This week, the UK will have a referendum on whether to switch from the current First Past The Post voting system to the Alternative Vote system. A degree of bollocks has been put forth by the Yes campaign. An incomprehensible quantity of bollocks has been put forth by the No campaign. Purely based on the lower level of bollocks spewed by the Yes campaign, I would vote for them. But I would also vote for them for political reasons. Although the principle behind changing the voting system is theoretically apolitical, any change worth bothering to organise a referendum for is obviously going to benefit one party and damage another.
The way history has worked out, we have ended up with two centre-left-ish parties and one centre-right-ish party. So the left-ish votes get split. The right-ish votes do not. And we end up with an unrepresentatively right-wing government, both in terms of number of Tories voted in and in terms of how far the other parties have to shift to the right in order to woo the unsplit-and-hence-doubly-valuable right-wing voters. I have left-wing beliefs, and so obviously I want the country to be run by a more left-wing government. Hence I will be voting "yes" on Thursday.
If history had panned out differently, perhaps we would have had one left-wing party and two right-wing parties. If this were the case, the right-wing parties may well have been pushing for a change to a more representative voting system. But this is not how things have transpired, so I would recommend that anybody unfortunate enough to have a right-wing outlook on life should vote "no" on Thursday; politically, it makes sense.
It amuses me slightly that the Yes and No campaigns are campaigning as if this is not a left-right issue. The most controversial poster of the campaign so far shows a picture of a newborn baby in an incubator, with the caption "She needs a new cardiac facility, not an alternative voting system". Even putting the aside the hilarious maths used on the poster, it seems odd that the No campaign are suggesting that voting "no", which will retain the status quo and hence benefit the Conservatives (otherwise they wouldn't be backing it), will result in more funding for hospitals. The Tories are currently demolishing the NHS for ideological reasons; whatever a new voting system costs to implement, it seems highly unlikely that switching to AV (which will shift the balance of power to the left and hence move money from rich people's salaries into public healthcare) will make it less likely that any theoretical new cardiac facility would be built. Perhaps the cardiac facility in question is a private one, and the silver spoon has been Photoshopped out of the baby's mouth.
Of course, there is a third voting option. Rather than voting out of self-interest, you could vote based on logic. Alternative Vote delivers a more representative democracy than First Past The Post, as it prevents quirks of history (such as the existence of both Labour and the Lib Dems) splitting the vote and allowing the third-most-popular party (the Tories) to triumph in many seats. Isn't it odd how a very similar but utterly incorrect argument is being used by the No campaign?
If you are properly committed to democracy, and to the idea that the government should represent the people's wishes as closely as possible, then you should vote "yes". I am lucky, in that I can honestly say that my vote will have logic on its side, even if I am mainly voting out of political self-interest. If you are right-wing and unbothered by the principles of democracy, vote "no"; you will have my grudging respect. But please, whatever you do, don't base your decision on any of the fucking posters.
No comments:
Post a Comment