Scottish Election 2011: Two sides of the alternative vote

THE bookmakers have made up their minds on the referendum result and have slashed the odds accordingly. You will get a mere 1 for every tenner you place on a No vote victory as the polls suggest a comfortable win against electoral reform.

In the event of the alternative vote (AV) being defeated in Thursday's referendum, the biggest gamble to have paid off will have been the one taken by Prime Minister David Cameron in May last year.

When he agreed to a referendum on the alternative vote system - which is not proportional but means that a candidate cannot win a constituency without 50 per cent of the vote - as the main price of forming a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, there were many in his party who were outraged by the concession.

But in return he has managed to have Westminster constituency boundaries redrawn and the number of parliamentary seats slashed by 50.

Labour knows the cost of this - the party's in-built advantage over the Tories has been ended at a stroke, despite a battle in the Lords.

Lord George Foulkes, one of the leading players in Labour's resistance through all-night sessions in the upper house, said: "The Tories have gerrymandered the boundaries and the Lib Dems have let them get away with it. It really is one of the most shocking things I have seen in politics."

In fact, with first-past-the-post intact and new boundaries set up, Cameron would be able to turn around to his own malcontents and tell them he has probably guaranteed Tory rule in the UK for at least a decade.

Alistair Thompson, a Tory candidate and partner at Media Intelligence Partners (MIP), which represents many right-wing interest groups and MPs, said: "Basically Cameron will look like a genius. The Tories and Labour members in the No campaign have played it very cleverly and it looks bad now for the Lib Dems."

Success may also be down to MIP, which has helped the No campaign turn around from distant losers to front-runners. Nick Wood, the senior partner and a former adviser to William Hague when he was Tory leader, has orchestrated many of the messages which have angered Cameron's Lib Dem government partners. And it is in the coalition government that the recriminations of a No vote would be felt most.

The Lib Dems have already been stung by the tuition fees U-turn are generally upset about taking the flak for "Tory" cuts which they campaigned against in last year's election.No to AV

They look set to have the worst electoral drubbing in their history on Thursday.

If the Lib Dems are reduced to single figure seats in Holyrood, wiped out in the Welsh Assembly and lose around 300 English council seats, as is widely expected, then the failure to deliver the one big change Nick Clegg promised them might be just too much.

The question might not be whether he can survive the party conference but whether he can even get through the summer. Already, energy secretary Chris Huhne, who narrowly lost the leadership battle to Clegg in December 2007, has suggested he may resign from government because of the way Tory ministerial colleagues behaved in the AV campaign.

This opens the door to a possible leadership challenge and there has been talk in Westminster of the party splitting down the middle, reminiscent of the Asquith/ Lloyd George division in the 1920s with Lloyd George's faction supporting the Tories and Asquith's going into opposition. If Clegg were to lose the leadership it is also likely the coalition would come to an end, which, given his new boundaries, Cameron may not be too upset about.

Even with the odds stacked against them, few Lib Dems want to talk publicly or privately about defeat. Deputy chief whip and Orkney and Shetland MP Alistair Carmichael said: "We can still win this, the campaign is not over yet, but we know just how important victory is."

But defeat will not only be bad news for Clegg, it will also undermine Labour leader Ed Miliband. One Scottish Labour MP recently noted: "If you look at it, Ed has been the politician most associated with the Yes campaign, he has invested an awful lot of energy and himself in it, so while success will be good for him, defeat will look bad."

The problem Miliband has is that he still suffers from the fact that most MPs and ordinary party members wanted his older brother David as leader, and so he is not short of enemies. Lord Reid, known as not exactly having the warmest feelings towards the party leader, has been responsible for some of the more brutal attacks from the No campaign.

Then there was the Murphy moment. Jim Murphy, the shadow defence secretary who ran David Miliband's campaign, suddenly a couple of weeks ago came out against AV. He said: "I have waited in the expectation that the pro-AV campaign would make a convincing new argument. They haven't, so when the referendum comes, I have decided to vote no."

He's a 25-1 shot for the leadership, but he might be in the mix if things pile up for Miliband. This will not happen simply because of AV, but coupled with defeat in Scotland there is likely to be a summer whispering campaign and an awkward autumn conference.

Yes to AV

ACCORDING to some MPs with a sense of drama, the price of a Yes vote on Thursday could be Britain's Trident nuclear missiles. This at least is the view of the right-wing malcontents on the Tory backbenches who are already unhappy with being in coalition with the Lib Dems.

If the AV camp is to win in Thursday's referendum they know that it is extremely unlikely the Tories could ever rule alone in Britain again. While it is important to remember that the AV system is not a proportional one, it still tends to mitigate against outright majorities - particularly Conservative ones.

There are far more Conservative seats than Labour ones which are under threat with less than 50 per cent of support.

In these circumstances, whichever government emerges from an election, it is almost certainly going to involve the Lib Dems as a junior partner.

Tory New Forest MP Julian Lewis has expressed the greatest fear among his colleagues on the replacement of Trident, which the Lib Dems want to cancel. Dr Lewis said: "If AV were to win and we were to end up with the Liberal Democrats holding the balance of power [after the next election], Nick Clegg would be able to go to Ed Miliband who would, I am sure, agree to cancel the replacement Trident to go back into government.

"This means that David Cameron would effectively be left with no choice but to offer the same on the basis that it would happen anyway even if we were not in government."

A victory for AV means there will probably be a right-wing backlash from a party which thinks Cameron has given up too much to the Lib Dems as it is. However, few think it would sink his leadership and some even think he may be happy to fall in to a long-term relationship with the Lib Dem leader Clegg.

One Tory coalition sceptic told Scotland on Sunday: "We believe they have a suicide-list of MPs who will go as a result of AV and boundary changes. But what worries us is that Cameron seems to be far more comfortable and at home with Clegg than he does with most of his party."

Another pointed out that there is no realistic challenger. "[Ken] Clarke is left-wing, [David] Davis is too old, [William] Hague doesn't want it and [George] Osborne is too close to the Cameron project. The next leaders are not on the frontbench yet, so Cameron has plenty of time."

While it would be difficult for Cameron, an AV victory, even though that now looks unlikely, would provide welcome relief for the embattled Clegg.

He would be in a position to tell his unhappy party members, furious about NHS reform and student tuition fees, that they had finally succeeded in killing off the hated first-past-the-post system.

It would also allow him to portray himself as the leader of a new politics who took a chance but brought lasting change. On the other hand, it may just buy him a bit of time with others still circling to replace him.

One Lib Dem noted last week: "Actually it is [former leadership rival] Chris Huhne who has effectively led the Yes campaign." In fact the Yes campaign asked Clegg to stay away because of his personal unpopularity, so he may not be able to take much credit for victory.

The one politician who definitely could take credit for victory and would then be positioning himself as the leader of the "new progressive politics" is Ed Miliband.

Not for the first time he cocked a snook at a majority of his MPs, who oppose AV, and played an extremely active role in the Yes campaign, almost to the detriment of his involvement in Scottish, Welsh and English elections. Victory would give Miliband a moral authority in his party and help to end the rumblings and bitterness created by his controversial victory over his brother David. One Labour MP told Scotland on Sunday: "Ed has needed something to stamp his authority on the party, this [victory with AV] wouldn't do it alone but it would help."

However, there are still questions over whether an AV Yes vote would mask the calamity of defeat in Scotland should the SNP prevail on Thursday.

In the end what Labour wants is to get back to power in Westminster and the party is alone in standing a chance of having an outright majority under AV. In both 2005 and 2010, it would have won more seats and, in fact, Gordon Brown would now be Prime Minister with a majority if we had AV.

So even though most Labour MPs oppose AV, a victory for the Yes campaign would give them something to aim for in 2015 and enhance their chances of returning to power.

YES