I quite enjoyed this advice being dished out to The South.
betty
(true North)
Why Londoners should flock to vote on Thursday
Armando Iannucci
3 May 2011
When it comes to the alternative vote, I can't help feeling that the
true significance of the choice we're being asked to make this Thursday
has grown just as the maturity of the debate has diminished. Never have
so many twisted arguments been flung at such an appalled electorate as
part of such a potentially massive change to our constitution.
To start with, things were pretty even: both sides talked profound crud.
The No To AV campaign got off to a terrific start by being
gob-crackingly patronising; their argument was that AV, the act of
listing your candidates in order of preference, was too difficult to
follow. By implying most people couldn't count to four, they alienated
anyone with an IQ over three. What's wrong with things being slightly
more complex? Making toast is slightly more complex than eating plain
bread but somehow we've all adapted.
Meantime, the Yes To AV camp launched with their own vapid
counter-claim, that AV would clean up Parliament for ever, ridding us of
any more mad MP expense scandals and headlines involving duck houses.
How a tiny change to the voting system would lead to such a gigantic act
of moral cleansing was never made clear and anyway, thought most people,
wasn't this all dealt with two years ago? A dazzling vision of the
future based on cheap headlines from the past was never going to be
persuasive.
And so the debate has whimpered, each side vocalising smaller and
smaller courses of argument, eventually to meet in one superdense point
of pettiness. All the referendum has boiled down to now is Cameron
saying vote No or you'll get more Lib-Dems in government, and Cable
saying vote Yes or you'll get Tories for ever. A coalition arguing for
any voting system that ruins the coalition partner's prospects does not
make for dignified politics.
In the end, I knew I'd make my decision based on which side had the
least headbangingly annoying argument, so I've come down on the side of
voting Yes. This is mostly as a result of David Cameron's beautifully
foolish argument on Sunday that voting for electoral reform wasn't
British. It was so alarming to see him forget all British history from
1832 onwards, where small but steady electoral reform has been a very,
very British thing to do (votes for women, anyone?) that I'm now quite
alarmed he has any say over how our children are educated.
Wedding aside, it's been a profoundly depressing four weeks. The sight
of party leaders promising to have a dignified discussion and ending up
flinging custard pies at each other has turned the nation off, just at
the very moment that nation is expected to make one of the most
significant political decisions for a generation.
Out of the miasma of abuse, however, a simple choice is emerging. Do you
want politics to change, or stay the same? It's debatable whether the
current mess is a temporary blip in an otherwise workable system, or a
symptom of something more chronic.
That's what you have to decide on Thursday. If you think the malaise is
permanent, then you should vote Yes to change. If you think we'll all
get over it, then go for No. But get out and vote. That's all Londoners
have to decide on Thursday: whether politics is working, or whether it's
bust. Suddenly, it got interesting.
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MARCHING ON TOGETHER (There's it)
