Michael Kelly: Alternative Voting gives power to the wrong people

IN A representative democracy there can be no perfect voting system. So the referendum on the Alternative Voting (AV) system which we are all likely to have to endure this May is about replacing one flawed system - first past the post (FPTP) - with another.

If adopted, the new system would mean that we would get to rank our choices in order rather than stick down a single mark against our favourite candidate. If no candidate gains a majority on first preferences, then the second-preference votes of the candidate who finished last on the first count are redistributed. This process is repeated until someone gets more than 50 per cent.

Earlier there was a glimmer of hope that this great yawn-in might be postponed as a result of the promised fight to the death in the House of Lords over constitutional reform. Now that this has collapsed at the merest threat of a government guillotine it looks like yet another piece of paper will be thrust under our noses as we enter the ballot boxes to vote for another inconclusive outcome to the elections to the Scottish Parliament.

There are long and boring arguments for and against electoral change. Be careful not to call it "reform". The BBC has already rightly banned that word as loaded and implying "improvement", outraging the irrational advocates for change. Can they not see that no-one reforms things to make them worse? You will be subjected to all these arguments over the coming months so there is no need to rehearse them here.

Having assessed them myself I can find little to get excited about. There was one fact, however, that caught my eye. FPTP is likely to be favoured by those voters more interested in choosing a national government than in getting the local MP they prefer. As the main point of general elections is to choose a government this is the argument that sways me.

The freak result thrown up by the 2010 election is the only reason we are facing this question. It allowed a small party to punch above its weight and to enter government ahead of the party holding the second largest number of seats. If you like that "fairness" you'll be likely to get a lot more of it under AV.

Holding this referendum was the price that the Lib Dems extracted for giving up chunks of their liberal manifesto while they took on government titles and chauffeurs. There's little doubt why they want AV - because it will benefit them. That must be to the detriment of someone else and this looks likely to involve the Labour Party.

I am not voting to hamstring my party any further. We've already done ourselves down by fixing a Holyrood voting system so that we cannot win. And our boys in Holyrood then added insult to injury by changing the way in which local government is elected to ensure we lost most of our control there.

The issue has already divided Labour. Advocates of AV argue that FPTP has been responsible for the fact that we had so many Tory governments throughout the 20th century. They'd be better looking at the quality of candidate Labour selected as potential prime ministers. No electoral system would have helped Michael Foot, Neil Kinnock or Gordon Brown win power. The Labour leadership is now contested under AV and it gave us the wrong Miliband.

Deputy Prime Minister and Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg, desperate to restore some of his lost credibility, needs to win this referendum. After his collusion with the Tories it is the only way he can avoid wipeout for his party at the next election - another good reason for voting it down.

Speculate on how the Lib Dems did so well last year. It was because of Clegg's compelling, charismatic performances in the TV debates. Under AV the leaders of all the parties would be entitled to participate in these debates. What if one of the minority extremist parties like the BNP or the Socialists Workers Party produced a hypnotic speaker who generated enough enthusiasm for his party to gain a lot of second preference votes and a minority position in government? Is that an outcome we would welcome? Was that not how Hitler gained power in 1933?

There are other international comparisons which will be made in this debate. But are they relevant? After Germany's warlike history in the late 19th and 20th centuries under strong government it is easy to understand why it would want a system that produced compromise and coalition. Equally after the weak governments that paralysed France it is clear why the Fifth Republic gives enormous power to the executive at the expense of the Legislature.

More pertinent to us is our short experience of coalition. There is something dishonest and distasteful in Mr Clegg's condemnation of the previous Labour government's economic policies and his support for the Tories. If the electoral arithmetic had been slightly different he would now be sitting in power with Labour, defending its record and deriding the Tories. How can he ever again put one over on the electorate after he has argued that he has had to give up his election promises because he didn't win the election.

Every voter knew he wasn't going to win. They didn't vote for him to give him carte blanche to drop the policies that he couldn't get past the Tories. Yet he acts as if that were self-evident. It isn't the electorate that decides the direction of an incoming government. It is politicians behind closed doors where the post of deputy prime minister can be bartered for the policy on student grants.

Well it is now - and he can't pull the same trick again. That's why he needs AV. And that's why we shouldn't give it to him.