We all know that the Alternative Vote isn’t the panacea. It’s not going to cure all the ills of our democracy. Only true proportional representation can do that. But since it’s the best we have on offer, it deserves fair consideration on its own merits.

I support AV because I believe that in a democracy, I have the right and the responsibility to vote for who I want to run the country, not who I think would be least bad out of the devil and the deep blue Tories. Under AV there is no wasted vote, no ridiculous need to squander my democratic right on tactics, no dyed pink in the wool New Labourites telling me that if I vote Green or Respect or whatever I believe is best for this country and the world, I’m letting the Tories in through the back door.

The last eleven months of Tory-Lib Dem cuts and fees have already left an unpleasant taste at the back of my mouth. But a decade of Blair’s neoconservative wars hardly made me feel much better. Like so many people I know, I marched against the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. We’d campaign against Blair for five years, shouting from the streets and rooftops, across blogs and broadsheets, but come polling day, so many of them would swallow that sick and stick their cross next to New Labour for fear of the Tories getting in. As George Monbiot told me before the last election, “As much as I dislike and am disgusted with the Tories, I think you have to vote for what you think is right. And if you cling onto something bad for fear of something worse, no one will end up with the government they want.” I will always vote for what I think is right. Under AV, I can do that safe from the fear of something worse. A two party state, after all, is only twice as good as a dictatorship, and I refuse to accept a system that allows me the choice between one of two evils.

This is exactly why Reuben was wrong to argue that AV should be voted down as the most extremist-proof electoral system. True, the BNP are voting against it, which in itself might be enough to make any sensible progressive support it, but there are more compelling reasons. What Reuben has done is mistake radical parties for parties that are unpalatable to the majority, fascists for example, who may well lose out under AV because they are less likely to be able to attract second preference votes from the mainstream, as Rupert Read argues. As Martin Kettle writes, however, the German experience suggests parties like the Greens could do very well out of AV. This is precisely because the progressive majority we hear so much about in this country will no longer feel that a vote for their conscience is a wasted one.

Some radical have argued that AV will constrain extremist viewpoints because it will encourage parties to attract the widest possible range of voters to scoop up their second and third preferences. They’re right to argue that AV is about coalition building, but I see it not as a constraining force, but an enabling one. As Labour MP Alison McGovern explained to me, this process of pre-election coalition building will naturally benefit the UK’s progressive majority. After all, Labour can look to pick up support from the Greens, the Lib Dems and other left of centre parties. In doing so, it will mean the party, already on a leftwards tilt, will be forced to abandon the banal middle ground, get off the fence and start reaching out to progressives with policies that will appeal to them. Who will the Tories reach out to? UKIP? Perhaps, but go too far down the Europhobic line and they risk falling back into their familiar patterns of disastrous infighting. The BNP? I don’t think so.

Some on the left have argued that the best reason to vote against AV is to deal a blow to the Lib Dems and cripple the coalition’s weak link. Hate Nick Clegg, vote against AV. Hang on, isn’t David Cameron doing the same thing? Don’t we hate him even more? I think we need to be more sensible in picking both our enemies and our battles. The Lib Dems may be the weaker part of the coalition, but it won’t come apart if AV fails, the Tories have thrown them enough bones and there’s no where else for them to go. It might ruffle a few backbench feathers, it might irk the rank and file, but the Parliamentary Lib Dems will stay behind the coalition because they’ve lost their clothes and the wilderness is too cold without them. AV, on the other hand, will benefit genuine progressive reformers. It is childish to put short term political gripes that we all share ahead of long-term democratic reform. Nick Clegg deserves to be the punchbag he wishes he weren’t. He deserves every expletive, every hate-filled column inch, every ounce of fight we can possibly bring to him, but the future of our democratic system is not the right battle.

And let’s not forget, this really is about the future of our democratic system. AV is far from perfect. It’s a sop, another Tory bone, a limp excuse for listening to the people and above all, it’s not proportional representation. But it’s all we’ve got for the moment. We can either say yes to meagre change, or stick with what we’ve got. If we vote down this reform, we will derail all attempts for genuine democratic reform for decades to come. Our opponents will say ‘look, no one wanted AV, there’s no demand for PR’. And the debate will die there for another generation. If we vote to pass AV, we have a platform. We have an argument to say this is just the beginning, we want more and we’ll have the power of a referendum behind us.

Rome wasn’t built in a day. But when Honorious saw the Visigoths coming over the hill and decided to do nothing, it was sacked much more quickly.

That is why I’m voting for AV on May 5.

Guest post by Guy Aitchison

POWER2010 is entering the final stretch of its public vote to find the very top ideas that will fix UK politics.

With over 4,000 ideas submitted, boiled down to a list of 29 by the deliberations of a representative sample of the UK, and then opened up to the public vote, almost  100,000 votes have been cast in just under 5 weeks.

There’s now just a matter of hours left to have your say.

The 5 ideas with most support come midnight tonight will become the POWER Pledge and the backbone of a major campaign, reaching across the UK, to pressure every candidate in every constituency to back reform.

Proportional representation  is currently topping the leaderboard with well over 11,000 votes, with Scrap ID cards and Rollback State Databases not far behind. The race is tight for 3^rd, 4^th and 5^th, place, meanwhile,  with An Elected Second Chamber, English Votes on English Laws, A written Constitution and Fixed Term Parliaments bunched at around 6,000 votes. Not far behind are more populist reforms like Right to Recall and None of the Above, which could easily make it on to the Pledge with a last-minute surge.

POWER2010, a campaign backed by the Rowntree Trusts, is set to be the largest third-party campaign at the coming election with volunteers and full-time organisers around the country.

Be sure to have your say on the final pledge before voting closes tonight! 

http://www.power2010.org.uk/votes

Guest post by Oli Henman

How do we decide about democracy? What are the major changes that would lead to transparent politics?

Last weekend people from across the UK were given that chance- this was the moment when the key ideas that have been brought together from across the country on the POWER 2010 website were put before a cross-section of people to pull out the main areas for the next stage of the campaign. Supported by the Joseph Rowntree Trust, this Deliberative Poll was part of a broader campaign that is running in the build-up to the next General Election. I went to check it out…

People from all walks of life were chosen as a representative sample, to work together over 2 days to develop their own thinking on tough choices like voting rules, House of Lords reform, local government and civil rights. These might sound like complex issues but following the recent expenses scandal and in the midst of a new Inquiry into the Iraq War, people were extremely active in putting their views across. In fact people were so active in their involvement that it often felt that time was too short, as from over 4,000 suggestions on the website this poll had to pull out only 30 major recommendations to be shared with supporters around the country.

The Deliberative Poll method was developed by Professor James Fishkin at Stanford University and it focuses on a rigourous sociological process to ensure a highly detailed body of recommendations. One major part of the analysis revolves around comparing the views of participants at the start and at the end of the process, this way the transformative effect of the deliberative process can be measured. So the participants themselves shape and develop the recommendations, with an opportunity to throw questions at specialists and to draw on background information on the subject matter. This leads to an exciting situation whereby the method reflects the basis of democratic debate and leads to very open conclusions.

But this is only one step along the way for POWER 2010. We’ll see what this group developed, and the recommendations it made to the British public, very soon and in the next stage everyone has a say in defining which issues will be on the final list for the election… what’s your choice?

David Cameron and Nick Clegg have already written off this year’s Queen’s Speech as pointless political posturing, filled with legislation that will never see the light of day before the next general election. The implication being, neither men expect Gordon Brown to be residing at the same address this time next year. Of course, as they say, it ain’t over till it’s over and we here at The Third Estate have never been ones to shy away from a bit of in-depth political analysis. But why should we have all the fun? Brown’s just such a riveting, dazzling, charismatic, exciting and wholly interesting figure, that it would seem selfish of us to analyse his new policies all by ourselves. So, I’d like to point you to Power2010′s new little tool, allowing you to grade Gordon on his promises to introduce a new kind of politics. Win, or epic fail? You decide!

So, Power2010 has been criticised on the grounds that it won’t have the massive reach and appeal that it’s aiming for. This seems likely to be true, but how much does it matter? I don’t think that in order to revive mass popular interest in our political system it’s necessary to have a campaign which itself has mass popular support. That seems to be demanding the impossible; if only a small unrepresentative minority is currently interested in parliamentary politics (which I would argue is indeed the case, even if there is widespread interest in politics as it impinges on people’s everyday lives), and if we want that to change, then unfortunately it’s up to that small unrepresentative minority to re-engage everyone else.

In order to do this, I suggest that getting rid of the First Past the Post system has to be the first step. Salman already covered electoral reform in his post on this, but in my view it’s a far more important issue than any of the others under discussion. A written constitution, resolving the West Lothian question, reforming the Lords …yes, these are all important changes that need to be made. But I don’t think any of them are going to re-engage people’s interest in politics. There are two (related) reasons why electoral reform would do this where other changes wouldn’t.

First, every vote cast in an election would actually matter, and every voter’s views would have to be taken into account in an election campaign. As things stand, party manifestoes are targeted at a tiny group of voters – centrist swing voters in marginal seats – hence all the drivel spouted every election cycle about Mondeo Man and Worcester Woman. This is why the parliamentary parties have all moved so far into the centre, and why so much parliamentary debate  just reduces to bickering over who thought of a policy first (cf. the squabbles over inheritance tax and points-based immigration systems).

Second, the reason why parties’ high commands know they can get away with this is that it’s nigh-on impossible to break the two-party deadlock under the present system. It tends to be strongly majoritarian, disproportionately favouring large parties over smaller ones. (Though it also has random quirks, such as favouring small parties with concentrated support in one area, like the SNP and Plaid Cymru, and occasionally gifting a parliamentary majority to a party that comes second in the popular vote, like the Tories in 1951). In the entire history of the British Parliament, the second and third parties in British politics have only changed places once – when the Liberals were superseded by Labour in the 1920s – and that took a much-disputed combination of a World War, the Liberal Party literally tearing itself apart with infighting and the introduction of universal suffrage. The upshot of this is that as things stand the most likely effect of supporting a small leftwing party rather than Labour is that the Tories will get stronger. It’s worth noting that while Labour were busy overtaking the Liberals in the 1920s, the Tories were in government almost continuously for decades; they were in power either absolutely or in Tory-dominated ‘National Governments’ for all but three years between 1918 and 1945.

I’m still undecided as to which specific voting system would be the best replacement – though dusting off the findings of the Jenkins Commission wouldn’t be a bad idea – but pretty much anything would be better than the current setup. No more FPTP would mean that parties would have to take into account everyone’s views, not just a few geographically fortunate waverers. It would, as Salman so eloquently put it, turn the House of Commons from a tricolour into a rainbow. Yes, it’s a top-down reform that only cared about by a few geeks with an unhealthy interest in politics. But it’s one we desperately need.

The Third Estate is brought to you today by the letters DEMOCRACY and the number 2010. In just one month the Power2010 campaign has received over 2000 ideas to reform our political system. To highlight their launch, I invited Guy Aitchison to set out the campaign’s stall in a piece that was met with mixed reactions, and some head banging from Dave Semple who has just written a detailed rebuttal of the campaign’s approach, alongside a picture of Wolfie Smith praying for the glorious day. Last week, Guy returned the favour by tagging me in his new meme to encourage bloggers to post their own suggestions for Power2010. I would have responded to it sooner had I not been writing up my interview with Nick Clegg who, amongst the usual policy platitudes, said: “One of the great things about Power2010 is that it’s asking for your ideas, from people well beyond the bubble at Westminster. I’m really looking forward to reading what people come up with after November 30th. Politicians don’t know it all, and we have to ask people directly if we’re to know what they want.” That’s how big it’s got.

Do I think Power2010 is the answer to the millions of British people who are rightly disenfranchised with a broken political system? I don’t know. But then, I didn’t really think we were going to stop the war either and I gave that my best shot too. So here goes, my grand plan come that glorious day!

When I am king, you will be first against the wall

The Lords have got to go. Almost a century has passed since the Parliament Act and we still have an unelected upper house. No serious approach to democratic reform can begin without addressing the Lords.

What do we want? Democracy! When do we want it? Erm. Now!

The crucial stumbling block for leaders trying to reconnect people with politics is the first-past-the-post method, which essentially leads to a system based on voters choosing the major party they dislike the least. When, as in the last decade, the difference between the two main parties appears to have evaporated faster than Gordon Brown’s popularity, people begin to believe that their vote won’t make a difference. That’s why they stay at home. That’s why Nick Griffin ends up on Question Time. The answer to both problems is, quite simply, to introduce proportional representation. Not only will it ensure that people can vote for who they want to run the country, rather than just voting against who they don’t want to run the country, but it will turn the House of Commons from a tricolour into a rainbow, giving people a genuine choice and reconnecting politics with ideology.

Please sir, I want some more lollipop ladies outside my school

The biggest potential drawback to proportional representation is that it might remove one of the most popular elements of British democracy: the local MP who hears the concerns of their constituents, represents them to Parliament and faces losing their seat if they fail to do so. This is where the Lords come in. I propose an upper house composed of constituency politicians directly elected by the alternative vote system to sit alongside a lower house that proportionately represents the wider passions of the people. All neatly tied up? I think so. Why am I not Prime Minister yet?

For some strange reason I can’t quite fathom, other people have different (some might even say better) ideas for democratic reform. So I’d like to tag a few of them. Some may be sympathetic to Power2010’s aims and objectives. Others may prefer to bang their heads. It’s their choice. That’s democracy.

Jim Jepps – The Daily (Maybe)

Andy Newman – Socialist Unity

Phil BC – A Very Public Sociologist

Derek Wall – Another Green World

Carl Packman – Raincoat Optimism

Left Outside