Labour: Say yes to AV to hurt Tories

With polls pointing to win for no campaign at AV referendum, mobilising Labour vote seen as yes camp’s last chance Labour voters will be urged to kick Cameron not Clegg in the 5 May referendum on the Commons voting system, as the party’s yes campaign steps up its drive to corral swing Labour voters into backing the alternative vote. As the latest polling shows a strong lead for the no campaign, a swing to yes from undecided Labour voters is seen as the last chance for the yes team. Labour Yes will produce a set of posters showing a happy David Cameron and George Osborne with the caption: “Wipe the smile off their faces. Hit them twice on May 5th. Vote Labour in the council elections and yes.” The poster is an admission that the yes campaign is only likely to win if it turns the referendum into a verdict on the prime minister, and persuades Labour voters not to see it primarily as a chance to punish the Lib Dems’ decision to form the coalition with the Conservatives. It also marks a shift away from the claim that a yes vote will be a blow to the “complacent” culture that led to the MPs expenses scandal. Alan Johnson, the former Labour home secretary, called the no campaign “a Tory campaign almost exclusively funded by Tory donors”. He said: “The no campaign is not a genuine cross-party campaign. If Labour voters and others are fed up with the Tory-led coalition, they should send a clear signal by voting yes to AV.” Johnson will be joined on Wednesday by Nigel Farage, the leader of the UK Independence party, and Tim Farron, the president of the Liberal Democrats. But another former Labour home secretary, David Blunkett, said: “The Labour no campaign now includes over half of Labour’s MPs, four out of five councillors, and thousands of Labour activists.” The renewed efforts to win over the critical undecided Labour supporters came as another poll suggested the no camp is likely to win, mainly due to a hardening of Tory voter opinion against change. An Angus Reid poll published on Tuesday showed the no camp leading 41% to 30%, a 13-point increase in the no vote since its last survey in mid-April. The yes camp has slipped 2 points from the same date. Once the “don’t knows” are removed, the result is 58% to 42%. The pollsters said: “The big jump in support for the no side is coming from people who voted for the Conservative party in the May 2010 general election. In January, 30% of these voters were in the no column. The proportion rose to 43% earlier this month, and has now reached 65 %.” The proportion of respondents who are “very informed” or “moderately informed” about the alternative vote system continues to rise as referendum date draws near, and now stands at 67%, up 10 points since mid-April. The pollsters add: “The drastic shift observed in this survey can be traced back to Cameron’s speech on 18 April, where he described the alternative vote system as ‘obscure, unfair and expensive’.” The yes camp is only ahead in London and Scotland, but there is expected to be a low turnout in the capital. Putting forward the yes camp’s latest argument , Lord Mandelson said: “If there’s not a no vote successfully obtained, the Tory party will never forgive David Cameron. “It will put an instrument, a weapon, in the hands of his critics and detractors in the party and greatly destabilise him and might even cost him his leadership. “What I’m saying to my party is, think strategically. How is it best to collapse the coalition? In my view, you have to pull the rug from under David Cameron much more significantly than any damage you might inflict on Nick Clegg.” One Labour yes campaigner argued: “Clegg is already down and he is going to stay down.” The same campaigner nevertheless vented fury at the way in which Clegg had decided to raise his profile in the campaign, saying: “Every time he pops up, our poll rating goes down.”Clegg’s friends claim privately there has been a breach of trust since Cameron promised he would not take a high-profile role. They say he has instead made the no case a central feature of his local election campaign. The yes and no camps have been struck by the extent to which the campaign has turned into a bout between party politicians, rather than a wider debate about the future of democracy. AV referendum Alternative vote Labour Patrick Wintour guardian.co.uk

Posted by on April 26, 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.