Someone started a hashtag on Twitter Meh2AV
It brilliantly summarised my feelings about the forthcoming UK referendum on the voting system.
I used it once, to state:
It's not proportionate but may either hasten or delay PR. Assuming that one has a view either way on PR.
And I was lectured by someone describing himself as a 'first year student at Cambridge University'.
I resisted saying: 'I was thinking cogently about voting systems before you were born' because I hate the implication that being older necessarily confers greater knowledge.
(Below the body of the post, I insert tangential ruminations about the essence of politics).
The discourse ended when he said:
You'll make your own mind up will you?
To which, naturally, I replied:
No, I'm a middle-aged bloody woman. How on earth can I make my fucking mind up without having it explained to me by a teenager?
My indifference to AV is: it changes the electoral system and appears more representative when it's not. (Not that I especially support PR: it's logical, but in weakening the local link it may create MPs divorced from what they represent).
I consider AV to be inferior to FPTP because it caters for negativity and cynicism in politics. It's brilliant for those who want to vote for the party most likely to unseat the incumbent but can't identify which party this is.
I suspect this will lead to more negative campaigns: rather than 'Vote for our package of life-improving measures' it will, even more, be 'Vote for us because we're not as evil as the other lot'. Hmm, that argument is probably enough to convince me of the need for a properly proportional system.
In its favour, it can allow for tactical and true voting where there is a risk of BNP being elected - the only circumstances I can envisage myself voting Tory would be to stop the BNP (or similar). In doing so, I am sort of disenfranchising myself. Under AV, I could vote Labour 1, Tory 2. Even so, I'd have to cross my fingers and hope that BNP didn't exceed 50% of first preferences. If I was unsure of this, I'd end up voting Tory 1; my Labour 2 would be eliminated before Tory, so I'd still have disenfranchised myself.
It would lead to different results in some constituencies. I suspect under AV, where I live, Streatham, would have elected a LibDem, as the anti-Labour and anti-Tory voters combined in a ill-defined mealy-mouthed centre. Elsewhere, it would further reinforce the inherent 'natural' majority.
It is difficult to see how it would advance the representation of smaller parties, whether it be the Greens - whose growing influence enriches politics - or the BNP - who earn the votes of significant numbers of people however repugnant I find this.
If one supports a change to the electoral system from FPTP to PR, a move to AV may not help this. Granted, it will demonstrate that change is possible. Conversely, most people who aren't political geeks will think 'we've already changed the voting system once, I can't be doing with this constant meddling'.
In all the years on-and-off that I have been politically active, PR has only been an issue on the doorsteps inside student Halls of Residence.
There is no ideological argument for or against AV. I see no reason to get out and campaign for or against. I probably won't return to the subject on blog, certainly not with new insights, before May. I don't know how I shall vote in the referendum, because I don't care.
My 'don't care' isn't the product of apathy. There exists a strong case for constitutional and electoral reform. We still have an unelected Upper House of Parliament and an unelected, hereditary Head of State. Applying patches to the First Past the Post system of voting is a spit in the ocean. It does not further a debate about how we should be governed or how society should be arranged. It is just a numbers game to fascinate the geeks. (And coming from me...!)
Tangential thoughts on politics:
I resented the fact that this young man picked me, of all the people on the internet, to lecture about something political. By being admitted to Cambridge University, he is no doubt aware that he is amongst the top vanishingly small percentage of people with the academic ability and the family background to get into to one of the world's most academically excellent universities.
In his imagination, that means he is more intelligent than almost anyone else. I wouldn't be surprised if he's previously been to an elite school at considerable expense to his parents, where the predominantly male teaching staff reinforce the message that their boys are by social status and gender vastly superior to the unfortunates who can't attain that status.
Fired with all the enthusiasm one should expect from a first term student, he knows everything about politics.
My argument is that politics doesn't comes from sitting round drawing conclusions on theoretical arguments. Politics requires observation. Look at the world, or the small part that concerns you. Listen to what people have to say. Watch how people live their lives. Watch also what they don't do.
Don't assume that people actually want what they say they do, but don't be patronising and dismiss them as uninformed. Probe, find out 'why'.
(As a simple example, if people say they want an end to immigration, don't assume it's because they're racially prejudiced or hate-filled: dis-entangle their logic, and in most cases you'll find they are worried about jobs, skills, housing and public services; they perceive immigrants to be the problem, rather than addressing their own skills shortages and the absence of unskilled work and pressure on public services and housing).
You don't learn this sitting in a college bar with privileged academically aspirant rich young adults. There are three ways to learn it:
Conducting methodical social research with stated parameters; participate in political campaigning on the doorsteps and streets - but don't be the over-confident young man who lectures the *insert chosen paradigm of social diversity* on what they should think.
The third is to participate actively in society, ensuring that you mix, however casually, with a wide-range of people. Not in order to engage them in a dialectical process, but to live and enjoy life and to learn from others how life - especially politics - is complex and varied.
