist Central Hall sat Labour leader Ed Miliband, Green leader Caroline Lucas, and Liberal Democrat stalwarts Charles Kennedy and Shirley Williams. And Tim Farron, Lib Dem party president and a likely future leadership contender, was there too. However, Mark Pack, co-editor of Lib Dem voice, warns against reading too much into the apparent bonhomie. “Coalitions are driven by parliamentary arithmetic far more than by politicians’ own preferences,” Pack says. “So the answer really depends on the public rather than how relations between politicians are affected by the referendum.” And given that of the last seven general elections only one – 2010 – would have produced a hung Parliament under AV, a coalition of any colours seems no more likely than under FPTP.

5. Will this bring the antipolitics mood to an end?

Should the Yes campaign emerge triumphant later this week, then will the public grow to love politicians again? Unlikely, says Peter Kellner, who says that AV will do little – “Greens and UKIP will win more votes in AV elections but will still find it hard to win seats” – to change the political make-up at Westminster. The real solution to the mood of anti-politics, Kellner argues, “is not to rejig the voting system but to address the reasons why so many people distrust politicians. We need – but won’t get – a period of honesty and candour, and an end to the obviously confected rowdiness of PMQs.” Now that really would be a political change of epic proportions.

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