Could AV Been

On the whole, I'd much rather have a government that I disagreed with than an electorate that disagreed with me. And right now I have both. At least when a government gets things wrong I can moan about it or swear at the television; the chances are that I will find someone sympathetic to discuss it with. But the mistakes or delusions of fellow voters are sacrosanct and one is not allowed to query them, let alone over rule them.

Nothing, conversely, feels better than when one is part of a national consensus that sweeps a new government into power. That last happened in 1997 and it was very exciting. The resulting Labour administration did pretty well, tackling child poverty, investing in health and education, and so forth, but expectations were not met from the off: Labour's landslide was so great that Blair cooled on a commitment to offer a referendum on AV.

With the Tories enfeebled and dejected and other reforms taking place, such a referendum might have been accepted - although there would still have been strong resistance from Labour. And what if AV been in place for the last three elections? Well, AV doesn't prevent landslides, in fact it can exaggerate them, so Blair would certainly have been returned convincingly in 2001 and the 2005 election would have resulted in a slightly greater Labour majority than actually occurred.

What would have changed, then? Well, the Conservatives, who nearly fragmented anyway under Iain Duncan Smith, would have faced a catastrophic collapse in numbers of MPs. Certainly they could have slipped into third place behind the Liberal Democrats. Yes, the Lib Dems, remember them? The old ones I mean, the good ones who opposed the war in Iraq, and Trident, refused to countenance tuition fees for students and were honest about wanting to raise taxes on higher earners to pay for things like schools. Whatever happened to them I wonder?

Here's what would have happened in 2010 under AV. I think the Tories would have been in a weaker position than this after 10 years of AV, but even here the chances of a Lib-Lab coalition are much stronger and any Lib-Con pairing would have been much more balanced. A 'big three' cabinet post would have had to go to them (Cable as Chancellor anyone?) And I doubt very much that the Lib-Dems would have felt compelled to ditch core policies like, say, opposition to tuition fees. And what else might Clegg (or Huhne?) have demanded from Cameron as the price for cooperation? Maybe even a referendum on a switch to STV?