The Fair Votes referendum might have been lost but it appears that voting reform could be making a comeback as one of the red lines before Lib Dems can sign up to another coalition.
The most likely option is PR for local government, which wouldn’t need a referendum, but Lib Dems should be careful what we wish for.
I’m very much for reform of the voting system. It is manifestly unfair that votes for various parties carry different weights, and that some parties are chronically under-represented in comparison to their popular support.
But there are five key reasons why Liberals should approach voting reform, particularly for local government, with caution.
1. Electoral credibility matters more at council level
What could be on the table is AV+, a system of directly elected councillors at ward level and a number of councillors benefiting from a top-up ‘list’ to balance out any unfairness in the result and make the chamber more accurately reflect the proportion of votes cast for different parties.
This works well for the London Assembly mainly because most voters couldn’t name their assembly member, so the different between directly-elected and top-up members hardly matters. Local government is different. It is more competitive at a local level, so the idea of introducing top-up councillors runs the risk of some members being seen as second-class councillors.
2. The ward is king
The nature of local government is one of street-by-street battles for supremacy fought over the most local of issues as well as the vision for the whole borough. In this situation directly elected ward members are crucial and top-up councillors will lack that umbilical cord to voters in the ward.
3. Recipe for confusion
There is a well-established understanding that ward casework and local issues are handled by ward representatives. Some residents choose to go outside their ward because they do not have councillors from their preferred party, but most residents do not care that much so long as the job gets done. Creating a cohort of floating non-ward based councillors is a recipe for confusion as they start ‘interfering’ in ward matters without a local ward mandate.
4. It undermines Lib Dem ‘squeeze’ messages
Lib Dem strongholds, whether the main opponent is Labour or the Conservatives, depend heavily on squeezing out the third-placed party on the basis that ‘they can’t win here’. AV+, and indeed other forms of PR, whip the carpet from underneath that argument and risks jeopardising gains made over many years and decades in one fell swoop.
5. Lib Dems don’t perform that well under PR
Ironically for a party that is the strongest advocates of voting reform, Lib Dems have a woeful record of actually competing under it. The recent European elections and the London assembly are a case in point. The reason for this is that the party’s whole campaigning strategy is geared towards concentrating on local strongholds rather than high support across the country, which is why Lib Dem heartlands are often surrounded by ‘black holes’ where there is little or no presence. Our failure to appeal to BAME communities is just one of the factors that will count against us when competing under PR. Allowing voting reform to decimate our local base will in turn impact on the party’s ability to win parliamentary seats under first-past-the-post, so it is the worst of all possible worlds.
Rather than fiddle with how councils elect members, surely our time would be better spent strengthening sub-ward neighbourhood governance, which chimes far more with a Liberal desire to devolve power to the grassroots?
Giving more decision-making and spending powers to neighbourhood panels with, say, three or four panels per ward made up of local residents, seems like a far more sensible route. This has the dual benefit of empowering residents and holding elected councillors to account.
By Lester Holloway @brolezholloway
