Not only that, but Labour are blatantly defying party guidelines on campaigning in the referendum by using the logo and font/”vote Labour” tag.

Bad form all round.

How do you mean? That flyer is produced by Tories by the way, not signed off by Labour party.

How bizarre.

In any case, it’d be better if people realised this is a non-partisan issue. Take off the party glasses, and look at which system is best for electing a legislature.

If the tories have a poster with vote labour on it, it’s the best tory poster since the One With Blair and the Devils eyes, Thanks tories,

mind you our one with Cameron as Gene Hunt was a bit of a disaster ,so maybe they;re repaying the favour

@Sunny

I don’t have them to hand, but NEC guidelines very clear that campaign literature can’t look as if it’s been endorsed by the Labour party.

This includes using the logo.

Labour No know this and must have had some say in what went out (it even has a message from Prescott on the reverse), so someone has to be accountable.

All’s fair in love and politics.

FWIW, I think it’s an astute move associating AV with Clegg. Certainly it makes me even more hostile to AV (a rubbish system no supporter of FPTP or PR should welcome).

Astonishing. Sickening. Liars, hypocrites and idiots the lot of them. Is this the dirtiest political campaign ever?

“a rubbish system no supporter of FPTP or PR should welcome”

So in other words, AV should not be welcomed by people who prefer one of the other two options generally suggested?

Obviously FPTP supporters won’t welcome it. Many of them will not want to lose their systematic unfair advantage. PR supporters would probably be wise to support it as superior to the present system, though.

In any case, it’d be better if people realised this is a non-partisan issue.

It isn’t, if they’re going to put up a picture of Ed Miliband with the words ‘AV doesn’t work’.

Paul – its cheap, and frankly David Cameron is the bigger enemy here not Clegg.

Of course, it isn’t all tories, or even Central Office. It is just one election agent.

8 – AV can also increase advantages though – would have helped the Tories even more under Thatcher and Labour under Blair. Plus it results in the least unpopular candidate rather than the most popular candidate being elected. Result being a parliament increasingly made up of inoffensive centrists lacking strong personalities or convictions. Then again I’m not sure if this is the thread for discussing the merits or demerits of AV .

I do find this tactic rather unpleasant I have to say.

PS – what I find unpleasant is a Tory agent using the Labour No campaign, especially one that attacks Clegg directly given that he’s their main partner in the coalition.

However I do think the Tory Ed poster makes a very powerful point.

In advertising and marketing, there is a concept called “passing”. Passing is pretending to be something else.

You may not use any logo or product design associated with Coca Cola because they are trademarks. The Labour Party has not trademarked its identity, so we have to go to passing.

When you borrow a brand identity, you tread on dodgy ground. You can borrow a brand identity, using irony, to advertise product X adopting the catch phrase from product Y. As long as product X and product Y are not in the same market.

In this example, No2AV and the Labour Party are in the same market. No2AV are clearly guilty of passing.

What next? We don’t have a system for this. No2AV should be told to address the abuse. How?

@ 11 Richard

“AV can also increase advantages though – would have helped the Tories even more under Thatcher and Labour under Blair.”

What’s your basis for that?

“Plus it results in the least unpopular candidate rather than the most popular candidate being elected. Result being a parliament increasingly made up of inoffensive centrists lacking strong personalities or convictions.”

While that might happen in some cases, it’s not definite. You’re working on the assumption that the person who would have got in under FPTP due to the other candidates splitting one another’s vote being the least centrist. I admit I’d put money on that, but I’m not confident it would actually be the result.

For example: a constituency has two fairly hard-right candidates, both of whom are generally popular and get 60% of the vote between them on a fairly even spread. 35% of the remaining vote goes to a centrist who my woolly liberal friends in the area vote for in an attempt to keep both of the right-wingers out. Under FPTP, the liberals would succeed. Under AV, they’d probably fail.

“Then again I’m not sure if this is the thread for discussing the merits or demerits of AV”

ANY thread that mentions AV in the OP is going to devolve into an AV vs FPTP vs PR debate within 30-odd comments. And well you know it!

@ 12 Richard

“However I do think the Tory Ed poster makes a very powerful point.”

Does it? First, saying “the system we don’t like got THIS bastard into power!” is a crap argument, because it’s way too narrow. Secondly, AV doesn’t have all the ridiculously complex rules of the Labour leader election system – in fact, AV is broadly democratic, whereas the Labour system just looks that way if you squint at it.

@ 13 Charlieman

“What next? We don’t have a system for this. No2AV should be told to address the abuse. How?”

Perhaps we should complain to the authorities and let them pass it between one another until several months after the election, at which point they can force No2AV to make a grudging apology that will appear on page 20 of most newspapers and be forgotten within the week? I think that’s the best way.

Sunny says: “I thought they said they were above personal attacks?”

@3 said: “In any case, it’d be better if people realised this is a non-partisan issue.”

Sunny says: “It isn’t, if they’re going to put up a picture of Ed Miliband with the words ‘AV doesn’t work’.”

@6 – “All’s fair in love and politics.”

Sunny says: “its cheap.”

********

Some time ago, however, Sunny wrote an execrable piece entitled ‘How Ed Miliband could win the AV vote for Labour’. Here is his solution:

“… how does he square the circle? Simple: make David Cameron the face of the No campaign. Tell Labour voters to treat the referendum as a vote on Cameron’s policies and give him a black eye.”

“… If I was running the Yes campaign, I’d take plaster ads with Cameron’s face and ask Labour voters to do give him a bloody nose by over-throwing FPTP.”

“… [Miliband] has to become more aggressive, and he has to tie the vote around David Cameron’s neck.”

Hypocrite much?

14 – http://www6.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2011/04/09/whod-benefit-most-from-ld-2nd-prefs-lab-or-con/

I believe the Jenkins Commission also found that Labour would have done even better under AV in 1997.

@ 18 Richard

Hmm. Ok, two things. Firstly, that graph doesn’t seem to make sense: what does “LD/All voters” mean? Which is it?

Secondly, even if AV does sometime increase the Tory/Labour advantage, in those instances the advantage is not unfair, or at least less unfair. If most of the country broadly support the winner then job done, I reckon.

Pro-FPTP people always forget that under AV people will vote differently so it’s absolutely pointless trying to knock AV on the spurious grounds that “Labour would’ve got XYZ in 1997″ or whatever.

Oh and on-topic: it’s no surprise that the majority of the anti-AV lot in Labour were also anti-Ed Miliband. The dinosaurs that still inhabit the LP are showing their true establishment colours by aligning themselves with the rabid right-wingers of the Tory party.

Sadly, democracy is an illusion. Should we get organised and promote our own candidates, go out and canvas for them, fund their deposits and vote them in, replacing those that have let us down so badly; we would find the establishment
turning out the troops against us!
Socalled democracy is designed to keep us under the heel!

“Should we get organised and promote our own candidates, go out and canvas for them, fund their deposits and vote them in, replacing those that have let us down so badly; we would find the establishment turning out the troops against us!”

Yes, we really should stop sending successful Independent candidates to the gulags. It’s an embarrassment to us all.

*rolls eyes*

Chaise,
I think that you missed my point. They are not to bothered about one or two independents. But; and thats a big but; what if we start to replace them all?

Chaise,

??????????

#24

I think his point is (and if it isn’t his point, it’s mine) that if you get organised, coalesce behind lots of independents and build a structure which can get them elected, you have essentially formed a party, and the candidates cease to be independent.

Hi Tim,
Even if you allow them to keep their Independence and have no whip?

@ 24 Chris

“But; and thats a big but; what if we start to replace them all?”

We’d have a new government. What possible reason do you have for claiming they’d impose martial law?

OK Guys and Gals,

let’s all give it a try and see. It’s the only true way to test my theory?

But whatever you do; get out there and vote in this referendum.

…Especially if you’re voting Yes.

#27

Well, in order to do that, you’d have to have a unified principle (presumably that there’d be no whipping) – otherwise you might find some of the candidates decide to band together since they didn’t seem to be getting anywhere, and agree amongst themselves to adopt similar positions even where they disagreed, so as to maximise the chances of getting something done on the issues they agreed on. They might even appoint someone among them to make sure this happened in practice.

To stop this, you’d have to make sure they were accountable to the people who got them elected and stuck to those people’s values in some loose way, including a commitment to have no party whip. That way they would be guaranteed to keep their independence.

Wait a minute…

Many thanks for the opportunity to practice the freedom of speech and thank you all for your kind comments and responses to my somewhat poor missive. The Queen once said that there are dark forces at work in our land; I wonder if She was referring to Old Nick ?

What’s the issue? Yes and No 2AV are cross-party campaigns trying to attract people across the political spectrum. Of course, they are going to go for each other’s Achilles heels.

I researched Matthew Jim Elliott, the director of No Campaign Ltd, and find he used to be at GLOBAL VISION FOR BRITAIN LIMITED55 TUFTON STREET
LONDON SW1P 3QL as a director. He is now at Westminster Tower, 3 Albert Embankment, London SE1 7SP. According to http://www.companiesintheuk.co.uk/ltd/global-vision-for-britain he still owes P&O PROPERTY HOLDINGS LIMITED, a RENT DEPOSIT DEED – OUTSTANDING on 16 Apr 2008.

This is the sort of person campaigning for things to stay the same. Pigs in the trough. Greedy, selfish and determined to continue stealing money from the British People.

We just don’t have the time now to get a YES vote. Information has been kept from the public, and the Tries can always count on the blue-rinse brigade to turn out. Most people I have spoken to, 45-50, are not going to vote at all.

I thought this campaign, on both sides, was supposed to be non-partisan? David Cameron certainly attempted to reinforce that point when he appeared cuddled up with John Reid the other day.

So its interesting when you get to the last page of William Norton’s rather tacky flyer

This page is just an outright partisan attack on the Lib Dems and Nick Clegg in particular.

I carry no particular standard for the Lib Dems but lets think about this some more. The NO-to-AV campaigners are clearly anti-Lib Dem (notwithstanding any AV issues). But under their ‘NO-to-AV’ flag, they berate Nick Clegg for breaking promises on job cuts, VAT increase, tuition fees, spending cuts and so on. Since David Cameron is clearly in support of the NO campaign, one assumes that he is equally vociferous regarding Nick Clegg breaking promises on job cuts, VAT increase, tuition fees, spending cuts and so on…..

So does that mean, if the Conservatives win the next election by a clear majority we can look forward to the government stopping job cuts, reducing VAT and tuition fees and increasing public spending – proving that they can keep the promises Nick Clegg breaks?

A facetious point to suggest of course. I am just trying to make the point that you cannot conduct a ‘non-partisan’ campaign where you resort to specific attacks on political parties and leaders.

It would be unwise to ally oneself too closely to such a cause.

Nick makes a good series of points. Of course, should the Tories win outright at the next General Election, they will make absolutely no reversals on what is happening now. “A facetious point to suggest of course”, not in my opinion. Carry out some research of your own. Go to http://www.no2av.org/04/a-letter-from-donors-to-no-to-av/ and see the long, long list of fat-cats and “lots-a-money” people who are supporting keeping the current corrupt and corrupting system. These are not ordinary people, not working class like myself, with a higher education I funded myself through my work, but greedy, selfish stinking rich people who want the system to stay the same, so that corruption can stay the same.