PM and Miliband lock horns over AV

PM to share platform with Labour’s John Reid, while opposition leader joined by Vince Cable David Cameron will today declare that he is opposing the alternative vote from gut instinct as much as from rational argument as he goes head to head on the issue of voting reform with Ed Miliband. The prime minister and the Labour leader are due to make speeches on the subject at rival events at almost exactly the same time. With coalition and Labour splits on full display, Cameron will be joined by John Reid, the former Labour home secretary, while Miliband will be accompanied by Vince Cable, the business secretary. Cameron has not shared an anti-AV platform with a Labour politician before and he will insist that he and Reid “don’t agree on much”. Reid is expected to reciprocate the sentiment, but will say “some issues are so important that they transcend party politics” and that he and Cameron are opposed to AV because they are “united in believing that politicians are the servants of the people”. The campaign has, at times, become particularly acrimonious, with Lord Ashdown, the former Lib Dem leader, accusing George Osborne and other Tories campaigning for a no vote in the AV referendum of “cynical smears and scaremongering”. But Cameron and Miliband are expected to seek to raise the tone of the debate by focusing more on the respective merits of the existing first-past-the-post voting system and AV. Claiming the debate on AV too often involved “a language of proportionality and preferences, probabilities and possibilities”, Cameron will say: “For me, politics shouldn’t be some mind-bending exercise. It’s about what you feel in your gut – about the values you hold dear and the beliefs you instinctively have. And I just feel it, in my gut, that AV is wrong.” The prime minister will argue that AV will take power away from the people. “I want a system that lets you, as the Americans say, ‘throw the rascals out’,” he will say, claiming AV would “damage our democracy permanently” and lead to more hung parliaments. This assertion was disputed by the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, who told the BBC’s Politics Show that AV would not lead to more coalition governments. “More hung parliaments have been delivered under first past the post than have been delivered under AV in Australia,” the Lib Dem leader said. But Cameron said the coalition would survive whoever won the referendum: “Whoever is on the losing side, as it were, will just have to pick themselves up and say: well, it was a fair argument, a fair fight, a fair referendum, the country has decided and now we have got to get on with all the things that really matter so much.” The PM also found himself defending his chancellor after Osborne was singled out for attack in a particularly strongly worded article by Ashdown. Osborne infuriated AV campaigners last week by suggesting the Electoral Reform Society should not be funding the yes campaign because its subsidiary, Electoral Reform Services Ltd, a company that organises elections, could profit from a switch to AV. The ERS says it is completely untrue but Five days ago, lawyers for the ERS sent a letter to journalists saying that although ERSL makes money from election administration, the type of election system used is “entirely irrelevant” to the provision of these services and “a change in the voting system would, therefore, have absolutely no impact on any of the revenue earned by the ERSL.” Osborne said its involvement in the funding of the yes campaign “really stinks”, prompting Ashdown to accuse him and other anti-AV campaigners in an article in the Observer of resorting to “smears, deliberate misrepresentations and sometimes even downright lies”. On Sky News, Cameron said: “The point George Osborne made, that the Electoral Reform Society is a big funder of the yes campaign, that it has an organisation that could make money out of it, that’s a fact, and I think there’s nothing wrong with bringing that fact out,” he said. But although this seemed potentially provocative, Ashdown subsequently praised the prime minister for focusing in his Sky interview largely the substantial issues at stake in the campaign. Cameron also insisted that the coalition would survive whoever won the referendum. said yesterday: “Whatever the result on May 5, this is a five-year government, Nick [Clegg] and I are absolutely committed to taking the government and its programme forward,” he said. “Whoever is on the losing side as it were will just have to pick themselves up and say: well, it was a fair argument, a fair fight, a fair referendum, the country has decided and now we have got to get on with all the things that really matter so much.” AV referendum Alternative vote Electoral reform Conservatives David Cameron George Osborne Labour David Miliband John Reid Liberal Democrats Nick Clegg Vince Cable Paddy Ashdown Liberal-Conservative coalition Andrew Sparrow guardian.co.uk

Posted by on April 17, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.