AV backed by Labour’s Progressives
Progress, the independent organisation for Labour members and trade unionists, has joined the Labour Yes! campaign in favour of the Alternative Vote after a poll of its members showed a clear majority in favour of reform.
With 43 per cent voting for AV, and 21 per cent against, those backing the change led the field, while the number of undecided members – 35 per cent – showed there is all to play for, a situation mirrored by the public at large.
Progress will now work to support a Yes vote in the AV referendum planned for 5 May.
In the latest edition of Progress magazine, the organisation advises against the temptation to vote No to AV to ‘give Nick Clegg a metaphorical bloody nose at the ballot box’. Recent authoritative voices studies such as the ippr published earlier this month have shown that the current ‘first-past-the-post’ system is broken.
From a partisan perspective too, the Conservatives would have fared worse at the ballot box at all elections since 1997, thus further boosting the Labour drive for reform.
Progress further highlights the close links of the No2Av campaign to ‘anti-tax and anti-European allies’ of the Conservatives, who know that a Yes vote in May could open the door to a progressive majority in British politics for the foreseeable future.
Elsewhere in the magazine Peter Kellner of pollster YouGov also highlights the exclusionary effect of AV on extremist parties such as the British National Party, in a mock memo to Nick Griffin advising the party’s leader to fight to retain FPTP.
