Only the Lib Dems can win here – errr…?

Gandhi wore sandals too

“First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.”

This famous quote by Mahatma Gandhi is probably privately what many Liberal Democrats are feeling at the moment, even if they can’t work out whether or not they are stuck on the third phase or really moving into the fourth. Because following last week’s leadership debate the party has really made a breakthrough, at least in terms of opinion polling. The bounce since Thursday has certainly been the most striking psephological aspect of this General Election campaign so far. The questions which plague the pundits, of course, are: will it or can it be sustained; and even if it is, what will the effect be in real terms as the seats are counted?

It’s a very blunt tool, but look at the swing calculator and have a play with it. Obviously there are going to be very localised swings in this election, but one thing stands out very clearly to me from using it: the current electoral system is more biased in favour of Labour and against the Lib Dems than I ever imagined it could be. For example, I used some very exaggerated numbers (they certainly feel exaggerated today, but by next Monday who knows what might happen…) based on the Lib Dems getting 35% of the vote, the Conservatives attaining 30% and Labour polling 28%, with the other parties on 7%. This produced an outcome with Labour the biggest party on 269 seats (some 57 seats short of an overall majority), the Conservatives on second place with 199, and the Lib Dems more than doubling their Commons representation but still only reaching 150 seats.

Then play with the calculator a bit more. Pop in 40% to the Lib Dems, 27% to Labour, and 30% to the Conservatives. Because it’s only then, in terms of a uniform swing across the UK, that the Liberal Democrats overtake Labour in terms of representation in Westminster.

Luke Akehurst, a Labour stalwart, offers a range of other demonstrations of the innate unfairness of the current electoral system over on his blog. As with so much he writes, it’s definitely worth a read. His conclusion is stark:

“This isn’t an electoral system it’s a lottery.”

There’s no point voting Lib Dem, their opponents have decried for years, they just let Labour/Tories in (delete as appropriate – the message is the same). They just can’t win this seat, we are told. And they certainly can’t win the election.

And on this maths and this system then that looks to be pretty true.

This monstrous unfairness is just plain wrong. If any result close to this actually came to pass, then the public would quite rightly feel very aggrieved indeed. Even more annoyed, in fact, than Plaid supporters who have raged about Ieuan being left out of the very leadership debates that have fed this bounce. At a time when public faith in democracy is at such a pitifully low ebb, what on earth would people make of a system which could, very clearly, give the party that came first of three the fewest number of seats, and the party which came third the highest number?

As Nick Clegg visited Wales for the second time this morning, in a press conference that achieved way more oomph than their manifesto launch last week, two things occurred to me. The first was that it was the first time I had ever been to a press conference that felt bigger than some of the party’s own conferences (sorry, couldn’t resist).

The second and more serious point was that Nick Clegg looked damn convincing when he said that rather then being a vote that would permit wins by other parties, a vote for the Liberal Democrats is exactly that – a vote for the Liberal Democrats. But the unfairness of our existing electoral system means that even if the Lib Dems basically double their vote across the UK then it still wouldn’t make them the biggest party in Westminster. And that, to any democrat, is simply plain wrong isn’t it?

If any seismic change takes place in voter intention that isn’t reflected in voter representation, this may well be the last General Election fought under the current system. And depending on how well the Lib Dems do, Alternative Vote may be no more of a palatable alternative to them than it is to me.