Gerald Warner: AV or not AV: that is the question we can't be bothered with

Published on Wednesday 23 June 2010 19:15

COO! Look at that: David Cameron sharing a platform with John Reid - there's ecumenical for you. It is testimony to the gravity of the threat posed by the Alternative Vote (AV) system that such strange bedfellows should unite.

We know the former Scottish Secretary and Labour "all-purpose attack dog" (in the words of Jeremy Paxman) was once a member of the Communist Party; but for Lord Reid of Cardowan to consort with so unreconstructed a leftist as Dave suggests a national emergency - for the political class, at any rate.

Our tribunes are finding the AV referendum stressful, since it affects what they most care about in politics: the security of their own fat sinecures. Normally, as the parliamentary expenses episode demonstrated, MPs have a clear-cut, intuitive perception of where their self-interest lies and are programmed to pursue it single-mindedly.

What is disorienting them about AV is the system is so opaque some of them are uncertain whether it will serve or subvert their selfish priorities - and that is driving them to distraction. Every parliamentarian is haunted by the fear that, by campaigning for the Yes or No camp, he may inadvertently be sawing through the branch on which he is sitting. That is why parties are divided over the referendum. If you imagined this infighting was something to do with the national interest, do not delay - seek professional help urgently.

It epitomises the cynical totalitarianism of British politics that an electorate which has been denied a promised referendum on the Lisbon Treaty is being urged to vote on a change to the ballot system to which it is passionately indifferent. Where the AV system does exhibit a congruency with the EU is in the demonstrable fact that it does not work. BBC Radio 5 recently held a dummy election under AV; because many of those who voted stated only their first preference, it proved impossible for the leading party to obtain 50 per cent of the vote, so the election was void.

That is the one persuasive argument in favour of AV. By consistently refusing to give second preferences, voters could keep the House of Commons dissolved indefinitely; in the interim, taxes could not be increased nor young men sent to die in Afghanistan or elsewhere to serve some convoluted Westminster political expediency. It has long been the contention of this column that the parliamentary chamber that should be abolished is not the House of Lords but the House of Commons.

In the Westminster bubble, of course, next to self-preservation the most canvassed question is how the referendum will affect Dave and Nick's marriage. It has already had a severely bruising effect.

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Hot on the heels of Liberal Democrat subversion of Dave's NHS reforms (which, since they ran into trouble, have metamorphosed into Andrew Lansley's possibly hasty innovations, as a goat is groomed for scaping), the whingeing Whigs have rounded on Dave, the Bullingdon bully. Why is he so horrid to Nick? Elder statesman Lord Pantsdown has described himself as "very, very angry" at the Tory and Labour attacks on Nick Clegg.

What has actually upset the heirs of the Glorious Revolution is the reversal in the Yes camp's fortunes from a narrow poll lead in February to a 16-point deficit (whatever happened to the axiom "I agree with Nick"?).

A No landslide on top of his tuition fees U-turn and other peccadilloes would leave Clegg's coat hanging on a very shoogly nail. In corollary, a Yes vote would have left Dave prone and perforated at the base of Pompey's statua, as the men in grey suits came to bury him, not to praise him. Such considerations as those illustrate what a tough call it is between voting Yes and No.

A No victory will not end the coalition, since even the Lib Dems do not really want AV, but it will further unravel it. Obsessed with constitutional change, their historical raison d'tre, the Lib Dems will next paralyse the legislative programme by pursuing House of Lords "reform" and that is more likely to terminate the increasingly unhappy marriage. A Yes vote, now unlikely, would have precipitated civil war in the Tory Party and the fall of Cameron who is viscerally loathed by his own MPs.

The most interesting feature of the public's change of heart on AV is that it suggests the possibility that the mindless neophilia which was the distinguishing characteristic of public life under the Great Charlatan Blair - deifying Diana, shredding the constitution and destroying pivotal institutions - may finally be burned out. "New" Labour made the brand of novelty toxic.

Perhaps there may be a new climate emerging in which Dave's creative plan to attend the next coronation dressed in a shell-suit may not chime with the public mood.