Politics

 

It may not be perfect.

But it gives voters a better

chance of being heard

 

Jill Stephenson

 

Recently 26 'eminent historians' wrote to the Times to state what they believed was their compelling case against the alternative voting (AV) system. SR has to manage more modestly. Here is merely one bog-standard historian arguing in favour of AV.
     Two things disappointed me about the 26. First, of course, that they were campaigning against AV. In many cases, this was not much of a surprise. Historians count among their number some unreconstructed right-wing fanatics who still think Britain has (or should have) an empire, and this group was extremely well represented among the signatories to the anti-AV letter.
     But I was particularly sad – nay, shocked – to see among them the regius professor of history at Cambridge, one Richard J Evans – ah kent him whan he wis a laddie – who would normally count himself among those on the progressive left (when ah kent him, he posed as someone close to the revolutionary left). My second source of disappointment derived from the sheer silliness of the letter. It does not, I’m afraid, say much for historians if a number of 'eminent' ones demonstrate such pathetic powers of reasoning.
     AV is not a perfect system. Perhaps there is no such thing as a perfect system. But it is a jolly sight more representative than 'first past the post'. At least it gives voters a better chance of having their vote count. 'First past the post' effectively disenfranchises those living in a constituency that is 'safe' for one of the parties if they do not wish to vote for that dominant party. For most of us, our votes are wasted. The large number of safe seats – especially in the mindlessly Labour heartlands in Scotland – means that those who do not vote Labour in these seats are wasting their vote, in every election.
     Under 'first past the post', it matters not if 30% vote SNP, 20% vote Conservative and 10% vote Lib Dem. If 40% of the voters in these constituencies vote Labour, the Labour candidate wins. In fact, if 31% of the voters vote Labour, Labour wins. This is not 'majority voting', and it encourages the political parties to concentrate their resources, at election time, on the few marginal constituencies, and on selected groups within these constituencies. General election results are determined by a small number of voters in a small number of constituencies. Is that really what we would call a democratic system? One man/woman, one wasted vote.
     I recently saw someone arguing that, under AV, Andy Murray could be said to have beaten Roger Federer if the score in a match between them was 4-6, 6-1, 5-7, 6-2, 4-6 (to Federer), by 25 games to 22. This is a daft sort of argument. Has anyone suggested that the tennis system of scoring should be abandoned and that the total numbers of games (or points – why not?) won should be the deciding factor? I hope not, but nowadays nothing would surprise me. This is not analogous with voting: points and sets do not feature in our electoral system, nor is 'first past the post' a system similar to counting the best of three or five sets.

 

     It is peculiarly shocking that historians, of all people, should think that arguing as this group has done is a reasonable way to conduct a debate. When people used to say: 'Of course, you've been trained as a historian', I asked myself what on earth this 'training' had consisted of and whether I actually had anything that could be called a 'skill'. But intermittent exposure to people who demonstrate that they have no idea of how to set about addressing a historical problem (or, sometimes, any other kind of problem) and solving it has persuaded me that historians do have a skill set. Above all, we have learned how to solve problems.
     This is nowadays called a 'transferable skill'. (One of my colleagues used to say to students who turned up late for an appointment: 'Being on time is a transferable skill'.) The material with which we solve problems is called evidence. It is not unsupported opinion; it is not hearsay; it is not the advertising copy of spin doctors. It is evidence.
      Yet here we have more than a couple of dozen historians whose names are, for the most part, well known – not least because some of them have been on the telly – and who, or many of whom, have written serious works of historical interpretation based on a strong evidential basis, who are in thrall to an ideological prejudice that has made them cast the historian's traditional caution to the wind.
     First, they excoriate 'a voting system that will allow MPs to be elected to parliament even if they do not win the majority of constituents' first preference votes'. Duh! That is precisely what happens now, under 'first past the post'. Then they descend into absurdity: 'one person's casting ballot will be given greater weight than another. For the first time in centuries, we face the unfair idea that one citizen's vote might be worth six times that of another'. No! This is psephological illiteracy.
     If you vote for the candidate who ends up with the least votes, s/he is eliminated from the second round and your vote (singular) will be transferred to the person who was second on your list. Your first vote has been expunged, and so your second preference vote is your only vote – unless the candidate to whom you have awarded it is eliminated and your third preference vote becomes your only vote. The historians' reading of this is that some people will have more votes than others. This is demonstrably untrue. Each person has only the one vote. How often does it have to be said?
     These historians regard it as fair and proper that, in the 2010 general election, 10,706,647 million voters elected 306 Conservative MPs and 8,604,358 million voters elected 258 Labour MPs, while 6,827,938 million voters elected 57 Liberal Democrat MPs, under 'first past the post'. For its 917,832 votes, UKIP returned no MPs, although the Greens were rewarded with one MP for their 285,616 votes. That certainly privileges the votes of some electors over those of others. No wonder turnout in British general elections has declined in recent years. And no wonder that over 200 Labour MPs and peers have signed up for the 'No to AV' campaign. They have too much to lose. All those Conservative nay-sayers have a similar vested interest.
     The 'eminent historians' further claim that: 'The cause of reform, so long fought for, cannot afford to have the fundamentally fair and historic principle of majority voting cast aside'. This completely disregards the fact that, under first past the post, what we rarely have in constituencies is 'majority voting'. In the 2010 general election, only in a small minority of constituencies did the winning candidate achieve a majority of the votes. As I indicated above, it is perfectly possible – and it is routinely the case – that under 'first past the post' an MP is elected by a minority of his/her constituents.
     In Scotland, we do things differently, and better. The Scottish parliament is more genuinely representative of the Scottish people than is the British parliament representative of the people of these isles. I have not said that that means it is perfect. But it does make me wonder why there is not an energetic 'Yes' campaign being run in Scotland.

 

Jill Stephenson is former professor of modern German history at the University of Edinburgh