So What Does AV Mean in Terms of Coalitions? Part 1

The "coalitions" question is one that comes up a lot in discussions about the merits of AV (or PR for that matter) and it's been on my list of things to address for a while. Having just poured out all of my thoughts on the subject I ended up with a ludicrously long blog post so I've decided to divide it into two parts. This first part just looks at what coalitions are, whether they're in principle a good thing, and whether the current government is a really representative example of coalition governments.

It's true that it's taken a coalition situation for us to be even offered a referendum on the voting system. This is because up until now British politics has been dominated by two parties, and those two parties have benefitted from First Past the Post, in the way it skews the proportions of the votes by encouraging tactical voting, and then further skews the proportions in favour of those two parties between the proportions of votes cast and the proportions of seats won. Thus, the only time a government would consider changing the voting system, would be when a party other than one of those two, Labour and Conservative, has a say.

That doesn't necessarily mean though, that the Alternative Vote would necessarily lead to more coalitions. In fact, in Australia, there's only been one Coalition government under AV, and that's one fewer than the two we've had here under FPTP. PR possibly would lead to more coalitions, but we're not voting on PR just yet, so this is not really the time to worry about it.

Then again, who's to say coalitions are necessarily a bad thing? The current coalition government doesn't seem to me to be a representative example. The two parties involved are a huge mismatch for one thing, and for another, one party is heavily outnumbered by the other. That smaller party is suffering a great deal, having to put its name to decisions that suit only the views of the larger party, and absolutely destroying their own reputation.

The Lib Dems probably knew this outcome was likely, but they entered into this situation for a number of reasons. Firstly, a chance to be involved in the government, and at least have more say as a minority in the government than as a minority in the opposition, an opportunity that they had a duty to their voters and members to take; and secondly to take the only sniff of a chance of electoral reform that we've seen in a long time and are likely to see in quite probably an even longer time. Even though it's AV and not the PR that the Lib Dems wanted, it's a chance to show we want change (for more on this see http://brdonnelly.blogspot.com/2010/11/why-those-in-favour-of-pr-should-say.html )

But as I say, the current coalition government isn't really the best example of a coalition. I'd say the best example would be the Labour Party, or the Conservative Party, or any other party really. All parties are really coalitions. They're united under one colour, one name and one leader, but the reality is they're a coalition of different political views working together, compromising on various issues and only really united to stand themselves a better chance of forming a government, than they would if they subdivded according differences of views. That is pretty conclusive proof to me that coalitions can indeed work.

In the second part I look at how we ended up with the current coalition government and argue that First Past the Post had a massive hand in it, and that the Alternative Vote would be far less likely to lead to such a bizarre mismatch.