The No to AV campaign save the most incredible twisted logic and history re-writes for the very last page of their leaflet.
1. They seem to equate coalition governments with 'broken promises', but the current coalition government was elected under FPTP, not under AV.
2. The No to AV campaign is funded by the same people who fund the Tory party. The policies which they describe as unpopular (job cuts etc) are Tory policies. Are they actually saying that their own policies are shit?
3. They imply that Nick Clegg is going for AV as a result of his party's sudden unpopularity, when quite the reverse is true. The senior Lib Dems managed to wring two concession out of the Tories - that Lib Dems would get lots of lovely ministerial posts with all the trimmings and that we'd have a referendum on AV. The Lib Dems appear to have torn up the rest of their manifesto and given the Tories free hand. So their unpopularity is the price they had to pay for finally getting a referendum on electoral reform, and not the other way round.
4. They say (probably correctly) that under AV, the Lib Dems would have gained more seats at the last General Election. In which case, instead of ending up as junior partners in a Tory government, the Lib Dems might have ended up as nearly-equal partners, in which case they would maybe not have had to cave in on the woefully badly implemented tuition fees hike (which the Tories possibly did just to stab the Lib Dems in the back).
5. It's not clear to me why they say that 'The only vote that would count under AV would be Nick Clegg's'. Can anybody explain that to me?
Reminder
7 hours ago
5 comments:
For myself, and only for myself perhaps, it comes down to the balance of arse-wipery. Fairer voting system - good; deals after the count excluding the elector - bad. Therefore, I am reduced to listening to the supporters of each view, balanced on a knife until my opinion was swung by one individual.
How can anything supported by Mandelson ever be for the common good - it is not in his nature.
Shallow maybe, but at least I have a reason.
Nick's is the only vote that counts because: under an AV election it is assumed that neither Lab nor Con has an overall majority. Clegg will be able to choose which of these to enter a coalition with, since they will never enter a coalition together. So however the electorate votes, Clegg will be free to give us a ConLib or LabLib govt.
TCC, the chances are that Mandy actually supports FPTP and, knowing how unpopular he is, decided to speak out in favour of AV in order to help the FPTP camp.
MA, so?
a) The amount of Lib Dem influence on this government is minimal. There's no reason to assume that their influence in a Lib-Lab coalition would be any diferent.
b) If this is what the Lib Dems are like as junior partners (whether under FPTP or AV), then they will lose most of their votes (being protest votes) and will cease to be of relevance.
Well, we'll know in a few days.
Presumably there are people who think the present system isn't broken.
AV may not be that much of an advance, but a No2AV vote for the status quo takes us where?
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