To AV, or to AV not?

I'm not sure how many times the Prime Minister has been stopped in a busy shopping street by one of those ever-so-nice market research people to explain his views on the sort of washing powder he prefers, or his preferred brand of mayonnaise. I suspect it hasn't happened very often. But most people will have experienced such an encounter at one time or another, being asked to rank their preferences with a 1,2, 3 and 4 and so on. This 'complicated' task is mathematically very similar to voting for contestants on the X-Factor, or the Eurovision Song Contest.

Choosing a brand of mayonnaise, a preferred washing powder or Simon Cowell's next signing are just three of the sorts of tasks the British public are expected to grapple with on a daily basis. It's also a bit like selecting an MP under a new-fangled voting system – the Alternative Vote (AV). But does David Cameron place such faith in the intelligence of his fellow citizens?

Like the opponents of decimalisation in the late sixties and early seventies, the No to AV campaign, led by Cameron himself, has decreed that AV is complicated and could be costly to explain and run. The evidence would, however, suggest that the electorate are rather more comfortable with changing the way we do elections than the vested interests of the Conservative party – and the more tribalist elements of the Labour party - might like to think. One poll in the last week showed the Yes campaign was 10 points in the lead, although this has not quite been matched by other polls.

Recognising its weaker position, the No campaign has scrambled to rely on an incoherent ragbag of arguments, which can hardly be said to be responding to a general public disenchantment with politics and politicians. It is also trying desperately to ignore the statistical evidence – that every government since 1945 has been elected with less than 50% of the vote. Even with its landslide victory in 1997, Labour only secured 43.2% of the vote. And in some seats at the last election, seven out of every 10 voters wanted other candidates.

The No campaign tells us that hung parliaments are more likely with AV, as if this is in itself an undesirable outcome. Playing on the supposed British preference for strong, single party majority, they've completely forgotten the democratically questionable results thrown up by hung parliaments of the 1920s, 1970s and in 2010 – all under First Past the Post. Each resulted in a single party being unable to effectively govern alone.

Yet the No campaign, as personified by local organiser and 2010 Tory candidate Chris Philp at a talk given to City University students in January, Philp criticised Clegg for 'making deals in dark rooms' – despite the essential presence of the third party in supporting Cameron's government. He then made an extraordinary personal attack on Clegg in his role as 'kingmaker'. But it's clearly news to Philps that the Conservatives can no longer rely on the support of a healthy chunk of the electorate to form a majority government. Those who oppose AV in the Labour camp are similarly misguided. And, where I slightly depart from the Yes campaign's official line, I believe coalitions will remain just as likely, if not more likely in the future as a result of the slow ebbing away of support for the major parties, including the Lib Dems. Negotiating a programme for government with other parties will become a part of the course to Downing Street.

We've easily established there's nothing difficult about AV. The hard work is left to returning officers and people who count the votes – and they're paid to do that. It will mean that election results come in much later in the day. That's a price worth paying for a move to fairer representation. What's more, the Yes campaign knows that there is still a clamour for change, despite general public disenchantment with the Lib Dems. And although introducing AV didn't feature in any of the manifestos in 2010, neither was 'business as usual' acceptable to the electorate in the cold light of day after the MPs expenses' scandal.

As Serge Lourie, AV proponent and a long-serving Richmond councillor also said at City, it's time for 'grown-up politics'. Lourie conceded that no electoral system was perfect, but the 2010 General Election was a rejection of the old politics, and the absurdities of tactical voting and MPs with 'jobs for life'. For me, if the Liberal Democrat side of the Coalition is worth anything, it's worth a push for change.

Alastair Stewart and the new theatre of TV politics



Alastair Stewart, moderator of the first ever UK General Election televised debate



“The TV debates were a tipping point in how we do politics” according to Alastair Stewart, who made history as moderator of Britain's first ever televised election debate between the three main party leaders. And having experienced in the flesh the effervescence of the man himself, I couldn't think of anyone better to do so.

For Gordon Brown, there was much to fear from a new spotlight on his persona. For David Cameron, it was a chance to prove his statesman credentials. Nick Clegg would be the new boy with the clean slate, railing against the 'Labservative' duopoly. They had everything to lose, and everything to gain. For the broadcasters, the debates were a long-awaited “alignment of the planets” as according to Ric Bailey, the BBC's political adviser, previous Prime Ministers had refused their rivals an equal footing.

It would have been easy to write off the debates as presidential. But for Stewart, they were a chance to revert to “old fashioned campaigning...when TV meets people who are trying to get your vote”. And it worked. Viewing figures compared favourably with, say a Friday night episode of Coronation Street, with the first debate watched by 9.6 million – and remaining consistently high for the Sky and BBC broadcasts.

The debates came at an opportune time for parties to get their message across when public trust in politicians was at an all-time low, in the wake of a damaging expenses scandal and an enormous budget deficit. Stewart reflected the overall feedback seen afterwards in the press, and throughout on social networking sites such as Twitter. Brown came across as “ill at-ease, and made no 'killer' points”. Cameron “hadn't a clue what he was doing”, but Clegg “shone from the outset, with a natural, compelling narrative”.

“The penny dropped in enormous numbers” as the public fell for Clegg's seemingly invincible message. Joint favourites of the 2010 General Election had been the Tories and 'change' – and the result fulfilled a general desire for a hung parliament. But as Stewart said, “the real impact didn't change the outcome” - but did confirm the perception of politics as presidential...the brutal ideological battles are now struggles of the past”.

In articulating party policy, those “three to four minutes of interplay were better than reading out verbatim statements on policy” and for Stewart, from that “brash, commercial channel”, prime time viewing figures were encouraging: “We got 10 million people to watch a TV show about politics – and I'm personally very proud of that.”

Stewart's perception of the debates was unsurprising. And, like Stewart, I'm only partially in agreement with Andrew Rawnsley in that the TV debates dominated to such an extent that they 'sucked the oxygen out of the rest of the campaign'. It could be the fault of the parties themselves, for not creating enough 'real' events. Arguably the only other exciting element of campaign in 2010 was Brown's infamous encounter with Gillian Duffy, which benefited Labour ultimately as they snatched the seat from the LibDems. Might the campaign have benefited from more unscripted encounters? Maybe. “Television has to reflect the tussle that's going on” said Stewart, and, what's more, “there were lots of local candidates who were not being covered by national TV. Local TV needs to work better.”

And, having delivered his script, in true TV style this seasoned pro shuffled his papers as if signing off from the evening bulletin. I half expected the lights to go down and a rousing theme tune to play him out...

Election 2.0?

If it wasn’t quite the Sun ‘wot won it’, it certainly wasn’t Facebook or Twitter in 2010. The General Election proved that social media did some novel and exciting things to encourage young voters out of their perceived apathy, but put simply, there was no Obama-like mechanism to galvanise the part of the electorate with most recent gift of suffrage.

Whereas the 2008 US Presidential election relied on micro-donations through sites such as Twitter, the UK election showed that the mainstream media were still capable of pulling off more campaign coups than many observers might have predicted. As early as 26 April, the BBC’s Rory Cellan-Jones argued that “the bloggers hoped they would boss this campaign, breaking stories, setting the mood, and leaving the flat-footed old media types trailing in their wake…but the newspapers, and in particular the broadcasters have proved far more influential, with the TV debates dwarfing every other aspect of the campaign.”

In the run up to polling day, a convincing argument could have been made that social media would have an almost magnetic effect on the 18-24 age group. There were some political soap operas played out on Twitter, but nothing that turned changed the debate that the three main party leaders couldn’t manage by themselves. Stuart MacLennan found himself rapidly deposed as the Labour’s candidate in Moray after some not particularly probing digging into his Twitter history, but the moments of drama were undoubtedly the preserve of the big broadcasters.

In a more prominent way, the infamous vandalised Conservative billboards maybe signalled a more telling analysis of the way the internet influenced the election, or not. This episode of web anarchy, played out on Facebook, had such a humiliating impact on the Tories’ campaigning strategy that when faced with several hundred digitally manipulated spoofs they were forced to rethink their entire approach to posters - and soon got their own back with their unexpectedly positive approval of Labour’s depiction of David Cameron as 1980s misogynist cop Gene Hunt. It was party political poster wars which caught the popular imagination far more than any web based ‘get out and vote’ campaign - and a great many younger members of the electorate took part in the fun - but no-one yet knows whether these sideshows reflected a genuine interest in the campaign.

In an effort to prove its worth to the national debate, Facebook’s Democracy UK site appeared just weeks before polling day, a belated effort launched with the claim that “social networks will prove to be as central to political debate and the general election as the post, the phone and television have been in the past.” Although political parties have for several years had a presence on the site, amassed through online armies of ‘supporters’ groups, there was never a concerted effort by Facebook to engage its 23 million UK users in anything other than a running commentary on politics. On 10 March however, it linked up with the Electoral Commission to offer every single user the opportunity to download a personalised voter registration form, and has since attempted to track whether those who took part made the leap from clicking ‘I like this’ to marking a cross on a ballot paper.

There’s plenty of evidence to suggest that Twitter was the place to be during the TV debates, particularly for younger, educated and liberal minded voters - making real time observations on the leaders personalities, policy statements and tie choices. From the insightful and serious, to the sharp and witty, Tweeters upheld a very British tradition of holding their potential leaders to account with a dose of healthy satire.

The evidence infers that younger voters were more discerning in their information preferences though. In Ipswich, a marginal seat that swung from Labour to the Tories at the election, two sisters give their verdict on whether the online campaign affected their vote:

Sarah Clark, 23, said: “Initially, I wasn’t going to vote because I knew nothing about the candidates. But I did watch the summaries of the leaders’ debates each morning before I went to work”

Sarah plumped for the Conservatives in the end, and specifically mentioned the Sun’s ‘dumb guide to the election’ which was published during the campaign - with no access to social networking sites at work, traditional channels of media were her primary source of information.

”I’m on Facebook but I didn’t use it to help me decide my vote during the election” she added.

Online communication, and social media in particular, made more of a difference to Sarah’s 18 year old sister, Angie, a first time voter who says she watched one of the TV debates, but wasn’t sure that newspapers helped her make up her mind in choosing which party to vote for:

“I found there was more information on Facebook groups which I’m a member of, and I went on a lot of the party websites to help me make up my mind”.

Research published in the days immediately following the election appears to reflect the mix of information sources young people preferred. A YouGov survey undertaken between 12-14 May suggests that 36% of 18-24 year olds used Facebook as a source of information during the campaign, with 34% visiting a political party or candidate’s own website - suggesting that social media was a crucial signpost in directing younger users towards more traditional web content. Most significantly, 31% of younger voters said that online information influenced the way they voted ‘not very much’ and 16% chose not to consume election content online at all.

This research, and others surveys since, hints that social media just wasn’t the game changer that it was expected to be. Until we have been presented with the overwhelming evidence that social media paves a direct route to the polling station for the younger electorate, well-established traditional channels may still prove to be what counts during those crucial four weeks.

No surprises there, thankfully!

Well, thankfully I've come out for Labour yet again! Love this site:

Read between the lines - Tory education policy proposals

I've been at best ambivalent towards Labour's notion of academy schools over the past thirteen years. I never felt the need to join the ranks of old-school socialists who outrightly opposed these key tenets of Blair's education policies as, having long left the state education system, I neither experienced it first hand as a teacher or a pupil and was far more interested in higher education policy when these places were first set up. I also strongly felt that academies hadn't yet been fully proven. Only now will the first batch of pupils be starting to emerge from Labour's academy schools into universities and the world of work.

So I was particularly struck by the vagaries of Tory education policy today, the day the General Election was finally called. We were reminded during Cameron's somewhat over-confident speech this morning that the Conservatives would let people "with a passion for education" start a school.

Well, that's nice of them - they're clearly thinking of people like me. I'm absolutely passionate about education too, but I also firmly believe that education should be firmly in the hands of professionals, and not a mysterious, and as yet-unnamed collection of 'charities, parent and teacher groups,trusts, voluntary groups and co-operatives' which their draft education manifesto refers to. I also happen to be absolutely passionate about our railways, and I really do believe in their power to enable people to make sustainable transport choices, but at the same time I've never been a train driver, or worked for a railway company or ever had any academic qualification in transport operations. I think I'd probably be a bit of a liability left in charge of our railways.

So Dave, what makes those people who are passionate about education really good education providers - a really efficient yet untested way of providing public services? What tests will they be subject to? How do we even know that they will provide this service at better value than the state currently provides, in an arguably untested system of academies and specialist schools? It seems like change for change's sake, and an easy way of promoting new found Tory co-operative principles.

Dave is right - there's a big choice when it comes to the future of our public services, but even with the unknowns of Labour's academy experiment, I'm prepared to give New Labour the benefit of the doubt for trying out an idea that at least had the support of education professionals.

Ask The Chancellors - a personal view

If Channel 4's Ask the Chancellors debate tonight was the template for the long-awaited leaders' debates during the General Election campaign, then the real thing may be well worth watching. Maybe it was the focus on specific economic issues rather than general platitudes and populist issues which made it more interesting than the usual 'panel' style of debate, or the skillful chairing by Krishnan Guru-Murthy - I don't know - but it was a good bit of telly – an intelligent alternative to the the usual bloodbath you normally get on Question Time.

Even though I’m admittedly biased towards Labour, putting those prejudices aside for one moment I still thought Darling and Cable both came across exceptionally well – Darling very confident and with good arguments. Cable absolutely right on a lot of things and you could sense a genuine interest in the things he was saying from his views on public spending to bankers’ bonuses. Some people might write off the election campaign as a two-horse race but in a possible and likely hung parliament this guy has a higher chance of becoming Chancellor of the Exchequer than any Liberal/Liberal Democrat since the government of David Lloyd George.

George Osborne, on the other hand, just sounded like he’d been spending far too much time with Andy Coulson, the Tories’ director of communications. There was a time in British politics where you could get away with those sort of vacuous soundbites, but even if (as we are led to believe) Osborne is a very clever guy with a firm grasp of economics, he didn’t display these qualities this evening. I felt Darling and Cable had the right balance of sound figures, a record of making the right judgements and the right sort of political acumen in a studio environment. Osborne tells us it is essential to "learn the lessons" of the banking crisis and calls for stronger regulation, but to me this is a belated conversion. You might have expected that if he'd really believed in reform of the banking system, Osborne would have fought back when Darling pointed out the Tory position on the response to the crisis was completely at odds with 20 of the world's largest economies.

It'll be interesting to see how the Tory high command judge Osborne's performance tonight - if I were Dave I'd be deeply worried at this point. If anything, tonight's debate was a complete vindication of the 'do-nothing' response to the turbulent economic times of the last few years.