First past the post favours ....

As we enter the final week before the AV referendum the campaign is hotting up and the Sunday papers are full of politicians telling us how to vote.

In the Observer Lib Dem Chris Huhne has joined forces with one of the minority Labour supporters of AV, John Denham, to call for an anti-tory alliance to remove first past the post which he claims has favoured Conservatives.

Firstly it appears that the Yes campaign has dropped all pretence of real arguments in favour of Mandelson’s argument of vote Yes to defeat the wicked Tories. The new non tribal politics is clearly winning inside the Yes camp.

But the main thing about this argument is that first past the post favours the Conservatives. His reasoning, only twice in the last 110 years (1900 and 1931) has a Conservative government had an absolute majority of 50%. His argument appears to be that if we added together the Lib Dem and Labour vote then they would have had a 50% majority. His argument is therefore that all Lib Dem voters are anti Tory, which of course isn’t true, and if you follow it through then clearly the solution is that Labour and the Lib Dems should merge and become one party, job done.

Looking at the figures of General Election results also destroys his argument. Since 1900 there have been 13 Conservative governments (including the current coalition), 12 Labour Governments and 4 Liberal governments, so how exactly has it favoured the Conservative Party?

Of course in reality First Past the Post currently favours the Labour Party, mainly due to the current constituency boundaries (which is why they’re being changed). That’s why even though the Conservatives got a large national swing last May they still didn’t win an overall majority. In reality the Labour party (a progressive majority?) won a landslide election in 1997 and then two more majorities before being kicked out (although not in any way by a landslide) last year, and technically they could have stayed in power with the Lib Dems.

So given recent history do you really think that First Past the Post favours the Conservatives? And who do you think AV favours?

Update:
I see everyone’s favourite Vince Cable wrote basically the same thing in the Guardian yesterday. I do feel sorry for Clegg who I believe is more centre right than centre left, and is stuck with a coalition in his own party, the left side of which is abusing the AV referendum to try to enforce their dominance.

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