Clegg and Miliband both campaign for a Yes vote in referendum

With May’s AV referendum finally passed by Parliament this week, both Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg have been taking to the public stage to argue for a Yes vote.

Nick Clegg’s speech today majors on how the alternative vote will hold politicians better to account:

Under the Alternative Vote, politicians will need to aim to get half of their constituents to choose them. That means they will have to work harder to appeal to more people than before. It means they will have to reach out to people who were ignored under First Past the Post. It means they will no longer be able to rely on just their core supporters and ignore everyone else. They will be more legitimate and will carry a stronger mandate from a broader range of people. That can only be good for our democracy.

Under the Alternative Vote, there will be fewer MPs with jobs for life in safe seats. That means people whose voices have been ignored will be listened to again. It means that parties will have to compete for votes in every corner of the country and not just those few marginal seats. It means more people get listened to and more respect for the different opinions and feelings we share as a nation. That can only be good for our democracy.

Given my previous criticisms about Labour’s repeated unwillingness to see through political reform when it comes to the crunch, it’s only fair to say that there is much which is very good in Ed Miliband’s Guardian piece this week. He started out confronting head on the temptation to oppose for the sake of opposing:

My belief in a better politics is the reason why I support the alternative vote and will back the yes campaign in this coming referendum. The easy and politically expedient route would be to find an excuse to abandon my support now. But I won’t.

I respect the views of my Labour colleagues who are for retaining first past the post. But I disagree with them. Why? Fundamentally, because AV offers an opportunity for political reform, ensuring the voice of the public is heard louder than it has been in the past. And given the standing of politics that is an opportunity we should take.

His arguments for supporting electoral reform in the referendum are similar to those Nick Clegg and other Liberal Democrats have previously made (indeed his words could almost be taken as a summary of my previous argument):

The very fact of having to gain the majority support of the voters will increase political accountability. AV will also force parties to admit where there is agreement between them, prising open our confrontational system so that similarities sometimes become as important as differences. It could be the beginning of a transformation in political debate.

There is, regretably, a but – and that is when it comes to House of Lords reform. During 13 years of Labour majority rule, Labour always ended up backing away from introducing elections for the Upper House arguing that all sides in the Lords had to agree to it. That, of course, gave a veto to opponents of reform who not surprisingly used it. Despite Ed Miliband’s key role for some of that time, he now has cast aside any desire for broad consensus:

Nick Clegg should make clear that he still supports a fully elected second house rather than another Conservative-inspired compromise [in the form of a mostly rather than fully elected Upper House]. Certainly, I believe MPs – both Labour and Liberal Democrat – should be given the chance to vote for what was in their manifestos.

The optimist in me thinks this is good news. Even if he is not in public acknowledging the previous mistakes of Labour in giving opponents of reform a veto, now calling for there to be no such veto is a good move. However, the pessimist in me fears that in fact this is just lining up Labour to once again flinch away from reform at the crunch. You can imagine the sequence of events: Labour demands fully elected Upper House; Conservatives say no way, only a mostly elected one; Labour say, ok – we will then oppose any reform and Labour ends up voting for having a totally unelected Upper House in preference to a mostly elected one. Time will tell, fingers crossed…