The Guardian tells us today that Matthew Elliot of the TaxPayer’s Alliance is to head up the campaign for a no vote in next May’s referendum on the Alternative Vote.

The TUC has no policy either way on AV as yet, though we were asked to stimulate a debate on electoral reform at our last Congress. I suspect that this announcement is unlikely to aid the no campaign in unions.

But what struck me in the article was this enconium from Conservative peer, Rodney Leach – who as Wikipedia tells us is “chairman of the eurosceptic think-tank Open Europe and a noted climate change sceptic.^“

What I like about Matthew is that he’s not a gun for hire. He’s that rare combination of someone who not only believes passionately in what he’s fighting for, but is also an extremely successful campaigner. Campaigning against the ‘alternative vote’ system is a natural extension of his fight for greater accountability and transparency in politics.”

But shouldn’t he be “a gun for hire”?  Isn’t this how markets are meant to work?

It’s a small step from this view to recognising a “public service ethos” in public sector staff that might be hit by privatisation and contracting out that treats them purely as “guns for hire”.

I’m working from home today, and before I started work I had a look at my personal e-mails. One was from Unlock Democracy, asking me to protest at rumours that the legislation on the Alternative Vote referendum will include a 40% threshold – to win, the ‘Yes’ campaigners would not only have to get over 50% of those voting, but also score over 40% of those entitled to vote.

I agree with Unlock Democracy, and I’d find it hard to improve on the arguments they put forward:

“These proposed amendments are as ill-advised as they are undemocratic. International experience shows that thresholds on turnout just stifle debate. Supporters of the status quo don’t have to win the argument; they just have to convince people to stay at home. If this threshold was applied one MP is on record saying the Yes Vote would require an 80% turnout to succeed. Unlock Democracy finds it disappointing yet unsurprising that some MPs are trying to rig the deck in this way.

“People should feel confident when casting their vote that their opinion is being listened to and that their ballot counts. Public distrust of politicians is already at an all time high. Nothing could be worse for restoring trust in this era of ‘New Politics’ than the perception that MPs had rigged the result of the referendum.”

Of course, trade unionists will recognise the eerie similarity to the CBI’s proposals for strike ballots. A couple of thoughts occur to me; one is the way in which restrictions on liberty are connected – the CBI proposals may well have prompted some MPs to come up with the same idea for the AV referendum.

The second thought is that I hope that people who recognise the unfairness in one context will also recognise it in the other. I hope that campaigners for electoral reform and sympathetic MPs will make a point of opposing the 40% threshold for industrial action. Equally, trades unionists, whatever their views on the Alternative Vote, should recognise that a threshold is just as bad for the referendum.

MPs will be voting later today on whether there should be a referendum on changing our current first-past-the-post electoral system to one based on AV.

This is not an area where there is any TUC policy – other than the motion at our Congress last year calling for us to stimulate a debate. This we have tried to kick off by publishing the Touchstone extra on electoral reform.

But in this spirit, here are some thoughts on what AV might mean.

AV is the easiest change to make to our current system – and therefore the least disruptive to our electoral law and arrangements. There would still be single member constituencies on the same boundaries, but instead of just getting a single cross, voters would be able to put candidates in preference. After counting first preferences, if no candidate gets more than half the votes the candidate at the bottom is eliminated and their second preferences are allocated to the remaining candidates. This repeats until someone gets more than half the vote.

AV has two big advantages:

• Every MP would be able to say that they had the support of at least half of those who voted. Arguably this would increase engagement as a bigger proportion of the electorate would identify their MP as someone who is in parliament with their support.
• Voters would no longer have to vote tactically. If your overwhelming aim is to ensure that the Conservatives do not get to form a government, then at the moment you should guess which candidate has the best chance of beating the Conservative candidate in your constituency and give them your support, even if you prefer another party. With AV you can vote for your favoured party first, and as long as you put all the non-Conservative parties with any chance of winning in your preferences you are also tactically voting as efficiently as possible. (My guess would be that there will both anti-Tory and anti-Labour tactical votes at the next election as it’s likely to be close – AV would mean that people would be able to vote positively before they vote negatively.)

But AV has its critics too:

• It is not proportional.  In some years it might produce results that are more proportional, but it can easily go the other way. While it depends on how the votes pan out, it has an inbuilt tendency to favour parties of the centre as they will tend to be everybody’s second choice. It can also give the winning party even more seats as centre party voters may well split their second preferences in line with voters as a whole. While it is hard to know how second and other preferences would affect the result, one consequence might be to give the winning party a bigger majority over all other parties – and also a bigger majority over the main opposition as they are likely to lose seats to a third centre party. But in other years it might deprive the winning party of its overall majority by boosting third party seats.

AV may also change voting behaviour. At the moment there are few constituencies where it is not possible to work out which two parties are most likely to win, and if you do not want to “waste your vote” then you opt for the one of these two you least dislike.

With AV you can vote for other parties first. It would almost certainly benefit the Lib Dems as they are the biggest third party. But while AV won’t help parties like the Greens and UKIP who are not centre parties, they could still gain substantial votes. Conservatives who don’t like David Cameron’s modernity can vote UKIP first. People really worried about climate change can send a message by voting Green first, and then for a party in contention for the seat.

This would probably increase the pressure for a more proportional system as it would reveal more “wasted votes”. This is not doubt why first-past-post supporters are so wary of a system that is not really that far from what we have today.

Some are saying that even if MPs vote today for a referendum it will not become law as the election will intervene. But I suspect that the genie is now out of the bottle and that at some stage a referendum is inevitable.

My personal view is that this would be more legitimate if there was some kind of citizens’ convention to look at what new system would best suit the UK. It is generally agreed that MPs have too big a vested interest to decide whether we should change. It is consistent to argue that they should not choose the alternative system either.  Unions were involved in the Scottish Constitutional Convention which helped pave the way for devolution and gave the new arrangements legitimacy. UK level change could well learn from this. While the Conservatives and some Labour MPs back the status quo, Labour go for AV and Lib Dems support STV, the answer – in good proportional fashion – might be something that is none of their first choices but is high in all their preferences.

As you’ll know if you’ve already had a look through our latest ToUChstone Extra pamphlet, “Getting it in proportion?”, there are as many electoral systems out there as there are elections. But which to choose?

Well to help, we’ve made a clever little test. Give it your opinion on a list of statements about the way you’d like elections to be handled, and it will recommend those of our main 5 systems that most closely match your preferences.

Try it out now, and see how you might handle electoral reform.

Today we publish the latest Touchstone Extra report, “Getting it in Proportion?”. It asks whether we need a new electoral system for Westminster elections. You can click on the image to download a copy. It is designed to help implement the resolution carried at our 2009 Congress that called for a debate within the trade union movement about whether we should move to a more proportional system for electing the House of Commons. It does not come to any conclusion but describes different systems and assesses their strengths and weaknesses. The report does suggest four basic starting principles that should inform the debate:

1. There is no perfectly democratic electoral system. We expect our democratic system to balance a number of different objectives that are not fully compatible with each other. No system can therefore meet them all, and any practical system is a result of compromises and choices between these objectives.
2. Different countries and communities have different political cultures, history and institutions. These can dramatically change the context in which an electoral system operates and the demands made on it. What is appropriate for the USA’s two-party system may be quite wrong for countries with multi-party traditions or those making the transition from a non-democratic system without strong existing parties.
3. Circumstances can change. People may decide that they now want the electoral system to reflect different priorities. The political system can evolve – for example a strong two-party system can break down if parties split or new parties gain support. Many supporters of reform would argue that the UK’s political landscape has changed markedly from the strong two-party politics of the years after the Second World War.
4. A country’s electoral system will influence its politics. The way that parties and individual politicians behave will be influenced by the electoral system in which they seek to win power. What electoral system we have is therefore not some free-floating abstract debate, but can make a real difference to people’s lives.

TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber says in his introduction:

The MPs expenses scandal, the declining turnout and the relatively small share of the popular vote required to form a government, while the vote for third and other parties rises, all point to something wrong with our democracy. We have an unelected second chamber. Our Parliament remains unrepresentative of the population particularly in regard to gender and ethnicity. Parties can become dependent on limited numbers of super-rich donors, who do not even have to be resident for tax purposes. The evidence suggests we need a major clean-up and reinvigoration of our politics. It is very unlikely that there is a single measure that can do this, and it will take action in a number of areas. Electoral reform may or may not be part of what is required, but unions – as the largest mass democratic organisations in our society – must make their contribution to analysing what is wrong and helping reinvigorate our political system. Unions have democracy built into our DNA; it is how we conduct our internal business. The basic justification for unions is that the power relationship between employer and employee is fundamentally one-sided, and that employees need to join together to restore some balance. But the same argument holds for wider society. Power and wealth become concentrated in fewer and fewer hands without countervailing pressures secured through democratic institutions, law and regulation, quality public services and a strong, vibrant civil society. None of those are possible without a democratic society. This is why it is right for unions to play a part in this important debate.

This blog will be one place where we hope that debate will develop. Check out the report and let us know what you think. The comments box is open.

Later today we expect to launch a web tool that will help people sort through the different options of the status-quo or various alternative systems. Watch this space!